Links: Bad News Edition — Theft at SPIEL '18, Downsizing at Steve Jackson Games, and Disappearing Funds for Super Dungeon: Legends

Over the course of the four-day event, at least six small companies were targeted in various ways and suffered losses of cash, product and personal effects. One individual was apprehended in connection with a particular event, but the cash had been taken by an accomplice and there was no recovery. Although security at the show and the Essen police were notified, there was not much recourse to take and to these companies, often run by families, friends or even individually, these are heavy costs to bear.

In total, these six companies listed below lost more than $20,000, although totals are not final. These are small to medium sized companies, run by a handful of individuals, often just family and friends in some cases. SPIEL is a year-long preparation process, and the profits from this show are sometimes the life's blood for the company, allowing them to continue creating and publishing the games their customers love.

Recovery efforts are underway. All the companies agree that the largest concern is bringing to light the need for changes and improvements in SPIEL's security, but recouping these losses follows closely behind.

From the gamer's standpoint, we are in a Golden Age. The combination of crowdfunding and low minimum order requirements at factories means that more and more new creators are releasing their own games. And some are very good, no mistake about it! Others, not so much. Some Kickstarter projects vanish after funding, and some produce a pretty product with no play value. But customers and retailers can't tell which is which until it's too late.

This has led to a situation over the last year or so in which the "New Releases" shelf is swept clean every week or two to make way for yet newer material. Unsold inventory increases at the retail and distribution level, and that expense inevitably rolls back on the publisher.

This has affected the market in two noticeable ways: many older games are selling fewer copies, and publishers have to print smaller numbers of new games because of how quickly they become "old." This leads to a treadmill effect in which a publisher tries to release more and more games while spending less and less on each one. That's bad for both the publisher and the gamers.

Rather than join this treadmill publishing model, we are choosing to strategically adapt by putting more focus and support on our core franchises/titles while limiting new title releases until the correct market environment presents itself. Unfortunately, this also means reducing staff, cutting down overhead expenses, and limiting our presence at conventions, so we can focus on what we do best — create the games our fans have enjoyed for decades.

The problem was that while [CGF's Ed] Carter may have known something about retail, he knew next to nothing about the logistics of game printing, shipping, and customs. "Ed wanted to do something that was completely different," [CGF's former general counsel Christopher] Rao added. "He said that all games will come with worldwide free shipping. I don't know if it's immediately obvious how big of a headache that is. We were sending games to Singapore and to small eastern European countries and stuff like that. So it's tricky. There's different import export laws in all of those countries."

Furthermore, I for one, would happily wait another year to get a coin with Agatha on it to tie it to this kickstarter. Would it be rude to ask for it to be put to a vote? Delay the coin, to have a Girl Genius themed image on the coin that we got with our Girl Genius Munchkin set?

...it's not out of the realm of possibility that you could ship the rest of the project, then stick the correct coin in an envelope and mail it out a year later. I think most of us would be quite satisfied with that.

Initial Funding was able to cover initial development as well as the company's annual overhead for the end of 2015 and all of 2016. However, the project changes and additional development required (as outlined above) required us to use remaining funds towards our annual overhead for 2017, essentially exhausting the funds earned from Kickstarter. While also not being able to bring the product to market for 2017 retail sales.

With a significant amount of the project's development complete, the majority of production was expected to begin in November 2017, which we communicated with backers via an update. [10] The products that we were able to complete development of during 2016 - 2017 were shown in an update to backers in early 2018. [11] Unfortunately, the funds we anticipated to have in place in order to begin manufacturing did not materialize.

Required Funds to Complete Project

With the Kickstarter funds expended it was upon us to be able to self fund the necessary cash needed to complete the project. The remaining estimates for completion of the project are shown below.

● Manufacturing: $490,592.00
● Shipping: $238,000.00
● Remaining Development: $17,400

Raising the funds needed was attempted (and continues to be attempted) through profits of non-Super Dungeon projects as well as outside investor funding.

To date we have still not been able to secure funding for the approximately $750,000 needed to complete the project. However, we continue to work diligently in an attempt to find the funds.