In mid-November, Marcus King of Titan Games revealed that GAMA (Games Manufacturers Association) had acquired the Game Industry Network (GIN), a popular retailer discussion group that is part of the Delphi Forums, which also hosts the CBIA (Comic Book Industry Alliance) discussion forum.  When some retailers registered potential objections based on the way in which they thought GAMA might run the forum, King revealed that GAMA had already owned the forum for ten months.  King noted that GAMA had been 'completely hands off,' and that GAMA was also working on setting up a GAMA Members Delphi Forum, specifically designed for manufacturers.

GAMA's Executive Director, Anthony Gallela explained the acquisition of GIN to the retailers on the forum (reprinted by permission).  'Helping you directly and indirectly to make money is why we exist,' he said. 'We feel that a forum like this one is helpful to our industry making more money. If one did not exist already, then GAMA would create one for the good of the industry.'  Gallela noted that Marcus King had come to GAMA and told them that he was thinking of shutting down the forum, and that buying the forum from him was much cheaper than setting one up from scratch.

As for why GAMA did not announce its acquisition of GIN for nearly a year, Gallela said it was to demonstrate good intentions.  'We wanted to have that year to show you that we really mean it when we say that we're not going to mess with it,' he said. 'Now I'm not saying that we will never change the forum in any way at all, but you can see by our work so far that our intention is to keep it the way it is. Now I know that most folks on the forum don't need this kind of proof, but since we felt that some vocal folks do, we decided not to make a big deal about our purchase until we had some time under our belt to show what our plans were.'