Privately owned game and toy company Goliath has acquired Lucky Duck Games, which will be run as a separate division, the companies announced.  Lucky Duck Games Founder Vincent Vergonjeanne and the current management team will run the division as an independent studio.

Flamecraft is the most recent Lucky Duck hit.  Lucky Duck has also recently announced international localization deals with Steamforged (see “Steamforged Partners with Lucky Duck”) and Paverson Games (see “Lucky Duck Signs Paverson Games”).

The move was described by Goliath as a move into the strategy games category.  “As a global games business, we see there are two major growth areas in games: (adult) party games and strategy games,” Goliath CEO Jochanan Golad said in a statement accompanying the announcement.  “Consumers and kidults particularly are playing board games like never before.”

Lucky Duck’s Vergonjeanne noted investment and distribution as positive outcomes of the deal. “This partnership empowers us to continue investing in cutting-edge strategy games while leveraging Goliath’s expansive global distribution network to reach an even broader audience of tabletop gamers,” he said.

Goliath acquired assets of Funko Games in January (see “Goliath Acquires Funko”), and cut staff, which moved to form Tempest Workshop, a new board game design and development studio (see “Funko Games Alumni Form New Studio”).  Goliath referred to the Funko portfolio in the Lucky Duck acquisition announcement, noting that there were "...more kidult games slated for release under its global distribution deal with Funko Games announced last month."