Here at Goonhammer, we know that it’s hard to keep track of all the news happening all the time in the games industry. So much is always going on with games of all sorts, and their related media, it can be a real blink-and-you’ll miss it situation.
That’s why every week, we round up five of the biggest stories in the gaming sphere from the past week in the Games Industry News Roundup. Our trusty news boy, Dan “Swiftblade” Richardson, is here with the scoop.
New Age of Sigmar Edition and More at the Games Workshop AdeptiCon Preview
AdeptiCon is the largest convention for tabletop strategy games in the United States, so when Games Workshop showcases a new preview event for AdeptiCon, they bring out the big guns.
There were big reveals for almost all of Games Workshop’s flagship games at this event. For Warhammer 40,000, highlights included a new Chaos Lord model and the return of the Chaos Lord with Jump Pack, as well as new Leagues of Votann special operatives, Hernkyn Yaegers, for Kill Team. Leaving the world of science fiction for fantasy, Games Workshop gave us a first look at new Dwarf models in plastic for The Old World, as well as a spectacular new Slaves to Darkness hero named Abraxia, Spear of the Everchosen.
Speaking of Age of Sigmar, the biggest reveal of the night came at the very end, with a brand new cinematic trailer to announce an upcoming new edition for Age of Sigmar. The Skaven take the spotlight in the trailer, battling against a new chamber of Stormcast Eternals. While little else was teased about the new models coming up for the new edition or big game play changes, we do know that this will be a full reset of the Age of Sigmar rules, similar to how Indexes have been for tenth edition Warhammer 40,000. For more of our thoughts on the upcoming Age of Sigmar Edition change, you can check out what our best and brightest AoS players have to say about it here.
Fantasy Flight Games Addresses Star Wars: Unlimited Stock Problems
Earlier this March, Fantasy Flight games released a highly anticipated new trading card game set in the Star Wars universe called Star Wars: Unlimited. Much Like Disney: Lorcana last year, Star Wars: Unlimited was a sales hit the moment it reached store shelves, and local retailers found themselves in a tight spot of not having enough product available to support organized play or grow the Star Wars: Unlimited communities.
Fortunately, it seems Fantasy Flight planned for this scenario, and released a statement on Twitter/X last week to address the next steps for the game.
The post thanks players for their enthusiasm, to a degree that Star Wars: Unlimited Sales have “far exceeded the sales of any game we have ever released” according to Fantasy Flight. After this, Fantasy Flight explains that they work hard to balance overstocking or understocking vendors with product, and explain that they laid out a plan in case sales of the game overperformed.
While Fantasy Flight did not expect to need to do this until the end of this month according to the initial plan, the company states that the additional stock available in case the game overperformed will be distributed to retailers in waves from now until the release of the next core set, so that a steady supply of new product is circulating through the new card game community. As of this writing, there is no indication of what those timelines will be, but at least fans of the new came can rest assured any drought of stock for the game will likely be brief.
Miniature Market Sold by Asmodee to Two Asmodee Executives
While Asmodee has been a bright spot for Embracer Group during its recent financial turbulence, that does not mean it has not been affected by Embracer Group’s cost cutting. Possibly related to these cuts from Embracer Group, Boardgamewire reported last week that Asmodee has sold Miniature Market, a well-known online superstore for tabletop games that Asmodee bought three years ago. The buyers? Two of the company’s senior managers.
Christophe Arnoult and Maud Decombe, both corporate leaders at Asmodee and joint owners their own company called Square One Capital, saw an opportunity in the sale and purchased Miniature Market for an undisclosed amount. Decombe says that the pair’s reason to buy Miniature Market is they “saw an opportunity to invest in what we knew to be an amazing online retail store.” Despite Miniature Market closing one of its retail spaces last year, Decombe says that the pair plan to launch a new retail front for Miniature Market in St. Louis in the near future, with the possibility of more expansions to come.
Larian Studios Announces They’re Not Making a Sequel to Baldur’s Gate 3
Larian Studios, the game development company that shot to superstardom last year after the release of the critically acclaimed Baldur’s Gate 3, shocked the world last week. During a panel at the Games Development Conference (GDC), Larian CEO and founder Swen Vincke announced that they planned to move away from Dungeons & Dragons to do something “entirely new”, leaving stewardship of the IP to Wizards of the Coast.
Further interviews with IGN point to the Larian team finding little creative joy in continuing more work on any DLC or potential sequels to Baldur’s Gate 3. Regarding the mood around the office while developing DLC for BG3, Vincke told IGN, “You could see the team was doing it because everyone felt like we had to do it, but it wasn’t really coming from the heart, and we’re very much a studio from the heart. It’s what gotten us into misery and it’s also been the reasons for our success.” After informing the studio that he had decided that they would stop work on anything Baldur’s Gate-related and instead focus on their new concepts, Vincke says the team was “elated.”
Vincke also clarified on his personal Twitter/X account that the decision to move on from Baldur’s Gate was not related to any friction with Wizards of the Coast, but instead a decision based on the creative fulfillment for himself and his team. Currently, Larian is working on an unannounced new game, and it is unknown what Wizards of the Coast and Hasbro intend to do now with the immensely popular Baldur’s Gate franchise.
Kotaku Editor-in-Chief Resigns After Ownership Demands Shift in Content
Just months after firing their previous editor in chief, Patricia Hernandez, over disagreements with management on personnel issues, popular gaming news website Kotaku is once again left without an editor-in-chief as the most recent person to take this role steps down from the company.
Jen Glennon, who succeeded Hernandez, stepped down from her position as editor-in-chief last week, announcing the news on her Twitter and calling Jim Spanfeller, CEO of Kotaku’s parent Company G/O Media, “an herb [sic]”.
Aftermath.com reported that they received a copy of Glennon’s resignation letter, which shed further light on the tensions between Kotaku and G/O management. According to this letter, wanted to change the structure of the site and focus the bulk of Kotaku’s content on guides for video games. Aftermath reports that G/O specifically wanted Kotaku writers to put out 50 guides for the site a week, a staggering amount of work for Kotaku’s small staff.
Glennon’s frustration with the decision was clear in her resignation letter, writing that, “I firmly believe that the decision to ‘invert’ Kotaku’s editorial strategy to deprioritize news in favor of guides is fundamentally misguided given the current infrastructure of the site.” and that the decision by management “directly contradicted by months of traffic data, and shows an astonishing disregard for the livelihoods of the remaining writers and editors who work here.”
With Glennon’s departure, it’s unknown who will fill the position of Editor in Chief at Kotaku, or what the future of content on Kotaku will look like.
Bonus: The Creator of Dwarf Fortress Weighs in on Mass Industry Layoffs
In 2022, Dwarf Fortress’s release on Steam after 20 years of existence turned its creator Tarn Adams into an overnight millionaire. This year, at GDC, PC Gamer Magazine took a chance to sit down and speak with Adams about the widespread layoffs currently plaguing the gaming industry. PC Gamer wondered if Adams’s newfound success and the possibility that he may need to one day make those decisions himself “more empathy for the people that lay people off.”
Adams did not mince words.
“They can all eat shit, I think they’re horrible, and I think they’re bad people. These decisions, they don’t sound practical. They sound like they’re driven by greedy, greedy people trying to make some kind of venture capital thing work out.”
What a king.
And that wraps it up for our Games Industry News Roundup this week! Join us again next week for more news about the tabletop games industry and related media.
Have any questions or feedback? Have an interesting tabletop news story we should be including in our round-up? Drop us a note in the comments below or email us at contact@goonhammer.com. And if you want regular updates in your inbox, subscribe to our newsletter.
