Name Your Game is a cute little store in the village of Hampshire, Illinois. It sells some clothes, it sells some candy, and most importantly, until this year it had ten old arcade machines.
Ms. Pac-Man & NASCAR Racing were among the titles, whose retro appeal was a big hit with the local kids. But Hampshire were having none of it, with a levy in place slugging operators of coin-op arcade machines a $100 "annual registration fee", plus an additional $250 per machine.
That added up to $2600 for Name Your Game, a price they couldn't afford. So at the start of the year, they got rid of the cabinets, and say that business has tanked ever since.
We had become a pretty big hangout for kids after school and weekends. But not having the video games this year has made a big impact in just the first two weeks.
There's more to the story than this - apparently Hampshire instituted the levy because they knew the big companies that normally operate the machines pay them, rather than the store hosting them - so check it out at the link below.
Hampshire shop: Video game tax driving teens out of their hangout [The Courier News, via Game Politics]