The fate of the Star Wars, Legend of the Five Rings, Genesys and other Fantasy Flight Games roleplaying games looks bleak tonight. The team at d20 Radio has found a source that confirms the company’s long term plans are to discontinue their tabletop RPG products.
Although sad, the news is not surprising. It emerged in January, that most of the company’s RPG designers had been let go. A week later, a spokesperson for Fantasy Flight Games stated that the RPG lines would carry on for now.
Now, it seems “carry on for now” is, as many suspected, a polite way of saying they’ll be looking to wrap-up those products.
ICv2‘s sales tracker of North American outlets often put Star Wars in the top five selling RPGs of the quarter. Roll20 recently put Star Wars in the Top 10 of games played on their platform.
However, Top 10, in this case, was less than 1% of all campaigns.
We don’t know why Fantasy Flight Games has made this decision. Speculation falls on the company’s owners, Asmodee and the financial targets that must be met. Are tabletop roleplaying games profitable enough?
It’s also entirely likely that Star Wars will find a new home, either as a continuation or with a relaunch. It’ll be an expensive license, but an attractive one.
Legend of the Five Rings was bought from Alderac Entertainment Group in 2017.
Genesys has a new product coming out. The Secrets of the Crucible is the KeyForge RPG, using Genesys as the system. It would seem to be a perfect example of why owning a set of RPG core rules would make sense for FFG.
Equally, the fate of the Genesys Foundry for third-party content is uncertain but not rosy.
d20 Radio who broke the news has a good write up on what appears to be a well researched and sourced story.
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