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About 10% of that is true.
They weren’t broke as the business continues trading even to this day, but they also didn’t have enough money to fulfil the Kickstarter.
They obviously had some sort of legal position against Hasbro in some territories (as a minimum, Spain, but from the press release it sounds like they also held it in other European territories). If they had no legal position, Hasbro would have simply released their game and Gamezone would have been unable to prevent it or they would have taken Gamezone to court to put an end to their use of the trademark. Neither of these things happened so we can probably assume Gamezone did indeed have a legal position, even if we don’t fully understand IP law, we can at least assume this based on the actions of the two companies.
It’s a stretch to say they were deliberately trying to create brand confusion because at the time they launched their crowdfunding campaign Heroquest, as a boardgame, no longer existed. The trademark was owned in the USA by an RPG publisher as part of the Glorantha setting and that company also sold their trademark to Hasbro (this is also why the original Kickstarter was taken down). Despite any other criticism people might have of Gamezone, they were very clear when they launched their crowdfunding that they weren’t Hasbro. They legally held the Trademark “Heroquest” in Spain and were entitled, whether you personally like it or not, to produce a boardgame called Heroquest, even one that looked like a then defunct game (especially so, in fact, seeing as they were trying to release it celebrate the 25th anniversary). They weren’t creating brand confusion because there was nothing else for it to be confused with.
I don’t think they’re trying to sound like they “scored big” with Hasbro because they don’t actually give ANY details at all about what the agreement with Hasbro entails. We don’t know whether they sold the trademark or whether the deal is something else.
Gamezone have not been particularly good at communicating and are not trusted by backers of Heroquest. Thus people are understandably not getting their hopes up. You are at least correct on that count.
