Three founders, imported comics and role-playing books, then Portugal and Spain.

Devir is often filed as a Spanish company, and its operational base is indeed in Barcelona, but the name was born in Brazil. Portuguese Wikipedia says the company was founded in 1987 in São Paulo by Douglas Quinta Reis, Mauro Martinez dos Prazeres and Walder Mitsiharu Yano. It began as an importer and distributor of North American and European comics and role-playing games, and it set up a reservation system, much like a magazine subscription, that let readers choose the titles they wanted to receive. BoardGameWire, reporting in January 2025, likewise describes Devir as having started in 1987 as a comic book distributor in Brazil.

From imports the company moved into publishing. Portuguese Wikipedia says Devir published Brazilian comics artists including Laerte Coutinho, Angeli and Lourenço Mutarelli, and that until 2010 it represented three American role-playing publishers in Brazil: Steve Jackson Games, White Wolf and Wizards of the Coast. It began distributing Magic: The Gathering in Portuguese in 1995, the same source says, and Spanish Wikipedia says Devir holds exclusive rights to translate Wizards of the Coast products into Portuguese and Spanish.

The move abroad came in steps. Portuguese Wikipedia dates the start of operations in Portugal to 1996, the expansion into Spain to 2000, a wider push into Latin America to 2004 and the opening of Devir Chile to 2006. Spanish Wikipedia describes the result as a Brazilian publishing group devoted to leisure and entertainment — fantasy literature, comics, role-playing, board, collectible card and miniatures games — with subsidiaries in Brazil, Portugal, Spain, the United States, Chile, Colombia, Mexico and Argentina, and its operational headquarters in Barcelona.

Devir Iberia, Catan, Carcassonne and the first in-house games.

The Spanish chapter is the one most board-game players know. The Catalan newspaper Ara, in a January 2025 profile, says Quim Dorca opened the Barcelona subsidiary, Devir Iberia, in 2000, and that it first distributed collectible card games. Dorca and his partner Xavier Garriga then persuaded the Brazilian founders to sign licensing contracts for board games, which the Spanish company translated and distributed in Spain and Portugal; Ara says Devir Portugal provided the initial funding. BoardGameWire dates Devir’s board-game business, launched as a Spanish publisher, to the same year.

Two German titles built that business. Ara says Devir’s editions of Catan and Carcassonne created its market in the first years, and Spanish Wikipedia lists Los Colonos de Catán and Carcassonne alongside Dominion, Stone Age and Twilight Struggle in the Devir Iberia catalogue. Role-playing stayed in the mix: Spanish Wikipedia records Devir Iberia’s Spanish third edition of Dungeons & Dragons in 2001 and a role-playing game based on Arturo Pérez-Reverte’s Captain Alatriste novels in 2002. In September 2014, Spanish Wikipedia says, citing the site Ludoscopia, Devir bought the Spanish publisher Homoludicus, absorbing its board-game catalogue; BoardGameWire notes that Homoludicus had localised games such as Agricola, Pandemic and Galaxy Trucker.

Devir also designs its own games. Ara says the first appeared in 2004, and that developing one — rules, graphic design and printing — can take up to eighteen months. One in-house title is The Red Cathedral, a 2020 dice game about building St Basil’s Cathedral, designed by Isra C. and Shei S. and published by Devir, according to a February 2022 review on Board Game Meeple Lady. The same design pair’s The White Castle later gained an expansion, Matcha, which BoardGameWire listed in January 2025 among Devir’s recent releases with Cities, Salton Sea and Daitoshi. Devir began bringing English-language versions of its games to the United States in 2017, BoardGameWire says, and about two years before that report agreed a deal with the German publisher Schmidt Spiele to bring English editions to the American market.

Design and documentation.

The seven brands in this group are all board-game publishers: Lookout Games, Gamewright, Thunderworks Games, North Star Games, Devir, Horrible Guild and Bézier Games. Board-game publishers sit at many different points in the hobby, from small studios built around the work of one or two designers to companies that now belong to much larger games groups, and a single title can be sold everywhere from a specialist game shop to a toy aisle.

A publisher’s identity is usually carried less by a single box than by a name, a logo on the box and the games it becomes known for, because the company behind the name may have changed hands, moved, or licensed its games to other publishers in other countries. That makes the questions behind each name worth asking plainly: who started it, who owns it now, and which games and designers made its reputation.

Each guide separates what independent sources record from what the company says about itself — its founding story, its owners over time, its best-known games and any honours from named awarding bodies — and marks plainly what rests only on the company’s own word.

Maldito Games, two imprints and a group run from Barcelona.

The latest step was an acquisition. In January 2025 Devir bought Maldito Games, a Seville publisher of advanced and expert-level games, ICv2 reported on 17 January 2025; Maldito’s catalogue includes Spanish editions of Terraforming Mars, Brass: Birmingham, Wingspan and Everdell. Both imprints continue, each aimed at a different part of the market, and the companies said the deal would help Devir grow, particularly in Latin America. “Adding Maldito Games to the group reinforces our movement into the expert-level games territory,” Devir’s chief marketing officer Quim Dorca told ICv2. BoardGameWire reported on 14 January 2025 that the sale had been instigated by Maldito, and that its general manager, Francisco Álamo, would stay on as editor-in-chief.

The same reports place Devir in Barcelona and say the company was marking its 25th anniversary in 2025, a date that matches the opening of the Spanish business in 2000 rather than the Brazilian founding in 1987. ICv2 adds that Devir publishes in Catalan, Spanish and Portuguese, releases titles in Italian, and publishes in English through its United States operation. Ara says Devir’s games are manufactured in China or Germany.

Devir is a Brazilian group by origin, and Spanish Wikipedia describes Devir Iberia as a subsidiary of the Brazilian holding, which also owns Devir Brasil and Devir Portugal; the same encyclopedia places the group’s operational headquarters in Barcelona, where Ara says Devir Iberia keeps its main centre. The catalogue mixes licensed editions of games first published elsewhere — Catan, Carcassonne and, through Maldito, Wingspan — with titles designed in-house.

For a design guide, Devir shows how a publisher can build a name in other people’s games — localised, translated and repackaged — and then use it to launch games of its own. Compare Catan, the hex-island game at the centre of Devir’s Spanish catalogue, and Hans im Glück, the German publisher of Carcassonne. For this guide we use terracotta, ochre and box cream with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Devir’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.