Ils ont promis un update pour lundi pour s’expliquer sur la qualité des composants de la Deluxe.
Oui, d’où ma remarque 
. C’était la dernière bonne affaire chez GB…depuis 
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Eh beh… Quand je pense que j’aurais pu le backer celui-là (et puis finalement les mécaniques m’ont paru un peu trop classique), je remercie ma bonne étoile de m’avoir épargné ce nid à emmerdes…
Bon maintenant on croise les doigts pour que Darwin’s Journey (mon seul KS en cours) ne soit pas dans la même situation 
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Bon ben comme ça on est fixé : priorité donnée aux exemplaires retail aux dépends des backers qui attendent toujours, qualité des composants médiocre, SG non respecté… bref, je pense que l’éditeur coche toutes les cases pour être blacklisté !
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Beaucoup d’excuses, de promesses pour l’avenir dans leur longue actu … mais les cartes ne seront pas remplacées suite à leur erreur, ils n’assument donc pas leurs responsabilités … juste à bon à valoir de 5 EUR sur un prochain jeu.
Perso ils peuvent à l’avenir éditer le meilleur jeu du monde, je ne l’achèterai pas.
Après rien dans l’actu sur la livraison pour l’Europe … j’en déduis de l’actu précédente que les jeux sont toujours en Chine sans bateau prévu pour le transport autant dire que l’on va encore attendre plusieurs mois pour être livré d’un jeu de qualité médiocre … à 74 EUR fdp inclus cela fait mal.
Il y a toujours la possibilité de demande un remboursement mais nous perdons 10% de la mise (frais de port compris) 
… je n’ai jamais demandé de remboursement et cela fait mal de laisser 10% mais je pense que je vais le faire.
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exactement c’est completement incomprehensible et j’en suis à les placer sur ma blacklist vraiment dommage
Le pire c’est qu’ils n’assument rien, c’est toujours de la faute du transporteur, du fabricant, voir même, comble du foutage de gu***, « oh ben on sait pas qui a fait l’erreur mais bon, tant pis pour vous, maintenant c’est fait hein » (cf. l’absence de linen finish sur les cartes par exemple)
je suis un fan de le travail sur PARIS , sur GUGONG etc mais la il ont depasser les bornes et le news de 5 pages ne change rien comme tu dis c’est pas nous c’est eux , le matos c’est pas grave tant que le jeu est bon , on a vaut sous on fait ce qu’on veut
c’est du n’importe quoi
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Game Brewer racheté par Mythic Games sans que l’on soit au courant ? 
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Quelqu’un pour poster l’update en question ? Je suis passé par Crowdfinder, ils devraient l’envoyer bientôt, mais je ne sais pas quand…
L’annulation est-elle encore possible sur Crowdfinder, d’ailleurs ? Au cas où 
Perdre les 10% de frais sur une annulation, ça coûte bien moins cher que de rester des mois à cogiter sur les conneries d’un éditeur 
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Dear Backers,
It’s never pleasant to read negative comments on social media or other channels. And lately, we’re reading more and more negative comments on the fulfillment delays, and more recently, regarding the quality of the Stroganov Deluxe components.
Rest assured that this negativity weighs very heavily on our small team, who are constantly working hard and doing their best to develop quality board games and keep our customers happy.
But, we hear you, and acknowledge that Stroganov Deluxe doesn’t feel as deluxe as many of you were expecting, based on our previous deluxe releases. And of top of that, people are disappointed to see the retail game in their FLGS before they’ve received their KS copy.
We want to take a moment to explain in detail why we couldn’t stop retail copies from being released, and how the manufacturing process went for Stroganov.
We are hoping for your understanding, as much of this happened beyond our control.
Fulfillment Delays
After a few setbacks in the production process, Stroganov, Hippocrates, and Rulebenders were all produced by September 2021. Since then, we’ve faced the same global logistical problems as any other international company.
At one point in September, we got confirmation from our freight forwarder that they had found us 3 containers out of the 8 containers that we needed at that time to get our games to Europe and North America. We had to make a tough decision. Would we prioritize the deluxe edition for fulfillment to our backers, or would we try to get the retail edition in stores before Christmas? We decided on the latter, and it wasn’t even a choice; we made that decision out of necessity to keep our business healthy.
After we shipped the 3 containers with retail, our freight forwarder kept denying us a booking. They gave a variety of reasons, but we only later learned that they would not allow us to book more containers because our credit allowance wasn’t big enough for 8 containers (We’re talking about 8x $20,000-USD). They didn’t even give an option to pay upfront. You can call that amateurism, but for us, it was the first time we needed 8 containers simultaneously, and we know the freight forwarder wasn’t fully transparent about the actual reasons.
In November, we changed to a different freight forwarder, who did not give us a credit allowance limit, and would let us book, but weren’t much faster in finding us containers/ships.
We tried to explain this situation in several updates, but the more the fulfillment gets delayed, the more negative comments we receive. We understand and share the frustration. You can consider this update as our final attempt to make people understand why we had no other choice than to prioritize the retail release.
The answer is Operational Cash Flow. And to clarify once and for all, we will share our total Operational Cash Flow numbers of Stroganov. You can find them here: Operational Cash Flow Document
To interpret those numbers, it’s essential to keep a few things in mind:
- The existence of Game Brewer depends heavily on crowdfunding, it was our foundation, but as we grow, we are slowly outgrowing crowdfunding. We sold about 6000 copies of Stroganov Deluxe through crowdfunding but did a first print run of 18,000 copies in total. That’s 12,000 copies we ordered for retail thanks to our co-publishing and distribution partners.
- We publish about 4 games a year, and Stroganov was our most successful crowdfunding campaign and biggest print run in 2021. However, compared to many other publishers, these are very small quantities.
The document with our Operational Cash Flow numbers shows three tables:
- The first table is our initial projected cash flow. When we ran the Kickstarter campaign, it was unknown that ocean freight costs would skyrocket later that year. Note that we intended to ship all games together and deliver our games to our backers first. We would have easily been sold out of retail games in a typical year by the end of December. In this table, you can also see how much money we invest in a game like Stroganov before we even go to crowdfunding. We always have several ‘investments’ running simultaneously.
- The second table shows what would have happened if we had prioritized the fulfillment of our deluxe games while leaving our retail copies in China. This concerns our own retail copies and the retail copies ordered by some of our European partners, and therefore also the balance payment of those co-publishing partners. Not only is it clear that this would have caused negative cash flow numbers (remember that these are the numbers of only one of our games), but we would also have risked losing some of our co-publishing partnerships permanently. We are still a small publisher. Having a negative operational cash flow, together with our other running investments, was too big of a risk to take for us.
- The third table shows what’s happening now. Our profits will be less than planned, due to the insane ocean freight costs, and due to the late arrival of our retail games, despite all our efforts. The retail edition of Stroganov and Hippocrates arrived in Europe in the first week of December and only in January in the United States. But the trickling retail sales in this post-holiday season, have managed to at least keep our business alive, and we know that that is in everyone’s interest, including our backers.
We hope that sharing these numbers will shed light on the matter. We’re not only printing your one game. We’re trying to run a business in a very competitive market. We are very sorry and frustrated that circumstances did not allow us to ship the deluxe games at the same time as the retail games. But we simply didn’t have a choice.
Production Quality
Along with the above explanation, we wanted to take a moment to address the online feedback regarding the quality of Stroganov.
- What we ordered
To be clear, here is a link to the manufacturer’s quotation, on which we based our order: Quotation
This was our first (and will be our last) experience with this manufacturer. Not only did they start mass production much later than initially promised, but the whole production process didn’t go very smoothly. We are used certain amount of damages and the occasional production error with every game. But with Stroganov we are already getting many reports of assembly errors in the retail editions. We need to send more replacements than usual because of missing punch boards etc., or occasionally because of printing issues.
Don’t worry, we do our best to solve every single issue, however, we’re still waiting on spare components from the manufacturer. We are beyond being frustrated and will keep track of all production errors and will confront the manufacturer with that list when the fulfillment of all deluxe copies has been completed.
But, based on the original quotation, the only outright mistake we have noticed is the linen finish cards.
A few other details have changed (no embossing on the box lid, full print of the cloth bag…), but we know that we never changed our wish to have a linen card finish.
We received a white copy (unprinted components), and some printed components samples and proof prints (on paper), to check the quality, which we did. Due to the very difficult communication and delayed production process, we only received a complete pre-production copy of Stroganov, when mass production had already started.
We again checked the quality, but because we were focused on many other quality issues, mainly concerning the insert and the quality of the cardboard for the gameboard, we must have overlooked that the playing cards didn’t have a linen finish. We will own this. It was a human mistake on our end.
We’re not saying that we’re satisfied with the overall quality. The cardboard density seems to be a little lower than usual. The game board seams are manufactured without enforcing tape. These are details that we never had to bring to the attention of any other manufacturer before.
However, it’s still a great game, but with cardboard of common retail quality. That was a mistake. We also regret some other of the decisions that we made (including choosing this manufacturer) and promise to do better in the future.
- Cardboard Thickness
We’ve seen people compare the cardboard thickness of Stroganov Deluxe with the cardboard thickness of Gugong Deluxe. We understand the comparison with our earlier productions. Here is a full comparison table of the cardboard thickness as used in our deluxe titles:
Multiple numbers means double or triple layered
We apologize to everyone who expected the same cardboard thickness as Gugong Deluxe. We clearly underestimated the importance of cardboard thickness for a deluxe feeling of the game. We admit that a 2.5 mm thickness for the game box would have been the better choice here for a nice deluxe feeling of the game. And we will use thicker cardboard for a 6-fold game board for future deluxe games.
- Cardboard Quality
When we received the pre-production copy, we made a serious remark about the quality of the greyboard that was used for the gameboard. The same remark was made about the quality of the greyboard used for the insert, a few months earlier, when we received a sample of the insert.
Along with some other issues, the quality issue was discussed in a long video call with the manufacturer. The manufacturer assured us that they would check all the batches and sent us a report (in Chinese, accompanied by pictures) in which they acknowledged quality issues in a few batches. They assured us that they would replace all the gameboards in these batches.
The copies of Stroganov deluxe, that we’ve seen, seem to have no cardboard quality issues. If you received a bad quality gameboard, please contact our customer service so we can find a solution.
- Finish
Although a linen finish has a certain deluxe feeling to it, due to its structure and matt look, we didn’t think it’s always the best choice. With Stroganov, and other games, we chose not to use linen for the cardboard components, for instance, because the artwork looks sharper without it. One of the first times that we decided not to use linen, was because the beautiful watercolor (aquarelle) art by Andreas Resch for the box cover of Paris just didn’t match well with linen, and we felt this could also be true for the art of Stroganov. But, apparently, many people don’t share that feeling, and we will of course take note of that.
- Overall quality
With every deluxe game, we carefully consider what components we can ‘deluxify’ compared to the retail edition, always with a competitive price setting in mind. Those decisions can vary every time and are reflected on our campaign page. In every campaign we clearly mention the difference between the deluxe and retail versions. If it doesn’t say ‘Kickstarter exclusive’ or ‘Gamefound exclusive’, you can expect that the components in the retail version will be the same.
The differences between the retail and deluxe versions of Stroganov are:
- A bigger box
- A custom insert
- 20 metal coins
- A printed cloth bag
- 40 wooden horses
- Prints on the wooden story tokens, trophy tokens, and VP tokens
- An acrylic season marker
Other stretch goals were not KS exclusive and are also applied to the retail version. The KS exclusive icon next to the « custom shaped story tokens » shouldn’t have been there, as it’s only the printing that was meant to be KS exclusive. The linen finish of the cards was, unfortunately, overlooked.
Other than the linen finish of the cards, the product that we deliver matches the description on the campaign page though.
But, obviously, it was our goal for Stroganov Deluxe to feel deluxe. In this, we failed, and we apologize for that.
- Pricing
Since the beginning of Game Brewer, we’ve always heard complaints about the pricing of our deluxe games. It’s a comment that we see return with every crowdfunding campaign.
In our very first years, we used to offer both a retail and a deluxe version of our games on the crowdfunding campaign. To satisfy our co-publishing partners, we changed that policy. In our recent campaigns, we only offered the deluxe version.
Gugong Deluxe was heavily underpriced and was a big learning lesson for us. We corrected that price setting in Gugong: Panjun and the Gugong Big Box a few years later.
We sold the Stroganov deluxe edition for €59 on Kickstarter. That’s only €4 more than the current MSRP of the retail version.
We hear people compare Gugong Deluxe with deluxe games by Lacerda (Eagle Gryphon). And we think it’s safe to say that the quality of Gugong Deluxe falls in the same category as Eagle Gryphon’s games.
And of course, we could match that quality in all our deluxe games, if we wanted to, but unfortunately not at a price of €59/$68, like Stroganov Deluxe. In fact, if we wanted to now have a game with the same production cost as Gugong Deluxe, we would have to price it at €110/$130 (ex.VAT in Europe) to make it a profitable campaign.
It’s a challenging exercise with every crowdfunding campaign. But we don’t believe that our backer numbers would increase if all our deluxe games would be priced over a €100.
However, for our next campaign, we’ll keep in mind that it’s important to have a decent ‹ deluxe feeling ›.
- Promise for the future
Based on the comments of our backers, we will of course reconsider the quality of our deluxe games again. We will try to determine certain quality standards for our deluxe games, regarding cardboard thickness and finishes.
Nevertheless, we will stick to our policy of creating games with a deluxe feeling but with a reasonable price setting.
A second promise that we want to make, is that we’ll mention the size and finish of all materials more in detail. For example, instead of saying “+15% thickness”, we should have said that it was an upgrade from 1.70 mm to 1.95 mm.
- What now?
Unfortunately, a full reprint of the game or cards is not an option.
We know this will be a deal-breaker for some, so we do have a ‹ no questions asked › refund policy (general-terms-and-conditions).
However, we still love Stroganov and know it is a good game, and we know a lot of people will still want to play it. We want to provide some form of compensation for the unfortunate human mistake of the missing linen finish of the playing cards, and the disappointment about the general quality.
We want to offer all Stroganov backers a ‘store credit’ of €5 (the approximate value of the linen finish cards) that they can use towards one of our three next crowdfunding projects on Gamefound later this year (Oak, Amygdala, or Hippocrates: Agora). You don’t have to do anything but log in with your Gamefound account, to receive this discount. You will automatically be able to add it to your cart during checkout.
We do realize that a store credit doesn’t improve the quality of the game materials, of course. But, it is something we can do immediately in the absence of any other reasonable solutions.
To end with a positive note, Game Brewer celebrates its official 5th anniversary today!
We’ve dealt with many growing pains in the past few years. But we still consider ourselves to be a new publisher, learning from our mistakes daily.
We take these lessons to heart and will use the knowledge to create the most cost-effective deluxe games we can. And while we’ve shown why we need retail sales; we also really do need and value our backers. We hope we can continue to count on your support.
Thank you for taking the time to read this.
Rudy, Rafaël, Seb, Eefje, Wim, and Amanda.
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Merci beaucoup !
Elle est où la foutue trad 
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Pour ceux qui ont la flemme de lire :
« Nous sommes des passionnés , on s’est fait plein de thunes sur le KS, la preproduction était merdique, la production aussi, ne parlons même pas de l’incompréhension entre nos différents interlocuteurs dans les usines mais malgré tout ces voyants rouges on s’est quand même dit qu’avec qu’avec un peu de magie ça n’allait pas se voir !
Ne vous inquiétez pas on a appris de nos erreurs et ca ne se reproduira plus ! »
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Avec Game brewer, on est typiquement sur un éditeur qui passe par la case KS et le soi disant deluxe (vu le succès de Gugong) pour lever des fonds pour une prod retail. Concernant le jeu en soi, satisfait de ma version boutique (payé 46 euros) que je trouve d’assez bonne qualité. Ils sont coutumiers d’une livraison des pledges après les boutiques.
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C’est ça, pour 46€, tu as un jeu avec des plateaux un peu fin, ça passe, pour deux fois plus, on a pas le jeu.
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Je la trouve très correcte et argumenté, la réponse de Game Brewer. Ils ont merdé sur le linen finish et le fabricant semble avoir fait de la merde de son côté, mais ils expliquent ça clairement sans noyer le poisson sous le tapis.
C’est un peu dur pour les backers, mais le jeu semble tout à fait jouable, et bon d’après les premiers retours…
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