CMON sells global headquarters after suffering $12m H1 revenue slump, charges some pre-order customers extra to cover tariffs

Financially-troubled board game publisher CMON has sold its global headquarters as part of a fightback against heavy losses – and is charging some pre-order customers extra to cover tariff costs it says it “cannot absorb given our current financial position”.

CMON posted losses of nearly $7m in the first half of this year and another $3m across 2024 – figures which dwarf the overall $4.2m profit it managed to make over the previous nine years combined.

The company has been scrambling to stem the losses since the start of this year, laying off staff and halting new game development and campaign launches in March, and selling off a string of its IPs -including Blood Rage, Rising Sun and its most famous and profitable title, Zombicide – in the summer.

That financial battle has now seen it part with the global headquarters it bought in Singapore in 2017 to claw back about $2.4m – although that total is still a drop in the ocean for a company which saw its revenue slump by more than $12m in the first half of this year.

CMON is also adding extra charges for backers of its Marvel United: Witching Hour and Cthulhu: Dark Providence pre-orders, which it says are packed and waiting to leave the warehouse, saying the money is necessary to cover tariff charges.

Dark Providence backers will have to pay an extra $2.30 per pledge, while customers who pre-ordered Witching Hour are being charged $0.69 extra.

CMON has not revealed how many people backed both the games, but if all 2,529 followers of the Witching Hour Gamefound pre-order page were to contribute the extra charge, CMON would receive about $1,700.

A statement from the company, which came as part of a wider update on its financial situation, said, “We know it is frustrating to be asked for additional charges after pledging, and we share that frustration.

“We have worked to ensure that backers are charged as little as possible, covering only a small portion of the total tariff expense.

“These tariffs, while not large in absolute numbers, represent costs per pledge that we unfortunately cannot absorb given our current financial position.”

CMON acknowledged in the update that “rumors and panic” had been spreading given its lack of communication to crowdfunding backers, which it said had “resulted in us experiencing the highest number of refund requests in CMON’s history”.

It said, “This has created a vicious cycle: The slower fulfillment is, the more refund requests we receive. The more refunds we process, the fewer resources we have to accelerate fulfillment.

“With more resources funnelled into refunds over fulfillment, fulfillment slows down even further. This cycle has snowballed and grown into one of the toughest challenges we have ever faced.”

The company added the staffing cuts it made earlier in the year had pushed its remaining team “to its limits”.

It said, “With a fraction of employees remaining, every day has been a balancing act between managing production, logistics, customer service, and financial obligations. We have been overwhelmed by the sheer volume of day-to-day tasks.”

CMON has not clarified the scale of the staffing reduction it said it made in March, or how it was spread across permanent or outsourced employees.

The company’s H1 financial report shows it had 77 employees at the end of June, four less than the 81 people it was employing at the mid-point of last year.

The total staff costs listed in its H1 report were $1.6m, identical to the total from the first six months of 2024.

The report also shows that “key management” received just under $550,000 in total compensation across the first half of this year, down from about $660,000 for the same period last year.

CMON’s chief operating officer David Preti stepped down from the role in April, and in August its chief financial officer Koh Zheng Kai and company secretary Ng Sau Mei both handed in their resignations.

The company currently has eight undelivered crowdfunding campaigns, which raised about $18m, as well as another eight pre-ordered games still to make their way to backers.

A ninth crowdfunding campaign, for Degenesis: Clan Wars, was cancelled by the IP holder in July amid a legal wrangle with CMON.

CMON said in its recent update, “While we recognize that the situation may seem disappointing, we are making steady progress on clearing our backlog and delivering our campaigns.

“The road ahead will be difficult, and we thank you for your continued patience, understanding, and trust as we navigate it. We continue to move forward and remain fully committed to fulfilling every project we promised.”

CMON’s vast losses across 2024 and the first half of this year brought to an end three years of improving performance at the company, following a disastrous 2020 in which it lost almost $5m due to the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on its business operations.

The company had managed a $420,000 profit in 2021, $510,000 in 2022 and about $750,000 in 2023 – but those slowly rising numbers all fell well short of the its pre-pandemic performance.

It had previously made profits of about $3.5m in 2017, roughly $2m in 2018 and around $1.88m in 2019, once one-off costs related to its transfer to the main board of the Hong Kong stock exchange in the latter year were removed.

CMON’s cash reserves have also been diminishing, going from $3.9m at the end of 2022 to $3.1m at the end of 2023, and falling again to about $2.1m by the end of last year.

Those reserves stood at just over $900,000 at the end of June, while the company’s bank borrowings sat at about $940,000.

CMON announced in July that rather than focusing on large scale, miniatures heavy crowdfunding campaigns, the company had pivoted to releasing several small-box games direct to retail, some of which are expected to make their debut at Spiel Essen later this month.

The company’s remaining library of titles still includes big hitters such as the Marvel United range and DC Super Heroes United, which have raised more than $18m between them across four crowdfunding campaigns.