Final Frontier Games is closing down. The Macedonia-based tabletop developer is closing after nearly a decade of producing board games. This closure results from five years of financial struggle, leaving three crowdfunded projects unfulfilled.
The Closure of Final Frontier Games
The news of Final Frontier Games’ closure came from a backer update sent via their Kickstarter projects. That update was made public via post on the r/boardgames subreddit.
In the backer update, Final Frontier Games states that cash has been tight for a while and after a large order for Chinese localized copies of Merchants Cove fell through, they cannot fulfill the Kickstarter projects that have been fulfilled. The post continues, citing other compounding production issues behind the scenes that eroded their finances.
We cannot understate the gravity of the situation and the suddenness of the fall of the company. We are emotionally devastated, sad, we are hurting, we are angry and there is a big hole in our hearts that will take a long time to overcome, if ever. Just recently we were tweaking ads for our next campaign, talking with reviewers, preparing for production on our other games, developing our future projects and entering a distribution partnership with QML, something that we had lacked for 4 years… hoping that the payment will come through.
All our dreams and hopes vanished. 10 families that put food on the table through Final Frontier Games that had stable, creative and good paying jobs are now faced with extreme uncertainty with no financial stability. We are truly living in the darkest timeline.
As a result of these developments, Final Frontier Games’ three current Kickstarter projects – Merchants Cove: Master Craft, The Sixth Realm, and a Coloma reprint, have remained unfulfilled despite funding of $1.39 million. This is the culmination of protracted financial struggles for the company going back to their first Merchants Cove Kickstarter suffering serious production issues during the COVID-19 pandemic.
According to FInal Frontier Games, the order that fell through was with tabletop giant CMON. The update stated that CMON had initially agreed to pay 50% before production then the remainder after the process was complete. Allegedly, this deal was changed to paying the entirety once the games were ready to be picked up.
Final Frontier agreed to this change. But, according to them, the last possible day for payment came and went with no contact from CMON. Despite multiple emails being sent, no one at CMON got back to them regarding payment.
CMON has yet to make an official statement or comment at the time of writing.
