Ken Burnside on how screwed Asmodee is
- Thread starter billd91
- Start date
Whizbang Dustyboots
Gnometown Hero
Boy, if that's true, there's going to be a mad rush in the OSR sphere to publish Conan stuff.
môrgondír
Explorer
If I were Embracer, I would have at least wanted the 'Saudi investor arrangement' committed to paper, rather than merely a spoken deal.
But the arts & entertainment and leisure industries don't have the options for shuffling money around that the tech industry enjoys, q.v. the current 'nVidia / AMD <-> Intel <-> US government' shell game.
But the arts & entertainment and leisure industries don't have the options for shuffling money around that the tech industry enjoys, q.v. the current 'nVidia / AMD <-> Intel <-> US government' shell game.
aramis erak
Legend
The UK, until 1974, used to use 1 Billion as 1 million million, ie, 1e12, while the US has always used 1000 million (1e9) as a billion. Many older news agencies avoid using Billion as part of their style manuals because of the issue of "which billion"... tho' most of the anglophone world is using it as 1e9 now as far as I can tell.
aramis erak
Legend
That it's not yet public domain hasn't stopped many. Astonishing Swordsmen and Sorcerers of Hyperborea being the key exemplar, but not the only OSR game in the space, using the setting.
The trademark, however, is still current, so if you want the name Conan on the cover, you still will need a license from the current owners of the Trademarks.
As for when: current is 95 after first publication or 70 past life of author, longer of. 1932 magazine appearance means mid 2027 for the early character, but the trademark makes using those legally interesting. the novels will be a decade more... assuming no copyright reforms in either direction.
It's like Steamboat Willie: you can copy the story and reuse the animation, but Disney still owns the Trademark "Steamboat Willie" and so you'll need to change the title if using it publicly...
Cergorach
The Laughing One
@kronovan Don't blame Asmodee, blame the people 'selling' (merging) FFG in the first place: the original FFG owners. One can not buy what someone else does not want to sell...
I have seen no announcements that Games Workshop lost the LotR license for their miniatures game, it's still for sale on their website...
Asmodee has been buying up properties (and responsibilities) from CMON (which is doing far worse then Asmodee).
In 2024 Asmodee made a big loss, but in 2025 they made a profit. And they got their loans refinanced. And put a big dent in their debts.
Source:
Looking at their stock prices, they are 16% higher then when they were released in February this year (they had a serious dip and a peak in the mean time). The Market Cap of Asmodee is almost $3 billion, while Hasbro's Market Cap is almost $11 billion.
The doom and gloom in the OP post did not come to pass.
I have seen no announcements that Games Workshop lost the LotR license for their miniatures game, it's still for sale on their website...
Asmodee has been buying up properties (and responsibilities) from CMON (which is doing far worse then Asmodee).
In 2024 Asmodee made a big loss, but in 2025 they made a profit. And they got their loans refinanced. And put a big dent in their debts.
Source:
Looking at their stock prices, they are 16% higher then when they were released in February this year (they had a serious dip and a peak in the mean time). The Market Cap of Asmodee is almost $3 billion, while Hasbro's Market Cap is almost $11 billion.
The doom and gloom in the OP post did not come to pass.
aramis erak
Legend
No, but from a fan perspective, something far worse: both Star Wars and L5R are not getting good support. Couple that to the US distributor going bankrupt... and tariffs... and getting the one new L5R book is worse than getting teeth pulled, especially given that most of my local dentists have 6 month backlogs and are cheaping out on the local anaesthetic...
My FLGS can't get it.
Unfortunately, that's exactly it. Stock prices are irrelevant if you aren't an investor. Investors aren't the ones putting out a product - unfortunately, neither is Asmodee. You've got one of the largest IP's in existence (Star Wars) and they're doing virtually nothing with it because they're too busy managing their debt, and making product would be adding too many costs which makes investors unhappy.
Cergorach
The Laughing One
That's not true.
The problem you're having is that Edge currently isn't producing the SW RPG. Atomic Mass Games is coming out now with a very thorough 2nd edition of the Legion miniatures game. Which costs probably more to produce then the RPG, as they are moving completely to HIPS plactic minis. The problem isn't cost to produce, it's return on investment, and apparently that's been pretty darned poor with the SW RPG since (before?) 2020. FFG has also been doing the Star Wars: The Deckbuilding Game and Star Wars: Unlimited. Days of Wonder is doing Star Wars: Battle of Hoth. So Asmodee is most certainly doing some very successful stuff with the SW IP, just not with the RPG... I wonder why... They did multiple supplements for their Arkham Horror RPG, even one L5R book... Not a SW book since 2020... This started with the SW RPG way before Embracer ever bought Asmodee.
At the start of 2019 SW was #3 in the top 5 charts for RPGs at ICv2, by the end of 2019 it was #4, at the start of 2020 it dropped off the charts completely.
People have a difficult time accepting the reality that, just like the miniature games X-Wing and Armada, and all the old OOP SW board/card games by FFG, there just wasn't any good money in it at the time. Things may cost a lot of money to make, that's not a problem IF sales are significantly higher then that.
I have some suspicions about why this could have happened.
#1 SW RPG was just at the end of it's popularity cycle and sales just collapsed. This has happened before, WEG had the license till 1999. No products at all in 1999, only four products in 1998, and 18 in 1997...
#2 There might have been more products planned for the SW RPG in 2020, but then the pandemic hit. That comes with a couple of issues with playing in person, getting actual physical products to customers in the first half of 2020. Add to that that FFG/Edge didn't sell PDFs of their products, so digital gaming was already difficult with just physical books, add to that the special dice you needed. There were VTTs in 2020, but I suspect very few had working custom SW RPG dice. Nor was there any official VTT products for the SW RPG. I suspect that FFG/Edge didn't have the license for either or they were extremely stupid at the time. Why do you think SW5e (SW RPG on the D&D5e engine) became so popular, digital (free) fan books, and (free) VTT implementations...
aramis erak
Legend
the several months with no new products during the transition, plus killing the forums several months prior to that when Asmodee first bought FFG, did not help sales at all. And seeing the FFG SW staff, the people who knew the game, kicked to the curb or migrated to boardgames was also not popular with the fans.
The L5R staff seem to have all left.
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