Wonderbow Games, a young publisher, is currently warning about counterfeit versions of its game Kelp. Fraudsters had put the copies on the market, but the title would not be officially released until late in 2024.
Plagiarism and counterfeits of board games are becoming an increasingly bigger problem for publishers: Copies are available, especially in cheap shops in China, for which prices are sometimes drastically lower than the regular retail price. The great popularity of the shopping portals in conjunction with the low offers is tempting, but this does not bring in any money for the makers of board and card games. If the trend prevails, publishers could face economic consequences as a result of the failures. Wonderbow Games recently appealed to the scene not to buy counterfeit versions of Kelp.
Fake kelp can also be bought commercially
With the game Kelp, Wonderbow Games achieved a small coup on Kickstarter: The shark versus octopus idea was extremely well received by fans and generated almost one and a half million euros as part of the campaign. It was also clear there that Kelp would officially be released in October 2024, but the “game” had already been spotted on Amazon and Ebay, among others, as the publisher itself writes.
But there is no premature publication behind it. According to the publisher, they are fakes. The original version of the asymmetrical board game is exclusively via Kickstarter or the Pledge Manager. Wonderbow Games says it has reported around 125 fake offers in the past few weeks, but dealing with the platforms has proven to be “difficult” from a brand owner’s perspective. The publisher split it up Kickstarter mit.
With Kelp, Wonderbow Games was able to convince more than 20.000 fans of the game idea via crowdfunding. The still young publisher had funds from the two-player game and the idea of the slightly different “cat and mouse” concept between November 7th and December 5th of last year Kickstarter collected. This alone makes it clear that the versions of the game that are already available cannot be originals. According to Wonderbow Games, Kelp will only be available from around January 2024 via the Pledge Manager. The game itself is scheduled to be released around October, possibly in time for GAME in Essen.
According to the publisher, Wonderbow Games' trading partners are cooperative and will only sell the game once the produced versions of Kelp have been sent to the backers.
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