No buyer could be found for yet another bankrupt retailer.
Game Mania filed for bankruptcy on Monday. The game store chain made this decision after no buyer had been found for the company. The physical stores are closed from today. The webshop will remain open for the time being. Game Mania has thirty stores, twelve in Belgium and eighteen in the Netherlands.
Parent company Heroik applied for a kind of deferral of payment at the corporate court in Antwerp in June. As a result, Game Mania was temporarily protected from creditors while it looked for a suitable takeover candidate. The company was burdened by increased costs, which weighed on results. The number of shops had already shrunk considerably in recent years. For example, in 2019 Game Mania still had 75 stores in Belgium and the Netherlands.
Game Mania was founded in Antwerp in 1992 by three Belgian entrepreneurs. In 2006 the company was purchased by the Dutch chain The Free Record Shop. When that chain started to struggle financially, the game stores continued independently again in 2013, under the leadership of the founders.
