Finally, the Big News: Distribution

After months of talks, I can finally announce that Asmodee will be handling our English language retail distribution (so US, Canada, UK and, oddly, the Nordic countries)!

Why does this matter? Why is this big news?

Good questions. You're probably saying to yourself, "Well, I've already got the Kickstarter, this has nothing to do with fulfillment, why are they even telling me about retail distribution?"

It's because of what this means for the long term health of the game. When we crossed a million dollars I said to the team, "We can't let Cyberpunk Legends be a flash in the pan Kickstarter game. With people caring this much we have an obligation to make something lasting."

This is a big step towards that.

You've all seen Kickstarter games that are amazingly cool... but then you can never find them at retail to share with your friends, to get replacements if you lose a piece or, most importantly, to pick up expansions. They disappear within a year and all those things you bought lose their value as anything but objects to put on a shelf.

Asmodee is THE BIGGEST distributor of tabletop games. With them behind us it means (assuming we don't blow it) that this gets to be a living game. The game will be able to grow, new people will be able to pick it up and get involved, we can form a lasting community.

We want you to be sitting around the table with your friends in five years, playing the fourth campaign, and for them to say, "Oh man, you have THAT? That's so cool" as they point to some of the first printing cards, Kickstarter exclusives or foils that didn't get reprinted in later editions (or heck, let's be honest, a misprint or something that we had to swap out of later versions of the core box because someone found a way to turn it into an infinite combo ; ).

Say what you will about them, having Asmodee on board makes that much, much more likely.

—JP

PS: On Distribution

If you’re curious and don’t know, in tabletop games, a distributor is basically the middle step between the people who design and make the game, and the stores where you go buy it in real life.

The highly simplified chain of events looks like:

1) Game designers (like us) hire manufacturers to print the game; 2) the distributor buys a whole bunch of that game and stores it in their warehouses; 3) retail stores (like your friendly local game shop or bookstores or whatever) order the game from the distributor, instead of dealing with a billion individual indie companies and publishers; and then finally, 4) players buy the game from those stores.

Working with a good, trustworthy, established distributor is great and helpful for people like us because they can handle a lot of stuff we are just not equipped for. Like, for example, storing thousands of copies of games…maintaining sales relationships with sales reps all over the country or world…and the multitude of logistical tasks like shipping, invoicing, and other supply-chain stuff involved in getting thousands of copies of a thing to many different places.

Basically, a distributor like Asmodee is to games what record distribution is (erm, was?) for record shops. Without them, most games would be hard if not impossible to find and getting our games onto shelves far and wide would be much harder for us. All this is to say, we are very excited at being able to share this news because it means we are that much closer to getting this game into the hands of everyone who wants it.

Hopefully we'll have more updates about distribution in the rest of the world in a few weeks!

—IM

 

Feature artwork: Aldecado Allies, by Bence Beregi for Cyberpunk Legends / Night Crew Games.