Portal Games ends nine-year US distribution partnership with GTS, will focus on distributors that can ‘provide the best service for its brand’
Polish board game publisher Portal Games has ended its almost decade-long US distribution partnership with GTS, saying it will focus on partners it believes can best inform retailers about its games.
Portal Games founder Ignacy Trzewiczek told BoardGameWire, “With the amount of products released each year on the market, on the distribution level there might come the lack of understanding of the brand, product and the publisher strategy behind the new releases.
“We decided to focus on a fewer distributors and work with those who can provide the best service for our brand, who know Robinson Crusoe, Detective or Neuroshima Hex lines and can supply retailers with the knowledge of the line, new exciting promos, and the full support.”
Portal said it will continue its US distribution relationships with PSI, ACD Distribution and other unnamed partners, promising its games will continue to reach retail stores and gaming communities without interruption.
A statement from the company said it extended its gratitude to GTS Distribution for nearly a decade of cooperation, “which helped bring popular games such as Robinson Crusoe: Adventures on the Cursed Island, Detective: A Modern Crime Board Game, and Imperial Settlers to players across North America”.
Portal, which was founded by Trzewiczek in 1999, began life as a publisher of tabletop RPGs, before beginning to publish its own titles such as Neuroshima Hex! in 2007.
Recent successes for the company include Detective: A Modern Crime Board Game, which was nominated for the connoisseur/expert level Kennerspiel des Jahres award in 2019, losing out to Wingspan.
In August this year Orange Nebula, a Kickstarter-focused board game publisher which has raised more than $6m across its campaigns, inked an exclusive US distribution deal with GTS Distribution.
That deal came six months after Open Owl Studios, the publisher of Kickstarter successes Mythwind and Stars of Akarios, agreed its own exclusive US distribution deal with GTS.
In September last year Renegade Game Studios re-established its partnership with GTS Distribution to “enhance its product accessibility”, three years after dropping the company as one of its distributors.
The publisher had pared down its US distribution partners in January 2020 to just Alliance Game Distributors and ACD Distribution, ending its deals with GTS as well as Peachstate Hobby Distribution and Southern Hobby Supply.
