All good things must come to an end. And, unfortunately, that time has come for Southtown Arcade.

Due to a number of circumstances, Southtown Arcade’s last day of operation at its current location will be Sunday, November 25th, 2012. We’re really sorry for the sudden nature of this announcement, but we were hoping that we would be able to resolve a number of outstanding issues in order to continue normal business operations, and, unfortunately, our optimism did not bear fruit.

Between our lease expiring at the end of the year, increased demands on our time from work and home (we have families and/or full-time jobs outside of STA!), and increased demands on our time to grow the business and maintain day-to-day operations at the Arcade, we’ve decided that the best thing for us to do is cease operation of STA at this time.

Are we going to come back? Never say never; we’d love to continue doing what we’re doing, but, as it stands now, we’re in no position to do so, given the circumstances we find ourselves in. However, we are going to continue our partnership with Iplaywinner and run events in the San Francisco Bay Area; Season 6 of our Ranking Battles will be played out, it just won’t take place at STA, sadly. We’ll have more information on this and future events, like Season 7 of our Ranking Battles, very soon.

We’d also like to take a moment to thank everyone and anyone who has ever supported STA in any way, shape or form, even if it was as little as a Facebook “Like” or just stopping in to take a look around. We also want to thank all of our sponsors and partners who’ve supported us in the past, including, but not limited to, CAPCOM, SEGA, EightArc, Mad Catz, Namco and ArcadeShock. We especially want to thank everyone who showed up, day in and day out (you know who you are!), everyone who ever came by for a Ranbat (you know who you are too!), and everyone who came by just to tell us how much the place sucks (we know you who are!). We’d just start rattling off names, but we’re sure we’d forget someone, and that wouldn’t be fair, so, if you’re thinking to yourself, “You’d shout me out… RIGHT?!”, you are one of those people. Thank you.

Lastly, we wan to tell everyone to support the community. Support events that support the community. Support businesses that support the community. Don’t support scumbag tournament organizers and don’t support businesses who’ve shown themselves to be incapable of conducting themselves professionally. This is the most important thing you can do to keep the community alive and make sure we continue to grow. If we don’t support the real honest supporters of this community, then they all go away, and this will make the community weaker.

Please feel free to send us comments, words of love, proclamations of hate, or whatever you need to get off your chest via Twitter, Facebook or email. We always love to hear from our fans. We will not be granting requests for interviews nor will we be providing comment for news stories, so, please, kindly refrain from sending us media requests.

Thanks again to everyone for your love and support, and we’ll be back sooner than later, one way or another. We’ll always bring the hype, as we always have.

#RIP #RIP BibleThump Kappa

Love,

Southtown