Altered, the fantasy trading card game that broke Kickstarter's TCG funding record in early 2024 with 6.2 million euros from nearly 15,000 backers, is being discontinued. Publisher Equinox announced the decision on 18 March after its Roots of Corruption expansion crowdfund raised just 1.1 million euros, well below the 2 million the company needed to keep going.
"The numbers simply aren't there," Equinox said in its announcement. The 1.1 million figure combined roughly 420,000 euros from the Gamefound campaign with 680,000 euros in retailer pre-orders.
This was not the first warning sign. A previous expansion, Seeds of Unity, also struggled to hit its targets last autumn, scraping together roughly 900,000 euros from crowdfunding and another 1.4 million euros from retailers after the campaign was extended.
Altered launched with ambitious digital features, including print-on-demand cards and a digital marketplace. But those innovations were plagued by delays and only reached open beta in April 2025, far too late to build momentum in a TCG market crowded with heavyweights like Magic: The Gathering, Lorcana, Star Wars: Unlimited, One Piece, and Flesh and Blood. The digital marketplace also made it difficult for local game shops to offer single-card sales, cutting off a vital part of the TCG ecosystem.
Founder Régis Bonnessée acknowledged the company had "failed to achieve" its goals while thanking the community, artists, and retailers who supported the game. Equinox plans to close the digital platform by the end of May 2026 and is in talks with Board Game Arena about transferring support to the community. The company also intends to release the majority of Altered's card list and artwork on GitHub, while lore will remain hosted on the Altered website.
In a bitter bit of timing, Altered lost its Kickstarter TCG funding record just days before the shutdown announcement, when the Cyberpunk TCG surpassed it with over 13 million dollars from more than 16,000 backers.
Sources: BoardGameWire | TechRaptor | Gaming Trend