The game industry is hard work, and even when you’re “living the dream,” there isn’t always a guarantee it will be a good dream. Today, we have some sad—but thankfully, not dire—news to share with you.
In the last few weeks we did a financial review of the company, reviewing both the past performance of our product lines, and our future financial/cashflow projections. The results were unfortunately grim. The short version is that we’ve been publishing too many games that haven’t performed well enough to continue at our current pace and volume.
Looking at what we’ll need to do to stay solvent has been a painful process. On the project side it means focusing largely on RPG books in our 2019 roster. We understand the risks and costs involved in them very well, as we’ve been making many of them over the past 13 years. We believe that narrowing our focus to focus on our core strengths will be best for helping us get back into the black in 2019. Unfortunately doing so means cutting or postponing a lot of projects (a dozen in total) composed mostly, but not exclusively, of our our in-development non-book products.
Our hope is that once we’re on sturdy footing again we’d be able to pick up some more experimental projects, but in the near-term we’ve got to focus on what we know works.
We’ll also be seeing some staffing changes as part of our effort to get our costs under control. Carrie Harris, our Head of Marketing, and Chris Hanrahan, our Head of Business Development, are leaving at the end of October. This will give Chris and Carrie the opportunity to focus on some other things that they’ve been eager to take on. And sadly, our significantly decreased art direction needs for 2019 also means we have to let our good friend Brian Patterson go after the end of 2018.
This process has been a rough ride for everyone involved. We’ve done our best to make it as gentle as possible. Many of the projects on our cut list are getting “mothballed” rather than canceled, and we hope that in 2020 and beyond we can return to them. A few others we will work with to find new homes at other publishers. They wouldn’t have gone on our (overambitious) prior roster if we weren’t excited to see them all make it out into the world!
The silver lining, if you will, is that we’ve spotted this problem well before we’ve run into it at a speed which would not have done good things to the company or anyone at it. Seeing a problem from far off and course-correcting to avoid it is a good thing! Ultimately, these changes are about regaining our footing and rebuilding our core strengths and finances to where we can return to our growth agenda in future years. The company that remains will be a company positioned to survive, and even thrive, in the ever-changing landscape of the tabletop game industry of 2020 and beyond.
Projects that remain with us from now through 2019 include:
- Tachyon Squadron: Releases next week!
- Improv for Gamers: Coming later this year!
- Channel A: The Kickstarter on the Alpha Genesis Edition concluded recently and we are hard at work getting it ready for the manufacturer.
- Shadow of the Century: Our new successor to Spirit of the Century, moving the SOTCverse timeline forward to 1984! Artwork is in development and should wrap within a month or so. This will be the final digital release to our Fate Core 2013 KS’s backers, and will be followed by a release in print likely within a few months of that.
- Fate of Cthulhu: We had a very successful playtest round recently, and the team is working hard on taking all our playtester feedback into account as they work on producing the final complete draft. We expect to Kickstart this around March of 2019.
- Band of Blades: We’ll be bringing you another Forged in the Dark game from the Scum & Villainy team in 2019.
- Agon: We’re working with John Harper and others to update his classic swords-and-sandals RPG of greek heroes. Expect a Kickstarter about a year out from now, very approximately.
- Monster of the Week: Tome of Mysteries: Michael Sands from Generic Games, designer of Monster of the Week, has been working on a supplement for the game for a while now. We’re happy to confirm that we will publish this as well. Layout is currently underway.
- For the Queen: A card-based story-building game from Alex Roberts — one of our few remaining non-books — is targeted for next year.
- Digital stretch goals for Uprising and Tachyon Squadron remain in development, and will be released to the backers, and then for sale on DriveThruRPG at least, once ready.
- Patreon! We still have several Fate Worlds of Adventure in development to bring to you, pay-what-you-want like the rest of the line over on DriveThruRPG.
As you can see, that’s still a plenty busy slate of games and projects for us to get out the door over the course of the next year and change. So fear not, fans of the Hat! We’ll continue to bring you a selection of the best games in the field for the foreseeable future.
And thank you all, so much, for your past and continued support!
Thanks for staying the course for Evil Hat, even in the slim times. Your transparency is refreshing and makes me for one, glad to support you in whatever little way that I can. As much as for your great product, as to show that you can be successful without giving up everything that makes you.
Thank you for being open with your customers/gamers/fans. I am sure this has been a challenge for you and I wish you well and will continue to support your products as much as possible.
Sorry to hear about the unfortunate news. I believe it would be in your best interest to at least consider creating a couple of console games especially with the Dresden files series. There You can reap the rewards of financial success by reaching a much larger audience. I would greatly appreciate a response when someone has the time just to know if this has even been considered. Thank you in advance,
JIM
James, the budget for a console game would be anywhere from 100 to 1000 times the highest the Evil Hat bank account balance has ever been — and we have absolutely no skills in that very very different sector from tabletop games. Just doesn’t make any sense for Evil Hat.
Please ask the folks that are leaving to drop me a resume.
Thank you for the updates and for the transparency. Hoping that this is just a “for now” and not a “for good” situation.
Hoping for the best for all at the ‘hat.
What products *are* being held up for the time being?
I’m saddened to hear the sales figures aren’t where they need to be. I am heartened, however, to hear that you folks are on top of things. Far too many good games and good game companies have foundered on the financial rocks because they weren’t.
So sorry to hear about the personnel changes. You’re losing some great folks. But I’m glad that Evil Hat recognized that it was in trouble early enough to correct its course.
Do you anticipate that the Fate System Toolkits will be impacted? The Adversary and Horror Toolkits were top-shelf, and I really like everything about the Space Toolkit from what I’ve seen in the preview shared with Tachyon Squadron backers.
Fans of the Hat, if you don’t have the Toolkits already, I’d strongly recommend them. I bet if you stepped up and bought one today, just to show a little support , you’ll be thrilled that you did.
Space Toolkit is postponed for now (it was right on the cusp); we’re holding off on the expenses of artwork and printing until we’re in a better, ummmm, space.
Accessibility Toolkit is still in process. At the least we hope we’ll be making a digital release for it, but figuring that out is slated for late in 2019.
Kai, that’ll be made clear on our Project Status page here on this site soon enough.
The comment about console games got me thinking. While I agree that doing something of this sort would be a huge undertaking, beyond EH’s scope, I think there’s a related aspect that might be useful to think about.
My RP days are long behind me–mainly college and for a time when my friends lived nearby (enough) and had time (enough) to get together to play. But that was close to 20 years ago now (gasp!). While I still like to think about RP’ing (and loved the concepts behind Fate to buy it), sadly, I am unlikely to do much more RP’ing anytime soon. It seems to me that the RPG has become a very much niche market.
It could only help the business of publishing RPGs if some attention was given to facilitating more online RPing (of this variety, not what is called “RPGs” in today’s computer games). I’ve “MU’ed” (Mush/MUX) somewhat since I stopped playing face-to-face (and likely have run into some of folks in EH in some of those), but even that has faded.
MU’s are in need of a technology refresh to make them play more conveniently on today’s electronics, like tablets and phones, and also to include a re-invigoration of the MU client (as well as MU server, IMHO). Other technologies, like virtual tabletops, could also help inject new (or maybe old like me) customers into the mix.
Thank you for the update. As soon as our RPGs start taking off I will link your websites so people can buy the rule books straight from you
Sad to hear that but understandable. Will the Dresden Files card game app still be supported? Fortunately, all the expansions are now available, but there will always be some bugs and tweaks to take care of… 🙂
@Zhiroc — the only thing MUSH-like that I use these days is Slack. I believe some folks RP on Discord too, which is Slack-like at least. As far as it making sense to make a MUSH or similar happen for our RPGs… I’d need to see a well developed business case showing the expenses of running and maintaining and administrating and moderating one vs the expected monetary gains. I think ultimately that particular math boils down to “community members can always make one, but it doesn’t make sense for Evil Hat to devote resources to it”.
@Mac — Will the card game app that’s licensed to and supported by another company that’s not at all entangled with Evil Hat’s own finances continue to be licensed to and supported by that other company? Yes.
I am sorry to hear about the cuts. I am happy to see Fate of Cthulhu is still on track. Thank you all for your hard work and efforts.