West End Games For Sale!

[LadyTevar]

+http://westendgames.com/forum/showthread.php?t=4621

The link is to their forums, so I broke it, but Eric Gibson, publisher of WEG, is seriously meaning to sell the franchise with all intellectual properties.

I'm tired of all the work for negative reward. No good deed goes unpunished, as they say.

WEG and all it's properties are for sale, and I'm taking bids. I've been talking with some of the more interested publishers already but I was recent bitched out (what else is new) for not offer WEG for sale to fans publicly.
__________________
Eric Gibson
Publisher, West End Games/
Purgatory Publishing Inc.

[Hotfoot]

Unfortunately, I think all that they really have left is TORG and maybe one or two more things. Their Fantasy, Adventure, and Space settings were more like generic templates.

I was REALLY looking forward to the WEG system going OGL-ish. Looks like that won't happen now.

[B4UTRUST]

they had Paranoia back in the day (which I, of course, love) but now that belongs to Mongoose Publishing. TORG was/is good, but other then that... I really can't recall anything that really struck me as that great. Which is kind of sad...

[Hotfoot]

Well they had Star Wars at one point, but that is long since over.

[General Havoc]

Can't say I'm familiar with WEG. What's their claim to fame?

[Hotfoot]

D6 Star Wars, mostly.

[B4UTRUST]

TORG, Star Wars D6, Paranoia...

really that's the only 3 that they ever had worth much...

[The Minx]

Still, they had survived competition against more powerful companies for a long long while. Too bad.

[Hotfoot]

It's sad, but we're going to keep seeing this for the next few years, smaller RPG companies throwing in the towel. Indie games (heh) will keep going, but I suspect that RPGs will start to go "free" for a time before some kind of market online stabilizes.

[The Minx]

Yeah.

Steve Jackson games and Chaosium had better not fold, or there will be trouble.

[Hotfoot]

Steve Jackson has Munchkin to keep it afloat if nothing else, can't speak for Chaosium, but basically the big three companies who have little to worry about are WotC, White Wolf, and Steve Jackson Games. GURPS and World of Darkness/Exalted sell well enough to keep money coming in, but everyone else is pretty much on the short list to failtown without something else to keep the company afloat. People are much less likely to pay $40 for an RPG book these days, due to an oversaturated market and the ease which most people can make their own material. Pretty much all that sells these days are core books and big, necessary supplements.

[B4UTRUST]

You forgot Shadowrun, Hotfoot. It's still fairly popular as well and sells well, or at least around here it does.

Other companies that will worry, but probably won't completely die off: Palladium (Rifts, Palladium FRPG, Nightbane, Chaos Rifts, Ninjas & Superspies, Robotech/Macross, System Failure, Heroes/Villians Unlimited) and Hero Games (The Hero System - Champions, Dark Champions, etc).

[General Havoc]

I heard that Palladium was up shit creek financially, but I don't remember where I heard this or why things had gotten so bad for them particularly. I stopped paying attention to Palladium about five years ago, but I'd still hate to see them die after all the fun I got out of Rifts for many years.

[Hotfoot]

Shadowrun is currently owned by WizKids, unless something happened recently I'm unaware of. FASA already went belly up, so I consider those properties on life support. However, bottom line, Shadowrun does NOT have the base that White Wolf, GURPS, or D&D have. It's not even in the same ballpark really, and even GURPS doesn't compare to White Wolf or D&D, it only gets by because of Munchkin.

Palladium had some big scale embezzlement or some such that went on, which sucks, because while I don't like the way they do business, that's not something I'd wish on anyone really.

R.Talsorian has been really low key lately, though there's something potentially cool on the horizon. Dream Pod 9 has basically forsaken their RPG line in favor of their tactical minatures systems, and the list just goes on. There is virtually no money in RPGs these days IN GENERAL, and only the big names can eke out any kind of profitable business.

[Cynical Cat]

As for the itty-bitty guys, Green Ronin does good work, but they're tiny. Fantasy Flight Games has a huge board game division, where it probably makes most of its money.

[Hotfoot]

Yeah, that's the thing. The small guys stand their best chance by not trying to overextend too much, while everyone else is looking for some other way to make money. Board games, card games, miniature wargames, and so on are all methods used. Companies that do that will survive, companies that don't, well...

[B4UTRUST]

I heard that Palladium was up shit creek financially, but I don't remember where I heard this or why things had gotten so bad for them particularly. I stopped paying attention to Palladium about five years ago, but I'd still hate to see them die after all the fun I got out of Rifts for many years.

As Hotfoot said, it was an embezzlement issue. Their sales manager ended up embezzeling about a million dollars from the company. They didn't find out till they did a full inventory and found it out. This was happening between 02 and 04 and they found this out in 06. The sales manager got a year probation and ended up having to pay about $50k in restitution.

Siemba had the choice to take the cash and get the immediate bills that absolutely needed to be paid, paid or go after his pound of flesh. He stated that the open sales from the site during the 'time of crisis' by fans had almost totally covered what was lost. So it worked out in the end.


Shadowrun has never been a huge property, but it's fun and enjoyable and fairly successful. No, it doesn't compete with D&D or World of Darkness, but it does hold it's own decently. GURPS is the same way. And yes, it is still is owned by WizKids.

Green Ronin seems to make a lot of thier money off supplements for D20. And Fantasy Flight is good for a few things, I do like some of their boardgames and they are releasing some ones that are fairly interesting.

[Cynical Cat]

Fantasy Flight bought all of Black Industries stuff, including Warhammer Fantasy RPG, Dark Heresy, and Talisman. Green Ronin, having done RPG adaptions of both the Black Company and Thieves World is doing a Game of Thrones RPG coming out this fall. If they don't trip, crash, and burn they'll be slightly larger players.

As an aside, Palladium's game system is horrible, but I'm glad the company didn't crash and burn because of theft.

[B4UTRUST]

While I dislike the system for tabletop purposes, I like the games themselves. The system didn't really fit well to me, but I really liked the world settings so I ended up picking up or obtaining just about all the books in some shape or other.

[Cynical Cat]

While I dislike the system for tabletop purposes, I like the games themselves. The system didn't really fit well to me, but I really liked the world settings so I ended up picking up or obtaining just about all the books in some shape or other.

Nothing wrong with liking some of their fluff (they had quite a few game worlds), but their mechanics were inconsistent kludges they never even tried to improve.