Jesus Christ can they stop crowdfunding games. I really want to like mantic I really do but the Kickstarters need to end now. If you as an established miniature company don't have the funds to make a game from the ground up then you don't have the funds to make the game full stop. Unlike Halo I don't think Assassins Creed has the fan base that would transfer over to the tabletop despite how often the hobbies intersect.
Kickstarter is definitely a bad crutch for established companies. It gets them a surge of income and of course product out the door that's paid for(assuming they didn't fuck things up... more on that later) but the problem is once the kickstarter is over with, they need another because there's no continued revenue. People have covered this many times before, and it's wildly apparent, but most kickstarters that do make it to a retail phase after launch don't succeed in that environment as the buyers with the most interest have already received everything at a massive discount(compared to retail) from the kickstarter. The boardgames with the 16 unlocked stretch goal expansions that never get played and eventually end up in a landfill are probably the worst examples of this.
There's been a number of board game companies that have either already shutdown, or announced they will be over the past couple of weeks even before the tariffs took effect, and apparently a lot of it is because these small to mid size companies are run by idiots. The article goes over 2 examples, one of which fucked up by trusting CMON with a massive order in fucking Chinese of all things, who then failed to pay them. CMON has been known for years to have issues in the industry like this. The other company is the producers of Gloomhaven, who apparently decided to quadruple their KS production needs to sell the rest to retail but are then crying about tariffs(yet everything was funded and paid for, with the KS backers funding their speculation into retail) and claiming they owe millions of dollars because of the 100+% tarfiffs because if the miscellaneous toys import codes but...
In other words, properly classifying their shit for import means they avoid the massive generic tariff even though smaller tariffs exist. Why wouldn't they classify their shit correctly? Because apparently the people running some of these companies are dumb or never looked into it. They just rely on the freight forwarders to do it all for them(or are getting scammed by freight companies), or just go with the miscellaneous option because it'll get through customs the quickest(and previously it didn't matter). Someone in the comments actually inadvertently affirms the customs issue by pointing out that customs will want to reclassify things, cause delays, force people to appeal re-classifications... well yes they do and that's why if you want to save the money you fight it. But your company also shouldn't be on such razor thin margins that a 2 month delay bankrupts you. There's another commenter claiming that the article is full of misinformation(when it cites shit) who says they're Loren Coleman from Catalyst Game Labs, well that's a respectable company so maybe this person does know their shit? Oh right, that's the Loren Coleman from CGL who knows so much they got away with embezzling company funds to buy themselves a house a few years back instead of properly paying staff.
Yes, it's a very long read and the owner of this boardgame company is indeed selling a book about running a game company at the end, but it's interesting and points out many patterns over the years that have apparently come back to bite people in the ass because they were being lazy.
