Game Makers Warn of Inflation and Shutdowns Under Tariff Strain

The board game industry is an innovative, creative, and tight-knit community of hobbyists that mostly doesnt make that much money. This is why, when news hit this week that all goods imported from China to the U.S. will be subject to a 54 percent tariff going forward, plenty of those in the industry are responding with horror and despair about the future of their livelihoods.

Designer Jamey Stegmaier, creator of recent hits like Scythe and Wingspan, put those feelings most succinctly in a blog post this week. Last night I tried to work on a new game I9m brainstorming, Stegmaier wrote, but it9s tough to create something for the future when that future looks so grim. I mostly just found myself staring blankly at the enormity of the newly announced 54 percent tariff.

For the creator of some of the most popular tabletop games in the world, that was a surprisingly personal and raw statement. It was also one that many industry professionals have shared.

The Who, the What, and the Where of the Modern Board Game

Americans buy a lot of their board games from China. There are other places, most notably Germany (the spiritual home of the modern tabletop gaming industry), that also have facilities that produce board games. In Germany and elsewhere, most companies outsource the work of making printed cards. But if youre looking for custom plastic miniatures, wooden tokens and standees, die-cut boards and cardboard cutaways, and specialty dice, its still usually cheaper, faster, and more reliable to go to China.

At least it used to be. Its possible to have these components produced domestically, but, in almost all cases, not at a cost that a consumer goods company can make sense of. Stegmaier noted in his post that he was once quoted a price of $10 by an American manufacturer for a standard empty game box. With that same $10, you can have a whole game made and boxed in China.

Its easy to see why a sudden increase in the cost of manufacturing without any lead time or ability to spread it out over old inventory would be disruptive for an industry made up largely of small to medium publishers with very slim profit margins.

Others in the industry are speaking out as well. Meredith Placko, CEO of Steve Jackson Games (publisher of Munchkin, among other titles), has been just as frank as Stegmaier about how reliant they are on overseas manufacturing.

There are a lot of questions, Placko wrote in a recent post on the matter. Some people ask, Why not manufacture in the US? I wish we could. But the infrastructure to support full-scale boardgame production 6specialty dice making, die-cutting, custom plastic and wood components 6doesnt meaningfully exist here yet. I9ve gotten quotes. I9ve talked to factories. Even when the willingness is there, the equipment, labor, and timelines simply arent.

For Placko, the problem isnt just a matter of business calculations, but one that strikes at the root of the game industry. I also am grieving this as more than a policy change, Placko wrote. This is a seismic shift in how our industry exists.

Rob Daviau, co-founder of Restoration Games and designer of Pandemic Legacy, one of the recent breakout hits in the board game industry, has been a strong, outspoken voice about the new tariff as well, and has been vocal for months about the state of his industry on social media. I have had pretty much every business meeting with publishers over the last 6 months become an existential crisis about our industry, Daviau recently tweeted. We are in big, big trouble.

Gamers and Retailers Will Pay Too

If publishers are suffering, gamers could soon be suffering too. New games will almost certainly cost more at retail. At the same time, if companies feel pressure to keep price points low and have limited control over their overseas production chains, the result could be games being made more cheaply. (Theres already a strain of game journalism devoted to calling out tabletop games with production values that dont match their retail prices.) Some companies might also simply release fewer new games, waiting out the situation.

Theres also the impact on local game stores, already struggling to compete against online sales, that could be affected as well. Faced with the option of either playing more games they already own, many of which are unplayed games from the last decade, sitting on what are known in the community as shelves of shame 6or buying online to get better prices, some fans might start skipping the local brick-and-mortar store.

Aside from a few months of pain, Stegmaier predicted, US companies will lose a lot of money and/or go out of business. And US citizens will suffer from extreme inflation.

Workarounds and Ironic Timings

Theres some irony in that statement from Stegmaier, who, with the small volume of American sales for the games his company typically produces, might be able to make workarounds that larger publishers without the same options cant. Publishing games via European distributors is an option, given that tariffs on EU goods are not nearly as high. But, as Stegmaier noted, We sell 65 percent of our product in the United States. Its still going to hurt.

Others in the industry, such as Chris Solis of the California-based Solis Game Studio, arent even in that fortunate position.

I have 8,000 games leaving a factory in China this week, Solis told the gaming site BoardGameWire, and now need to scramble to cover the import bill.

Its the Game Manufacturers Association (GAMA) that represents board game publishers in trade and other matters. According to its website, its been actively lobbying against the tariffs, to no avail so far.

The Last Word on an Uncertain Future

As is always the case in a community like the modern board gaming industry, its only a matter of time before people start bringing up how industry professionals should not be complaining when video game developers dont make that much more money, or some such. But with hobby game prices in the range that they are, its hard to imagine this new tariff not having a severe effect on how and what people play in this country.