Christian T. Peterson to Step Down as CEO of Asmodee North America

He's taking Netrunner with him. You heard it here first.

From the reviews stretching back years that FFG in Roseville is a terrible place to work, I always presumed that sort of toxic work culture sprang forth from CP himself. I could be wrong, maybe he's a boffo guy, but I've never seen anyone in the industry go out on a limb to defend the dude.

fightcitymayor wrote: I've never seen anyone in the industry go out on a limb to defend the dude.

I'll just say I have no reason to defend anything about the guy. Any further negativity I'll leave to the imagination.

On the plus side, Steve Horvath getting an even bigger role in the company will be good.

Horvath, on the other hand, is not only personable, but very proactive. That's a hill I'd die on to defend.

I take back not defending CP. He did make some good hiring choices. So there is that.

Is this related to the recent purchase?

It's gotta be hard to build something from scratch and run it for years, successfully, and then have someone else take over and tell you how to do it.

I'm sure the boatload of money softens the blow a little bit.

Disgustipater wrote: I'm sure the boatload of money softens the blow a little bit.

No kidding. He sold FFG, then turned around and reinvested his cashout back into Asmodee. I'm sure he deserves all the sympathy he can muster...

I mean, honestly, I have a hard time seeeing CP as the bad guy here. He's the one who built the brand from nothing as an entrepreneur and he made a boatload as compensation. I just hate seeing a system that has the private equity buyers, probably leveraged to the hilt to buy the damn thing, who may or may not have any intention of doing what's good for the business from here on out.

I have heard that Peterson was sometimes an unreasonably demanding boss, but I never saw it during my short time there. I was just a lowly warehouse monkey doing boardgame assembly at the time, but when he found out that I'm an accountant with a CPA license, he offered me the bookkeeper job. The money was low, so I said no and continued my job search. But I sometimes look back with regret. As Gary said, Peterson started from scratch and built this company himself, and got paid accordingly.

I grew up working for my dad's small company, and I remember all those dinners where my parents talked about the business. He did sales and installation, and my mom ran the office and did the accounting. They worked long hours and worried constantly about money. They hired and fired people, they sometimes took general contractors to court just to get paid, and our garage often served as a warehouse. By age seven, I was sometimes answering the business phone and taking messages, and at age 16 I lied about my age and joined the laborers union so I could work the union-only construction sites. Most people just don't understand the challenge of being an entrepreneur. You don't just show up for work and get paid, you invest your personal savings and take out loans and burn through cash until you hopefully start making profits. And then you need to keep going, because if you stop growing, somebody else will compete and take away some of your business. And if you are supporting a family, all the pressure is multiplied.

Shellhead wrote: Most people just don't understand the challenge of being an entrepreneur.

Here's the world's smallest violin... playing just for "the entrepreneurs."

But srsly... it can be both. CP can be a successful entrepreneur, as well as an arrogant, toxic boss from which a terrible corporate culture grows.

The end of an era. FFG is one of the major factors getting me into board game. I still remember their old charming site, with plenty of content to drool upon. Granted, the games are never as exciting as what my mind made them, but hell if they don't try to be.