Starmork Knocks Off Wyrmwood’s Gaming Table Designs

This is a tough one to write down about.

Wyrmwood Gaming is an organization whose designs I admired. The Massachusetts-based firm designs and builds revolutionary gaming tables, which transforms from eating desk to gaming configurations laden with modular equipment. The firm launched over 20 profitable Kickstarter campaigns for his or her merchandise, touchdown hundreds of thousands in funding.

In 2023, io9 launched an investigative report on Wyrmwood, containing allegations of a sexual assualt cover-up and malfeasances starting from misogyny to harmful working situations. No costs have been filed, however a web-based backlash ensued.

Today the corporate nonetheless exists, promoting gaming tables that begin round $2,800; bigger fashions with unique woods can method $8,000. However, whereas they’ve managed to climate their scandals, a Kickstarter from an abroad competitor supplies a bigger existential risk.

A startup known as Starmork has copied key options of Wyrmwood’s designs. Starmork’s Multi-Mission Game Table boasts the identical accent rail and modular attachments, and provides LED lighting and energy shops.

Here’s the kicker: Starmork’s desk is being provided on Kickstarter for as little as $300. It’s virtually 90% lower than Wyrmwood’s entry-level design, and keen backers have propelled Starmork’s Kickstarter to 5 occasions their funding purpose.

Starmork manufactures abroad (Wyrmwood employs American staff at a plant in Pennsylvania) and makes use of Rubberwood, a tropical hardwood frequent in Southeast Asia. Rubberwood is reasonable to return by; the timber are grown in rubber plantations and produce latex, and when their yields develop low, the timber are felled and burned as waste. In distinction, the woods Wyrmwood makes use of—Cherry, Maple, Elm, Walnut, and so forth.—are valued and dear.

Following io9’s report, it is tough to really feel sorry for an organization alleged to have a poisonous office tradition. That mentioned, corporations will not be a monolith, and the allegations in opposition to Wyrmwood have been leveled on the firm brass, not the employees. If Starmork drinks Wyrmwood’s milkshake, it is the women and men on the manufacturing line who will undergo.