I’m late to the party on this following bit of news, I’m kicking myself on how I missed it, but better late than never.

Yesterday on one of the many many boardgaming Facebook groups there was a post about selling a copy of Love Letter: Batman for £25. Like many others on the discussion that followed I was shocked that the game was going for this price. But apparently that was on the cheap side.

Why was this my favourite version of the Love Letter games so expensive to buy now? The obvious answer was that it was out of print, and also the licence hadn’t been renewed. I thought that was a little short sighted.

I then thought wow I wonder what Love Letter The Hobbit The Battle of the Five Armies (my close second favourite Love Letter) is going for then? Because if they didn’t renew the licence for Batman, then I was pretty sure that they wouldn’t do The Hobbit. And I was right, some-one responded saying the game was going for £40 on eBay when they checked!

Madness.

So I did some quick digging around with Google, and the bit of news I missed earlier in the year was that as of 1st May 2018, the Asmodee Borg collective took over the Love Letter game from AEG, and stamped it with the Z-Man brand of the Asmodee Borg collective. The only versions that transferred over were the “classic”, Premium, Lovecraft and Wedding editions. The other licensed versions gone.

Hence the situation that we are now seeing ourselves in with the prices of the Hobbit and Batman editions etc shooting up.

I’m sure Z-Man/Asmodee have their plans for the game. If we are lucky they will include the English version of the Russian Star Wars printing. But I would love to see them get the licences back for the likes of Batman so that people can enjoy the game at a reasonable price.

I’m off to sleeve my copies of The Hobbit and Archer (Batman is already sleeved). Need to protect that investment!