Company co-founder and CEO Jamey Stegmaier told BoardGameWire the prevalence of smaller box releases, expansions and re-releases in its 2026 plan was not a response to US tariff concerns or other economic factors.
The French award focuses on new, expert-level eurogame releases from the previous 12 months which have a high replayability, especially those “whose format does not always allow them to apply for one of the many other current awards”.
The War of the Ring publisher has added Europe to its distribution partnerships with Poland's Galakta Games, Italy's Tabula Games, Czech Republic-based Albi, and France's Nuts! Publishing and Don't Panic Games, for which it already has distribution deals in North America.
Homebrew designs and fan-made rules and variants have been part of hobby board gaming for as long as the pastime has existed - and some publishers have leaned into utilising design work from fans in their published games. BoardGameWire spoke to Jamey Stegmaier from Stonemaier Games, Alex Hague from CMYK Games, and Jackson Pope from Eurydice Games about how they've approached bringing in fan-made ideas for their titles.
The surprise cancellation comes four months after the Root and Arcs publisher unveiled the crowdfunding campaign for Take, a risk management and negotiation game which sees players executing a series of heists.
Codenames and SETI publisher Czech Games Edition has signed its first-ever distribution agreement with Hachette, as the French publishing giant continues to expand out its European board game distribution operation in the face of competition from industry heavyweight Asmodee.
SETI's indomitable 2025 awards run also includes the Deutscher Spiele Preis - the biggest community-voted board game award in Germany - Dice Tower Awards for game of the year, best strategy game and best new designer, and the Golden Geek heavy game of the year and thematic game awards.
Kevin Wilson, the veteran tabletop designer whose abundant list of work includes Descent: Journeys in the Dark, Arkham Horror and Cosmic Encounter, spent most of the 2010s working a successful freelance career after a decade at Fantasy Flight Games. Wilson became director of game design at Incredible Dream upon the company’s 2021 launch, but a tariff-disrupted year for the Kinfire series publisher has seen the business downsize to just two permanent staff - putting Wilson back into the freelance pool. He spoke to BoardGameWire about how his time at Incredible Dream has helped him hone his design strengths, why visibility as a freelancer is key and which of his older unpublished designs might now get another bite at the cherry.
Few board game designers score the kind of rapid success that has come to Connie Vogelmann - with her debut design Apiary from 2023 flying high in the BoardGameGeek rankings, and follow-up creation Wyrmspan selling "far beyond the wildest dreams" of publisher Stonemaier Games' founder Jamey Stegmaier following its high-profile release last year. That double success - and the "destruction" Donald Trump's administration has had on her work as a grants law attorney - has seen Vogelmann decide to take the plunge into full-time board game design. She spoke to BoardGameWire about navigating freelance design, branching out beyond worker placement, and the challenges that face full-time designers in the current economic climate.
The company has let go of project director Danielle Reynolds and customer experience manager Derek Gill as part of the "heartbreaking" layoffs, which it said were necessary to ensure its long-term sustainability.
