Fast Forward To Distribute Shadowrun, BattleTech, Dark Eye

Missed this news earlier in the week: Fast Forward, FanPro, and FASA “announced together that they have entered into an agreement allowing Fast Forward to be the sales and distribution arm for the Classic Battletech game, the Shadowrun roleplaying game and The Dark Eye roleplaying game with all new releases in the future; and that existing FASA and FanPro inventory on those lines as well as Vor, Crucible, Crimson Skies, and Battletech/Shadowrun novels will be available from Fast Forward starting May 1, 2002.” You don’t see separation between developers and publishers too often in the paper-games industry, but it appears that FanPro’s relationship with FFE will be analogous to what you see in video gaming: one company does the creation, another does the selling. Several diligent Google searches turned up nothing on what The Dark Eye actually is or was; maybe I’m clueless, but it looks like the rest of the world is too. Fun!