CMON’s COO David Preti is resigning after eight years at the company

Zombicide publisher CMON is losing its chief operating officer David Preti after the 54-year-old handed in his resignation last week, citing unnamed “other work commitments”.

Preti currently oversees game development and production at CMON, the miniatures-focused board game studio which has seen huge success over the last decade with multimillion-dollar Kickstarters for titles such as Marvel Zombies, Rising Sun, Bloodborne: The Board Game and several editions of its Zombicide franchise.

He joined the business as creative director in 2016, before being named COO in 2018 and becoming an executive director of CMON in 2022.

During Preti’s tenure as COO the company restructured its distribution model, with Asmodee become its worldwide English language distributor – a move he said on his LinkedIn page “generated a great influx of cash for the company and greatly streamlined our operations and costs”.

He was also involved in striking new licensing deals with companies including Mattel, Netflix, CD Projekt Red and Marvel, via Spin Master, to create games using those companies’ IPs.

The latter agreement has been particularly lucrative for CMON, with Kickstarters for several Marvel United games and a Marvel version of Zombicide raising a combined $22.6m since 2020.

Earlier this year CMON sealed a significant switch in its crowdfunding operation, ending 12 years of running campaigns on Kickstarter in favour of signing an exclusivity deal with crowdfunding rival Gamefound.

The company had raised more than $108m in total on Kickstarter across almost 60 campaigns, beginning with the first edition of Zombicide in April 2012.

CMON’s shift to Gamefound had a relatively slow start, with its H1 campaigns for Masters of the Universe: The Board Game – Clash For Eternia, Degenesis: Clan Wars and God of War: The Board Game marking the first time since late 2018 that the company had three sub-$1m crowdfunding campaigns in a row.

The company has had a far more successful second half of the year for crowdfunding so far, however, pulling in about $1.8m for A Song of Ice & Fire: Tactics – A Tabletop Miniatures Skirmish Game, and over $4.4m for DC Super Heroes United.

Other notable developments for CMON this year have included buying Japon Brand, the Japanese board game collective which introduced the world to Love Letter and Machi Koro, and buying the intellectual property rights to a pair of stalled Kickstarter projects from troubled crowdfunding specialist Mythic Games.

CMON said in a statement to the Hong Kong stock exchange that Preti would immediately shift to a non-executive director role, moving him away from day-to-day management of the business, adding that he had served notice to resign as COO effective March 9 next year.

The company did not respond to emails from BoardGameWire asking about its plans and timescales for bringing in a new COO and executive director, and how the changes could effect CMON’s strategy for 2025.

A brief statement from the CMON board submitted to the HKEX said, “The board would like to express its gratitude to Mr Preti for his contributions during his tenure as an executive director and the chief operating officer of the company and welcome to Mr Preti in his new role as a non-executive director.”

CMON’s executive director team now comprises co-CEOs Ng Chern Ann and David Doust, and CFO Koh Zheng Kai.

Earlier this month BoardGameWire reported that CMON’s mid-year revenue had fallen for the first time since the pandemic, with slumping wholesale earnings putting a dent into the company’s H1 results.

CMON posted revenue of just over $15.9m in the first half of 2024, down 24.9% compared to the roughly $21.1m it recorded in the same period in 2023.

That remains a significant amount of revenue within the board game industry, despite the drop. Earlier this year Stonemaier Games, the publisher of popular titles including Wingspan and Scythe, revealed it had total revenues of $16.7m for the entirety of 2023.

Preti’s resignation comes two months after CMON marketing manager Silvio Martins left the company after almost five years in the role.