Greater Than Games Shutters Due to Tariffs

Greater Than Games, the publisher behind the superhero-themed Sentinel Comics RPG, has shuttered due to the ongoing tariff war between the United States and China. Flat River Group, Greater Than Games' parent company announced that they've reduced Greater Than Games' staff "in response to ongoing economic pressures resulting from the international tariff crisis." Additionally, all new projects from the publisher are suspended due to the tariff situation. However, Flat River Group will keep Greater Than Games' website open for the time being, with in-stock products available and current catalog products produced "as needed."

While Greater Than Games is best known for publishing Spirit Island and Sentinels of the Multiverse, they also published Sentinel Comics, a superhero RPG set within the world of their Sentinels of the Multiverse games. The global tariff war has impacted board game publishers, most of whom rely on Chinese manufacturers to produce games. Some RPGs are also produced in China or printed by other overseas publishers, thus making them eligible for the tariffs imposed by the Trump administration in recent weeks.

 

[Umbran]

The definitions are the actual practice when it comes to tariffs.

I do not go to Wikipedia for legal definitions and practices.

 

[RealAlHazred]

I do not go to Wikipedia for legal definitions and practices.

Smart. Do what I do and go to /reddit.com/r/badlegaladvice...

 

[Bill Zebub]

I ask my private LLM chatbot, which I trained entirely from Barrens chat in World of Warcraft.

 

[Wofano Wotanto]

I find searching random forums for posts with "IANAL" in them works best.

 

[mrm1138]

I'm curious what this means for The History of Sentinel Comics. I've been really looking forward to it since it was announced, and I have no clue what kind of progress they'd made on it.

 

[Wofano Wotanto]

I'm curious what this means for The History of Sentinel Comics. I've been really looking forward to it since it was announced, and I have no clue what kind of progress they'd made on it.

You can find the long, long string of promises and progress reports on the RPG's kickstarter updates. It was supposedly due to go to layout in May back in the April update. Be interesting to see what the May update has to say, assuming there is one.

 

[Umbran]

You can find the long, long string of promises and progress reports on the RPG's kickstarter updates.

If there's one solid criticism to be made of GTG, it is that they could not manage a timely crowdfunding delivery if their lives depended on it. The Sentinels Comics RPG was... a year late? The board game was... three years late? Something like that?

 

[Wofano Wotanto]

The Sentinels Comics RPG was... a year late?

I had to go look through the updates, it's been so long. Project funded February 2019, expected delivery for core book was Dec 2019. Backers got the core pdf May 2020, physical book shipped December 2020, so a full year late.

Of the stretch goals, the Guise book shipped April 2022. That was the last actual book that came out for the game, although there have been a number of one-shot annual adventures (for GenCon) and a whole new edition of the Starter Kit from 2017, none of which were KS goals. They also supposedly shipped a spin-off game that was part of some zine month to the printers just before the shutdown - not part of the KS either, but backers were getting it as a bonus. It appears to be a fancier choose-your-path adventure. We might actually see that one, maybe. Unless it didn't actually go to the printer, or it was printed in China and won't be paid for.

That leaves backers short four hardcover books:

• The History of Sentinel Comics
• A 12-adventure book about the Diamond Book of Monsters and the setting's annoyingly spelled Cthulhu clone
• The Dark Watch sourcebook, presumably covering Rook City as well as the team
• An Urban Environments sourcebook

IIRC all of those were due by end of 2025 as of the last progress report, or maybe the last one was early 2026. None of them were even in layout AFAIK, and you know better than I how long that is from being done. They've promised other completion dates many times since 2019, as you might expect.

The earlier card game's Oblivaeon KS was legendarily late, but I wasn't at all involved and just bought the silly thing once it showed up at the FLGS. Bit of a waste since the Definitive Edition (which has left the Disparation backerkit hanging, and was planned to have at least one more boxed expansion) isn't backward compatible with Enhanced.

 

[aramis erak]

If there's one solid criticism to be made of GTG, it is that they could not manage a timely crowdfunding delivery if their lives depended on it. The Sentinels Comics RPG was... a year late? The board game was... three years late? Something like that?

It OPENED a year late. There are still products undelivered even in PDF. Too many stretch goals.

 

[Jd Smith1]

It OPENED a year late. There are still products undelivered even in PDF. Too many stretch goals.

Sounds like quality of management had a hand in the closing.

That's the curse of the industry: great innovators seldom make good businessmen, and good businessmen are rarely great on the creative side.

My baby brother, an engineer, has a sign in his office: at some point in every project you have to shoot the engineers and begin production.