Decipher has announced that it will donate over $1 million in financial backing, product, and promo materials to the Star Wars CCG Player's Committee.  The Committee is a non-profit organization of Star Wars CCG players and promoters that was established in February 2002 to carry on tournament and other support of Decipher's version of the Star Wars game, now that Decipher will no longer be producing new releases (see 'WotC Gets Star Wars CCG').  Decipher CEO Warren Holland said in the announcement, 'Our customers invested over a quarter of a billion dollars in these games and we will not abandon them.'

Among its activities, the Player's Committee has organized a championship series of tournaments, including a World Championship at DecipherCon 2002 this fall.  Included in the Decipher donation was over $10,000 for the purse for that event.

We also now have more details on what's happening to the Star Wars CCG inventory in the wake of the bulk sale to Cards Inc. (see 'Cards Inc. Buys up Decipher Star Wars Inventory').  After we published that article, we heard from John Weddleton at Mad Al Distributors, who told us that he'd just received a shipment on the Star Wars CCG and had a 'broad selection' of the product range. 

Confused, we went back to Decipher and checked with director of sales Dean Irwin who provided us with the following explanation.  'In early March, Cards Inc. purchased the final quantities of most of our Star Wars CCG, Young Jedi CCG, and Jedi Knights items....Since then, the only SW items available to distributors have been the YJ Collector's Box, Official Tournament Sealed Deck, Second Anthology, and Third Anthology.'  According to Irwin, Decipher's 2-for-1 promotion, in which it sent consumers boxes to match purchases from stores, ate up a lot of product, sending Decipher back to distributors in some cases to fill in inventory holes.