Earlier this year, Inside the Box Board Games, announced that it will be liquidated due to insolvency after multiple accusations of unpaid debts and salaries surfaced at the beginning of this year. The announcement came out as a shock, especially considering their more than successful Kickstarter Sub Terra and its sequel Sub Terra II: Inferno’s Edge, the very ambitious open-world gamebook Alba, among others.
This left many backers without copies of the games they had backed in previous years, causing an uproar of displeasure.
In a small ray of hope, on March 31st, Inside The Box Games announced that Naylor Games had bought all their assets. It was further announced that no Inside the Box staff would move to Naylor Games as part of the acquisition, further doubling down on the fact that Inside The Box, along with all of its debts and liabilities, will cease to exist. Naylor Games CEO James Naylor stated:
During the fallout, multiple Kickstarter projects have been left unfulfilled, leaving backers rightfully frustrated and angry. This is not fair on backers, which is why, from today, our first order of business will be to try to make this as right as possible.
Naylor Games CEO James Naylor
Making the Best Out of a Bad Situation
Naylor Games has offered the following options to Sub Terra II, Alba, CryptX, and Aquanauts backers:
- To deliver the products the company had access to as originally planned. All is well and good, but there’s a catch – backers will have to pay for shipping and VAT (where applicable) again, as the money that was going to be used for shipping had already been consumed by Inside the Box. James Naylor stressed that the backers will not have to buy anything anew.
- Donate some of the value of their games to various charities. This option will allow Naylor Games to sell the backed games, with some of the funds going to various charities, with the rest being used as contributions to “the substantial costs of buying all of the backer stock, storage and managing this complex process”. James Naylor stated that the benefiting charities will be announced at a later time.
It is fairly obvious that none of these options will be pleasing to the backers, but on a positive note, Naylor Games are trying to make the best out of a bad situation, and at least there are options. James further stated that “Morally, backers should simply have got what they ordered from ITB when it was still a going concern: it’s that simple.”
Unfortunately, the situation for the open-world book project Alba is entirely different, with James Taylor stating that there is “no Alba stock at all” and that “the journey there will be much longer and less certain”. He further stated that the company had contacted the original creative team to see if they can work something out in terms of further developing and finalizing the project.
As this is a developing situation, there is bound to be more news on the way, so stay tuned for more!