Steamforged Games - A redemption story

Once upon a time, back in 2016, a small and relatively unknown board game company called Steamforged Games launched a Kickstarter project for Dark Souls - The Board Game. It got a huge number of backers, over 31k, and made £3.7 million. The "estimated delivery" date was for April 2017. What actually shipped in 2017, a few months late, was just wave 1 with the core game box, a fact that hadn't been explained in the Kickstarter campaign. Wave 2 and 3, with the expansions and stretch goals were delivered much later, with worldwide wave 3 fulfillment being finally complete in January 2020. As you can imagine, a lot of people were not very happy with this. So if you search Reddit for lists of board game companies to stay away from, Steamforged Games is usually mentioned.

In November 2020, Steamforged Games launched another Kickstarter for a board game, this time with their own original IP, called Bardsung. They still got 10k backers and £1 million, but an original IP attracts less people than a licensed game, and Dark Souls shipping fiasco had hurt the brand of the company. Estimated delivery this time was May 2022. Nobody believed that. By this time, there had been a lot of other companies with a lot of other Kickstarter campaigns, and everybody knew that actual delivery was usually at least 6 months late, if you were lucky. In addition to that, there was a pandemic going on, and the first inklings of manufacturing and shipping problems in the board game industry. Manufacturing a big box board game with tons of miniatures for £75 and shipping it to customers within 18 months? Impossible! Can't be done! Especially not by a company with a bad track record on shipping.

Except ... sometimes a company that gets a lot of flak for having failed in something is then really, really motivated to do better. Plus, nothing teaches you the pitfalls of a process better than having gone through a failed process once.

Today, March 31 2022, my copy of Bardsung, including the stretch goals box "Bardsung Fables" arrived. Two months early. None of my other Kickstarter projects ever arrived early. Especially not the board game ones. And I only paid a total of £101 ($132) for the late pledge including the Forteller narration and shipping. For 10 kg of game and tons of miniatures, in today's market this is brilliant deal. Miniaturemarket.com has the game for $170 plus shipping, and that is just for preorder, and without the Fables box.

I am happy, and seriously impressed. Kudos to Steamforged Games for having learned how to deliver a Kickstarter board game on time. They went from a company that had shipping problems to a company that is first in class in shipping Kickstarter board games. That is an impressive feat!