Skybound has signed a deal with Druid City Games for release of its game The Grimm Forest, which recently raised over $400,000 on Kickstarter (see “Druid City Games Heads for ‘The Grimm Forest’”), Skybound Director of Business Development Shawn Kirkham told ICv2.  Release is scheduled for December.

The deal comes as Skybound is revamping its game distribution to the trade.  Late in 2015, Skybound began selling its games, Superfight and Red Flags, through game distributors.  It had previously only sold direct to a few stores and its games were otherwise only sold directly to consumers through the Skybound website and on Amazon.

Then late last year, Skybound ended its sales to distributors.  There were “wild fluctuations in online pricing” through Amazon resellers, Kirkham said. 

Skybound also began detecting counterfeit versions of its games being sold online, a phenomenon that was not limited to its games, but also true of Cards Against Humanity, Crabs Adjust Humidity, and other card games that had been selling through Amazon.  Skybound has bought up counterfeit copies of its games as a way to get them off the market and to identify counterfeiters, Kirkham said. 

Now Skybound is evaluating ways to get back into trade distribution that will limit the types of problems it saw in 2016.  In the meantime, it is continuing to sell directly to retailers, and to consumers through its website and Amazon.   

The Grimm Forest will be sold through distributors, Kirkham said.