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 OrlandotheTechnicoloured wrote:
some of the Chinese factories running out some/loads of extra copies of stuff when they do a print run (a fair number of places that do electronics have been caught doing this, along with selling on QC failures to places that get them just about working for sale as grey market imports)

BGG's been talking about this for quite awhile, but 70%???

Empirically, this counterfeiting isn't enough to affect sales, or otherwise Asmodee would find a manufacture that's more trustworthy (be it in China or the US) or have personnel who regularly visits the manufacturer to maintain their own audits and QA.

These games are good, but China has its own games that are more popular, typically ones with a Three Kingdoms theme.

Has this article been posted on BGG?

EDIT: Found these on eBay. Sellers from China, packaging I'm not familiar with. Multiple sets sold in one package. With Asmodee increasing their MAP, they can afford someone to look for these things.

There was a similar article to this in the Tabletop Gaming magazine. I'm not particularly surprised, anything that has a big, lucrative market will have someone, somewhere trying to rip it off. And as Orlando has said it's fairly straightforward for an unscrupulous Chinese factory that has knocked out several thousand of them to keep the production run going for a few more hours and those copies get loaded into a different truck.

That being said, the Tabletop Gaming magazine article mentions things to look out for which would indicate a counterfeit copy - more faded printing and components, a higher number of mis-cast or mis-printed pieces, or logos missing from the products. That would seem to indicate the counterfeiters are a specialised operation where they have got hold of a copy of the game and are replicating them (not entirely successfully).

Someone mentioned before about it being 3rd party components or add-ons being classed as a 'counterfeit' - thinks that's a completely separate issue, and not generally going to affect board games as you for the most part you would get what you need from the box set.

the_scotsman wrote:
EDIT: Thinking on this, I actually have to chuckle at how incredibly easy it would be to do something like make a counterfeit monopoly game or something like that. It'd be like hiding a slightly differently colored piece of hay in a haystack.

Take a game with the same basic shaped board, that uses the same components (paper money in the right denominations and six-sided dice) and call it "Anything-ply" rather than "Anything-opoly".

Then, in the rulebook of the game, create an ENTIRELY DIFFERENT game using the same components. Make the rules wholly distinct.

99% of the people who buy the box would just play monopoly with it, and would never crack the rulebook open.

There's no copyright on rules mechanics, so you could have differentopoly play the same as monopoly, if you changed the graphics.

(when we were in school, we bought a set of monopoly cards/cash/pieces in a charity/thrift store for like $1 and made our own board out of an old cupboard door. I'm pretty sure I've still got the Ownopoly board somewhere).


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
Are games like Catan and Ticket to Ride pretty easy to counterfeit? How is that possible? They are staples of discount shelves everywhere--there's not much point to trying to undercut Target's prices.[/quote[

Scanning and printing then selling for just under the discounters will get you a lot of profit.

Or are they really suggesting that any drop in sales must be due to piracy? because I've heard that somewhere before...

They are seeing random drops in sales, which correlate to spikes in complaints/reviews about poor quality.

Man, I just can't wrap my mind around what the underground boardgame market would even look like. "Real Monopolis Thimbles Cheap! Buy now, my friend!" "scrabble tiles sold by weight, all letters for pennies." "Chewie here tells me you're looking for Passage to Ride, but you want to avoid any trademark intanglements."

It'll just be an Amazon/eBay seller listing stuff as if it's legitimate.

Benn Roe wrote:

the_scotsman wrote:
For a lot of their bigger products, Asmodee has already made ripoffs so easy with the sheer ridiculous volume of pasted-on themes they put on their bigger titles like Monopoly and (weirdly) Munchkin. There are probably literally hundreds of Asmodee-manufactured monopoly themes. Throwing in a ripoff one you could easily make it just impossible to spot.

What? Those aren't Asmodee games. Monopoly is a Hasbro title, and most of the alternately-branded versions are produced under license by a company called USAopoly. Munchkin is the property of Steve Jackson Games, with a few versions also produced under license by USAopoly. Asmodee mostly does orginal titles, though their imprint Fantasy Flight definitely reskins games from time to time (Descent, Talisman, etc.).

USAopoly is owned by Asmodee. They produce the trillions of vomited-out monopoly themes as well as the vomited out munchkin themes (http://usaopoly.com/games/munchkin?gclid=Cj0KCQiAs9zSBRC5ARIsAFMtUXFb9TCw4NlUsj3SPDE-x0uDmxnvciP26y7as3AwcF4Fi8Au0SMI0csaAotAEALw_wcB) and Yahtzee http://usaopoly.com/games/yahtzee and Risk http://usaopoly.com/games/risk. it is a company that pretty much exists to take a game and create an identical version with a pasted-on theme of a thing you recognize.

...Which is why you see the same trend of pasted-on themes to other recent Asmodee acquisitions like Zman and FF IPs. After all, who doesn't want to play "Space Gloom"? How about "Pandemic: Cthulhu"? "Betrayal at the Baldurs Gate on the Hill" anyone? I don't know about you but to me all these slapped on themes definitely seem to fit their original game concepts like a blood-soaked glove on an alleged murderer who used to play pro football.

USAopoly isn't owned by Asmodee. They have a partnership that allows Asmodee to distribute their games outside the US, I think, but they're definitely not under the Asmodee NA umbrella.

Comedy gold, or irony in action. A company that takes it unique games and slaps a half-dozen themes to turn into a slew of knock-offs claims 70% of the product bought are fake knock-offs?

Another thing to possibly keep in mind is that not everything is made typically in the same factory. From what I've seen in various kickstarters, typically the plastics are made in one spot whereas heavy card components in another and maybe the box in a third. Making counterfeit Descent boxes would require coordination between factory in all likelihood (not impossible but just less likely). That's less of an issue for an all card board game though.

The 70% thing just seems...unlikely. Something that significant would show up in yearly earnings and would have promoted much more of a reaction than "We're looking into it". It's not like a switch flipped this past year and the counterfeiting that goes on went from 0% to 100%, it builds up as the counterfeiters sense profit to be made.

I know counterfeiting is a problem in MtG and it's definitely a problem for miniature companies and it could easily become a problem for board games but I am exceedingly doubtful that it is a serious one right now.

The more I think about it the more I come to the conclusion that it's another sky is failing FFG/Asmodee claim to justify an upcoming change like just how bad small store discounts supposedly were leading to their GW-esque pricing policies that ONLY affect small retailers but let big box stores do whatever they want.

I don't think I'd be willing to ascribe malice to them at this point, but it does come off that they've produced a conclusion prior to collecting data in support of that conclusion.

Granted, that could also be the handiwork of whatever anti-piracy consultants happened to be able to cash in on this.

I don't ascribe malice but rather self serving spin laying the groundwork potentially for a future justification. There is nothing inherently "evil" as the word malice would indicate about jumping to conclusions about piracy unless they accuse someone directly of doing it. I don't think that FFG's policies I referenced are evil but rather simply greedy and anti-consumer. YMMV but I find there to be a wide gulf between the two when talking about something that is essentially an option luxury item (as all gaming products are).

Pacific wrote:Someone mentioned before about it being 3rd party components or add-ons being classed as a 'counterfeit' - thinks that's a completely separate issue, and not generally going to affect board games as you for the most part you would get what you need from the box set.

The issue might be separate but I think they might see it as something that's "taking their money" in a way (instead of upgrading your existing game with bits from somebody else you could have spend that money on their games), like GW doesn't like third party bits or how music publishers would love to count every person who has ever accidentally listened to one of their songs without paying for it as a pirate who should have been customer and paid for it.

I think it was a few years ago in a prominent music piracy case where the publisher's side calculated the worth of the infringement at a hundred thousand per song—what they wanted in damages—instead of a dollar—what it costs on iTunes or comparable services—and the result was that they wanted to be paid the GDP of a small country and more than the music industry made in sales in a year (all that from one person). When your incentives lie in showing the worst case scenario then reality just doesn't cut it.

I'm a simple man. If I see a model that is clearly a representation of what I need for the table, and its half the price, I think "That's a much better deal and I wouldn't mind buying it".


If GW doesn't want knock offs selling for half price and stealing their product, they should just reduce their prices.

You certainly can charge more for better products, but if your customers don't want to pay that much money, your very much in risk of loosing them.

That's capitalism.

I do agree with protecting your IP, but you also need to actually try to stay competitively priced.

What moron at GW decided, for example, it was a good idea to charge $42 for a single biovore model which is taken in a unit size of 3 ($126) and only makes up 6% of your armies composition?

Mario wrote:

Pacific wrote:Someone mentioned before about it being 3rd party components or add-ons being classed as a 'counterfeit' - thinks that's a completely separate issue, and not generally going to affect board games as you for the most part you would get what you need from the box set.

The issue might be separate but I think they might see it as something that's "taking their money" in a way (instead of upgrading your existing game with bits from somebody else you could have spend that money on their games), like GW doesn't like third party bits or how music publishers would love to count every person who has ever accidentally listened to one of their songs without paying for it as a pirate who should have been customer and paid for it.

I think though most consumers would view 3rd party bits as acceptable, while actually making forgeries of something meant to be the original item is not.

And that's actually the same way the industry would view it. It was only when GW was going through its weird insular phase of launching assaults on its fans some years ago that they were worried by it - I don't think I have seen any news of C&D letters recently, and there have never been more companies making components and accessories to go along with 40k. Which is as it should be I think.

Mario wrote:

Pacific wrote:Someone mentioned before about it being 3rd party components or add-ons being classed as a 'counterfeit' - thinks that's a completely separate issue, and not generally going to affect board games as you for the most part you would get what you need from the box set.

The issue might be separate but I think they might see it as something that's "taking their money" in a way

If something is counterfeit, then it is "taking their money". Counterfeit goods, by definition, are being passed off as originals; What the comment in the OP is saying is that Asmodée are going to online retailers, buying what is being offered as one of their own products and getting something that isn't. It's not a matter of buying a copy of Colonists of Islands because it's a tenner instead of £30 for Settlers of Catan, it's buying what you think is an original copy of Settlers of Catan for £30 and getting something from a different company.

Buying bits from Puppets War, Victoria Miniatures, etc, is not counterfeit. Buying recasts of old miniatures or Chinese and Russian recasts of Forge World models is, but most of the time it's less objectionable (from the consumer's point of view) because they know what they're buying.
Those fake suitcases, handbags, etc with misspellings of the designer label are an edge case; usually they're so obvious that the buyer must know what they're getting, I would think.

 Pacific wrote:

Mario wrote:

Pacific wrote:Someone mentioned before about it being 3rd party components or add-ons being classed as a 'counterfeit' - thinks that's a completely separate issue, and not generally going to affect board games as you for the most part you would get what you need from the box set.

The issue might be separate but I think they might see it as something that's "taking their money" in a way (instead of upgrading your existing game with bits from somebody else you could have spend that money on their games), like GW doesn't like third party bits or how music publishers would love to count every person who has ever accidentally listened to one of their songs without paying for it as a pirate who should have been customer and paid for it.

I think though most consumers would view 3rd party bits as acceptable, while actually making forgeries of something meant to be the original item is not.

And that's actually the same way the industry would view it. It was only when GW was going through its weird insular phase of launching assaults on its fans some years ago that they were worried by it - I don't think I have seen any news of C&D letters recently, and there have never been more companies making components and accessories to go along with 40k. Which is as it should be I think.

Taro Modelmaker got a C&D last week for one of his Imperial Knight shields because GW thinks they own the rights to double headed eagles

 AndrewGPaul wrote:
If something is counterfeit, then it is "taking their money". Counterfeit goods, by definition, are being passed off as originals; What the comment in the OP is saying is that Asmodée are going to online retailers, buying what is being offered as one of their own products and getting something that isn't. It's not a matter of buying a copy of Colonists of Islands because it's a tenner instead of £30 for Settlers of Catan, it's buying what you think is an original copy of Settlers of Catan for £30 and getting something from a different company.

Exactly, that's what Asmodée is implying.
Most people don't buy their games on obscure chinese websites, but locally or through big retailing websites. So saying that 70% of copies sold are fakes implies that big retail stores/local game stores sell counterfeit products, en masse. So there's either something very very wrong with the supply chains, or Asmodée is giving completely fake numbers (either making them up, using a very biased method of counting, or just having a very weird definition of counterfeits).

Remember, that 70% figure is "for some games" (emphasis mine).

Not across their sales as a whole. I would think (unless the linked article gives some specifics), that figure refers to some older, low-selling games, not their top items.

because GW thinks they own the rights to double headed eagles

Not double-headed eagles, that double-.headed eagle. I googled the part, he should have gone for a different design.

XuQishi wrote:

because GW thinks they own the rights to double headed eagles

Not double-headed eagles, that double-.headed eagle. I googled the part, he should have gone for a different design.

Yeah, the design was not a "Double Headed Eagle" it was "The exact, down to the last detail, the double headed eagle that GW uses for the Imperium" I mean even the claw shape and single eye were identical.

 Eihnlazer wrote:
I'm a simple man. If I see a model that is clearly a representation of what I need for the table, and its half the price, I think "That's a much better deal and I wouldn't mind buying it".


If GW doesn't want knock offs selling for half price and stealing their product, they should just reduce their prices.

You certainly can charge more for better products, but if your customers don't want to pay that much money, your very much in risk of loosing them.

That's capitalism.

I do agree with protecting your IP, but you also need to actually try to stay competitively priced.

What moron at GW decided, for example, it was a good idea to charge $42 for a single biovore model which is taken in a unit size of 3 ($126) and only makes up 6% of your armies composition?

Technically the minimum size of Biovore unit is a single model, and you're not just paying for the model but an office full of people, manufacturing, etc. Which is why people recasting or ripping them off without all the overhead costs of supporting the game are generally considered parasites, because they benefit from all the stuff GW does to make that model have value beyond its paltry material cost without any cost to themselves or benefit to GW.

Kind of weird to think of it happening to board games, but people buying stuff tend to think of themselves as buying the object rather than supporting the people producing that object and creating value for that object. I mean, I'd love to be successful enough to be ripped off, but I think it would be irksome nonetheless to have a bunch of freeloaders screwing around with the price and value of my product.

Okay, posted on BGG. Thanks, Orlando. : https://boardgamegeek.com/article/27947372#27947372

The interviewers mention Amazon, and Amazon *does* have a fulfillment that suppliers are unhappy about. It's "Fulfilled by Amazon", where inventory from *all* suppliers of a specific product are pooled together (inventory commingling). That works when the product is identical, it does not work when one of the suppliers has counterfeit goods. So, frex, Supplier A and B have legitimate goods, but Supplier C has counterfeits. Legitimate and counterfeit goods are commingled together, and you buy from Supplier A. You buy from Supplier A, but, thanks to commingling, you're actually sent a good from Supplier C. You end up with a counterfeit and give Supplier A a negative review, even though Supplier A supplied a legitimate product. Not good for your or Supplier A. https://consumerist.com/2014/05/12/does-amazons-inventory-commingling-help-fake-products-fly-under-the-radar/

Technically the minimum size of Biovore unit is a single model, and you're not just paying for the model but an office full of people, manufacturing, etc. Which is why people recasting or ripping them off without all the overhead costs of supporting the game are generally considered parasites, because they benefit from all the stuff GW does to make that model have value beyond its paltry material cost without any cost to themselves or benefit to GW.

This is sarcasm right?

The interviewers mention Amazon, and Amazon *does* have a fulfillment that suppliers are unhappy about.

Interesting, I didn't know about that. Of course when it comes to generic goods (a lanyard for my work ID, drill bits, etc) I don't really care since it all comes from China anyway. But I can see how this might be an issue with some products.

On the other hand I'm vehemently against Asmodee's sort of "solutions" to this - MAP and retail authorization when the whole problem can be resolved by you know actually following supply and demand and adjust prices.

Pacific wrote:I think though most consumers would view 3rd party bits as acceptable, while actually making forgeries of something meant to be the original item is not.

And that's actually the same way the industry would view it. It was only when GW was going through its weird insular phase of launching assaults on its fans some years ago that they were worried by it - I don't think I have seen any news of C&D letters recently, and there have never been more companies making components and accessories to go along with 40k. Which is as it should be I think.

I wouldn't be so sure that consumer and companies are on the same side on the topic of 3rd party bits. My guess is they would all love if we bought more of their stuff and no 3rd party bits. Some companies are just more tolerant of it while others are not.

AndrewGPaul wrote:If something is counterfeit, then it is "taking their money". Counterfeit goods, by definition, are being passed off as originals; What the comment in the OP is saying is that Asmodée are going to online retailers, buying what is being offered as one of their own products and getting something that isn't. It's not a matter of buying a copy of Colonists of Islands because it's a tenner instead of £30 for Settlers of Catan, it's buying what you think is an original copy of Settlers of Catan for £30 and getting something from a different company.

Buying bits from Puppets War, Victoria Miniatures, etc, is not counterfeit. Buying recasts of old miniatures or Chinese and Russian recasts of Forge World models is, but most of the time it's less objectionable (from the consumer's point of view) because they know what they're buying.
Those fake suitcases, handbags, etc with misspellings of the designer label are an edge case; usually they're so obvious that the buyer must know what they're getting, I would think.

I was specifically addressing the point of "70% looks high, they might be talking about 3rd party bits too (and including those in their numbers)" and explaining why companies might look at 3rd party bits as losing them money. At no point was I making any argument about actual counterfeit miniatures or even implying that they were including 3rd part bits in their numbers.

Peterson here looks like he is riding an agenda. Some of those "Answers" were pretty laughable.

Asmodee doesn't have the best reputation to be discussing this subject, BTW. Seeing as they get titles on the cheap, then try to pass some of it off as if they came up with it.

 Rolsheen wrote:

 Pacific wrote:

Mario wrote:

Pacific wrote:Someone mentioned before about it being 3rd party components or add-ons being classed as a 'counterfeit' - thinks that's a completely separate issue, and not generally going to affect board games as you for the most part you would get what you need from the box set.

The issue might be separate but I think they might see it as something that's "taking their money" in a way (instead of upgrading your existing game with bits from somebody else you could have spend that money on their games), like GW doesn't like third party bits or how music publishers would love to count every person who has ever accidentally listened to one of their songs without paying for it as a pirate who should have been customer and paid for it.

I think though most consumers would view 3rd party bits as acceptable, while actually making forgeries of something meant to be the original item is not.

And that's actually the same way the industry would view it. It was only when GW was going through its weird insular phase of launching assaults on its fans some years ago that they were worried by it - I don't think I have seen any news of C&D letters recently, and there have never been more companies making components and accessories to go along with 40k. Which is as it should be I think.

Taro Modelmaker got a C&D last week for one of his Imperial Knight shields because GW thinks they own the rights to double headed eagles

Ah OK I didn't realise that was still going on, thanks for the info.

That's a shame as I thought they had put that nonsense behind them, although it does sound like it is somewhat more focused than the previous attempts to commandeer general historical and fantasy tropes.

Spoiler-ed due to coming OT: