As a distributor, FRG is also caught in a foreseeable Malachi Crunch if the tariff situation continues for any real period of time. The industry is probably headed for a massive contraction as publishers collapse or scale back to direct sales only, which will starve the distribution network, which in turn will lead to retail stores failing - especially if sales overall drop along with discretionary income as the rest of economy stutters. If that pattern goes on for long, even if things turn around who’s a distributor supposed to sell to? A few surviving stores, most of which will have gotten used to ordering direct from publishers? And how much will even be available to sell with many publishers gone for good?
I’ve worked through the sports card and comic book boom-and-bust cycles. Those were mild blips mostly caused by speculators and publisher overproduction compared to this idiotic trade war, and they still killed half the specialist shops that existed before the booms started. I’ll be amazed if one game store in five survives this mess, and one in ten might be more realistic unless it ends tomorrow.
All of this information lines up with my spotting direct FRG employees lamenting their own layoffs on the social medias.
Yeah, that’s my concern. They don’t realize the podcast is its own product we’re willing to pay for separate from the games.
(As for the political situation causing all this, it also gets infuriating realizing this could end tomorrow if certain elements were willing to take back their souls they sold out. They have plenty of options and the issue is lack of willingness, not lack of opportunity.)
That’s exactly why I was talking about trade groups, up above. You and I live in states where our representation is already convinced, so any noise we or our states’ Chambers of Commerce make doesn’t move the needle much. But Missouri… “arbitrary Administration policies directly killed a St. Louis small business” is a powerful argument to use to hold certain Senators’ feet to the fire, and it gets even more powerful when it comes from an association of business groups rather than just one.
Stonemaier is joining a lawsuit against the tariff policies. Not sure if it’ll have any result, but it’s good that they’re making some noise, and having such a popular company involved should get more eyes on this.
Sorry to thread necro, but I couldn’t get my password to work for weeks for some reason. Anyway, just wanted to let folks know that the guys at Bloons TD6 threw some love our way. They added an Absolute Zero avatar that folks can display in game. Not much, but never forget, never forgive.
I wasn’t expecting much. It’s on FRG to give the details. At minimum I still don’t get why the RPG is held up since that’s printed in the US as far I know. While Trevor was let go, it also shouldn’t prevent C&A from recording more episodes but my best guess is a concern there is they divulge something they aren’t supposed to
Yeah, you hit upon what I mentioned in my email to FRG: That it seemed weird the RPG and podcast were also put on pause since neither have anything to do with tariffs. I don’t like how weird all this is, and the longer FRG doesn’t give more details (or allow C, P&A to do so) the shadier it feels.
The RPG getting suspended makes sense to me—if it even is. Most of the work that’s holding it up is either done by contracted writers (who can’t be “let go” as they’re not employees) or by Christopher. Not a lot of it seems to be actively being worked on by other full-time employees.
But also, the RPG isn’t making money. RPGs have razor-thin margins at best, due to the amount of work that goes into them, the price of books, and the diminishing returns you get on successive expansions on the same product. How much more investment would be needed to actually put out a product at this point? And what would the sales be? It was one thing to have people working on it in addition to other things, as a passion project, but from a corporate overlord perspective I can see why it wouldn’t make sense to continue.
And the podcast… that’s a good question. Trevor certainly could be paid as a freelancer, as he used to be, and as he certainly still is for Ludological Alchemy. The Patreon brings in enough money to pay him. But it likely doesn’t make much profit, if any, beyond breaking even. FRG may simply not want to be bothered. Especially since the podcast is effectively an investment in future content that FRG may be thinking they don’t want to make.
It doesn’t to me for the RPG when the tariffs are the only item really cited by FRG and you’ve got Adam, Christopher, and Paul now being paid by them with no work as far as I can tell. At the least I would think that means they have time to do work there as it’s not impacted by these inane tariffs. Those three may not be thrilled given what has happened but at least continuing some work they want to get done seems worthwhile. Unless they got them helping their other board game companies under FRG.
Sonvar covered the RPG weirdness, so I’ll say for the podcast that FRG isn’t bothered to begin with… it doesn’t require anything from them to just get out of C&A’s way on letting them keep doing it.
Especially since, as Sonvar notes, they seem to be paying C,P&A to do absolutely nothing at this point. Why not let them keep working on the RPG and podcast?
There’s gotta be something FRG isn’t telling us here that has nothing to do with tariffs. I increasingly find it bizarre to immediately shutter an entire company “because of tariffs” when AFAIK only Compile 2 and Disparation are actually immediately affected by the tariffs, and even purely locally produced things like the RPG and podcast are also on pause.
Medium box 2 is also affected right know, AFAIK. And possibly the zine?
I don’t think Paul and Adam have anything to do for the RPG as things stand. Paul never did any creative work on it. Adam’s work is either done for the foreseeable future or dependent on other artists. I’m sure there’s some writing for Christopher to do, but other than the history book, the next few things in the pipeline were stuck waiting for other people. Maybe they could take over some of that work, but in many cases there are contracts involved.
Then it makes even less sense for FRG to pause it, because their own employees are not involved and the money is already spent, as it were.
Adding in things I saw on other social media, this entire thing smells to high heaven. If this was merely about tariffs, then why blindside the GTG employees in ways that are making them unhappy even beyond “I got laid off” disappointment, why cancel things that are purely locally produced, why cancel things currently being done by non-GTG people in the first place, why not have an already-prepared plan to announce, the list goes on.
I suspect we were right all along about FRG, that FRG bought GTG always planning to eventually scuttle it and snatch the IPs, this is all just a convenient excuse, and the GTG folks just got duped unfortunately. Otherwise why be so shady and secretive? Especially with seeing things from the GTG folks that indicate they’re irritated, not merely just disappointed. That doesn’t say “this was an amicable situation that everyone knew ahead of time needed to happen” to me.