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Yokohama publisher TMG reportedly lays off staff, halts game development after “virtual bankruptcy”

Company will not be producing games for “next two to three years”.

Tasty Minstrel Games, the publisher of tabletop titles such as Yokohama, is reportedly in “virtual bankruptcy”, leading to staff layoffs and a halt to game development.

In a video from YouTube channel The Dice Tower, the hosts discussed an email sent out by TMG to those people who had purchased company stocks, informing them of the current state of the publisher.

According to the cited email, TMG’s “book value is in the negative”, everyone in the company - besides its owner - has apparently been laid off and the development of upcoming board games has been halted.

Cover image for YouTube video

Backers of TMG’s most recent Kickstarter campaign, a deluxe version of 2017 title Emperor’s Choice, are currently receiving refunds as the publisher will not be manufacturing the games due to “a wide array of reasons”.

TMG does not expect to produce any new games for the next “two to three years”. Instead, the company will be focusing on selling its existing stock of dice and other tabletop accessories in the hopes of “eventually being able to start up again”.

Tasty Minstrel Games is a publisher that’s best known for releasing Yokohama, a board game for two to four players that takes place in the Meiji era of Japanese history. In the game, Yokohama is developing into one of the most important trading cities in Japan, and as ambitious merchants, the players must take advantage of the boom in trade in order to make a profit. In 2018, a two-player version of the game called Yokohama Duel was released, which saw both players competing against each other for business.

Cover image for YouTube video

Other tabletop titles published by TMG include Colosseum - a board game co-created by Wolfgang Kramer, the co-designer of Tikal, about holding spectacular Roman events - and Harbour, which was designed by Tiny Epic Galaxies creator Scott Almes.

Dicebreaker has reached out to Tasty Minstrel Games for comment.

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About the Author
Alex Meehan avatar

Alex Meehan

Senior Staff Writer

After writing for Kotaku UK, Waypoint and Official Xbox Magazine, Alex became a member of the Dicebreaker editorial family. Having been producing news, features, previews and opinion pieces for Dicebreaker for the past three years, Alex has had plenty of opportunity to indulge in her love of meaty strategy board games and gothic RPGS. Besides writing, Alex appears in Dicebreaker’s D&D actual play series Storybreakers and haunts the occasional stream on the Dicebreaker YouTube channel.

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