Inventor of the Catan board game Klaus Teuber passes away at age 70

According to a family statement, Klaus Teuber, the wildly famous Catan board game designer in which players fight to establish cities on an imaginary island, has passed away after a brief illness.

He was 70.

Tens of millions of copies of the board game, first released in 1995 under the name The Settlers of Catan and now accessible in more than 40 languages, have been sold.

Many new editions and spinoffs, including electronic ones and associated merchandise, have been produced.

The announcement on the German-language Catan website said, “It is with great grief and a heavy heart that the Teuber family announces that their beloved husband and father, Klaus Teuber passed away at the age of 70 on April 1, 2023, after a short and difficult illness.”

The family asked for discretion.

While Klaus made valuable contributions to the board game business, the Catan studio team said in a statement posted on social media that “we will remember him most as a kind and unselfish human being, an inspirational leader, and most importantly, as a friend.”

Teuber was born in the German town of Rai-Breitenbach on June 1952. He began creating board games in his basement in the 1980s while working as a dental technician outside the industrial city of Darmstadt; he told The New Yorker magazine in 2014.

He claimed I had many issues with the business and the field. “I created games as an escape. This was a universe I made for myself.

Competitors in the multiplayer game construct their colonies or settlements using five resources: wool, grain, lumber, brick, and more.

Teuber never imagined Catan would be as popular as it is now.

He finally quit his work as a dental technician in 1998 “when I believed Catan could feed myself and my family,” he told the New Yorker. The game became a family business.

Sales soared during the first five months of the epidemic in 2020 as individuals played games while confined, the business informed NPR.

“Honor Klaus’ memory by being kind to one another, pursuing your creative hobbies boldly, and enjoying a game with your loved ones,” the Catan studio team told those mourning Teuber.