CMON to give up The Adventurers ownership to get delayed project delivered as it works to stabilise finances

CMON has found a route to getting one of its delayed projects into customers’ hands without having to fund the remaining costs itself, as the financially-troubled publisher continues its attempt to recover from almost $23m of losses across 2024 and 2025.

Long-time CMON manufacturing partner Top Games has agreed to take ownership of The Adventurers in exchange for covering the remaining production and fulfilment costs for the pre-order title, with CMON continuing to “provide support”, a joint statement from the pair said.

They added that production of The Adventurers had now been completed, with finished games packed at the factory and ready for shipment.

CMON said in January that IP sales and licensing deals were among the routes it was pursuing to secure fulfilment of its large backlog of outstanding projects, as part of its efforts to stabilise its finances.

Those undelivered projects comprise eight crowdfunding campaigns which raised more than $14m, including DC Super Heroes United, DCeased and Massive Darkness: Dungeons of Shadowreach, and four pre-order campaigns including The Adventurers.

CMON warned in the summer that its core business was suffering a “prolonged structural downturn” and was still consuming more cash than it generated, despite a drastic restructuring which has seen the company halve its workforce, sell off some of its biggest game IPs and halt new crowdfunding campaigns.

But the publisher received a major financial boost last month by completing a $19m capital raise – having entered August with just $368,000 in bank and cash balances.

That new funding is needed for far more than clearing its project backlog, however. About 40% has been earmarked for “working capital” over the coming 12 months, including staff costs, royalties, shipping and distribution, while another 20% is set to go towards repaying borrowings and other liabilities.

Another 25% of the new money is slated for expansion in existing and new markets, while 15% will go towards potential acquisitions as part of a push into digital gaming.

Top Games has been a major manufacturing partner for CMON over the years, working on more than a dozen of its games including Cthulhu: Death May Die – Fear of the Unknown, Massive Darkness 2: Hellscape and Zombicide: Undead or Alive, as well as Project: ELITE, Munchkin Dungeon and Starcadia Quest.

Its team has worked in tabletop manufacturing since 2009, and the Chinese company established its own plastics manufacturing facility in Dongguan in 2018.

Top Games stressed in the announcement that manufacturing will remain the foundation of its business, and said its involvement with The Adventurers had the specific goal of getting the project completed and delivered to customers.

The Adventurers is CMON’s revival of the adventure game series from Guillaume Blossier and Frédéric Henry, which began with The Adventurers: The Temple of Chac in 2009 – originally published by AEG and Dust Games. That title was followed by followed by Dust Games and Fantasy Flight Games’ The Adventurers: The Pyramid of Horus in 2011.

CMON launched a Gamefound pre-order in March 2025 featuring new editions of both games alongside a new entry in the series, The Adventurers: Tomb of the Pirate Queen, with delivery of the project estimated for December that year.

Just a month later, however, the publisher announced it was laying off staff and halting new game development and campaign launches, citing the ongoing unpredictability in US tariffs.

A week after that, CMON revealed it had slumped to a loss of more than $3m in 2024 – a figure subsequently dwarfed by the publisher’s 2025 losses, which spiralled to nearly $20m.

Those losses are almost 5.5-times the company’s profits from the preceding nine years combined – although the company’s recent restructuring efforts have seen its losses for the first half of 2026 narrow sharply, to just over $2m.

CMON’s revenue has fallen dramatically from its pandemic-era highs, dropping to $9.9m in 2025 from between $37m and $45m in each of the previous four years.

The company has blamed that decline on factors including a slowdown in crowdfunding, weaker consumer demand and disruption from US tariffs, leaving it trying to cut costs and reshape a business built around significantly higher sales.

Massive Darkness: Dungeons of Shadowreach, which completed a $2.85m crowdfund on Gamefound early last year, was CMON’s last before it scrapped its future crowdfunding plans two months later.

The company has pivoted in the interim to releasing several smaller-box games direct to retail, including Collect!, Peanuts Talent Show, Fairy Perfume, Rocket Punch and Yokai Carnival.

Its 2026 releases continue that trend via Renier Knizia design KumoKumo Park and Atrah from Jérémy Ducret and Johannes Goupy, while the company has also highlighted Grow Sky as another release it says is ‘coming soon’.

The company has not completed fulfillment of a crowdfunding project since Zombicide: White Death in mid-2025, but did manage to deliver pre-orders for Cthulhu: Dark Providence, Marvel United: Witching Hour and Dune: Desert War in the first half of this year.

CMON said in March that it planned to resume crowdfunding in the second half of 2026 – although its latest financial report stopped short of repeating that commitment, saying instead that new titles would be launched selectively depending on market conditions, available financial resources and project readiness.