Steamforged Games (SFG) confirms it’s making a number of redundancies across its teams and pulling resources from its board game crowdfunding operations, in a bid to focus its energy on the reborn tabletop wargame Warmachine.
Extremely fast growth in demand for Warmachine releases has reportedly tripled SFG’s revenue from the game, in the 21 months since it bought the rights from Privateer Press in 2024. That’s now made Warmachine “a core focus for the company”, an anonymous, senior SFG spokesperson tells Wargamer in a statement on Friday.
“Our intention to reduce new board game crowdfunding activity while we support that growth meant we needed to restructure accordingly,” they add, “including a confidential redundancy process in Q1 2026 that’s now complete”.
SFG has declined to comment on exactly how many of its people and departments were affected by the layoffs. But, according to anonymous internal sources who spoke to industry site BoardGameWire, seven separate departments saw jobs cut, spanning from game design and production through to marketing and commercial teams.
While Warmachine fans may be pleased to see the company turning more of its guns towards accelerating development there, the move to pull resources out of its crowdfunding arm comes at a time when SFG still has several incomplete, multi million dollar crowdfunding projects on the go.
Those include $4.4 million pledged to the Helldivers 2 board game, slated to ship to backers in October, and over $8.4 million to its Monster Hunter World Iceborne board game – currently scheduled to ship worldwide in July, two years later than originally planned. Cutting back teams and realigning strategy away from crowdfunding has already elicited worried comments from fans and apparent backers on those titles’ Gamefound campaign pages.
But SFG’s statement to Wargamer claims the “vast majority of creative work” is already done on these games, and it “retain[s] the internal resource and external capabilities needed” to finish up and make good on all its current pledges. “Steamforged has never failed to fulfil a crowdfunding campaign, even during difficult times, or to make tough choices to deliver on commitments,” the statement adds.
“Steamforged was originally founded as a miniatures game company,” the firm says, and “has always looked several years into the future” in its strategic planning.
“The next two years represent a significant growth opportunity for Warmachine”, SFG tells us, adding “we’re committed to realising that potential, supported by our dedicated team and launch plans in the miniatures and hobby categories.”
We’re hoping to speak to one of SFG’s co-founders, Rich Loxam and Mat Hart, very soon to explore what this shift means for both Warmachine and Steamforged’s board games – and what fans can expect in the coming months.
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Source: Wargamer
