Asmodee arm Fantasy Flight Games is discontinuing the latest iteration of its veteran dungeon crawler Descent, citing rising manufacturing costs, “global economic shifts” and the expense of developing the game’s companion app.

FFG launched Descent: Legends of the Dark five years ago as the successor to its popular 2005 release, Descent: Journeys in the Dark, and a more streamlined second edition from 2012.

All three games featured large amounts of plastic miniatures, cardboard terrain pieces and map tiles, while Legends of the Dark also leaned into an integrated companion app to help manage campaigns and individual scenarios.

A statement from FFG announcing the end of the game said, “Simply put, the game is too expensive to make. Between ever-increasing manufacturing costs, lengthy and pricey app development timelines, and global economic shifts making everything more expensive to produce, it became abundantly clear that continuing to make this game is just not feasible.

“This is far from the outcome we wanted – again, we all love this game and hoped to see it grow for years to come – but even if we were to sell every last copy, we would still ultimately be doing so at a loss.

“In a fiercely-competitive board game industry, that simply isn’t sustainable, and because of circumstances outside of FFG’s control, there are no adjustments we could make that could lower costs enough to continue printing the game.”

That competition for Descent has come in the form of huge crowdfunding successes for titles such as Gloomhaven and Frosthaven – the latter of which sealed one of the biggest Kickstarter campaigns of all time by raising almost $13m in 2020.

Other competitors in the space have included CMON’s Massive Darkness series – based on its huge-selling Zombicide system – which has raised more than $10m across a trio of crowdfunds since 2017.

Using crowdfunding for those large-scale, component-heavy games has helped publishers Cephalofair and CMON reduce the risk of developing expensive titles by being able to accurately gauge demand, as well as receiving financial backing for the projects up front.

Even with that data, however, both publishers have run into problems amid the heavy global economic uncertainty over the last couple of years – especially around volatile US tariff policy aimed at countries such as China, where the vast majority of board games are manufactured.

CMON is currently battling enormous losses from the past two years, while Cephalofair has had to navigate significant delivery delays alongside the frequently shifting import taxes situation, which last year saw US tariffs on China whipsaw as high as 145% before being reduced to a still significant 30%.

Asmodee has almost entirely avoided crowdfunding for its own games to date, with its only launched campaign believed to be Lookout Games’ Kickstarter for the Grand Austria Hotel: Let’s Waltz! Expansion & Deluxe Upgrade, which raised about €383,000 during the coronavirus pandemic in 2020.

Its only other prior exposure to crowdfunding is thought to be via the company Exploding Kittens, in which it made a strategic investment short of a buyout in 2021. That business has since raised more than $977,000 in a Kickstarter campaign for Hand to Hand Wombat the following year.

But the board game giant is currently preparing to dip its toes into crowdfunding proper through a Gamefound campaign for Zombicide: Dead Men Tales, having picked up the IP from financially-troubled CMON last summer.

The campaign follows Asmodee bringing in David Preti, the former COO of CMON, in May last year to head up a newly-launched crowdfunding and miniatures operation.

Both Zombicide and fellow CMON acquisition Cthulhu: Death May Die – a series which has raised almost $10m via crowdfunding – are now part of Fantasy Flight alongside Descent, although Asmodee is yet to reveal if the future of the latter title revolves around crowdfunding campaigns.

Its statement about the end of Descent: Legends of the Dark said, “While we don’t have anything to share at this time, there is always a possibility that we will revisit Descent in the future.

“It would take a different form and would not be Legends of the Dark, but this game universe is near and dear to FFG’s heart.

“The future is always uncertain, and even though we have to close the book on Descent today, we hope that, someday, we’ll be able to dream big with it again.”

FFG’s other major titles currently include collectible card game Star Wars Unlimited, ‘living card games’ Marvel Champions and Arkham Horror: The Card Game, heavyweight space opera board game Twilight Imperium and veteran bluffing and negotiation game Cosmic Encounter.

The company said that although Act III of Descent: Legends of the Dark is no longer in development, the company would continue to support the game’s companion app for the first two acts of the game, albeit without any new content being added.

In February Artefacts Studio unveiled Terrinoth: Heroes of Descent, a video game set in the Descent universe which FFG said “captures the classic dungeon-crawl feeling of the Descent board games in a whole new medium”.

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Financially-troubled board game publisher CMON says it plans to relaunch its halted crowdfunding operations later this year, after seeing its annual losses soar to almost $20m in 2025.

CMON pulled the plug on crowdfunding launches and new game development 12 months ago, citing the economic uncertainty created by US tariff hikes – which at the time had reached 145% for China, where the vast majority of hobby board games are manufactured.

But a month later it emerged that CMON’s financial problems had been growing long before the tariffs, with the company announcing it had slumped to a loss of more than $3m in 2024 due to falling sales for its crowdfunding campaigns.

That loss was almost double CMON’s total profits from the prior three years – but the figure is dwarfed by the $19.9m annual loss the company just announced in its 2025 financial results.

CMON’s $23m losses across 2024 and 2025 are now almost 5.5-times larger than its profits from the preceding nine years combined – and have led an independent auditor hired by the company to question whether it has the resources to stay in business for the foreseeable future.

An extract of a report from auditor Zhonghui Anda shared by CMON, which is set to appear in the company’s 2025 annual report next month, considered the publisher’s $19.9m annual loss, its net liabilities of more than $3.5m and contract liabilities of over $7.5m, saying, “These conditions indicate a material uncertainty which may cast significant doubt about the Group’s ability to continue as a going concern.”

CMON’s directors have a different view, however, saying in the 2025 financial report that the company “should be able to continue as a going concern” thanks to a trio of factors.

They include financial support from some of the directors “sufficient to finance CMON’s working capital requirements”, the roughly $2.4m proceeds from selling its Singapore office that it received in January, and the roughly $1.25m gross proceeds from a successful share sale last month.

CMON’s hefty liabilities are largely due to its eight undelivered crowdfunding campaigns, which are not recognised as revenue on the company’s books until they are fulfilled to backers.

They include DC Super Heroes United, which raised more than $4.4m, and DCeased, which brought in over $2.5m. Both campaigns were initially due to be delivered last year, but are now expected to be delivered in Q4 of 2026, according to CMON’s latest estimates.

CMON also has five undelivered pre-order campaigns on its books, including Dune Desert War and the Assassin’s Creed Role Playing Game.

The company said that delivering crowdfunding projects in 2024 contributed about $20m in revenue – a figure which had sunk to just $200,000 last year according to its latest financial report.

CMON said the 2025 losses were driven by a “significant decline in revenue”, which fell more than 73% to $9.9m last year, compared to the $37.3m total from 2024.

It also cited impairment losses on property, plant and equipment, right of-use assets and intangible assets, and a loss it made disposing intellectual properties and related assets as part of its “strategic portfolio restructuring”.

Those IP sales included parting with its most famous and profitable title Zombicide – which has raised more than $40m on Kickstarter since its 2012 launch – to Asmodee, as well as Blood Rage, Rising Sun and Ankh to Tycoon Games.

It followed those by selling the IP for former Mythic Games titles Anastyr and Hel: The Last Saga to Don’t Panic Games in September, and parting with the lucrative Cthulhu: Death May Die IP to Asmodee a month later – the latter a series which has raised almost $10m from backers to date.

CMON said all those sales combined amounted to about $5.1m, but added that it actually made an overall $2.4m loss on disposal of intellectual properties and related assets across 2025.

It also made a $5.7m loss due to undertaking an impairment assessment on some of its property, plant and equipment, right-of-use assets and intangible assets “with finite useful lives”.

CMON said in the financial report, “These actions, while negatively impacting short-term results, were undertaken to strengthen the Group’s operational focus and reduce future cost burden.”

The company’s remaining significant IP includes the Massive Darkness series, with the most recent installment, Massive Darkness: Dungeons of Shadowreach, completing a $2.85m crowdfund on Gamefound early last year – a figure which rose to more than $3.7m including late pledges.

That campaign was CMON’s last before it scrapped its future crowdfunding plans two months later. The company has pivoted in the interim to releasing several small-box games direct to retail, including Collect!, Peanuts Talent Show, Fairy Perfume, Rocket Punch and Yokai Carnival.

Discussing its current strategy in the report, the company said, “In light of the continued uncertainty in the global market, particularly the instability arising from US import tariffs on certain products since the first half of 2025, the Group has taken decisive steps to restructure its operations and strengthen its financial position.

“Our current strategy is to:

• 1) reduce exposure to large-scale crowd-funding launches in the near term, focusing on fulfilment of games already committed to backers, with plans to resume crowdfunding activities in the second half of 2026 with new titles from current game lines;
  
• 2) grow distribution in Asia as a primary strategic market;
  
• 3) maintain a streamlined operational structure with reduced headcount and a smaller office footprint in line with the Group’s current scale of operations; and
  
• 4) maintain a debt-free position following the full repayment of bank borrowings, significantly reducing the Group’s financial liabilities and improving its financial resilience.

“We remain committed to becoming a quality developer and publisher of tabletop games and believe the strategic refocus toward Asia and selective game development will position the Group more sustainably for the future.”

CMON said it had reduced its revenue exposure to the US to about 21.4% of its total across 2025, compared to around 42% for the previous year, through what it described as a “deliberate strategic pivot toward Asia”.

The report showed CMON’s combined North and South America revenue fell more than 86% last year to about $2.1m, from around $15.7m in 2024.

European revenue also fell more than 81% year-on-year, from about $12.7m to around $2.4m. Asia revenue fell too, but much less sharply, down about 33% in 2025 from $8m to around $5.3m.

CMON said in the report, “Notwithstanding this reduced exposure, tariff-related uncertainties may continue to affect future export sales, revenue and gross margin performance in the US market.

“The Group intends to maintain its current reduced focus on the US market until the trade environment stabilises and market conditions improve.”

CMON also revealed the scale of its staffing cuts in the latest report, with headcount falling from 81 at the start of 2025 to just 41 at the beginning of this year.

The report said total staff costs had fallen in that time from about $4m to around $2.8m, including pay for its directors and their pension fund contributions, but it did not provide a breakdown of those numbers.

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Elf Creek Games has begun fulfilling a wave of overdue crowdfunding campaigns after returning to profitability under the leadership of Genius Games founder John Coveyou.

The publisher said it has broken a three-year run of losses since bringing in Coveyou to restructure the company last July, with the profits allowing it to get Santa’s Workshop into the hands of backers, as well as starting to pay some of the backlog of royalties it owes designers.

Elf Creek raised $1.6m through eight Kickstarter campaigns following its launch in 2017, scoring significant successes for games including Merchants of the Dark Road and Honey Buzz.

But the publisher entered years of turmoil after being hit with a $226,000 freight bill for shipping Merchants of the Dark Road in 2022 – more than four-times its initial $50,000 estimate – when global freight costs soared in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Rather than hold back fulfillment until prices fell, Elf Creek ploughed on in delivering the game at the vastly inflated cost, relying on the entirety of the game’s profits, credit, and forecasts for future sales – a decision from which company founder Brent Dickman admitted in 2024 the business had “never fully recovered”.

Elf Creek had almost $340,000 of entirely unfulfilled Kickstarter projects when Coveyou came on board seven months ago, including Secret Villages & Santa’s Workshop (+Related Story Puzzles!) and Paradox Initiative – while some backers of its Atlantis Rising: Monstrosities campaign from 2020 are still waiting for French and German language editions of the game.

The announcement of Coveyou’s appointment last summer ended almost a year of silence from Elf Creek about the status of its undelivered crowdfunding projects – although company founder Brent Dickman confirmed to BoardGameWire in December 2024 that he was “actively looking for a home and way forward for all of our games, including our unpublished Kickstarter projects, and will make official statements when I am able”.

Coveyou founded Genius Games in 2013 following a career as an engineer, a science and chemistry teacher and a spell in the US Army. That company specialises in science-themed games with an educational bent, with its best known releases including 2019’s Ecosystem and 2021 release Genotype: A Mendelian Genetics Game (2021)

He is also the founder and director of accounting and tax firm Simple Financials, which Elf Creek said last year specialises in “helping small businesses recover from crises like ours”.

Elf Creek revealed at the end of February this year that it posted a 12.3% profit as a percentage of gross revenue in 2025, following losses of 8.8% in 2024, 33.25% in 2023 and 11.6% in 2022.

The detailed announcement from Coveyou and Dickman expounded on the extensive financial and operational changes the company had undertaken since the Genuis Games founder’s arrival.

It said, “Turning a business around isn’t about discovering a new or a secret playbook. It’s about returning to the fundamentals that every healthy business runs on. These are the things that, somewhere along the way, were deprioritized, deferred, or lost amid growth and day-to-day stressors.

“Most business crises are not sudden events; they are the outcome of the slow accumulation of small decisions that move a business away from the basics.

“None of this changes the impact on backers and partners who have been waiting, or the seriousness of outstanding obligations. The goal has been to restore operational stability so commitments can be met consistently and transparently.”

Those measures were listed by the company as:

• Stop all non-essential spending immediately. Every expense was reviewed and non-essential spending was cut. Software subscriptions, agencies, marketing, new projects—anything that wasn’t directly tied to generating income or keeping the business operating was put on hold.
  
• Gain visibility and control over cash flow and operations. A weekly cash and operations dashboard and tracking system was built so the team could see cash and inventory coming in, cash and inventory going out, and exactly where the business stood, in order to make proactive decisions instead of reactive ones.
  
• Get to accurate financials. If the books are wrong, the decisions are wrong. The bookkeeping and accounting were caught up, reorganized for better insights, and reconciled back to the bank statements. Every decision going forward was then based on reality and insights instead of assumptions.
  
• Prioritize and accelerate cash inflows. Core revenue channels were identified and reinforced, keeping the right inventory in stock, continuing to reconnect with key customers, and making sure the parts of the business generating cash had what they needed to keep doing so.
  
• Generate cash from what’s already there. We made a focused effort to collect on outstanding invoices, liquidate dead or excess inventory, and find new ways to monetize existing IP or underutilized resources – with ongoing work still in progress.
  
• Gain additional runway by renegotiating obligations. Many companies struggle under the weight of debt and accumulated obligations. The weight of this can be debilitating, and resolving it is often one of the most difficult steps. Keeping a company running is essential, because a shutdown stops repayment and harms all parties. We restructured debt, worked out new payment plans with vendors, and negotiated revised terms to ensure the company stayed viable and can continue paying back everything owed.
  
• Focus on a few key priorities. Identify a few major “game changers” that will have the greatest impact, then stay focused while avoiding distractions. With the business more stable, we concentrated available time and energy on three key priorities: fulfillment of Santa’s Workshop, getting base games back in stock, and rebuilding critical sales channels to keep revenue flowing and support ongoing obligations.

The company added that it had also paid all outstanding 2025 designer royalties across the Elf Creek Games product line, and was making “steady payments” toward remaining balances from 2024 and earlier.

It said, “Our business exists because of the games we publish. And those games exist because of the designers who create them. Without great products, we simply don’t have a company.”

BoardGameWire reported last December that Paul Salomon, the designer of Elf Creek’s Honey Buzz and Stonemaier Games title Stamp Swap, had left the publisher in September 2024 while owed “an enormous and life changing amount of money”.

Speaking in the wake of Elf Creek’s new announcement, he told BoardGameWire, “I finally received a statement of all of the royalties that I am owed, which hadn’t happened in several years.

“Looking at it now, ‘life-changing’ may have been a bit hyperbolic, but it is definitely making a big difference in the financial reality for my family. I have in fact been paid all of my 2025 royalties! Amazing.

“And in fact, I have been receiving steady and substantial payments on back royalties. Again fantastic.

“Finally, I renegotiated my contract so that Elf Creek can continue to print and sell Honey Buzz products. I am really happy with how that worked out and there’s no question that John Coveyou has done an amazing job as executive director.”

Elf Creek said that now fulfillment of Santa’s Workshop is complete in the US, and expected to be delivered worldwide in April, it would be prioritising small-batch fulfillment of Atlantis Rising Monstrosities, production of The Paradox Initiative, finalization and production of Secret Villages, and reprints of base games for Honey Buzz, Atlantis Rising, Merchants of the Dark Road, and Santa’s Workshop.

The company announcement said, “The hardest parts are mostly behind us, but there is still a long road ahead. We are hopeful that the future holds more opportunity than heartache.

“Our focus now is on executing the next phase responsibly and bringing the right people around the table to support long-term stability and reliable fulfillment.

“We’re looking to build a board of advisors, including those who have been in the trenches and understand what it takes to run and grow a business, as well as individuals who can contribute expertise, resources, or connections. If you have experience, resources, or a network that could help, we’d welcome a
conversation.

“We’re open to exploring strategic partnerships, outside investment, or proposals that support operational stability and our next phase of growth. If there’s a business, brand, or operator out there who sees the value in what Elf Creek can become, the door is open.”

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Asmodee posted record sales of €524m during the last quarter of 2025 despite a slump in its US performance, with trading card game earnings in Europe acting as a driving force for the business.

The board game giant’s overall net sales jumped 22.2% across October to December 2025 compared to the same period a year earlier, with the performance of products it distributes for other companies surging more than 50%.

Net sales for games published by Asmodee itself fell almost 13% year-on-year in the quarter, however, weighed down by US net sales slumping 23% to €70.4m.

That drop saw the US fall behind both France and the UK in Q3 in terms of the company’s highest-performing countries for net sales, with France surging 47% year-on-year to over €111m, and the UK growing 41% to €82.7m.

The US had previously outperformed all other countries for Q3 net sales for at least the past two years, Asmodee’s quarterly sales results show. Prior to that, individual country data for Asmodee was not publicly released while under former owner Embracer Group.

Asmodee CEO Thomas Koegler said in the company’s latest quarterly report that successful TCG releases in Europe across Pokémon, Magic: The Gathering and One Piece had driven the record Q3 results.

He added that lower sell-in to larger retailer for some of its own products had contributed to the sinking US result in Q3, despite saying that “overall consumer demand on our products remained stable”.

The company’ chief financial officer, Andrea Gasperini, added in the company’s Q3 earnings call that “unfavorable FX exchange rate exposure since the beginning of the year” was also to blame, as was a “normalising” of the performance of Asmodee’s own TCG Star Wars Unlimited compared to its launch year of 2024.

That situation echoed Ravensburger’s assessment of its flagship trading card game Disney Lorcana last month, with performance falling following an explosive start on its August 2023 launch that had quickly made the title a “long-term pillar” of the company’s products.

Koegler added during the Q3 earnings call, “Let’s remember also that the beginning of the year has been quite shaken up in everybody’s supply strategies – ours, the retailers – by the various announcements on the tariffs. And I think that it has been a constantly evolving situation where I’m quite proud of how the teams reacted.

“Once we’ve said that, of course, let’s not underestimate the impact of foreign exchange, which is quite material in the decrease. And secondly, what’s important to look at beyond our own sell-in performance, which is what we sell to retailers, is the sell-out.

“As I did say we have, since the beginning of the year, overperformed the market, and even in Q3 it was a quarter for the Christmas period that was very much focused on lower price point products. We captured very strong growth with Exploding Kittens and did have some headwinds on higher price point products.

“But I would say in the grand scheme of things: first of all, it’s fine, our portfolio is diversified, and secondly, it’s limited to the US, so we should expect some better trends in the future.”

When asked in the Q3 earnings call how confident he was in Asmodee’s own studios’ ability to return to growth, Koegler said, “Yes, we had some negative developments on the games, but if you look at the sellout, which is the sales to consumers in the US, for instance, the market was relatively flat, and our sellout was in line with this, which means that we still have positive outlooks for the future.

“Our performance was impacted, especially by, I would say, some inventory positions and retailers’ purchase strategies. Now, if we look forward, first of all, the vast majority of our revenue is coming from existing titles. That’s the first thing that’s important, and we are constantly working on engaging consumers on those.

“You saw the recent announcements on Catan and Ticket to Ride with Netflix, all of this with the objective to further increase brand awareness and visibility, and in the future, generate additional sales.

“If we look at some of the products we’re looking forward to in terms of new releases for next year, we have announced the new LEGO game in the Ninjago franchise being released the same time as the Ninjago anniversary.

“We have Azul Kids coming out. We have Dino Picnic, we have the future sets of Star Wars Unlimited. We have a refresh of Ticket to Ride Europe. So I would say that it will be still an active year.

“What’s important, if you look back at the historical performance of Asmodee, is that some years it’s strongly driven by trading cards, and in the other years, usually when trading cards are less strong, you have a relay that’s coming from board games.”

Asmodee also revealed in its Q3 results that it had bought bluffing and set collection game Sheriff of Nottingham from CMON – its third IP purchase from the company in the past eight months.

CMON’s IP sales have been part of its ongoing drive to combat the huge losses the business has chalked up in the past couple of years.

Asmodee kicked off its reignited strategy of buying up smaller board game publishers, distributors and IPs in June last year by acquiring CMON’s flagship IP Zombicide, a series which had raised more than $40m on Kickstarter since its 2012 launch.

Asmodee CEO Thomas Koegler was asked during the company’s quarterly results presentation whether the company was ready to make “more meaningful” acquisitions rather than small bolt-on deals.

He said, “Without being specific, the activity in the pipeline is in accordance with our plan. The smaller acquisitions are faster. IP acquisitions and asset deals are faster to execute. I’m satisfied.”

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Board game crowdfunding major CMON has secured new capital for game development thanks to a successful share sale, which values the business at more than $7.5m.

The much-needed capital raise is the latest move by CMON as it continues its attempt to recover from massive losses racked up over the past two years.

CMON suffered two failed efforts to bring in new shareholders last year to bolster its working capital, having posted losses of nearly $7m in the first half of 2025 and another $3m across 2024 – figures which dwarfed the overall $4.2m profit it had managed to make over the previous nine years combined.

The new share sale sees six extra shareholders come into the business, holding a combined 16.66% of the company – and gives CMON a valuation more than 50% higher than that expected through the failed share placement from two months ago.

CMON said in a stock exchange filing that more than half of the HK$9.4m ($1.2m) proceeds would go towards game development, including prototype design, content development and artwork creation, while another HK$2.35m would be used for marketing and events, including participation in trade fairs and promotional campaigns.

The company has been scrambling to stem growing losses since the start of last year by laying off staff, halting new game development and campaign launches, and selling off a string of its biggest IPs.

Those IP sales have included Blood Rage, Rising Sun and its most famous and profitable title, Zombicide, as well as Cthulhu: Death May Die and former Mythic Games titles Anastyr and Hel: The Last Saga.

CMON announced towards the end of last month that more IP sales could be on the way, alongside making an apology for delays to its outstanding crowdfunds – some of which are now running almost two years beyond initial delivery estimates.

The company’s remaining significant IP includes the Massive Darkness series, with the most recent installment, Massive Darkness: Dungeons of Shadowreach, completing a $2.85m crowdfund on Gamefound early last year – a figure which rose to more than $3.7m including late pledges.

CMON’s eight undelivered campaigns include DC Super Heroes United, which raised more than $4.4m, and DCeased, which brought in over $2.5m. Both campaigns were initially due to be delivered last year.

It also has five undelivered pre-order campaigns on its books, including Dune Desert War and the Assassin’s Creed Role Playing Game.

More details about CMON’s current financial situation are set to be unveiled by the end of next month, with the publisher required by Hong Kong stock exchange rules to submit its annual results by that date.

Last year CMON missed the stock exchange deadline for publishing its financial results, blaming an understaffed finance department – a situation which saw its shares suspended from trading for several weeks.

The company announced last July that rather than focusing on large scale, miniatures heavy crowdfunding campaigns, it had pivoted to releasing several small-box games direct to retail, which it showed off at the Spiel Essen game fair last October.

Those titles include Collect!, Peanuts Talent Show, Fairy Perfume, Rocket Punch and Yokai Carnival.

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