Asmodee/Embracer sells Miniature Market

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**Monkeysloth**

Got an email about a change in ownership today from MM.
Official announcement: https://www.miniaturemarket.com/company-updates

A little searching on the web brought up more info:

https://boardgametoday.com/embracer-and-asmodee-sell-miniature-market/

In some surprising news, Miniature Market has been sold by Asmodee and its parent company Embracer. The fact Asmodee owned Miniature Market was discovered when Embracer purchased the game publisher in December 2021 and it looks like Asmodee purchased Miniature Market some time earlier in 2021. Asmodee Group became part of Embracer in March 2022, forming the 9th Operative Group.

Today news broke that Miniature Market was being sold to Christophe Arnoult and Maud Decombe and under new ownership effective March 13. The reason for the sale of the 20-year old store is unknown.

From the announcement email:

Christophe got his start opening a specialized gaming store in Rouen, combining his passion for entrepreneurship and board games. Since then, his 30-year career has taken him across the globe and given him the chance to see all aspects of the gaming industry.

Maud’s career is a lot like a mullet, 10 years of boardgame industry experience in the front, and a love for board gaming and fun in the back. She is excited to bring her insights to Miniature Market, and make the shopping experience great for new, and loyal customers alike.

Though information is scant, it seems Christophe and Maud were both formally associated with Asmodee and Embracer and taking over this former division. Arnoult was the Executive Manager for Asmodee at one point and Maud Decombe was the Business Development Manager.

For those that don't know Embracer group went on a massive spending spree over the years buying various videogame companies and eventually Asmodee but was expecting a massive deal with the Saudi Government, to actually pay off all the debt they took to make all these purchases, that fell through last year. That's caused Embracer to shut down and sell off a lot of studios and other companies they own.

Several game studios have managed to break off from Embracer by "buying themselves" from the investment group and it looks like Christophe and Maud did something similar.

**Stormonu**

Thank goodness they're no longer part of Asmodee. Maybe they'll start having actual sales again instead of faking sales on their already discounted stuff.

I used to do big orders from them at least quarterly, but the last time I bought anything off them was during the "Black Friday" sale, and over a year before that.

**Mad Doc Grotsnik**

Is it Asmodee that bought FFG and the Star Wars games and that? Then palmed it off onto a tiny studio which hasn’t exactly done much with X-Wing or Armada?

**Dysartes**

Yes, Doc, it was - I think the miniature game company is Atomic Mass Games, or something like that, from memory.

**Billicus**

Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Is it Asmodee that bought FFG and the Star Wars games and that? Then palmed it off onto a tiny studio which hasn’t exactly done much with X-Wing or Armada?

We Armada fans refer to this as the Great Sorrow.

**CorwinB**

Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Is it Asmodee that bought FFG and the Star Wars games and that? Then palmed it off onto a tiny studio which hasn’t exactly done much with X-Wing or Armada?

Edit: I was out of the loop and thought Legions didn't receive any updates anymore. I stand corrected.

**kurhanik**

Monkeysloth wrote:

For those that don't know Embracer group went on a massive spending spree over the years buying various videogame companies and eventually Asmodee but was expecting a massive deal with the Saudi Government, to actually pay off all the debt they took to make all these purchases, that fell through last year. That's caused Embracer to shut down and sell off a lot of studios and other companies they own.

Several game studios have managed to break off from Embracer by "buying themselves" from the investment group and it looks like Christophe and Maud did something similar.

Yeah man if you follow videogame news at all it is so depressing hearing 'game cancelled, 1,000 people laid off' over and over again. Its not just Embracer group, but their antics are a big part of why so many developers are just out of a job on on the streets. The numbers are just stunning, as I think last year was a ridiculous number of people in the industry laid off, and already in March they have basically matched that.

Long story short, its nice to see at least a few people managing to escape that dumpster fire.

**Mad Doc Grotsnik**

With genuine respect to those involved in maintaining the Star Wars games, I’m hoping if it does collapse, the license ends up with a company that won’t just randomly can games, or keep producing models in very slightly different but ultimately incompatible scales.

I’d probably start sniffing around X-Wing and Armada again if I could be confident the company behind it put in more effort than repeating “if we own it, they will come”.

Would be even coolerer if Armada, or a replacement game, sorted out accurately scaled models, like X-Wing mostly has. And doesn’t include all those cards. Or at least, requires all those cards.

Gimme a book for each fleet, and the models. That’s my preference, even if it’s perhaps a bit archaic,

**CorwinB**

Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
With genuine respect to those involved in maintaining the Star Wars games, I’m hoping if it does collapse, the license ends up with a company that won’t just randomly can games, or keep producing models in very slightly different but ultimately incompatible scales.

This. I would probably have bought into SW Legions and/or SW Shatterpoint if it would have been possible to reuse my Imperial Assault minis.

Would be even coolerer if Armada, or a replacement game, sorted out accurately scaled models, like X-Wing mostly has. And doesn’t include all those cards. Or at least, requires all those cards.

Veering a bit off topic here, but there is some reason behind the madness as to why the scale in SW Armada is so tilted, it's because the ships the models are made after have never been designed for gaming purposes and are hugely different size-wise. Frankly it doesn't bother me that much if the game works. Fully agreed with you regarding the cards, of course, that's sadly very common with FFG games.

**Kanluwen**

CorwinB wrote:
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Is it Asmodee that bought FFG and the Star Wars games and that? Then palmed it off onto a tiny studio which hasn’t exactly done much with X-Wing or Armada?

Yep. To be fair, they also abandonned SW Legions so they could have everyone paint a new batch of Stormtroopers in a different scale for a 3rd game after SW Imperial Assault and SW Legions.

Yes, they abandoned SW Legions...and then announced more stuff for SW Legions and that they were going to be going back and revising what FFG had already released?

They're redoing the core stuff for The Original Trilogy in hard-plastic sprues instead of the weird restic stuff that it was in.

**His Master's Voice**

Monkeysloth wrote:
That's caused Embracer to shut down and sell off a lot of studios and other companies they own.

Embracer hasn't shut down, otherwise it wouldn't be them doing the selling. They are divesting assets at a staggering rate though, in order to survive long enough for the parts of the company that actually have something coming out relatively soon to produce some cash.

I wouldn't be surprised to see Asmodee going next, possibly in parts.

**LunarSol**

Kanluwen wrote:
CorwinB wrote:
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Is it Asmodee that bought FFG and the Star Wars games and that? Then palmed it off onto a tiny studio which hasn’t exactly done much with X-Wing or Armada?

Yep. To be fair, they also abandonned SW Legions so they could have everyone paint a new batch of Stormtroopers in a different scale for a 3rd game after SW Imperial Assault and SW Legions.

Yes, they abandoned SW Legions...and then announced more stuff for SW Legions and that they were going to be going back and revising what FFG had already released?

They're redoing the core stuff for The Original Trilogy in hard-plastic sprues instead of the weird restic stuff that it was in.

Legion has been one of the better supported games they got dumped on from FFG. They've been doing more of the scum and villainy style armies though. Stuff like Ewoks and Genoshians and other "local militia" sized armies.

Automatically Appended Next Post:

CorwinB wrote:

This. I would probably have bought into SW Legions and/or SW Shatterpoint if it would have been possible to reuse my Imperial Assault minis.

The problem here is that Legion was a much larger model count game than Imperial Assault. I considered just doing this, but I didn't have enough IA stuff for a single unit of Legion troops. I'd guess there's also issues with the whole Hasbro ownership that makes this impossible for them anyway. I do get the desire for Legion. It came out way too close to IA and while the models are an upgrade.... probably not enough. Shatterpoint is definitely its own beast though. The model line is wildly different even from Legion. At this point its on par with expecting to be able to use the minis from Pandemic: Clone Wars edition or something.

**Shrapnelsmile**

Stormonu wrote:
Thank goodness they're no longer part of Asmodee. Maybe they'll start having actual sales again instead of faking sales on their already discounted stuff.

I used to do big orders from them at least quarterly, but the last time I bought anything off them was during the "Black Friday" sale, and over a year before that.

exactly.

For a different reason I parted ways here. They stopped using USPS for large orders, and I have to use a PO Box. so unfortunately that was that.

**Sacredroach**

I used to order from them all the time, but with their sales tax, in-stock and ownership issued I have only made about 4 orders in the last year. I found that Gamer's Guild, The Warp Gate and WarpFire Miniatures take care of all my gaming needs these days...with free shipping and no sales taxes.

**Dysartes**

His Master's Voice wrote:
Monkeysloth wrote:
That's caused Embracer to shut down and sell off a lot of studios and other companies they own.

Embracer hasn't shut down, otherwise it wouldn't be them doing the selling..

You've misread what Monkeysloth was meaning - they meant that Embracer was either shutting down or selling off a lot of studios/companies.

**JimmyWolf87**

CorwinB wrote:
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Is it Asmodee that bought FFG and the Star Wars games and that? Then palmed it off onto a tiny studio which hasn’t exactly done much with X-Wing or Armada?

Yep. To be fair, they also abandonned SW Legions so they could have everyone paint a new batch of Stormtroopers in a different scale for a 3rd game after SW Imperial Assault and SW Legions.

This is outright nonsense. They're even making proper hard plastic stormtrooper kits to replace the fairly limited, softer plastic ones that Legion launched with.

**CorwinB**

Edited my post that was wrong about SW Legions.
Thanks to everyone who corrected me.

**His Master's Voice**

Dysartes wrote:
You've misread what Monkeysloth was meaning - they meant that Embracer was either shutting down or selling off a lot of studios/companies.

Ah, yes, you're right. Apologies to Monkeysloth.

**hotsauceman1**

Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
With genuine respect to those involved in maintaining the Star Wars games, I’m hoping if it does collapse, the license ends up with a company that won’t just randomly can games, or keep producing models in very slightly different but ultimately incompatible scales.

Legit, please dont.
MCP is my favorite game, and i do not want to see it go.

**Mad Doc Grotsnik**

Oh I’m not wishing it to happen. Just that if it does? A company with greater production capability takes it over.

Asmodee palming it off on Atomic Mass wasn’t cool. Not because Atomic Mass are bad or owt. Just they’re much too small.

**hotsauceman1**

Idk, i feel AMG is doing great with their games.

**MaxT**

hotsauceman1 wrote:
Idk, i feel AMG is doing great with their games.

Tell that to Star Wars Armada players. They didn't even have the decency to officially cancel it.

**Mad Doc Grotsnik**

Before rounding out the Republic and Confederacy fleets, if memory serves?

**Ancestral Hamster**

Asmodee is craptastic. If they die I will not weep. I'd dance on the grave, but that's too much trouble.

As far as I can tell, they only bought Fantasy Flight Games for the IPs it controls and they've just been transferring bits and pieces of FFG to different companies.

Perhaps under new ownership Miniature Market will be a decent OLGS again.

**LunarSol**

Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Before rounding out the Republic and Confederacy fleets, if memory serves?

Given they're prepaint models and even before the change it felt like FFG was struggling to create products for it, I suspect AMG was put in charge of shepherding product that was in the pipeline through and had no ability to develop it further. X-Wing is in a similar boat with much of its product line to this day tied up in repackaging content for the 2.0 relaunch that really showed how much FFG's physical rules bloat could weigh things down when a game needed to change course.

**Robert Facepalmer**

Stormonu wrote:
Thank goodness they're no longer part of Asmodee. Maybe they'll start having actual sales again instead of faking sales on their already discounted stuff.

Good news! Christophe was an Asmodee executive!

**Dysartes**

hotsauceman1 wrote:
Idk, i feel AMG is doing great with their games.

Their games? Maybe.

Games they were handed to look after by Asmodee? Not so much.

**LunarSol**

Dysartes wrote:
hotsauceman1 wrote:
Idk, i feel AMG is doing great with their games.

Their games? Maybe.

Games they were handed to look after by Asmodee? Not so much.

They basically stood no chance. A new company designing a single game got put in charge of 3 additional systems they had no experience with without even getting the resources to build a webpage for them. At that point though the X-Wing 2.0/Armada stuff had been cooling for a while. I think Asmodee just wanted someone who could handle the final logistics of things that had largely already been paid to put into production and finalized by FFG. Legion seems to be the one game they've done significant work on and that mostly just seems to be because it was the most popular of the 3 at the time of transition.

**Monkeysloth**

Dysartes wrote:
His Master's Voice wrote:
Monkeysloth wrote:
That's caused Embracer to shut down and sell off a lot of studios and other companies they own.

Embracer hasn't shut down, otherwise it wouldn't be them doing the selling..

You've misread what Monkeysloth was meaning - they meant that Embracer was either shutting down or selling off a lot of studios/companies.

I wrote this late at night. Should have been shut down or sell off which has the meaning I was implying. As you're all correct that Embracer isn't closed.

**Stormonu**

MaxT wrote:
hotsauceman1 wrote:
Idk, i feel AMG is doing great with their games.

Tell that to Star Wars Armada players. They didn't even have the decency to officially cancel it.

Agreed!

I can't recall if FFG was in some sort of financial trouble, but Asmodee's gutting of that company and handing the likes of X-Wing*, Armada off to AMG to let them rot and shutting down the RPG wing was angering.

* Didn't help that X-Wing 2.0 was an initial cluster, and can't seem to break out of mediocrity for releases now.