Sad News As Vesper-On Games Comes To An End
April 11, 2016 by brennon
The creators of Carnevale and Home Raiders, Vesper-On Games, have unfortunately had to close their doors following an announcement this week on their website. It seems like the custodians of the aforementioned games will be a new company if someone is willing to give them a good home...
Some words from their press release...
"We’ve always been a tiny company, and our lack of a financial strength to keep us on our feet prevented us to promote our products in the right way, in the way that a saturated and competitive market as ours requires.
We know that there is a base of Carnevale and Home Raiders players, and we are sorry to let them go."
This is sad news of course - no-one ever wants to see a company have to close its doors, especially in our field. Carnevale was a fantastically original game as was Home Raiders and we hope that they will continue in some form or another in the months and years to come.
What do you think of the news?
"Carnevale was a fantastically original game as was Home Raiders and we hope that they will continue in some form or another in the months and years to come..."
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This is really sad. I really hope someone picks up the games. I have both of them and the miniatures are great as is the original game play.
I generally avoid thinking anecdotally, but having had a few days to digest this it did get me wondering why I’d never played Carnevale. As a low-fantasy, Lovecraftian-horror skirmish game set in a very interesting historical period, it could hardly be pushing any more of my buttons, but beyond buying a few minis I never did anything with the game. I know nothing of how it plays and very little about the setting. I think the bit @brennon excerpts is important, and as although David did make appearances on BoW, overall I think the game was lacking a little in… Read more »
They did seem good at hiding out at times – I got in to Carnivale when there was the themed week on BoW – but it fizzed out quick. And again when they had a Kickstarter for the 2nd edition
that is very sady, sincerely. I thought they had a really good imagination – both carnevale and home raiders had pretty imaginative and unique worlds, but with good rules behind them too. I hope the games can live on somehow.
I’m not really into the ultra-competitive scene, I like the more social games. For that reason, I have just had the realization that Malifaux and Carnevale are not the same game. I imagine this was down to a promotion issue. I’d be interested to know if anyone else has that vague sense that they both exist in the sorta abstract game-place.
Yeah I understand what you mean
I am very tempted to create a kickstarter to purchase the Carnevale license, with rewards being the product already made at a significantly lower cost. Carnevale deserves saving
Sad news, and in a busy market with plenty of competitors in the Weird space (Malifaux to name but one). Never quite stepped up to that next level as a company and maybe spread itself a bit thin with Carnevale, Home Raiders and the aborted Fan Hunter KS rather than focus on getting one established.
Maybe if they’d worked the Carnevale IP a bit more – an RPG, a card game… sound a familiar model?
This is really sad news. I picked up quite a chunk of the minis in the Carnevale Kickstarter. I think it was a great setting and the BoW demo game showed players could try out some really spectacular moves. I’ll miss the imagination of Vesper-On, their originality.
Good luck, fellas. Wherever life takes you next, please keep making games.
That’s terrible news. Vesper-On was my recent favorite for originality. I backed both aforementioned projects, although I still need to build and play them. I hope the games will be continued in some form.
always sad when a company fails for the customers & workers.
What a loss. Such a great little company, original fun games. I really hope some company picks what has been dropped and runs with it.
This is gutting. Thankfully I got the ‘one of everything’ kickstarter bundle, although I don’t know if they produced anything else for the range since then. Does anyone know?
I never got round to playing a game but – like many others – it was on my ‘to do’ list…
I wonder if we’ll see more companies fold like this? In some ways I’m amazed there haven’t been more failures. Despite this being the ‘Golden Age of Gaming’ the supply of games and miniatures seems to have been growing faster than the market.
Overall I think our industry has an excellent strike rate when comes to failing business. I think it’s largely because there are a lot of small cottage industry-style business which don’t incur a lot of costs and don’t need to sustain the living of several people, so the incomes don’t need to be great to keep them going. Vesper On look like they may have been bigger than that, but not successful enough to sustain.
They did have a couple of releases recently. Nosferatu and Thr Knight of the Order of Malta. There was some kind of creature too.
An element that I find helps companies keep growing is a regular monthly release. It tends to fulfill that collectors itch that many have as well as promotes you as an ever growing company that is relevant. Always seeing new models is a form of ad in our hobby. As for Vesper-on Games, it was nice to see what they had but it seemed to never grow in it’s product line, therefore it faded from my mind.
I hope the games will be taken up by some other company that can help this grow.
I run the Relic Knights UK FB page and the amount of activity on the page is usually directly linked to new releases. They get people paying attention and talking.
Sorry to hear that, love the game and figures. Sad at the news. Could be nice to see rules for using Malifaux figures in Carnivale game.
Brother G
This is very sad to read, I did back both Carnivale & Home Raiders (but the player base for Carnivale in my area is almost non existent so it never went anywhere.)
There were 3 of us that backed Home Raiders though and although we havent had much of a chance to start playing yet (distracted with both Malifaux & Kings of War right now) we still intend to.
Seriously hoping that someone picks up Carnivale, Id love to see a regular release schedule