UK-based Osprey Games has let go of its entire board and card game development team and cancelled its booth at the upcoming Spiel Essen game fair, five months after parent company Bloomsbury began searching for a buyer for the operation.

Osprey revealed in May that multinational book giant Bloomsbury had made the “difficult decision” to sell the board and card game segment as part of a wider “strategic refocusing” on book publishing, which would see Osprey concentrate on its wargame and RPG lines.

Two sources with knowledge of the matter told BoardGameWire at the time that Bloomsbury hoped to find a buyer willing take on the existing board and card game team in addition to its catalogue, which includes acclaimed titles such as the Undaunted and Imperium lines.

But a Bloomsbury spokesperson has now confirmed to BoardGameWire that “all our colleagues who exclusively worked on creating and manufacturing our board and card games have now left the company”.

Multiple sources spoken to by BoardGameWire said those exits were in the form of redundancies at the end of September, although the company declined to say exactly how many staff were affected.

The departures mean Bloomsbury is now seeking a buyer solely for the board and card game catalogue, rather than the department as a whole – but questions remain over exactly how the rights to its portfolio of games could be sold on to a new owner.

BoardGameWire understands that some Osprey designer contracts include restrictions governing the transfer of publishing rights to third parties, which could complicate the sale efforts – with some agreements seeming to limit transfers to buyers acquiring all or substantially all of the imprint’s titles.

Asked about that situation by BoardGameWire, a Bloomsbury spokesperson said, “The contractual arrangements relating to Osprey Games are confidential, so we’re not able to share details of specific terms or comment on potential outcomes.

“We appreciate that these questions are important to designers and other partners, and we’ll share further information with those directly involved as soon as we’re able to.”

The spokesperson also confirmed that Osprey has multiple unreleased board and card game projects under contract at “various stages of development”, but did not say whether those titles would be published by Osprey or transferred to another buyer.

They said, “As with our published games, we will share information about the future of those projects with the relevant designers as soon as we are able to.”

Osprey’s existing games remain “well stocked”, the spokesperson said, adding that the company had no current plans for reprints “but will continue to review the situation as we move forwards”.

They said, “We remain committed to supporting our fantastic range of board and card games with sales, marketing and licensing efforts and each of our games remains available to purchase.

“Our upcoming games, Undaunted 2200: Revolution from David Thompson and Trevor Benjamin, and Upland & Prairie from Peer Sylvester will be released as planned this month.  

“We are, as ever, incredibly grateful to our brilliant in-house team, to our wonderful designers and illustrators, and to everyone who has supported Osprey Games over the years.”

Osprey Games was launched in 2015 as part of Bloomsbury arm Osprey Publishing, which had a decades-long history of creating military and historical information and reference books before beginning to publish wargaming rulebooks in 2008.

The gaming arm’s early successes included Peer Sylvester’s The King is Dead and The Lost Expedition, as well as popular titles such as Hal Duncan and Ruth Veevers’ design Cryptid and the second edition of Martin Wallace’s London.

Those releases were followed by the high-profile success of the Undaunted series of deckbuilding wargames from David Thompson and Trevor Benjamin and the Imperium games from Nigel Buckle and Dávid Turczi.

Osprey also gained a reputation for taking chances on a range of titles with intriguing mechanisms and designs, such as Sylvester’s area control and trick-taking hybrid Brian Boru, highly asymmetric area control title Crescent Moon, card-based strategic wargame Battalion: War of the Ancients and small-box, quick-playing conflict title General Orders: World War II.

The publisher has continued releasing games in the wake of the sale process announcement, including Threaded, Flip Pick Towers and Rattlesnake earlier this year and CRAB RAGE! last month.

Bloomsbury has not specified a timetable for completing the sale, with the spokesperson telling BoardGameWire that conversations were “ongoing”.

They added, “I’m sure you’ll appreciate that this is a very complex situation, and the timelines are based around confidential conversations. We will provide updates when we can do so.”

Osprey parent Bloomsbury, which has a stock market valuation of more than £500m, announced in April that it was “streamlining its structure for further growth” – which included a reorganisation of the company’s editorial divisions and the loss of about 55 jobs. No mention of Osprey was made in the restructuring announcement.

Bloomsbury has seen its profits almost double in the last five financial years, and confirmed at its July annual meeting that it expects annual revenue of more than £350m and was on track for record adjusted pre-tax profits of £49.9m, according to Publishers Weekly.

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CMON has found a route to getting one of its delayed projects into customers’ hands without having to fund the remaining costs itself, as the financially-troubled publisher continues its attempt to recover from almost $23m of losses across 2024 and 2025.

Long-time CMON manufacturing partner Top Games has agreed to take ownership of The Adventurers in exchange for covering the remaining production and fulfilment costs for the pre-order title, with CMON continuing to “provide support”, a joint statement from the pair said.

They added that production of The Adventurers had now been completed, with finished games packed at the factory and ready for shipment.

CMON said in January that IP sales and licensing deals were among the routes it was pursuing to secure fulfilment of its large backlog of outstanding projects, as part of its efforts to stabilise its finances.

Those undelivered projects comprise eight crowdfunding campaigns which raised more than $14m, including DC Super Heroes United, DCeased and Massive Darkness: Dungeons of Shadowreach, and four pre-order campaigns including The Adventurers.

CMON warned in the summer that its core business was suffering a “prolonged structural downturn” and was still consuming more cash than it generated, despite a drastic restructuring which has seen the company halve its workforce, sell off some of its biggest game IPs and halt new crowdfunding campaigns.

But the publisher received a major financial boost last month by completing a $19m capital raise – having entered August with just $368,000 in bank and cash balances.

That new funding is needed for far more than clearing its project backlog, however. About 40% has been earmarked for “working capital” over the coming 12 months, including staff costs, royalties, shipping and distribution, while another 20% is set to go towards repaying borrowings and other liabilities.

Another 25% of the new money is slated for expansion in existing and new markets, while 15% will go towards potential acquisitions as part of a push into digital gaming.

Top Games has been a major manufacturing partner for CMON over the years, working on more than a dozen of its games including Cthulhu: Death May Die – Fear of the Unknown, Massive Darkness 2: Hellscape and Zombicide: Undead or Alive, as well as Project: ELITE, Munchkin Dungeon and Starcadia Quest.

Its team has worked in tabletop manufacturing since 2009, and the Chinese company established its own plastics manufacturing facility in Dongguan in 2018.

Top Games stressed in the announcement that manufacturing will remain the foundation of its business, and said its involvement with The Adventurers had the specific goal of getting the project completed and delivered to customers.

The Adventurers is CMON’s revival of the adventure game series from Guillaume Blossier and Frédéric Henry, which began with The Adventurers: The Temple of Chac in 2009 – originally published by AEG and Dust Games. That title was followed by followed by Dust Games and Fantasy Flight Games’ The Adventurers: The Pyramid of Horus in 2011.

CMON launched a Gamefound pre-order in March 2025 featuring new editions of both games alongside a new entry in the series, The Adventurers: Tomb of the Pirate Queen, with delivery of the project estimated for December that year.

Just a month later, however, the publisher announced it was laying off staff and halting new game development and campaign launches, citing the ongoing unpredictability in US tariffs.

A week after that, CMON revealed it had slumped to a loss of more than $3m in 2024 – a figure subsequently dwarfed by the publisher’s 2025 losses, which spiralled to nearly $20m.

Those losses are almost 5.5-times the company’s profits from the preceding nine years combined – although the company’s recent restructuring efforts have seen its losses for the first half of 2026 narrow sharply, to just over $2m.

CMON’s revenue has fallen dramatically from its pandemic-era highs, dropping to $9.9m in 2025 from between $37m and $45m in each of the previous four years.

The company has blamed that decline on factors including a slowdown in crowdfunding, weaker consumer demand and disruption from US tariffs, leaving it trying to cut costs and reshape a business built around significantly higher sales.

Massive Darkness: Dungeons of Shadowreach, which completed a $2.85m crowdfund on Gamefound early last year, was CMON’s last before it scrapped its future crowdfunding plans two months later.

The company has pivoted in the interim to releasing several smaller-box games direct to retail, including Collect!, Peanuts Talent Show, Fairy Perfume, Rocket Punch and Yokai Carnival.

Its 2026 releases continue that trend via Renier Knizia design KumoKumo Park and Atrah from Jérémy Ducret and Johannes Goupy, while the company has also highlighted Grow Sky as another release it says is ‘coming soon’.

The company has not completed fulfillment of a crowdfunding project since Zombicide: White Death in mid-2025, but did manage to deliver pre-orders for Cthulhu: Dark Providence, Marvel United: Witching Hour and Dune: Desert War in the first half of this year.

CMON said in March that it planned to resume crowdfunding in the second half of 2026 – although its latest financial report stopped short of repeating that commitment, saying instead that new titles would be launched selectively depending on market conditions, available financial resources and project readiness.

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