The Lounge located on Wooster Street right across from Kohl Hall officially closed at 4 a.m. Saturday morning with no plans to reopen anytime soon.

The four owners, Alex Merced, Spencer Marugg, David Baum and Matt Morgan decided to close the Bowling Green location because business wasn’t doing as well as the other store located in Sandusky, Ohio, which is about an hour east of Bowling Green.

The store closed for multiple reasons.

The saturation of the market, being the market of entertainment in general, was one of the downfalls of the once-prosperous store.

The primary owners of the Lounge, Merced and Marugg, said that with the many gaming stores in Bowling Green the market had become stretched.

Merced explained that the merchandise they sold, with the exception of LAN (local area network) gaming, was also sold at several stores such as 2-Play, which also just recently closed.

Merced said that summer business was good because high school kids had gotten summer jobs, and had time and money to spare for gaming.

But once school started, business slowed down.

He explained how college students usually have time for gaming and high school students didn’t have the money to really buy anything.

Merced said they will still have the store in Sandusky, Ohio and their Web site, http://www.gamersloungeonline.com/. The store in Sandusky provides the same services as the one in Bowling Green did.

And for those gamers that do not live near Sandusky there is the Lounge Web site. It provides a link for http://theherozone.com which is the Web site that was originally for the Sandusky store, and you can buy merchandise off of the Web site.

Marugg and Merced both said they will miss the social phenomenon that occurred at the store. From making friends to new relationships, they will miss “the community that developed around the store,” Marugg said.

Many of the gamers said they will miss the store, even if they came to just watch games like freshman, Chris Risseler.

“Just sitting and watching people play board games, card games, stuff like that, learning new things. That’s always fun,” Risseler said. He said he wished the store wouldn’t have closed.

But the lounge did not close without a bang. Merced and Marugg held a going-away party that went on from open to close Friday, with it ending at 4 a.m.

People came in throughout the night and played games like Magic: The Gathering, Legend of the Five Rings or L5R as most call it, Super Smash Brothers and an assortment of board games.

At midnight, they ordered pizza. Finally, when 4 a.m. rolled around several were reluctant to leave. They all said their final remarks and headed on their way.

But Merced said they plan to reopen the store in four or five years when the Sandusky store is doing well and when the market has readjusted itself.

“This isn’t the last of the Lounge!” Merced said.