For today’s big news, Hogshead Publishing has just announced that as of November 30th, the company will be leaving the adventure-gaming industry. As the press release stated, the company hasn’t gone broke or anything. Instead, the shutdown is because “we are bored, creatively frustrated, and increasingly despondent about the future of the specialist games industry. After our successes in 2002, particularly the mould-breaking and critically acclaimed games Nobilis and De Profundis, we think we’ve gone as far as we can and this seems a suitable high-point on which to call it a day.”
So what’s to become of the Hogshead games, now bereft of a company? Nobilis will now reside at , while the English-language licence for Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay has gone back to Games Workshop. SLA Industries is back under the control of Nightfall Games, and Warpstone magazine will continue under its own imprint. All future products previously announced by Hogshead are cancelled, except for the Nobilis line which GOO is taking over, and the full-length Warhammer FRP adventure Fear the Worst by Michael Mearls, which Hogshead will make available as a free PDF download from its website “as a farewell-and-thank-you present to all our players and fans.” A small amount of backstock has been retained by Hogshead for mail order, which will continue for a while, but the rest has already been sold off to distributors.
Check back with OgreCave later today for our exclusive interview with James Wallis, Director of Hogshead Publishing, on the shutdown decision, the state of the industry today, and whatever else we manage to wring out of him.