The story
Ernest originally developed the idea for selling basic games without all the common components while freelancing at Wizards of the Coast during the 1990s. However, Wizards rejected the idea, and in 1995, Ernest quit and started up the company. Creating the games by hand, he initially showed the games at tradeshows and conventions, resulting in sales demand from game stores. The company created and assembled each game pack by hand, with most games only being made in runs of up to 5,000 copies.
Cheapass Games and James Ernest have won several awards for game design including the 2002 Origins Award for best play-by-mail game (Button Men Web Game),
the 2002 Origins Vanguard Award (Diceland), the 1997 Origins Award for best abstract board game (Kill Doctor Lucky), and the 1997 Origins Award for best traditional card game (Give Me the Brain).
Cheapass' game Pennywise was awarded the parodic 2003 "Spud des Jahres" award for most overpriced game by the website Spielboy (see Spiel des Jahres).
In 2004, the indie band Beatnik Turtle released The Cheapass Album, an album inspired by games from Cheapass Games.
In October 2007, Cheapass Games stopped updating their web site; a message on the homepage explained: "Cheapass Games is in the process of hibernating, which means we can be a bit sluggish and hard to reach. Most of us have moved on to better careers, and James Ernest is slumbering peacefully in a warm hole in the ground."
In 2009, Cheapass created a Button Men app for the iPhone. Paizo Publishing is selling some Cheapass games on its website.
In 2011, Cheapass Games resumed updating their website with a new business model: Games were released for free in PDF format for gamers to print and play, and customers were asked to donate a dollar or two if they like the game. James Ernest says, in the game rules, "I've decided to try a different gamble. I'm giving my games away for free. This way, you can read the rules, make a copy, and even play the thing, before you decide what it's worth. If you do like my games, I hope you will send me some money. But I'm also hoping you will share this experiment with your friends. You are my sales force, my marketing department, my demo team." New games were usually accompanied by the Ransomometer, where potential customers are encouraged to donate a certain dollar amount before a game is released to the public.
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In 2012, Cheapass Games offered their first Kickstarter project, a deluxe reprint of their previous game Unexploded Cow. This was followed in 2013 by another Kickstarter project for a deluxe version of their earlier Deadwood game, called Deadwood Studios USA. Nine more Cheapass games were produced with the help of Kickstarter in the period 2013 to 2018, including the abstract strategy game Tak, which was a collaboration between James Ernest and Patrick Rothfuss, and was based on a game in Rothfuss' book The Wise Man's Fear.
In 2019, it was announced that Greater Than Games had acquired the license to publish Cheapass Games, and taken over sales of Cheapass Games inventory.
With the help of 1,867 backers on Kickstarter, at the end of 2019 a 628 page hardcover book Cheapass Games in Black and White was published, which was a retrospective of the 22 years of Cheapass Games up to that point, and included coverage of more than 100 of their games.
In 2021, Greater Than Games was acquired by Flat River Group, and was subsequently shuttered in 2025 due to tariffs. As a result, all rights to Cheapass Games reverted to James Ernest's company Crab Fragment LLC, which made many of the games from the Cheapass Games catalogue freely available in print-and-play PDF format from their website.
From Wikipedia’s article on Cheapass Games, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.3