Fentasy Games looks to help complex game publishers avoid ‘strangulation’ of trad distribution with P500-style platform launch

French board game publisher Fentasy Games has launched a new platform aimed at providing publishers with a more affordable way to get their higher complexity titles into the hands of retailers and gamers.

Company founder and CEO Florian Gigot told BoardGameWire Fentasy had scored several successes since launching towards the end of 2024, including localisations of complex titles El Burro and Stephens – but said its major challenge in that time had been “the structural reality of the traditional distribution model”.

He said, “We realised that for a small publisher, a ‘critical success’ doesn’t always translate to a ‘financial success’ once the middlemen take their cut. The same applies to many of my partners around the world.

“…between squeezed margins, production costs, and trade discounts, even a popular game can become a financial failure. For an independent publisher, this means increasing difficulty in funding subsequent projects – and ultimately, a real risk of going out of business.

“In this context, profitability is no longer a secondary objective, but a condition for survival.”

He added, “This might seem counterintuitive, especially at a time when a game like [Brass: Pittsburgh] is thriving on Gamefound. But that is the exception. So many other expert ‘hidden gems’ deserve a chance to exist.”

Gigot hopes newly launched platform BoardGameCommerce will give publishers of higher complexity games with smaller print runs – of between 500 and 1,000 units – a more sustainable financial option than the traditional board game industry distribution model.

He described BGC as an ‘evolution’ of the P500 scheme successfully employed by wargame and strategy game specialist GMT for more than 20 years, which allows gamers to pre-order still-in-development titles, which then begin final art and development once they reach 500 orders.

Gigot said BGC differs, however, in that Fentasy commits to producing the game the moment it goes onto the platform, saying, “We don’t ask the community to carry the industrial risk – we carry it ourselves because we believe in the project.”

He said that model helps Fentasy and other publishers measure real demand for their titles, as well as giving visibility to game makers that might not be possible amid the plethora of new games battling it out through traditional distribution.

Gigot added that BGC also offers retailers “a professional interface to secure limited stock with high margins of up to 55%”, with no payment required until the game is ready to ship.

He told BoardGameWire, “I absolutely see this growing. In fact, BGC is designed to be an agnostic platform. We are already in talks with other small publishers who face the same ‘strangulation’ within traditional distribution.

“We want to offer them the same resilience we built for ourselves – bringing everyone together on a single, global platform. It makes it much easier for gamers and retailers to find exactly what they are looking for in one place.

“The icing on the cake is that all publishers using the BGC platform have access to a shared licensing ecosystem. For example, if Publisher A adds a game to BGC and is looking for a partner to localise it, Publisher B can check the available licenses for their country and initiate a business discussion immediately.

“BGC takes 0% commission on these deals – the goal is simply to be stronger together.”

Gigot said Fentasy aims to release between three and five titles each year, with about half going through BGC and half, such as its localisation of Animal Rescue Team and upcoming strategy title Microlonies, through traditional distribution.

The publisher’s first release through BGC is Iron Games’ Mesopotamia-themed territory builder Papyria, with future titles set to arrive on the platform before the end of next year including Martin Wallace space exploration design Casus Belli and Masaki Suga’s chocolate industry strategy title Bean to Bar.

Other Iron Games releases available through BGC include Discordia and its Magna expansion, Pandoria and Ploc, while Fentasy’s French localisation of Uwe Rosenberg design Kanal – previously Oranienburger Kanal – is also present on the platform.

But Gigot added, “Titles like Animal Rescue Team and Microlonies will still follow the traditional distribution model. We aren’t abandoning big distribution – we are simply choosing the right tool for the right game.

“There is no ‘hostility’ toward the traditional model – it just isn’t built to sustain niche titles effectively.”

Gigot said Fentasy’s biggest successes since its late 2024 launch have included Kikai – Bricolage Heads, which he said moved more than 4,000 copies “in a short window for a game of its complexity”.

He added that 2026 release Microlonies “is following the same successful path. It proved that a hungry audience exists for deep, high-production-value games”.

Fentasy’s success to date has persuaded Gigot – who runs the company as “a small, agile core team of one person” – to expand its scope internationally, with him telling BoardGameWire the business is moving towards a 60% international / 40% France split.

He said, “We are always looking for new partners to localize our games in their countries and to localise their games into French.

“Our goal for 2027 is to achieve a synchronized BGC launch for our expert line across Europe (Germany, Poland, Italy, Spain) and Canada, China, allowing local publishers / retailers to bypass the heavy costs of international imports.”