Board Game Arena

ChiefPointThief wrote: ↑21 July 2026, 21:46 Yes the publishers make money if the game is premium but if no one is playing then they aren’t making any money at all.

Some companies can be very stubborn about this. I suspect the decision makers have a sort of ego thing where they consider that what they are offering must be paid for. They’d rather let the business sink and make no money than to go through the "embarrassment" of offering something for free so that it can eventually make money.

Capitalism is already bad enough as it is, when people can’t even do capitalism properly and spend resources on products that no one is gonna be able to use, it doesn’t help things either haha.

tbhp wrote: ↑21 July 2026, 22:08

ChiefPointThief wrote: ↑21 July 2026, 21:46 Yes the publishers make money if the game is premium but if no one is playing then they aren’t making any money at all.

Some companies can be very stubborn about this. I suspect the decision makers have a sort of ego thing where they consider that what they are offering must be paid for. They’d rather let the business sink and make no money than to go through the "embarrassment" of offering something for free so that it can eventually make money.

Capitalism is already bad enough as it is, when people can’t even do capitalism properly and spend resources on products that no one is gonna be able to use, it doesn’t help things either haha.

If I create something, and another company wants to use that product to make money, I'm definitely going to want some of that money. That isn't 'capitalism bad'. It's common sense. Also, the digital version that you see on BGA isn't the company 'spending resources on products that no one is gonna be able to use'. Their product has already been created as a physical board game, and it had to be at least somewhat successful if they're asked for rights to create a digital version.

Rub the Buddha wrote: ↑21 July 2026, 23:24 If I create something, and another company wants to use that product to make money, I'm definitely going to want some of that money. That isn't 'capitalism bad'. It's common sense. Also, the digital version that you see on BGA isn't the company 'spending resources on products that no one is gonna be able to use'. Their product has already been created as a physical board game, and it had to be at least somewhat successful if they're asked for rights to create a digital version.

Do they '"make money" though? Looking through the list, most do, but some Premies I never see a table available.

So do they/will they ever clear out the deadwood, at least by eliminating the Premium status? If that raises the uses, BGA can always make it Premium again. If it doesn't change anything... nothing ventured nothing gained.

How profits have been explained to me is bga allocates a certain % to give to publishers. That number is split between every premium game and the % of what each game gets is dependent on the time players spend playing the game.

So if we are using coal baron as an example it only got 117 total games over the last month. Azul gets more total games than this every ten minutes. On a monthly basis this means 4,464x more than coal baron (this is rough math as it is about time and not total number of games). Now consider that there are 360 premium games atm.

So for the coal barons of the world (and there are actually games that are less popular than this that are premium) the question arises is it better to take the small profits of premium or to make your game more accessible and possibly get more revenue elsewhere w/ the added exposure of making it non premium.

Edit: There are actually more premium games than that because games that are free but are premium if you use expansion options (bang, crew games, etc) aren’t listed under the premium tag.

I wouldn't be surprised if the publisher's reaction to unpopular premium games followed this order from most likely to less likely:

1. Do nothing: no profit, but no cost
2. Pull out the game from BGA: it's not worth it
3. Make it free: maybe that will increase popularity

As noted above, the more Premium games there are, it seems that the less money goes to the publishers. So apparently, publishers would also like less games to be premium. Or BGA makes less money, as they pay out more publishers with games that are Premium.

So eliminating the deadwood would be beneficial to the publishers as people who get paid. And/or BGA. Yes? No?

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As my regular reminder, please note that I am not trying to advocate against Premium. Only that I'd like to see it used effectively. Having, say Dice Hospital (or Coal Baron) as a Premium makes little sense to me. If the producing company wanted to get paid when it was ported. great. How is having them Premium helping now? The company, BGA, or the users? The company at best gets a couple of dollars for this "dead wood".

I don't know if there's more benefit than that. Is that enough? Is there more?

Some games that are Premium, that status seemingly limits their availability. And thus their popularity. But, hey, I could be wrong.

Gislef wrote: ↑22 July 2026, 14:43 So eliminating the deadwood would be beneficial to the publishers as people who get paid. And/or BGA. Yes? No?

Removing their own premium games is never directly beneficial for a publisher, as it just reduces their share of the total premium pool. Removing other publishers' premium games, I'm sure they'd all like that

Jellby wrote: ↑22 July 2026, 17:36

Gislef wrote: ↑22 July 2026, 14:43 So eliminating the deadwood would be beneficial to the publishers as people who get paid. And/or BGA. Yes? No?

Removing their own premium games is never directly beneficial for a publisher, as it just reduces their share of the total premium pool. Removing other publishers' premium games, I'm sure they'd all like that

Then again, if no one does their part, no one will benefit either.

Jellby wrote: ↑22 July 2026, 17:36

Gislef wrote: ↑22 July 2026, 14:43 So eliminating the deadwood would be beneficial to the publishers as people who get paid. And/or BGA. Yes? No?

Removing their own premium games is never directly beneficial for a publisher, as it just reduces their share of the total premium pool. Removing other publishers' premium games, I'm sure they'd all like that

Removing their own games, no. Removing their games' Premium status, imo yes.

If the last sentence was the only factor, true. But it isn't. I've detailed the other factors in excruciating detail. On this very thread.

tbhp wrote: ↑22 July 2026, 17:49
Then again, if no one does their part, no one will benefit either.

Agreed. But no one is creating the tables currently. And some users can't.

Remove the Premium status for now, and see if letting everyone do their part benefits everyone. If it doesn't, reenable it.