Dunno if you folks have seen the announcement, but here comes a piece of news from Spielbox website
https://www.spielbox.de/branchen-wirtsc ... game-arena
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12.02.2021
Once again, the French Asmodee Group is causing a stir with the acquisition of a company, but this time it doesn't involve a traditional game publisher: New group member is Board Game Arena (BGA), a platform for online board games that describes itself as the global market leader in its field. BGA was founded in 2010 by Grégory Isabelli and Emmanuel Colin; today, the website features over 250 digital game adaptations in 40 languages, including titles from Asmodee and its partner publishers. As an example, Asmodee mentions the online version of 7 Wonders, which has been played 4 million times since its 2018 debut. BGA reportedly has more than 5 million users.
In 2020, the year of the pandemic, BGA's services experienced a real boom and was 600 % more popular than in the previous year; this likely benefited the previous owners in takeover negotiations and made the timing seem particularly favorable. However, BGA is to remain completely independent, including pricing strategies and program selection, and the current management will also remain in place. As before, online conversions will be offered to all other publishers as well, at least as long as BGA considers their works suitable. Asmodee, for its part, wants to accelerate the release of its titles on the platform. Skull and Splendor, for example, are scheduled for digital release in the next few weeks, followed by numerous other Asmodee games.
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More fun games are coming, as the announcement says, but now that BGA is no longer independent, I wonder if some publishers will be inclined to pull back some titles (or change their mind about publishing) because of conflict of interest. At the end of the day, the gameplay data is way too valuable to give away.
https://www.spielbox.de/branchen-wirtsc ... game-arena
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12.02.2021
Once again, the French Asmodee Group is causing a stir with the acquisition of a company, but this time it doesn't involve a traditional game publisher: New group member is Board Game Arena (BGA), a platform for online board games that describes itself as the global market leader in its field. BGA was founded in 2010 by Grégory Isabelli and Emmanuel Colin; today, the website features over 250 digital game adaptations in 40 languages, including titles from Asmodee and its partner publishers. As an example, Asmodee mentions the online version of 7 Wonders, which has been played 4 million times since its 2018 debut. BGA reportedly has more than 5 million users.
In 2020, the year of the pandemic, BGA's services experienced a real boom and was 600 % more popular than in the previous year; this likely benefited the previous owners in takeover negotiations and made the timing seem particularly favorable. However, BGA is to remain completely independent, including pricing strategies and program selection, and the current management will also remain in place. As before, online conversions will be offered to all other publishers as well, at least as long as BGA considers their works suitable. Asmodee, for its part, wants to accelerate the release of its titles on the platform. Skull and Splendor, for example, are scheduled for digital release in the next few weeks, followed by numerous other Asmodee games.
------
More fun games are coming, as the announcement says, but now that BGA is no longer independent, I wonder if some publishers will be inclined to pull back some titles (or change their mind about publishing) because of conflict of interest. At the end of the day, the gameplay data is way too valuable to give away.
