Board Game Arena

So after reading a forum post discussing publishers' rights and what games BGA can develop (and a lot of complaining about the lack of interactive/Ameritrash games). I was looking at the amount of game companies that Asmodee owns:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asmodee

And saw that Asmodee owns Fantasy Flight Games, so why haven't we gotten any FFG games? We have Pandemic and Agricola (Z-Man Games), Ticket to Ride and Memoir'44 (Days of Wonder), etc, so they have developed games owned by the game companies they have bought, but not one FFG game? And it' can't be a licensing issue since Asmodee literally owns FFG. If it's a issue of programming time, I'm sure there are plenty of volunteers who would do it since FFG games are so popular (and as far as I understand BGA relies only on volunteers to program their games). I'm sure if Asmodee
weren't holding back those games we would have at least one FFG on here. Having those games on BGA could lead to physical sales and a bigger BGA population as more interactive players would sign up to BGA, so I don't get the decision.

Starwarrior1128 wrote: ↑23 May 2023, 03:37I'm sure if Asmodee weren't holding back those games we would have at least one FFG on here.

You seem to have answered your own question. Odds are no one from Asmodee is going to come on here to explain why, so any response in this thread will just be pure speculation.

First of all, licensing agreements are maybe not as clear as you think. It could be that FFG has rights to produce physical boardgames with certain assets but not all the digital rights to put them on BGA.
Second, even though I am sure there are volunteer developers to be found, the question from a publisher's perspective might be if you really want to hand over these complex large-scale games to a volunteer. To achieve a high quality of the digital version, you'd rather give it to an experienced developer and pay for it. (Most of the recent very popular games on BGA are developed by paid freelancers, not all games are made by volunteers.) But then the question is if it is worth the money, and if digital BGA versions of high human interaction games will actually turn out to be good.

But as pointed out from the previous commentator, this is all just speculation.

I already answered you on another thread. It's not that simple, really. You kept thinking as "owning" as being the big boss that takes all the decision for them but that's not the case for many publishers owned by Asmodée that usually have their own decisions (including BGA). Sure, Asmodée can use its big hammer and force some decisions, but for the sake of keeping healthy relations with publishers they own, it must be done at a certain pace. As you said, even for other publishers than FFG liké Days of Wonders, only some of the titles are here, and it's not because no devs are found, but really just because it takes Times.
Also, as the two last comment pointed it out, there is also a general business model of bga that want to space out the release of big title. So maybe some titles are already cleared and even in dev, but planned for later release to make sure to harvest as much players as possible and keep the players base growing.
Which leaves us with speculation.

As mentioned there's potential issues around rights. As an example, all the Star Wars FFG games or LOTR games would have been licensed for physical games only with digital rights being a separate issue.
Additionally, it's possible they've already licensed someone else the rights for a full standalone digital adaptation which could be exclusive. It's one reason why Wingspan took a while to come to BGA. Jamey did a deal with Monster Couch, who have the digital license, to split the revenue share from BGA in return for them allowing it.
Even beyond that, a game FFG have published might be licensed from a designer and depending on that license they might not have the rights to publish/license it in a different format.