Spin Master has singed a 3 year licensing agreement with Warner Bros. Consumer Products for DC comics properties. The agreement covers games, puzzles, action toys, remote control and robotic vehicles, and water toys beginning in spring 2020.

PlayMonster (5 Second Rule, Yeti in My Spaghetti) is partnering with Audax Private Equity to finance additional expansion through “organic growth and add-on acquisitions.”

Goliath continues to grow, acquiring U.K. based Vivid Toy Group and moving in to the Italian market through a partnership with distributor MacDue. With the acquisition of Vivid, Goliath plans to launch 20 new games in the U.K. market next year.

Drumond Park has signed on with Tomy UK as exclusive distributor for all the former’s games in the U.K. and Ireland.

NSKN Games (Dice Settlers, Teotihuacan) and Board & Dice Games (Beet Empire, Dice Brewing) are merging. The combined company will continue operations under the Board & Dice name.

With the passing of designer Greg Stafford and earlier Stewart Wieck, of the games’ latest publisher, Nocturnal Media, the RPGs King Arthur Pendragon and Prince Valliant have been transferred again to Chaosium.

After a couple of messy PR situations involving insensitive or extremist material in game books, Paradox Interactive is stepping back from the publishing business but not abandoning the World of Darkness altogether. Instead, Paradox is moving to a licensing model and integrating White Wolf’s operations in to the parent company. Modiphius Entertainment, which was already handling distribution, is taking over development and publication for Vampire: The Masquerade 5th Edition. This will include production of various supplements (such as The Fall of London Chronicle and Players Guide), as well as oversight of other licensees (Onyx Path Publishing, Elderwood Academy, Dogmight Games, and others).

Impressions Game Distribution Services is being acquired by Flat River Group. The latter is a toy and game distribution company with business in e-commerce and crowdfunding fulfillment. Impressions founder Aldo Ghiozzi will continue with the combined company.

Scientific Games and Hasbro have extended their license agreement through 2025. The agreement covers the use of Hasbro properties, including Monopoly, Battleship, Clue, Yahtzee, and others for lotteries, slot machines, online gaming, and now also table games.

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This morning, Stewart Wieck posted a short message on Twitter: “I’ve purchased West End Games.” The company is most well-known for the D6 System, the game system that ran the Ghostbusters and the Star Wars role-playing games. The sale of the company comes after nearly eight years after Purgatory Publishing’s Eric Gibson, the owner of West End Games since 2003, announced he was done with the company and would auction off WEG’s properties. Wieck writes “the majority of the iconic West End Games properties have already found other homes, WEG still owns the D6 System as well as a handful games, mainly hex-and-counter wargames.”

Wieck’s company, Nocturnal Media, will be releasing the core D6 System rulebooks (D6 Adventure, D6 Fantasy, and D6 Space) as print-on-demand books with a POD version of Septimus, Bill Coffin’s space opera setting. Wieck announced that Greg Costikyan’s three-player, three-dimensional wargame Web & Starship will be launched as a Kickstarter campaign.

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Onyx Path Publishing and Nocturnal Media are taking up the banner of the Scarred Lands fantasy RPG campaign setting. Formerly a product of White Wolf Publishing, Scarred Lands was heavily inspired by Greek mythology and used the d20 system. The new publishers have not announced either specific products or what game system will underlie the setting in its new form.

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