LONDON (SHARECAST) - Embattled fantasy war-games company Games Workshop is to stick to its core business of table-top war games after striking a licensing deal with US games publisher Fantasy Flight.
Under the terms of the licensing deal, Fantasy Flight will have the exclusive right to publish board games, card games and role-playing games based on Games Workshop’s intellectual properties, such as Warhammer 40k.
Additionally, the deal will grant Fantasy Flight the right to publish new versions of classic Games Workshop (GW) board and card games, such as Talisman.
GW’s subsidiary, Sabertooth Games, which was set up to cash in on the craze for collectible card games, will sell certain assets, including inventory, work in progress and the publication rights to its Universal Fighting System, to Fantasy Flight.
Fantasy Flight is paying GW $250,000 in cash for the Sabertooth assets. GW said it would take a £0.9m impairment charge relating to the goodwill of Sabertooth as a result of the sale. This non-cash cost will form part of the exceptional restructuring charge in the Games Workshop financial statements for the year ending 1 June 2008.
The Company expects that the total amount of this charge for the current year will be in the range of £2m-£3m, in line with current market expectations.
Fantasy Flight is an established US gaming company that specialises in science fiction (SF) and fantasy based games, and has a similar target audience to Games Workshop.
