The sky has fallen. The gods are dead. Long live Godtear!

Hello Champion.  There was no official Godtear at Adepticon 2026.  Steve Margetson, the Lead Developer of Godtear, is no longer working at SFG.  SFG customer support let one player know that, “Sadly, we have no immediate plans for any further Godtear products at this current time,” and apologized for any disappointment

Doom!

I’ve been putting this off for a while now.  As an administrator of the excellent unofficial Godtear community discord, I’ve avoided making any gloom and doom articles or proclamations due to the position of importance I feel I hold in the Godtear community.  But the convergence of the three pieces of news in the paragraph above has changed my mind.

The sky has fallen.  The gods are dead.  SFG is not working on Godtear right now, nor in the foreseeable future.  I think Durthax is the last champion we will see for a long time.  Official tournament support, already a tenuous set of support so far, is unlikely to happen until and unless a new means of marketing the game arises.  We’ve got 27 champions to play with.

The good news?  The game is still exceptional, the community is even better, and Godtear has everything needed to stand on its own for many years to come.

The Textbook illustration of the Whiplash you just experienced

We, as a community, have been operating under a state of limbo since Durthax came out in the tail end of 2024, over a year ago.  I talked to Jamie Perkins, the Product Owner of Godtear at SFG, back in August of 2024 and we’ve heard nothing from SFG about Godtear plans since.  Now, finally, this community is breaking out of that holding pattern.

We’re working on a community balance pass for the game.

Okay, so not perfectly balanced as all things should be, but at least closer in power to each other.

I want to be clear, Steamforged Games owns Godtear.  The IP, the characters, the art, the lore, it’s all theirs.  But rules.  Rules are agreed upon between players.  Homebrew rules are a real thing that happen in in person gaming all the time.  Community balancing, done well, has repeatedly proven to bring freshness and significantly extend the shelf life of extraordinary games.  I say that we, as a community, develop and test modifications to stats and skills of champions and followers that  have consistently proven underpowered or overpowered.

We’re not developing new models for official play.  We’re not attempting to take over the brand for our own nefarious purposes.  We’re looking at balancing out some of the champions that see either a ton of or practically no play in our tournament scene.  Not every champion is being looked at for adjustment.  In fact, right now, the plan is to leave almost half of the champions completely alone.

So who are the “we” in the paragraph above?  Allow me to introduce: The Council of Eldritch Judgement.  It consists of Ben Christenson, Simon “Mushaa” Andersen, and Jeff “Gearbox” Mitchell.  We consider ourselves a “steering committee” that proposes balance changes for the community as a whole to test out.  Then, we will collect playtesting feedback on these changes to see if they accomplish our goals.

What are our goals?

1. We want to be as transparent as possible with the community on how and why we’re proposing any given changes.  We’ll have an OH article every two weeks to present proposed changes.

2. We want to work with the community to build something approaching consensus for any given change.  To that end, we will not force changes on the community, but build trust that our efforts are valuable and reasonable.

3. We want to keep the identities of the Champions and their followers intact.  We’re not looking to create anything new, just nudge some numbers and text so that the models feel more balanced and fun.

4. We want everyone to have fun.  There are some deeply disappointing kits out there in Godtear, and some very powerful ones.  We’re looking to change that so that everyone’s favorite champion can see tournament play.

5. Our scope is limited.  All champions should have a niche.  We are tuning champions, not remaking them.  No modifications to core rules, roles, or identities.  If we can't fix it with a card reprint, we can't fix it.

We’re planning on releasing playtest packet articles on Objective Hex every two weeks.  These articles will outline no more than 5 adjustments each to two crews, one for nerfs, one for buffs.  Then we’ll take community feedback for four weeks from the publishing of the packet.  If you have a suggestion on how to adjust a champion, please drop it into the #homebrew channel of the Discord and we’ll consider it for the future.

Playtest for the Community!

A community is only as strong as its members.  This is going to be a long, drawn out, slow process.  We have to get proposed changes, come to a consensus on which changes to test, test them out, and then roll those changes out to the community.  We’re a small community, so we don’t have any real requirements if you want to contribute; just a Discord account, a copy of Tabletop Simulator (if you want to play online), and a desire to see more come out of Godtear.

Join us, as we embark on the next chapter of Godtear, where we go from here is up to us as a community.  I hope you'll come along for the journey.

I'll be standing strong under a fallen sky,

Jeff “Gearbox” Mitchell