Financially troubled FunForge nears deal to get years-delayed Monumental Kickstarter into the hands of backers

Financially-troubled French board game publisher FunForge is understood to be within weeks of signing a contract which will give it the funding to get its heavily-delayed Monumental Kickstarter to backers within the next two months.

More than 4,200 people pledged a combined €467,000 in 2020 for a reprint of the Matthew Dunstan-designed strategy game and a new expansion, African Empires, with expectations it would arrive by April 2021.

Huge delays and a rise in shipping costs saw FunForge having to swallow about $250,000 of extra costs for the campaign – and a severe lack of capital at the company has left the completed games stuck in delivery hubs waiting for FunForge to be able to raise the money to send them out.

Some Monumental backers have become increasingly frustrated with FunForge’s communications about the situation, criticising excuses that have included saying last year that shipping was being postponed so backers did not miss their packages being delivered while on their summer vacations.

FunForge has not provided an official update to backers for nearly eight months, when it posted to the Kickstarter page that “the shipment for Monumental is about to begin”, saying the first wave of Europe and Asia hub shipments would start in December 2023, with the US wave set beginning in early January 2024.

Those shipments are still yet to take place. FunForge CEO Philippe Nouhra told BoardGameWire at the beginning of May that there would be an update to backers that month, but that has also failed to materialise.

Nouhra has now told BoardGameWire over email that he expects to update backers as soon as tomorrow, saying, “Fortunately, we found a solution, through an important contract that should be signed in the weeks to come, to solve most of our financial issues and therefore to be able to deliver almost all of the remaining games.”

He said, “Yes, I said there would be an update in May, and no, we haven’t posted it. That’s the truth, and the reason why is that the company has been facing a lot of financial challenges for several months, notably because of the loss of money suffered by the Monumental campaign.”

He said that in addition to selling retail copies of the game funded by third-party distributors in order to raise funds, the company has laid off half of its formerly eight-strong team since the beginning of the year, including communications director Charlotte Noailles.

Nouhra said, “Trust me, when you are a small team of eight, having to fire four people is a heavy and heartbreaking burden.

“Charlotte was part of these people, and this is the main reason why the communication has been so inexistent since this time.

“More widely, we reduced and cut all our costs in several fields. Unfortunately, this was not enough to allow us to restart the shipping that started at the end of 2023.”

He said the impending update, “Will summarize all of this and inform our community that we are planning to complete the deliveries by September”.

“To be honest, I understand the frustration of the backers, and I do share it. In fact, mine is probably more important as for them it is just one game that they still did not receive.

“For me, it is a day-to-day problem that I am genuinely struggling to solve, on top of all the problems that a small company like ours is facing in these difficult times.

“I know from the current stance of the vocal backers that they think that we have run away with their money and that we will never deliver the games. I can assure you that this is not true and that we are here working hard on solving the situation.

“I am not the kind of person who gives up on anything. I might not be the best one to communicate with, but I am always doing my best to deliver the promise, and as I already told you, I will do everything in our power to achieve it.

“All the games are in the hubs, and knowing that they are sitting there is driving me as crazy as waiting for them is driving the backers crazy. It is clearly time to find a solution to deliver and move on to the next projects. This is what we will do in the next few weeks.”

He added, “People should remember that problems about these deliveries delays are not one-man problems; they are company ones, from a company that is struggling to survive while honoring its promises through tough and unfortunate times.”

Nouhra would not specify the nature of the deal or the parties involved, or what the agreement would mean for the future of FunForge.

FunForge has not yet announced any upcoming releases for 2025. The company announced Monumental Duel, a 2-player card game version of Monumental, in February this year.

That game is expected to be released in the next couple of months, but has already been targeted by review bombing on BoardGameGeek.

One of Monumental Duel’s three versions currently has more than 40 reviews, all rating the game ‘1’, with several of the comments accusing FunForge of fraud and referencing the Monumental Kickstarter as the reason for the low score.

FunForge confirmed in an update to Monumental backers in May 2022 that it would not be running any more Kickstarter campaigns.

The company had attempted to raise Kickstarter funding for Far Cry: Beyond, a co-op game based on the long-running video game series, a month earlier, but cancelled the campaign after a single day in the wake of picking up just €30,000 towards its €100,000 goal.

Nouhra said, “You have no idea how tired I am of all this. This is also the reason why we decided to definitively give up on KS. The business model is globally broken, way too dangerous and deceptive for the backers.

“I will let people chit chat and explain how some other great companies are doing so well on KS and how bad we are. I do not really care.

“What I can tell you is that in spite of the fact that we are constantly struggling with money issues, we are still here, and we will deliver, no matter what the most unhappy minds may think.”