Exploding Kittens puts out fires from higher demand for tabletop games

The folks at Exploding Kittens, one of the most popular tabletop games from the past five years, are putting out fires all over the place thanks to the coronavirus.

When the coronavirus hit, retailers and others learned the hard way how their physical and digital businesses were intertwined. It showed how the company, in this case, could benefit from a 40% week-to-week increase in demand, but be left staggering because its factories in China were idled. And it made the need to create a free-to-play version of the game more urgent, as well as a version that people could play with their friends when connected by video calls, said Elan Lee, cofounder of Exploding Kittens, in an interview with GamesBeat.

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Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.