Mayfair Games Shuts Down After 36 Years of Board Games (polygon.com)

damnbunni writes: Longtime board game publisher Mayfair Games (English-language publisher for Settlers of Catan, Agricola, and many more) has shut down after 36 years. All of their games have been sold to Asmodee, who also owns Fantasy Flight Games, Z-Man Games, Rebel, Edge Entertainment, and a host of other board game companies they've picked up over the years. "As of today, the management team at Mayfair Games, Inc. announces we will wind down game publishing," the company said in a statement. "After 36 years, this was not an easy decision or one we took lightly, but it was necessary. Once we had come to this conclusion, we knew we had to find a good home for our games which is when we reached out to Asmodee."

Comments

Re:Asmodee

[Chas]

Oh hell no! Fantasy Flight was merely the biggest.

There are multiple publishers out there putting out board games. Maybe just not in the same way that FF did.

Iello's had a pretty decent track record with their churn & burn style. They make decent money and move on to their next title(s). They only really need one to "stick" the way Catan did and they're set.

Also, publishers of other types of games (RPGs, card games, etc) have the odd board games as well.

Catalyst Game Labs (Shadowrun & BattleTech) has done well with their "The Duke" and their Vikings themed "Jarl" tile game. They've also had offerings like Wrath of Dragons, a Vikings boardgame, Balance of Power, etc. They've also got the Crossfire-based deck-building games (Shadowrun Crossfire and Dragonfire).

And that's just two examples. Asmodee is just the 1600 lb French gorilla now.

We'll see if this attempt to buy market domination works in the long run or bites them. Hopefully it does. Because having Asmodee just up and fall over would be UGLY for the industry...