Fantasy Flight Games Discontinuing RPGs?

Back in January, it emerged that FFG was laying off a lot of staff, including RPG staff. Now, GM Chris over at d20 Radio is reporting that the company is discontinuing all RPG development, including Star Wars, Legend of the Five Rings, and its relatively newer Genesys universal system.

He says that all currently announced products will be produced, but in the long-term the RPG production is ending. There's some speculation regarding sales of companies to each other (FFG's owner is Asmodee, which is owned by PAI Partners who bought it from Eurazeo), but it's only conjecture. More info at the link below!

Fantasy Flight Games Long Term Plan will Discontinue RPG Development - d20 Radio

This article is a follow-up to a prior article published on January 8, 2020. We at d20Radio are sad to announce that we have independently confirmed [...]

www.d20radio.com

FFG's Katrina Ostrander appears to have confirmed the news:


Back in January, FFG laid off over 14 staff, and shut down Fantasy Flight Interactive. Reports were that the tabletop RPG department had been "shuttered" -- reduced to a couple of full timers. It sounds now like the cut is more severe even than that.

 

[Morrus]

I don’t think the license is a simple split of board games vs miniature games. FFG produced a dice game, card game, two straight up board games (Rebellion and Outer Rim), and of course the RPG.

Might just not be exclusive. Not all licenses are exclusive licenses. I’m pretty sure I heard the Trek license isn’t.

 

[billd91]

Well, I guess role playing games are not profitable to parent company Asmodee, especially when compared to card games, even for the small hobby stores who sell way more card booster decks than RPG books.

I wouldn't necessarily bet on it being the decision-makers at Asmodee since they, in turn, are owned by an equity capital/investment corporation - and they make their money by buying other companies, stripping them down of 'excess' liabilities, and selling them for a profit.

Think of what Bain and others did when they took over Toys R Us. Not only did they buy the company, they saddled it with the debt they took on to buy it in the first place, forcing it into bankruptcy which allowed them to hold off on any claims employees had to compensation or severance, and then retained the trademarks for lean and mean "store within a store" toy sections. So not only do they get to make profit selling toys with the overhead of a brick and mortar borne by a department store rather than themselves, they didn't have to pay any of the 20,000 odd employees they savagely dropped from the workforce. Eurazeo might not be that transparently predatory, but I think something similar is going on. They've turfed out a segment of their property's property (Asmodee and FFG, respectively) in order to improve the attractiveness of FFG for when they spin it off and give them a modest little profit.

 

[eyeheartawk]

So, from a license perspective, does that make Imperial Assault a miniatures game? Seems like the li9ne could get pretty blurry.

Yes. Imperial Assault was from before they had a license that included boardgames (they do now). It's why Imperial Assault shipped with a "skirmish" mode; to be classified as a miniatures game.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

That sucks for the people in that department and fans of the ffg games.

otoh, I can dream again of a return of wotc Star Wars.

 

[DWChancellor]

I do wonder if part of the decision is the relative age of the FFG SW RPG (i.e. declining returns), strength of D&D, and a lack of immediate to mid-term returns.

Perhaps the general retrenchment plan with the movies (if that is actually real) is showing up a little in their licensing space?

For my part I loved how the FFG SW dice worked, but felt the rest of the system was too big a change from my DM'ing habits.

 

[univoxs]

I'll just continue playing the old WEG rules, blissfully unaware.

 

[Morrus]

I'll just continue playing the old WEG rules, blissfully unaware.

Good talk.

 

[Jacob Lewis]

A shame for the systems that still had potential life in them, but at least the Star Wars RPG was complete and (dare I say?) fully operational.

 

[MerricB]

I don’t think the license is a simple split of board games vs miniature games. FFG produced a dice game, card game, two straight up board games (Rebellion and Outer Rim), and of course the RPG.

The basics are "it's complicated".

Hasbro has (or had) the pure boardgame license. FFG had a lot of other tabletop licenses. However, FFG were able to produce a few FFG boardgames since they contained miniatures, and then Outer Rim (which doesn't have minis). How? It seems they have an agreement with Hasbro.

However, FFG can't sell these Star Wars boardgames on their website. They're there, but perpetually "out of stock".

In addition, the licenses are also territory-dependent. Hans im Gluck has a Star Wars version of Carcassone, which can't be sold in the US. So that points to Hasbro having a US-exclusive Star Wars boardgame license, which intersects oddly with FFGs licences.

More discussion can be found here: FFG / Hasbro Star Wars License | Star Wars: Outer Rim

Cheers!

 

[ddaley]

Star Wars version of Carcassone,

That sounds interesting... how do I get a copy of that