andy Posted January 9, 2020 Report Share Posted January 9, 2020 Sad news. Fantasy Flight Games has laid off their entire RPG and FFG Interactive (digital versions of FFG boardgames) staff. Details are available at Reddit. According to the Order 66 Podcast guys, the entire RPG team was let go, so no skeleton crew remains to run a freelancer-based studio. I really like the FFG Star Wars RPG (yes, even the goofy dice...) so this is really disappointing news. The line was pretty close to completion... Edge of the Empire, Age of Rebellion, and Force and Destiny all released a full complement of splatbooks, but I was enjoying the slow stream of era sourcebooks, consolidation books, etc. A Mandolorian sourcebook would have been epic. The boardgames teams are apparently unaffected. So it goes. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ish Posted January 9, 2020 Report Share Posted January 9, 2020 Darn shame. The FFG Star Wars line was pure gold, their Warhammer 40,000 games (Dark Heresy, etc.) were some of the most immersive books about the WH40k setting in decades (even if they lost the license a few years back), and back in the D&D3.x era FFG’s settings of Midnight and DragonStar were some of the best stuff to come out in a heavily oversaturated market. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
deadwing34 Posted January 9, 2020 Report Share Posted January 9, 2020 I wonder if any of this has to do with them loosing/dropping support for all of the Games Workshop stuff? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ish Posted January 9, 2020 Report Share Posted January 9, 2020 12 minutes ago, deadwing34 said: I wonder if any of this has to do with them loosing/dropping support for all of the Games Workshop stuff? Probably not directly, since GW decided not to renew the contract over two years ago... But I’m gonna guess that had an indirect effect. GW licensed products were the lion’s share of their RPG output for most of the eight years they had the license after all. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
andy Posted January 9, 2020 Author Report Share Posted January 9, 2020 They didn't have a lot of irons in the fire. Star Wars was definitely winding down, and Genesys seemed pretty stagnant to me. I expect the bean counters looked at what it'd cost to keep the RPG studio open relative to predicted revenue and said the opportunity cost was too high. Better to invest those dollars in the side of the business that was more successful: board and miniature games ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ish Posted January 9, 2020 Report Share Posted January 9, 2020 RPGs are a niche industry, even the biggest of the big, Hasbro (owners of Dungeons & Dragons) reportedly only made $787.7 million net revenue from their entire Gaming division in 2018. That’s D&D, Magic: The Gathering, Monopoly, and all their other board and card games. Games Workshops annual revenue for the same year was £219.9 million (about $290 million in yankee freedom bucks). Most hobby gaming companies do orders or magnitude less: Steve Jackson Games has an annual revenue of $5.5 million; Catalyst Game Labs has an annual revenue of about $4.4 million; Chaosium does about $1.6 million... FFG does around $21.5 million, which is pretty good by comparison, but that’s everything they make all together. The bean counters probably figured that RPGs were more drag than lift... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
deadwing34 Posted January 9, 2020 Report Share Posted January 9, 2020 2 hours ago, Ish said: Probably not directly, since GW decided not to renew the contract over two years ago... But I’m gonna guess that had an indirect effect. GW licensed products were the lion’s share of their RPG output for most of the eight years they had the license after all. Yah was thinking more of an in-direct effect. They had a ton of things tied to the GW licence, board games, RPG's and card games. The company as a whole had to take a hit after that loss, I am still a bit sad they lost the license. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dark Trainer Posted January 9, 2020 Report Share Posted January 9, 2020 Sad they didn't even keep their digital games crew. Seems like digital board games (at least big hits) are a gold mine? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
andy Posted January 9, 2020 Author Report Share Posted January 9, 2020 Apparently, they had only produced the digital version of the Lord of the Rings living card game and that game was, essentially, a flop. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dark Trainer Posted January 9, 2020 Report Share Posted January 9, 2020 13 minutes ago, andy said: Apparently, they had only produced the digital version of the Lord of the Rings living card game and that game was, essentially, a flop. I really liked Battlelore on Android. Guess it might not have sold huge amounts. Not sure what huge HIT board games would be good for a mobile platform. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ish Posted January 9, 2020 Report Share Posted January 9, 2020 Descent: Journeys in the Dark would probably work well in mobile format. They could even monetize it by having micro transactions for new dungeons, new characters, loot crates, re-rolls, etc. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dark Trainer Posted January 9, 2020 Report Share Posted January 9, 2020 Apparently this includes Asmodee games too? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
andy Posted January 9, 2020 Author Report Share Posted January 9, 2020 They just closed the FFG Interactive studio, which was their in-house group and who had only produced the LotR LCG digital edition. There's nothing stopping them licensing out their IP, or working directly with other studios to produce stuff under their own banner like they did with Battlelore. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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