Asmodee North AmericaAsmodee is consolidating all sales and marketing operations in North America, including those of Fantasy Flight Games and Days of Wonder. The move will see Asmodee North America headquartered in Roseville, Minnesota with FFG’s Christian Petersen as CEO. The companies’ creative publishing businesses, however, will remain independent.

Along with the organization change, effective January 1st, Fantasy Flight’s exclusive arrangement with Alliance Game Distributors will end and Asmodee North America products will be distributed in the United States via ACD, Alliance, GTS, Southern Hobby, and PHD, as well as direct. Then starting in April, the company will begin restricting distribution in the specialty channel to authorized brick-and-mortar retailers. Participation by online retailers will be severely limited. Only those with “significant scale, unique service, or other exceptional differentiation” will be considered.

An announcement by Asmodee quoted Christian Petersen:

The marketplace has long been distorted by providing one-size-fits-all sales terms to every retail account, regardless of its channel of sale. The growth in demand for games over the last decade, in our view, has been fueled not only by fantastic product, but by the support of specialty retailers who incubate personal connections between players, facilitate tournaments and leagues, provide instant product availability, and increasingly provide a “third place” that is instrumental for so many gamers to enjoy and discover our products. The retailer cost of providing such channel services is significant, and so we’re now making policy changes to ensure that the sales terms provided to those retailers, relative to other channels, are positively reflective of the value they add to our distribution chain.