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Fantasy Flight To Merge With European Board Game Giant Asmodee
Fantasy Flight Games has announced its merger into the Asmodee Group, a major European publisher and distributor responsible for Ticket to Ride, 7 Wonders, and more. Fantasy Flight will remain independent as part of the conglomerate, and will likely retain all of its licensing relationships.
The Minnesota-based Fantasy Flight publishes games based on the Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, Warhammer, and Game of Thrones licenses. It’s also been behind titles based on Gears of War, Civilization, The Witcher, and will release an XCOM board game this quarter.
Fantasy Flight CEO Christian Peterson cites the ability to grow its international presence as part of the motivation for the deal. ““By joining forces with Asmodee, we’ll be able to continue that growth, expand our international marketing capabilities, and create additional career opportunities for our terrific staff,” he writes. Most importantly, we can do this while staying true to our vision of creating great products for the global hobby games market.”
Currently, Fantasy Flight Games are localized in Europe by external partners. That will not change immediately. Organized play changes in Europe will take approximately a year to be fully implemented, also.
The company also says that there will be no changes to distributor or retailer relationships. For more on Fantasy Flight, check out a recent instructional video for the imminent release of The Witcher Adventure Game.
[Source: Fantasy Flight]
Our Take
If you were to peek inside my board game closet, you would see the Fantasy Flight logo quite a bit. Included in my collection are the Star Wars Living Card Game, the Gears of War game, The Lord of the Rings card game, Arkham Horror, and more. I hope the promise of Fantasy Flight’s independence is kept, because losing this company would be devastating to the board game world.
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