▪️ On March 16, 2026, Kevin Bertram of Fort Circle Games published a fascinating article on his "Negotium Ludorum" Substack: "Designer Royalties with Real Numbers". Not all designers and publishers have the same levels of success, of course, but if you've been curious about what life might be like as a game designer, you'll want to check this out. An excerpt:
For contracts with Fort Circle we set aside 10% of sales for royalty payments. For The Shores of Tripoli, I was both designer and developer so 8% of sales are paid to me and 2% are paid to our charitable partner, Toys for Tots. For Votes for Women, Tory as the designer receives 6%, as the developer I receive 2%, and the League of Women Voters receives 2%...
These royalty percentages are based on the sale price of each copy. Using Votes for Women as an example, if a copy sells on our website for $75, Tory receives $4.50 and I receive $1.50. If a copy is sold to a retailer at a 50% discount, the company receives $37.50 and thus Tory receives $2.25 and I receive $0.75. If we give a game away to a school or a library or as a review copy, the royalty payment is $0. As of December 25, 2025, we have sold 8016 copies of Votes for Women for $463,575.10 - an average sale price of $57.83. We are out of stock of Votes for Women, so of the 8400 printed between two print runs we also gave away 384 copies...
Can you make enough money as a game designer? Not on the numbers above, but there seem to be two scenarios where it is possible.
▪️ Bertram also published a "2025 Financial Report" for Fort Circle Games on March 14, 2026 that you might want to read. If nothing else, this report (combined with the post above) gives you a sense of how a game's retail price translates into income for the publisher, designer, and developer.
The bottom line, which has been true for decades: If you want to support a creator or publisher, the best thing you can do is buy directly from the creator or publisher so that they receive more funds for the same item you could buy at a retail outlet.
▪️ Hey, did you ever catch BGG's 2019 video preview of Maiko, a 2019 game from Cecile Langlais and Ludovic Maublanc, and think "If only this game weren't available solely in France"? Or perhaps a video preview that same year for Above from Yves Charamel-Lenain and think "Some day..."?
If so (and you live in North America), publisher Don't Panic Games has (finally) heard your wishes and opened an office in the U.S. to facilitate the availability of its games via distributors and retailers in that country. Among the titles to be available are those two 2019 games, Guillaume Besançon's 2023 cathedral-building game Luminis, and 2026's Spyworld from Frédéric Morard.
Spyworld is similar to Christopher Westmaas' Lairs, due out in 2026 from KTBG and covered here, in that each player creates a lair that another player will explore, but whereas Lairs is for two players only, Spyworld can accommodate any number of players. During the set-up phase, you flip over the top cards of three piles (as in Welcome To...), with the front of a card showing the thing you can get — agent training, a gadget, a wall or upgrade for your lair — and the back of the next card showing the row or column in which the thing must be placed; by spending money, you can use two or three of the revealed cards instead of only one.
Once someone has completed their lair, everyone hands their lair to a neighbor, then you explore that lair with your agent, trying to complete missions, disable sentries, and steal secrets. You also score for secrets unstolen from your own lair.
▪️ Dave Campbell at Dolphin Hat Games, which launched in 2012, has embraced the company's biggest success story and renamed the business Taco Cat Games. An October 2025 profile of Campbell in the Dayton Business Journal notes that more than 12 million copies of Taco Cat Goat Cheese Pizza have been sold in 45 countries.
▪️ In late February 2026, Atomic Mass Games announced a restructuring intended to "enhance focus on its flagship titles, Star Wars: Legion and Marvel: Crisis Protocol... As part of this realignment, Atomic Mass Games' Star Wars: Shatterpoint product line will be transitioning into a specialist core game line." This doesn't mean that Shatterpoint has been discontinued, but AMG will be "streamlining the number of releases to align with the restructured development resources of the studio".
AMG ended development of Star Wars: Armada and Star Wars: X-Wing in June 2024, yet those product lines are still listed on the company's website.
▪️ Canadian distributor Universal Distribution, the new owner of Alliance Game Distributors, has shut down Game Trade Magazine with issue #313. On LinkedIn, John Kaufield, who has been posting reviews in that publication since 2014, reprinted a tribute to GTM that he wrote in 2025 in honor of the magazine's 25th anniversary. (As reported on ICv2, in April 2025 Universal Distribution and Ad Populum — owner of WizKids and a dozen other product brands — won a bankruptcy court bid for Diamond Comic Distributors, with Universal taking ownership of Alliance and Ad Populum taking everything else.)
