To ensure that gaming history is preserved for future generations, a UK videogame museum was granted $52,000 (£40,000) to help it stay open during the pandemic.

The global pandemic has had mixed effects on the gaming industry. For some, like Zynga, it has meant explosive growth in sales; for others, it has meant the dissolution of entire teams. No matter where you land on the spectrum of video games, however, from developer to player there is one thing that we all have a stake in: Gaming history.

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Luckily, with the grant from the Arts Council, the video game museum will stay open until the Spring of 2021. The Cultural Recovery fund—which is where the grant comes from—was created by the UK government that will provide £1.57 billion (2 billion US dollars) for arts and culture around the country.

The UK National Video Game Museum is the only one of its kind in the United Kingdom, making this grant more critical for the preservation of gaming history here than in other areas of the world. The museum is run by the charity BGI, which works to educate the public about the art, science, history, and technology of video games—helping to initiate a new generation of designers and artists to the gaming industry.

The CEO of BGI, Rick Gibson, thanked the Arts Council for the grant—expressing his concern about an impending second shutdown. Previously, the museum had been threatened with permanent closure, as "most government and all arts emergency funds" were denied to it—according to BGI. It had been saved up to this point due to its fundraising campaign "Just Giving" which raised £200,000.

If you want to visit the museum, you are requested to make a reservation on the website. Face masks are required, so if you show up without one, you will be denied entry and your time will either be rescheduled or canceled, depending on your preference. One additional precaution is the requirement to sanitize your hands after playing each game. Following all of these requests could help keep the museum open well past the Spring.

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Source: BGI