CMON, developers of ASOIAF Tabletop Miniatures Game, Zombicide and numerous other board games made a huge announcement on Thursday. Let’s take a look.
Board and tabletop game developer CMON has announced that they are pausing all future game development and new crowdfunding campaigns, effective immediately. They have also announced “reductions” to “all of our creative teams.” According to Polygon, CMON has over $26.1 million in products that are awaiting delivery to backers, and Thursday’s announcement addresses them directly. “Given global conditions, and most notably the situation with tariffs, CMON has decided to focus on our current commitments to our customers and partners, and prioritize the timely delivery of existing projects… it is our responsibility to take these difficult measures to ensure that we can keep current projects on track and deliver them in a timely manner.”
As US tariffs raise the cost to produce board games and their components, it is no surprise to see some companies pause their long-term plans. But CMON is a heavyweight in the industry, working with a lot of high profile intellectual properties, such as Marvel, Game of Thrones, Masters of the Universe and Dune. CMON relies heavily on crowdsourcing to fund their products, which may have something to do with their decision to pause development and lay off a portion of their work force. Campaigns that are fully funded but not yet delivered, such as Masters of the Universe: The Board Game, can’t change their prices, but their production costs may have just increased by as much as 150%. CMON will likely need to simply eat this cost in order to fulfill the campaign.
CMON has stated that they intend to resume game development “as soon as possible.” Look for further ripple effects from US tariffs in the tabletop gaming industry. I am keeping a close eye on Asmodee, who signed a deal with CMON six years ago to be their exclusive US distributor, and that sell a wide range of other games with supply lines that can be traced back to China. It’s a wild time to be a gamer!
And remember, Frontline Gaming sells gaming products at a discount, every day in their webcart!
