Mythic co-founder on death threats, doxxing and IP deals, Gamefound turns up heat on Kickstarter, German board game sales bounce back
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Mythic Games’ huge financial problems post-pandemic had already seen it take the unprecedented step of asking Kickstarter backers for more money to finish projects. Now the company has given up on completing two projects entirely, despite raising $3.2m from backers to create the games - instead selling the IPs to fellow miniatures-focused boardgame crowdfunder CMON. Backers are rightly furious, and Mythic co-founder Leo Vesperini says he has received death threats. He spoke to BoardGameWire this week about what the future holds for the company and its remaining unfinished projects.
Elsewhere, Votes for Women scored a huge crowdfunding success despite having its ads banned by Facebook, with new backers flooding in to support the project in the wake of the news. And Gamefound continues to eat Kickstarter’s lunch in the tabletop gaming segment, helped in part by the biggest board game fundraise of 2023. Related news: Polygon has -just- reported that Kickstarter’s tabletop games funding total has fallen for the second year in a row - and that the crowdfunding major has stopped sharing data for the segment after a decade of doing so. Not a good look.
Death threats, doxxing and IP deals: Mythic Games’ co-founder on the fallout from its CMON deal, and where it all went wrong for the company
Mythic Games’ fall from one of the most successful crowdfunding-focused board game publishers of all time to one beset by financial woes has been swift. In the 18 months since the company took the unprecedented step of asking Kickstarter backers for more money to complete a project – the $5.6m-crowdfunded Darkest Dungeon board game – Mythic has faced spiralling costs, outsourced the entirety of its remaining workforce and given up on delivering two Kickstarters worth a combined $3.2m, instead selling the IP for those games to CMON.
The sale of Hel: The Last Saga and Anastyr’s IPs earlier this week sparked the greatest outrage yet from backers, after CMON announcing that neither game was “ready for publication in their current state and would require substantial effort to complete”. Kickstarter backers of both games, some of whom paid hundreds of dollars for extensive add-ons and stretch goals, will now just receive a ‘core box’ of CMON’s redesigns. Mythic co-founder Leonidas Vesperini spoke to BoardGameWire about the decision behind the CMON deal, the death threats he has received since, and where the future lies for Mythic’s remaining projects.
Votes for Women shrugs off Facebook ad ban to raise almost $200,000 after huge show of support
Votes for Women, the critically acclaimed card-driven wargame about the fight for women’s suffrage in the US, has raised almost $200,000 for its second edition Kickstarter campaign as backers turned up in droves after the game’s adverts were banned by Facebook. Publisher Kevin Bertram told BoardGameWire earlier this month that the campaign stood to miss out on up to $60,000 in funding after Facebook repeatedly banned ads for the game, claiming it featuring a “sensitive social issue”.
Bertram had lowered his hopes for the Kickstarter total to about $120,000 due to the cancelled advertising – but a wave of support after the ban news broke, including more than $32,000 in a single day, pushed the total above what he’d been expecting if the Facebook ads had run their full course.
Gamefound turns up heat on Kickstarter after scoring 2023’s biggest tabletop fundraise, half of the year’s top 10 most-funded board game projects
Tabletop games-focused crowdfunding platform Gamefound has upped the pressure on industry heavyweight Kickstarter thanks to a stellar 2023 which saw it bag the biggest board game fundraise of the year. Gamefound began life as a Kickstarter pledge manager in 2015, before Marcin Świerkot, the founder of board game publisher Awaken Realms, set his sights on beating the crowdfunding giant at its own game in the tabletop sector two years ago.
Świerkot hoped 2022 would see the company take in $67.5m, representing 25% of the tabletop revenue Kickstarter had recorded the previous year – a total it fell well short of at $28.3m, despite a big rise in revenue, Polygon reported in February last year. This year the firm has outdone Świerkot’s initial $50m prediction, pulling in $56m in total crowdfunding from projects despite Kickstarter’s continued dominance and the rise of fellow upstart fundraising platform BackerKit – another former Kickstarter pledge manager which exited its beta phase last summer.
Arcane Wonders, Spin Master to publish Marvel comics collecting board game after Tom Vasel recommendation
Arcane Wonders has teamed with toy major Spin Master to publish a board game about collecting Marvel comics, after Dice Tower creator Tom Vasel brought it to them as a recommendation. Comic Book Hunters, which sees up to four players compete to build the best collection of Marvel comic book covers, is set for a release in Fall this year, BoardGameWire can reveal.
The game is an English language localisation of 2020’s Comic Hunters, which was originally released by Brazilian board game specialists Bocaneiros Jogos and MeepleBR. Robert Geistlinger, president and COO at Arcane Wonders, told BoardGameWire that Vasel brought the game to Arcane Wonders for consideration as a Dice Tower Essentials game – a line of games representing titles Vasel “personally loves and believes should be an essential part of any gamer’s collection”.
German board game sales have bounced back dramatically after a tricky 2022
Board game sales in Germany, one of the world’s biggest tabletop markets, returned to growth last year to shake off a difficult 2022 rocked by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the global energy crisis. Sales jumped 9% in 2023 according to new data from German trade association DVSI, reversing the 5% decline recorded the previous year thanks to strong across the board performance – with TCGs such as Pokemon, Magic and Lorcana doing especially well.
Spieleverlage, a group within DVSI of 19 game publishers from Germany, Switzerland and Austria, said that even without TCGs the market grew by 3% – decoupling itself from the wider toy market, which it said saw a decline of 5% last year according to initial projections. The board game segment was already on track to undo the damage caused by 2022 in August of last year – but DVSI said at the time that game publishers were expecting a further positive development for the Christmas period, which accounts for around 40% of annual sales in the toy trade.
How Goliath bought Prospero Hall’s game assets, but left its heart behind
When the news broke just over a day ago that Rummikub owner Goliath had bought Funko’s board game and puzzles assets, much of the initial industry talk focused on the decision by the financially-troubled Funko in getting rid of one of its only growing business segments. Discussions of how Funko’s well regarded tabletop game design team Prospero Hall could be boosted by Goliath’s stewardship quickly faded, however, as accounts began to appear suggesting the vast majority of the 30-plus strong team were set to be let go as part of the deal.
Goliath itself has said nothing beyond its initial press release, which celebrated its purchase of a “highly regarded brand that includes hundreds of board games” – but made no mention of the people who have made that brand what it is today. Several sources within Funko Games did speak to BoardGameWire on condition of anonymity, however, painting a bleak picture in which employees have been working for months amid huge uncertainty about their future.
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