Holy Grail Games, the publisher of Rallyman: GT and Museum, has announced that it is shutting down immediately due to delays and increased costs related to the COVID-19 pandemic. In an article posted to the company’s blog earlier this week, Holy Grail explained that delays caused by the pandemic snowballed over the last two years, resulting in the loss of much of their retail revenue over the past two years. While the company somewhat recovered last year, a fulfillment issue with Bollore Logistics resulted in not only games being mis-shipped to the wrong customers, but also led to Bollore held the entirety of Holy Grail Games’ stock at their website, preventing any additional sales from taking place. When Bollore demanded payment for three projects at once, Holy Grail’s financial prospects dwindled and the company decided to shut down after seeing no way forward for the company.
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“Holy Grail Games has now entered the bankruptcy process, meaning that all of our assets have been handed over to a government official who will use them to pay our creditors,” the blogpost read. “As of this week, we will lose access to all our email and work accounts, and our team will all be laid off.”
Holy Grail Games notes that their bankruptcy will mean that some Kickstarter backers will not receive games they were promised during campaigns. Holy Grail Games apologized to these backers, saying that they did everything in their power to deliver the games and were still trying to find a way to make it right even as the company enters bankruptcy.
The issues faced by Holy Grail Games are an example of the fragile financial state of many board game publishers even after the pandemic. Many companies are dealing with increased costs and shipping delays and often rely on relatively small windows to receive payments in order to pay their bills and keep the companies going. As evidenced by the collapse of Holy Grail Games, production delays are more than an inconvenience to players who want to play the game – they can be a killer for companies.
Holy Grail Games admits they don’t know the future of their games, although they hope that another publisher picks up the rights to the games so they can continue to stay in print.
