BGA yesterday, now and tomorrow

[DomitienAW]

Congrats Greg and Emmanuel, this a well deserved reward for your great work here!

To me it’s a great news to see a major actor investing in your plateform and framework.
Of course it will benefit first for their AAA games but this will also allow the community to have better tools to develop more small / indy / old games.

And it will help me introduce my friend to more board game and that’s the best part

[hasi6562]

Ich hätte mir gewünscht so wichtige Neuigkeiten auf der hauptseite zu finden. Schade das ich mein Jahresabo schon bezahlt habe. Auf Grund der führungsänderung hätte ich es nicht getan. Es hat sich ja schon längerer Zeit anzeichen für negative Veränderungen gegeben. Asmodee werde ich nicht unterstützen.
Den Gründern wünsche ich alles Gute für die Zukunft und wenn sie wieder eine neue Seite eröffnen, ich wäre dabei. Das sie verkauft haben kann ich verstehen. Hätte ich auch gemacht wenn das Geld stimmt.
Bleiben Sie gesund.

[oniony]

Can't say I'm positive about this. Asmodee ruins everything it touches. We're talking about the company that recently eliminated the ability to replace broken games, and removed their forums so they wouldn't have to directly support their games. It will be business as usual for a short time, until it is not.

I'm pretty sure you're dead on the money here. This will be like Digg or Myspace: a corporate board will take a much-loved, community run site that truly gets its user-base, will see it only for the numbers on the spreadsheet and try to squeeze these users for as much value as possible and, in doing so, will squeeze the very life out of it.

But I wonder how much we'll all be using BGA in the post-Covid world anyway. I mean, I was a member since 2015 and barely played anything on here, but have racked up some 800 games in the last year. Can we really blame these guys for selling this hot property whilst it's at its hottest?

[Alexalia]

Bye bye BGA

[LaszloK]

My 2p:
1) Yes this very obviously does belong on the front page. That's pretty much my only real criticism.
2) If you thought the current model (of a handful of people managing a site this size with funding just sufficient to "keep the lights on") was sustainable in the long run, I have a very nice bridge to sell you.
3) If you think that the founders don't deserve to cash in, you have a serious entitlement problem.
4) I read the license agreement very carefully before spending time developing games here. I didn't particularly like how I basically had to give the site a blank cheque, but I understood the reasons and thought that it was fair. Obviously, with the change in ownership, this will change, but that's not to say that I regret any of my past contributions - nor that I suddenly have a problem with developing or improving public domain games here (which is what my niche has been).
5) I don't think there is anything unethical about the move. It was obvious that something like this had to happen, and soon, or the site would just crumble under the weight of its own growth without a corresponding growth of the team running it. The way it happened is pretty much the best way it could have happened. If you didn't expect it, that's not Greg's and Emmanuel's fault.

Yes there is a risk that Asmodee make gradual changes for the worse. I'll be the first to sound the alarm if and when they do. But for now, this is nothing more than a great opportunity to bring in more funded developments while also improving the site's stability, scalability, and user experience.

[Alexcendre]

BGA does a better job than Asmodee Digital.
Same for Repo production, I no longer play the Android version of 7 Wonders and Duel since they are here.
Almost all the good digital adaptations have been bought by Asmodee Digital. What do you recommend? Ban Asmodee and only play Monololy?
The problem here is not BGA but other platforms. Yucatan will probably lose licenses like with Jaipur.
From my point of view as a player this is still good news ... at least for the game catalog.

[LaszloK]

Having read some of the reddit comments referenced earlier, I'd like to add that it's reasonable for small publishers to want to renegotiate their license agreements with BGA, especially in the case where they have been free up until now.
It's not really fair to say that they should have been contacted before this went through. Yes it would have been nice, but we're talking about _two people_ running the thing AND negotiating the sale. If you're really that small, you must understand what it feels like. Cut the guys some slack already, and renegotiate patiently in the coming weeks/months.

[Makkurokurosuke]

Well that news broke my bga heart and i just cancelled my premium. This was one comment i read about this issue and support the commenter 100%: "The fact that we as publishers were given no right of refusal or negotiation period is abhorrent. I'm very likely pulling my games from the site this week.

The tone of the emails Greg sent me was "if you want to get paid make your games premium". They seemingly have no plans of paying for games that publishers don't want to lock behind a paywall. Thing is, I offered these when pitched, "two-people trying to make games more accessible with a cool online platform".

They've sold for X amount, in part using our free royalties and developers free labor, yet they have no intentions to pay for the previous nor future use of mods that are now on a site owned by a 1.3 billion dollar industry competitor. Not only is this highly unethical, I'm fairly sure the stipulations surrounding volunteer work at "for-profit" entities make it illegal as well. I really hope their current position changes quickly."

I have invested my time for example in translating games for free to make those more accessible. Now all the work people have invested with this site is gone with a mega industry takeover. I have been more than happy to give my time for a community that makes the games more accessible. And the main problem is that Asmodee is just a business with zero support for the community according to it's latest decisions with board gaming scene. Screw this.

[rayzor6]

I have nothing but respect and admiration for all the people of BGA. I don't hold any ill will or blame or anything negative towards them. They are free to do what they will with their product. I repeat: there is nothing about BGA that I don't like.

That being said: Asmodee sucks. They are horrible and they WILL find a way to ruin what is so wonderful here. Any money they invest in something, the want that back plus as much as they can get. After that, it can go down in flames and they don't care. It's a horrible way to do business but if it didn't make profit: they wouldn't do it.

I just hate the idea of something that was built with love and hard work to be used like a disposable item. And Asmodee will do that. I'm seriously considering cancelling just because I don't want to support them in any way, shape or form and give this horrible model any success from my own hand.

[Murrur]

Why isn't this an official announcement on front page, but just a casual topic on a random discussion board?! It almost feels like you're trying to hide it...?

As a contributor, who has been one of the major translator of games, I will not be continuing my work. I was happy to help translations for a free board game community, operated by couple of European board game enthusiasts. I would have been happy to support a community financially too. But I'm not going to do any free work for an American megacorporation. I'm pretty sure, that they'll put major content pretty soon behind paywall to profit from this acquisition. The acquisition feels wrong against all the contributors and coders, who have given years worth of work and time, and now their effort is transffered to a megacorporation just to exploit the free work to make money.

I'm sure people would have been happy to support the site with much higher sums if you had given option, and you could have made nice income with that as well if you had wanted. Without the community and its free work, the site would still be hobby project of two dudes, instead of site with more than 4 billion played games. It feels you just cashed out your leadership and exploited the free work of all the contributors and community, who made the site great on their own.

What I'm expecting to happen in year or two:
- higher subscription fees
- most games behind paywalls
- smaller publishers games vanish, or get demonetized
- site will start displaying annoying ads everywhere
- exploiting big data for financial gain

Thanks for the community who made it great. Too bad it wasn't communal owned coop, so we could have made decision about ourselves together.