Mayfair Games

History

Mayfair Games was founded in 1981 by Darwin Bromley in Chicago, Illinois, United States. The company was created to publish Empire Builder, a railroad game designed by Bromley and Bill Fawcett. In 1982 Mayfair Games expanded its focus to include Role Aids, a line of role-playing game supplements.

In 1993, Mayfair was sued by TSR, Inc., who argued that Role Aids—advertised as compatible with Advanced Dungeons & Dragons—violated their 1984 trademark agreement. While the court found that some of the line violated their trademark, the line as a whole did not violate the agreement, and Mayfair continued publishing the line until the rights were bought by TSR.

In 1996, Mayfair Games became the publisher of The Settlers of Catan in the US.

In 1997, Mayfair shut down for financial reasons, and was subsequently bailed out by Iron Crown Enterprises (ICE), who purchased most of the company's assets and restarted operations as Ironwind, Inc. This new company operates publicly under the Mayfair Games trademark.

Pete Fenlon became the CEO of Mayfair Games in 2007 to oversee a major reorganization with a refocusing on core brands, most importantly, the Catan family of games.

In 2013, Mayfair reported selling more than 750,000 Catan-related products.

In January 2016, Mayfair transferred all publishing, commercial, and brand rights for all English-language Catan products to Catan Studio, a newly created subsidiary of the Asmodee Group. Former CEO Pete Fenlon left Mayfair Games to become the CEO of the new company.

Larry Roznai is the CEO of Mayfair games. He joined the company in 1999 as a board member, President and the COO.

Notable games

This list includes games published by Mayfair and games licensed by Mayfair from other publishers.

See also