Revised: 17 Jan, 2020.

Chaosium works with a wide range of commercial licensing partners who produce products to supplement and support our own. This includes board games, card games, certain RPG supplements, dice, computer games, and foreign language editions. These all operate under Commercial License. Such licenses are for officially approved product and require ongoing management, regular reporting, and close work with our line editors. Accordingly, we are selective about who we partner with, and initial approaches require a detailed business plan. These commercial licenses also have specified release and revenue targets.

Granting licenses and supporting our licensees can be very time consuming on our part. We only grant licenses to use our intellectual property and/or our trademarks to people and projects that we feel have a high degree of likelihood of producing a finished product. We treat all information you provide as confidential.

Commercial Licenses are usually granted to other publishing companies/commercial entities; very rarely do we partner with individuals at the commercial license level.

In general, Chaosium collects a percentage of sales as a royalty, and under certain circumstances may also require an advance on royalties. The exact percentage and dollar amounts are only negotiated after we have seen what a company is proposing to do.

If you are interested in obtaining a Commercial License contact us through the contact form below. To consider your license request we need a formal proposal with a detailed business plan.

Issues to address include:

• a brief company history
• key individuals involved and their experience
• list of other games/relevant products the company has produced or translated
• details about the product you intend to produce (think one minute elevator pitch) and Chaosium rules system used
• intended audience (fantasy, horror, 1920s, Gaslight, modern, etc.)
• proposed production formats
• proposed retail price
• your sales, marketing and distribution plan - n.b. if you intend to crowdfund on Kickstarter etc, also outline experience in this area
• expected Sales Volume
• expected Sales Revenue

We may also ask you to send us samples of your published products.

Note, we have a number of exclusive license agreements already in place for certain game lines, or types of products, or for products in certain foreign languages. This means it may simply not be possible to grant you the license you want at the present time, even if your proposal has great merit. We may also already have similar projects under consideration or in the works ourselves. It is our discretion whether we grant you a license or not.

Changes to Policy

The terms of the Commercial License may change from time to time at the sole discretion of Chaosium Inc. We will advise our Commercial Licensees by email of any changes, but it is your obligation to keep up to date with the Policy.