Fantasy Flight Interactive to Shut Down Next Month as Layoffs Hit

Fantasy Flight Games is shutting down its Fantasy Flight Interactive branch as part of company-wide layoffs. News broke yesterday that Fantasy Flight was laying off a portion of its staff, focused mostly in three departments - its Fantasy Flight Interactive branch, its RPG department, and its customer service department. Fantasy Flight Interactive studio head Tim Gerritsen confirmed some on the news on LinkedIn, stating that "the decision was made to close Fantasy Flight Interactive next month." Gerritsen stated in his post that he was working to get his team placed into new positions.

Fantasy Flight Interactive was started in 2017 to develop Fantasy Flight's games into digital, and to develop its own original games based on Fantasy Flight's various franchises. To date, Fantasy Flight Interactive had only one release - The Lord of the Rings Adventure Card Game, a digital adaptation of Fantasy Flight's Lord of the Rings Living Card Game.

While not officially confirmed by the company, multiple outlets are reporting that Fantasy Flight's tabletop RPG department and customer service department were also hit with layoffs and that both departments are expected to shutter. Fantasy Flight has released a number of RPGs based on their various properties, and were actively working on three RPG games - two based on Star Wars and Legends of the Five Rings, and its Genisys system, which could be used for both existing properties and homebrew worlds. While Fantasy Flight recently announced a Genisys book adapting the world of Keyforge, no RPG products have been announced past April 2020. Both Star Wars and Legends of the Five Rings have products announced for January and February 2020, but nothing afterwards.

There's plenty of speculation as to what the layoffs mean for FFG, which was purchased along with the rest of Asmodee in late 2018 by the private equity firm PAI Partners. Asmodee is the second largest publisher of tabletop games after Hasbro, and one studio facing layoffs isn't necessarily a portent of a company-wide shakeup. Still, our thoughts are with those affected by the layoffs.