Game Creators Warn: New Tariffs Could Destroy Industry

The board game industry, known for being innovative, community-driven, and running on wafer-thin profit margins, is reeling from what many fear could be a financial hit that may put many companies out of business. Jamey Stegmaier, creator of games such as Scythe and Wingspan, revealed this week that he was devastated by the news of a new 54 percent tariff on goods made in China and imported to the U.S.

“This is both a personal admission and a necessary admission,” Stegmaier wrote in a blog post. “Last night I tried to work on a new game I’m brainstorming, but it’s tough to design 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 a designer whose games sell and ship worldwide, including to the country the tariff is being levied on, this was a shockingly candid, uncharacteristically personal confession—and one that has captured the game industry’s attention.

A Global Production Pipeline, Interrupted

The board game industry has long relied on manufacturers in China for producing its games. Other countries, particularly Germany (generally considered the spiritual home of modern tabletop gaming), have board game production facilities of their own. But for most types of games, if you need to get a high volume of printed cards, custom molded plastic miniatures, wooden tokens, die-cut game boards, specialty dice, etc., all made in one place, it’s China.

Producing all that domestically in the U.S., or elsewhere, is in theory possible. But it’s cost-prohibitive in practice. “I can remember once getting quoted $10 from a U.S. manufacturer,” Stegmaier said. “That was just for an empty game box, not a fully produced and packaged game.”

If the U.S. price for that empty box is ten dollars, then in comparison, you can take that $10 and produce, package, and ship a finished game in China. This is part of why this new tariff is such a disruptive event for the industry: most U.S. publishers, particularly small-to-medium-sized ones, operate on razor-thin margins, and the tariff adds costs to their entire business without warning or time for adjustment.

The message was similar of other industry leaders. Meredith Placko, CEO of Steve Jackson Games (publisher of Munchkin, among other well-known titles), published a blog post last week saying that her business was similarly reliant on Chinese manufacturing for the same reasons many others are.

“Some people ask, ‘Why not manufacture in the US?’ I wish we could,” she wrote. “But the infrastructure to support full-scale boardgame production—specialty dice making, die-cutting, custom plastic and wood components, etc.—doesn’t meaningfully exist here yet. I’ve gotten quotes. I’ve talked to factories. Even when the willingness is there, the equipment, labor, and timelines simply aren’t.”

This is why the new tariff represents, for Placko, “not just a policy change, but a seismic shift for the entire board game industry.”

Rob Daviau, co-founder of Restoration Games and designer of the Pandemic Legacy games, has also been sounding the alarm. Daviau has been a vocal critic of the tariffs on social media for months now, describing his recent interactions with designers, publishers, and distributors as “basically every business meeting is an existential crisis about our industry.”

In a recent interview with BoardGameWire, he predicted a “great collapse in the hobby gaming market in the US” if this were to happen.

Gamers May Suffer, Too

It’s not just publishers and designers who will be affected by this, of course. Gamers may start to see effects, too, in the months to come. Retail prices for new games are almost certain to rise. For their part, some companies will attempt to cut production costs to maintain prices and end up with lower-quality games. Others may simply decide to hold off on new releases entirely.

There’s also concern that this could affect local game stores, already under duress from internet competition. With more gamers staying in and playing games from their collection, many of which have unplayed titles on their “shelves of shame” that need playing, and more shopping online to save money, these brick-and-mortar shops might see their sales suffer, too.

“Within a few months, US companies will lose a lot of money and/or go out of business,” Stegmaier wrote. “And US citizens will suffer from extreme inflation.”

Temporary Fixes, Widespread Anger

One possible workaround would be to send shipments to a distributor in a non-U.S. country (say, a European country, where the tariff is much lower or nonexistent), and ship from there. But this is more a temporary workaround than a real solution, particularly for U.S. companies who are mostly doing business in the U.S. Stegmaier himself, for example, wrote that 65 percent of his sales come from the U.S. alone. That’s still a big hit, which explains some of the frustration around this.

Equally frustrating is the timing. For games that are still in design or early production, a publisher can at least adjust its projected budget. But for games that have already been produced and are en route from China, there’s nothing to be done. Chris Solis, who runs Solis Game Studio in California, tweeted about his situation: “I have 8,000 games leaving a factory in China this week and now need to scramble to cover the import bill.”

A Game Industry at a Crossroads

The Game Manufacturers Association (GAMA), the trade association that represents board game publishers, has been lobbying against the tariffs, among other measures. But so far, those attempts have not made a difference.

It’s hard to overstate the severity of the situation. Board game publishers have had to weather an event this massive exactly once before in recent memory, when the market collapsed in 2013–2014 (a less severe “great collapse”, if you will) after being flooded by games at its peak years.

This is an industry that has seen historic growth in recent years: according to the latest NPD group sales report, hobby game sales in the U.S. alone hit $887 million in 2018. This isn’t an industry that is used to just watching its bottom line get crushed.

For a hobby founded on bringing people together, creating something new, and having fun doing it, the future now looks to be on rather shaky ground.