Broken Anvil Miniatures is having some pretty big issues fulfilling their most recent Kickstarter, and supposedly their previous ones too.
Broken Anvil/Level 52 has a Patreon and runs a decent number of Kickstarters. They ran a Forged campaign for miniatures and, more recently, a Kickstarter for paints that did really well (in terms of funding), reaching over $144,000. However, they started a second Kickstarter before fulfilling the first project, and from what the community is saying, they have run out of money for both projects.
Things get even more interesting as a rumored merger/ buyout to help fulfill these projects fell through, so now everyone seems to be pointing figures from the top down.
Keep in mind this is all based on what both sides of the issue are saying, so please take this with as much salt as you need.
Broken Anvil is in a Bit of a Pickle With Their Recent Kickstarter Projects
You can listen to the whole breakdown of this scandal from The King of Average, and we also summarize the points with linked sources below for you as well.
Let’s start with a Dakka Dakka post from a supposed previous employee (they posted as anonymous but say they worked there).
There’s a lot to break down here. BAM is accused of being one company running under two different names, but this isn’t anything too crazy in the world of business, depending on how they are structured. From there, supposedly, BAM was basically using money from new projects to fund old projects, instead of just using the actual revenue from those projects to fund them.
The whole point of Kickstarter is to get all the money needed to fulfill the project. Instead, it may have been that they were taking funds from new projects to finish older projects. Now apparently the money is gone, and the company is dead.
From what this anonymous source says BAM was they were doing zero work on old projects, and only focusing on new projects that would supposedly bring in new money. While no one has access to the books or numbers, there are huge delays, and updates have been few and far between for these Kickstarter Projects.
When it comes to the merger/buyout, it’s hard to say who is correct, but even Broken Anvil is saying the merger did fall through. So, something had to go wrong at the end of the process, as it had been in the works for months.
Then we have a recent update to check out from Broken Anvil Miniatures themselves:
Their Statement
This comes from the BAM Studio Paint Kickstarter page and is quite long, so we’ll be taking some snippets, but you can read the full statement here.
First and foremost, myself and my partner Hanna(she is currently working remote) are still working at BAM along with a few core members of our team, doing everything we can to right the ship after several major blows to the company since we announced the merger and the layoffs that were supposed to be temporary. Unfortunately, despite a long period of negotiation and due diligence, the company that we were transferring ownership to pulled out of the deal at the 11th hour, leaving our team and projects in difficult circumstances.
According to this, they are still working on the project and trying to fulfill it. Now onto what happened with the merger according to BAM:
As we have shared previously in updates, we were in the process of being acquired by another company with whom we had been in talks with since January of this year. Within the first few weeks of due diligence, we had provided all of Level52 and BAM’s books in detail, bluntly illustrating the challenges we were facing, offering our company for $0 in exchange for the support to complete our projects and keep our team…
…As time progressed, the soon-to-be ownership assured our team that we were on track to complete the merger within 90 days. Due to the transitional circumstances, we found ourselves without a formal budget from the incoming ownership and without the revenue from our client work. We made every effort to preserve our staff who we firmly believed were the strength of our organization, but payroll and benefits drained our account quickly without our ODM revenue to rely on. We held on as long as we could, believing that the soon-to-be ownership shared our view of our staff’s importance.
However, we were ultimately forced to furlough our staff in an effort to keep the business solvent, restructure as part of the merger, and get it over the finish line. It was our only option to preserve the business and create the best possible chance for our team to return.
Then, in July, the merger that we had carefully planned with new ownership fell apart, not because of anything our team did or didn’t do, but because the prospective ownership experienced a dramatic downturn in their own business over the course of negotiations–unbeknownst to our team–that forced a reversal just 30 days before the merger was supposed to close. My position was eliminated soon after in an effort to reduce their overhead expenditures and preserve their own operations, and ties were fully severed, leaving us cut adrift.
This is quite different from what the Dakka Dakka poster had to say, but the end result is the same. They had to lay off most of the employees, and the deal fell through.
What’s Happening With the Project
From this, it looks like Forged will not be fulfilled until the end of 2024, which is more than a year away from now, meaning if you ordered those minis, you better be ready to wait.
Then, the paints will not be out until early 2024, which is pretty vague considering the project is months old already. Perhaps the biggest takeaway here is that: the refund period is over, and they will not be doing any refunds.
Did you pledge to the Forged or Broken Anvil Miniatures Studio Paints project? What are your thoughts on the whole thing?
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About the Author: Rob Baer
Rob Baer
Job Title: Managing Editor
Founded Spikey Bits in 2009
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About Rob Baer: Founder, Publisher, & Managing Editor of Spikey Bits, the leading tabletop gaming news website focused on the hobby side of wargaming and miniatures. Rob has won many Warhammer 40k Tournaments over the years, including the Adepticon Team Tournament and American Team Tournaments, and is on a first-name basis with almost every major company in the space.
He’s all gaming all the time. With over 30 years of experience in retail and distribution, Rob knows all the products and exactly which ones are the best. He advocates for gaming stores and manufacturers in these difficult times, always looking for the next big thing to feature for the miniatures hobby, helping everyone to provide the value consumers want.
While he’s played every edition of Warhammer 40k and Warhammer Fantasy (since 5th Edition) and has been hobbying on miniatures since the 1908s, Titans of all sizes will always be his favorite! It’s even rumored that his hobby vault rivals the Solemnance Galleries, containing rulebooks filled with lore from editions long past, ancient packs of black-bordered Magic Cards, and models made of both pewter and resin.
