GameStop Forms a Label to Dive Even Deeper Into Publishing

Gaming retailer GameStop said Monday that it would continue its move into the game publishing business, with a new publishing label called GameTrust.

In January, the company had announced that it would publish the next game from Ratchet and Clank studio Insomniac, an adventure game called Song of the Deep. Today, it expanded its ambitions, saying that GameTrust would also publish new games from noted studios Ready at Dawn (The Order: 1886), Frozenbyte (Trine), and Tequila Works (Deadlight).

"Unlike a traditional video game publisher, GameTrust is not part of the creative process," GameStop said in a statement. "Instead, it is focusing on discovering creative and fun games from innovative independent developers that can benefit from GameStop’s expertise and retail channels to support marketing and connecting their games with a broader global audience."

GameStop will devote exclusive shelf space in its stores to GameTrust games, it said, and noted that it planned to publish games digitally and on physical discs for consoles, PC, and virtual reality platforms alike.

The move into publishing is just one of the steps that GameStop has taken in recent years to diversify its business. Its longtime core business, selling new and used games and consoles—which Wedbush analyst Michael Pachter called a "melting ice cube" in a note to investors last month—has been on the decline with no end in sight. This has prompted GameStop's entrance into other, complementary, businesses, such as acquiring the nerd-stuff retailer ThinkGeek and the AT&T wireless retail chain Spring Mobile.