BattleTech. FanPro GmbH continued to translate these books into German, along with German-only Shadowrun books. Licenses selling Until early in 2007 FanPro was a publisher for fantasy books and various role playing games. The company owned licensing agreements with WizKids to produce the German-language versions of Classic BattleTech, Shadowrun, Pirates of the Spanish Main, and the "Clix" games of Mage Knight and HeroClix. FanPro's decision to maintain a small staff meant that they could not do their own warehousing and shipping, and so they instead used the fulfilment company Fast Forward Entertainment. When Fast Forward went under, they took with them many earnings they had collected for FanPro's books and had not paid out. Fantasy Productions in Germany were having problems of their own, and as a result, in April 2007 they started divesting themselves of their gaming properties by selling Das Schwarze Auge and soon all the others. Fantasy Productions were helping to support themselves via gaming stock taken from the FanPro LLC warehouses, which meant not only that FanPro LLC wasn't getting support from its German parent in hard times, but in fact FanPro were supporting them. Boyle and Bills tried to buy FanPro LLC from Fantasy Productions and when that did not work out they threatened to leave and implied that they would be bidding for the WizKids licenses, which were just coming up for renewal. WizKids stepped in to mediate; although they were not willing to let Boyle and Bills create a new company, they were willing to give the licenses to InMediaRes. The license for Das Schwarze Auge went to Ulisses Spiele. Since then the company focuses on publishing novels only, although it continued its preexisting novel series for Das Schwarze Auge ; the Shadowrun and BattleTech series ceased publications in 2008, following disagreements between WizKids and Fantasy Productions concerning the German licence for those properties. References External links German website Book publishing companies of Germany Companies based in North Rhine-Westphalia Publishing companies of Germany Role-playing game publishing companies Publishing companies established in 1983