It has been announced that GAME has acquired Multiplay, the company responsible for the Insomnia gaming events in the UK, for £20m.
As an avid gamer, modder and LAN attendee myself, it comes as no surprise that I attend the largest UK gaming event there is, Insomnia. These events started in 1999 with less than 50 attendees per event and rapidly grew to where we are now; a huge event with thousands of attendees per day and over 65 thousand people in total last year. Insomnia has a lot to offer, it has LAN gaming halls, exhibitions, special guests, eSports tournaments and more. The events have been increasingly getting more corporate and now GAME have taken notice and bought the business for an impressive £20M.
It is reported that Multiplay CEO Craig Fletcher will still be in charge of the event, but will now be reporting to GAME. Will this mean any changes to the events? Well, I hope not. I have attended around 20 Insomnia events, either working, as a BYOC gamer or as an exhibitor and I have booked time off for all 3 events this year. I hope with this acquisition we don’t see it turn into some kind of event tailored just to make money and goes back to catering to the gaming communities more than businesses. GAME has been in quite a lot of trouble in recent years, and even went into administration in 2012, so it is good to see that they are branching out into new areas. It’s important that they look to eSports and online gaming more increase their market, this seems an excellent way for them to do so.
Multiplay’s Craig Fletcher said: “GAME and Multiplay are both passionate about games and gaming, building valuable communities of gamers and putting customers first. Over the years we’ve worked closely with the GAME team on many occasions and come to know them well.”
I can only say that time will tell and the community will be the final judge. I hope to have a chat with Craig Fletcher in the coming days to see if we can get some more information as myself and eTeknix are huge fans of the event.
Thanks to MCV for providing us with this information
Image courtesy of Insomnia
They must not change the formular and they must let multiplay run under it’s own brand.
PC gamers do not trust GAME.
Simple as that really. If they let things move as they are, then there is no problem, if they rebrand everything, then they will loose popularity.