
Lucky Duck cuts back on “resource intensive” localisation strategy, shifts focus to developing own titles
Lucky Duck has a big hitter of its own in the Chronicles of Crime series of games, which have sold more than one million copies worldwide.

Lucky Duck has a big hitter of its own in the Chronicles of Crime series of games, which have sold more than one million copies worldwide.

FFG said, "Simply put, the game is too expensive to make. Between ever-increasing manufacturing costs, lengthy and pricey app development timelines, and global economic shifts making everything more expensive to produce, it became abundantly clear that continuing to make this game is just not feasible."

CMON's $23m losses across 2024 and 2025 are now almost 5.5-times larger than its profits from the preceding nine years combined - and have led an independent auditor hired by the company to question whether it has the resources to stay in business for the foreseeable future.

Publisher Equinox said the €1.1m raised between the Roots of Corruption Gamefound campaign and through retailer pre-orders was "far too far" from the €2m it needed to "guarantee the future of the game".

MingYang Lu's puzzle fighter-style board game Re;MATCH has had a storming start to its Kickstarter campaign, picking up almost $250,000 from over 1,250 backers with half of the month-long crowdfund still to go. In this sponsored interview, Lu talks about why his design looks to derive fun from game mastery rather than discovery, the importance of conventions for small publishers, and why AI art "cheapens creativity".

ODN's work over the years has included crowdfunding and marketing support for companies such as Roxley Games, Indie Boards & Cards and Stronghold Games, Devir North America and Allplay, while individual campaigns worked on include the $2.2m More Terraforming Mars! Kickstarter and Roxley's Santorini Co-op & Deluxe Pantheon Edition crowdfund, which raised about CA$2.1bn.

The publisher has broken a three-year run of losses since bringing in John Coveyou to restructure the company last July, with the profits allowing it to get Santa’s Workshop into the hands of backers, as well as starting to pay some of the backlog of royalties it owes designers.

The dice and card-focused combat game has become a crowdfunding heavyweight following its original $180,000 Kickstarter project from Mind Bottling Games in 2018, going on to raise almost $13m across a string of subsequent campaigns.

Cardboard Alchemy has taken the next step in its rapid expansion by shifting to distribute its own games into retail, powered by the evergreen success of its dragon-themed design Flamecraft.

The Toni López-designed dice manipulation game fought off big name titles including Galactic Cruise and Luthier to win the 2026 Diamant d'Or, which was created more than a decade ago to celebrate complex euros the organisers felt were being overlooked by more mainstream board game awards.