When Zombicide: Dead Men Tales hits Gamefound on 22 April, it will mark Asmodee's first official crowdfunding campaign. But the launch is the final piece of a strategy that has been taking shape for nearly a year, built almost entirely from CMON's financial collapse.
The timeline tells the story. In June 2025, Asmodee bought the Zombicide IP from a struggling CMON, which had posted a $3 million loss and seen revenue drop 17%. That same month, Asmodee hired David Preti, the former CMON COO who had spent eight years architecting the company's crowdfunding strategy and helped raise tens of millions across campaigns for Zombicide, Marvel United, and Massive Darkness. By October, Asmodee had also acquired the Cthulhu: Death May Die series. In February 2026, Sheriff of Nottingham followed. And in March, Asmodee launched Nekuma, a new studio focused on bringing Japanese games to global audiences, after buying CMON's Japon Brand.
Zombicide is no small IP. Across its crowdfunding campaigns since 2012, the series raised over $41 million and sold more than 2 million copies worldwide. Marvel Zombies alone pulled in $9 million. Now all of that sits under Asmodee's roof, with the man who built CMON's crowdfunding machine running the show.
Meanwhile, CMON's situation has only worsened. The company posted over $23 million in combined losses across 2024 and 2025, and auditors have raised going-concern flags. CMON has said it plans to return to crowdfunding in the second half of 2026, but with its most valuable IPs gone and its architect working for the competition, that comeback faces steep odds.
For gamers, the practical upshot is this: if you backed Zombicide campaigns through CMON, your future campaigns will come from the industry's largest publisher. That brings production resources, but it also brings Asmodee's track record of price increases and consolidation. How that balance shakes out will depend on what Preti is given room to do.
Sources: BoardGameWire - Zombicide Acquisition | BoardGameWire - David Preti | BoardGameWire - Cthulhu DMD | BoardGameWire - Sheriff | ICv2
