Hello! As we’re about to go into the New Year, I’m writing this trying to figure out exactly if my words can express what I’m feeling while also conveying collective and constructive thoughts at the same time.
It’s been a long several years, with high points and definitely a lot of low ones, but Blacklist Games as a collective, have been proud of making some really amazing products and connecting with so many fans, artists, writers, and tabletop gamers over the years and all over the world. We’ve been fortunate enough to have the opportunity to immerse you in worlds where fighters, cops, adventurers, superheroes, gothic monsters, anime and video game characters thrive and come to life! However, it’s fair to say we’ve been playing catch up since the pandemic, making poor decisions (and trying to recover from them), and just blindly reacting to obstacles like someone scampering around in a downpour hoping to stay dry.
That said, it’s long overdue that we move ahead from the shadow of our failures and get things done. The past half a year, there have been a lot of changes and contrary to popular belief, Blacklist Games was not a company that I was solely responsible for. In all honesty there have been moments where I would start to talk to backers or make updates but had my wing clipped as to how I could say them, what final decisions I could make or talk about, or how I should reply (mostly not replying at all). It got to a point where I just had enough of being caught in the middle of being blamed and attacked by backers and Blacklist’s internal partner, that I just gave up and left the partner to do whatever he wanted with Blacklist Games, which apparently was nothing at all. Eventually, I returned after being transferred absolute ownership a few months ago. So to mark the first milestone of the upcoming year, Blacklist Games’s internal partnership has now finally dissolved and as of now, I am the sole owner who will be responsible for finding a new path for the company and using whatever means possible to rebuild, rebrand, and most importantly, to get you your games.
The Status of Blacklist Games
This past year has been pretty frustrating and confusing for all of us. You’ve seen some of our licenses and properties switch hands without any reason or explanation, forcing you to speculate or just lose interest in our own messy version of Cirque Du Soleil. In short, in order to ensure that it’s possible to get past orders to you, we’ve had to trade/barter entire franchises to make this possible and we/I will continue to do so (and find other means) to make this possible.
To clarify, here is a list of our past franchises and who currently owns them or will own them in 2025.
Street Masters (Currently with Steamforged Games)
Altar Quest (Currently with Steamforged Games)
Fantasy Series 1 Miniatures (Currently with Wildspire Miniatures)
Fantasy Series 2 Miniatures (Currently with Wildspire Miniatures)
Horror Series 1 Miniatures (Currently with Wildspire Miniatures)
Myth & Goal (Currently with Kolossal Games)
Cine Lucha: The Board Game (In 2025 with PQ Gamez)
Martial Arts: The Card Game (In 2025 with PQ Gamez)
Street Fighter (In 2025 with Kess Entertainment)
Mega Man Adventures (In 2025 with Kess Entertainment)
Contra: The Board Game (In 2025 with Kess Entertainment)
Boruto: Naruto Next Generation Board Game (In 2025 with Kess Entertainment)
Blacklist Games currently owns the following franchises:
Hour of Need
Dire Alliance
Brook City / Buddy Cop
Lasting Tales
The respective companies that own each franchise will also own the entirety of its artwork, gameplay mechanics, STL files, factory moulds/tools, any excess retail stock, characters/storylines for the games if applicable, exclusives, and some unreleased content.
The Status of the Games
The following games are outstanding projects that need to be completely fulfilled.
Street Masters: This is the responsibility of Steamforged Games
Fantasy Series 2: A separate update will be made alongside with Wildspire Miniatures
Street Fighter: This is the responsibility of Kess Entertainment and Kolossal Games
Contra: The Board Game: A separate update will be made alongside with Kess Entertainment
Lasting Tales: This is a Blacklist Games project which will finally have an update in January
Dire Alliance: This is a Blacklist Games project which will finally have an update in January
For those who missed the Fantasy Series 1 pledge manager with Quartermaster Logistics, I am trying to see if there is a way to help you with this. I had a plan a couple months ago by buying inventory at wholesale from someone who had purchased them from QML, but that turned out to be a dud.
Things to expect in 2025
Obviously there’s a lot that needs to happen in order to start setting things right. I honestly don’t know if my efforts are going to hold any weight or how long things will take, but I intend to try my best to make it happen. I expect to be challenged, face strong disbelief, and be ridiculed every step of the way, but with so many inconsistencies from within Blacklist Games the past years and the internal struggle I’ve had with just sending out an update, it’s understandable; I’ve finally made peace with that and will try to offset these things by being proactive and now being able to fully speak my mind and have direct conversations with you, so there won’t be a need for guesses or speculation. Given this, here’s what will happen:
Website: Don’t be surprised if you see major changes to the website, specifically some pages going away due to change of ownership of the respective IPs and a more efficient way of providing actual information.
Social Media: I’m not really sure what to do about this. Currently, we have Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram but it’s all a mess, outdated, and just offers too many ways for backers who have questions to get lost between formats. This will need a major overhaul this coming year and I might just get some help with this.
Direct Communication: I feel that the best way to squash misinformation is by giving you a direct line of communication to me, especially since I’m the only one here now. To do this, although I’m completely clueless to how this works at the moment, I plan on rolling out a discord channel for more active Questions & Answers and FAQs as well as monthly YouTube recaps and possibly scheduling live streams to talk with backers live. It’s definitely not my wheelhouse but I’ll try my best to find more efficient ways to relay information to you. As well, Blacklist Games had a Helpdesk that pretty much imploded. I don’t think I’ll attempt to stretch myself too thin with that until all backers are up to date with the status of the company and projects universally first.
Kickstarter/Gamefound Updates: Starting January, I’ll be doing monthly updates for Dire Alliance and Lasting Tales. Since Blacklist Games no longer owns the rights for Street Masters, Altar Quest, or Fantasy Series 1, there will no longer be updates for them from my end (an exception might be for Fantasy Series 1, when there is a solution to be found for those who missed the QML pledge manager). For Buddy Cop and any cross-publisher messaging, it’ll be on the Blacklist Games website.
Public Rebranding: I’ve always hated the company name. Being Asian and all, the name is just one bad omen and doesn’t make sense to me personally. So once I’ve gotten all the above things settled, the name Blacklist Games will be replaced with something a bit more optimistic and meaningful; That’s further down the line this year, but just want to lay the first brick in place here.
Inventory/Sales: After the whole deal with QML, Blacklist Games did not have access to any of its inventory and products held by QML were sold off, were destroyed, or still exist somewhere with them now. Rightfully so, since there was no more money to give them after paying them over $1MM for the disgusting upcharges for containers, freight, fulfillment, and moving products during the shipping crisis for fulfilling Fantasy Series 1 and Hour of Need. They still had invoices for us after the fact and we couldn’t pay it. No shade to QML as they are a business and that’s just smart business on their part. We just couldn’t pay their exuberant costs and had to forfeit all of that inventory in the end to them, as they refused to negotiate anything more than doing the Pledge Manager for FS1, in which all funds raised were 100% theirs to allocate themselves.
As well, about a year and a half ago the Blacklist Games’s internal partner had moved inventory from our factory to Hong Kong which included copies of Contra, Mega Man, Buddy Cop, and 40 copies of Street Masters: Tide of the Dragon (that was supposed to go to my past backers of Dragon Tides before Steamforged took that on), but because of money issues, only a portion was fulfilled and the rest was sold off by the Hong Kong warehouse (which is probably why some smaller retailer stores were able to pick them up by directly purchasing from the HK Warehouse) or destroyed.
Reaching out to all of our warehouses last month, it looks like the only inventory I have are in VFI Asia and only consist of some Hour of Need products. Additionally, I have all of the inventory for Dire Alliance and Buddy Cop at the factory’s temperature controlled warehouse, which accounts for all Backer orders.
It’s been about 3 years now since Blacklist Games ran a kickstarter and about that amount of time since it had inventory to sell directly to customers. This needs to change or we’ll continue to be at a stalemate. What Blacklist Games needs is cashflow and sitting idle isn’t going to do much for getting Dire Alliance and Lasting Tales to you. So to the point, I will have to find ways to raise money to do so, regardless of how much animosity it’ll cause. The reality is that there’s no money to be made for Blacklist Games until this fulfillment is taken care of first and foremost but it will take either new production, a barter of IP Franchise ownership in exchange for delivering a project, side hustles on my part, sales of all Hour of Need inventory we have at VFI, or more realistically, a combination of all of them.
In this regard, being left with the current situation, here’s what I’ll need to raise this coming year:
Dire Alliance: $140k to freight, boat, pick/pack, and fulfill to backers.
Lasting Tales: $60k to print (including all accessories for it) / $100k to freight, boat, pick/pack, and fulfill to backers.
Buddy Cop: $40k to freight, boat, pick/pack, and fulfill to backers.
Note: FS2 Miniatures, HS1, and Contra fulfillment will have separate updates to coincide with their respective owners.
The Future of Blacklist Games
To get it out there, Blacklist Games will not file for bankruptcy nor will I give up on it. At most, there will be a public rebranding but that’s at a future date. You might wonder why I’d stick around and take up the mantle, especially after having already left and with the company with zero income and very tough goals to meet. Whether you believe it or not, I care about you and when I came on board initially, I very much respected what Blacklist Games did from the ground up and loved all the games and world building it created in the process. I don’t want to see it fail and whether optimistic, naive, or just crazy, I want to see this through and get this company back to where it was before the pandemic; where it was a community of eager and excited tabletop gamers who couldn’t wait to talk about the newest card combos/strategies of our games, a community intrigued about what we might have in development, and a community who proudly showcased gameplays to friends and fans. That’s where I want us to be and the motivation to get us there.
During this upcoming journey I’ll definitely be hated, scorned, dismissed, and scoffed at. That’s fine. I also believe as a community, there will also be encouragement, hope, and similar desire to get us where we want to be. But regardless of the direction of the needle, what I intend to get us, is results. Time will tell, but I believe this coming year is a year of redemption and rebuilding from the ground up. I invite you to take this journey together, whether you’re curious or if you believe. Either way, without any more hindrance, it’s time to stop being idle and defy gravity in 2025.
TL:DR (Too long, didn’t read) Version
Nope. Admittedly there’s a lot of info to digest is in the update, but totally up to you if you want to carefully read it through, skim through it, or just not. You may feel there’s good info or you may feel there’s not enough of what you’re looking for. Either way, it’s here for you whenever you need and hoping to continue the trend of keeping everyone consistently informed.
Sincerely,
Alex Lim
(New) Owner
Blacklist Games, LLC