US Board Game Industry Says It Was Blindsided by Tariff Hike

Board gaming is a creative and collaborative industry, with small margins, high stakes, and a penchant for reinventing itself. One thing it’s not known for? Resiliency to massive financial hits that could change the industry’s landscape in a few short months, wiping out a lot of small publishers that aren’t prepared to just lie down and die.

Which is why this week, Jamey Stegmaier, the designer of beloved and best-selling games like Scythe and Wingspan, was rattled when he heard about a newly announced 54 percent tariff on goods printed or manufactured in China that are shipped to the U.S. for sale or distribution.

“It’s really hard to create something for the future when that future looks so grim,” Stegmaier wrote in a blog post. “I mostly just found myself staring blankly at the enormity of the newly announced 54 percent tariff.”

The Designers Take Off Their Helmets

For someone who designs and publishes some of the most popular board games in the world, this was one of the more unusual and unguarded posts on Stegmaier’s blog. He’s long been one of the biggest names in the industry, an outspoken and active board-gaming advocate (his company has sponsored events and game nights across the country). But it’s not often you see a top-tier designer and publisher so candid about the existential threat they—and the rest of the industry—are facing shortly.

A Game Production Ecosystem, Interrupted

The U.S. has for years outsourced much of the production of board games to China. There are factories in Germany, of course, and Germany is the spiritual home of modern board and tabletop gaming. But if a game company wants custom plastic miniatures, wood tokens, printed cards, die-cut game boards, specialty dice, and more, China is where they all come from.

Producing those goods stateside isn’t an impossibility. Stegmaier says one U.S.-based manufacturer quoted him $10 to produce an empty standard game box. In China, the same $10 might produce and package a fully realized game for sale.

The great disparity between the prices is why this new tariff is such a huge problem. Operating on extremely tight margins as they are, most American board game publishers have little leeway for a sudden spike in expenses with no lead time to develop cost-saving measures and adjust their business models.

Other Big Names Chime In

Steve Jackson Games CEO Meredith Placko, whose company publishes classic games like Munchkin and more, agreed with Stegmaier’s assessment. She also writes that her company, like most game publishers, outsources manufacturing for reasons that go beyond price.

“Some people ask, ‘Why not manufacture in the US?’” Placko writes in her post. “I wish we could. But the infrastructure to support full-scale boardgame production — specialty dice making, die-cutting, custom plastic and wood components, etc., 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.”

It’s not just a logistical shift for Placko, but a foundational one. “This isn’t just a policy change,” she said. “It’s a seismic shift.”

Rob Daviau, the co-founder of Restoration Games and designer of the bestselling Pandemic Legacy, has been warning of precisely this sort of thing for months on social media. In an interview with BoardGameWire, he estimated that, if tariffs went into effect, there would be “a great collapse in the hobby gaming market in the US.”

Gamers Will Pay, Too

Retailers and consumers will likely feel the impact, as well. New games coming out in the future will be more expensive than they otherwise would have been if publishers don’t cut costs in other areas, which means a potential dip in quality. Some companies may not release new games at all. Others will raise their prices.

Gamers could either start digging through their own “shelves of shame” of unplayed games purchased in the past, or, in an attempt to avoid higher prices, could start buying their games from overseas online retailers instead of local brick-and-mortar stores.

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

Few Options, Building Panic

The one option that some publishers are looking into, taking a cue from European publishers who won’t be affected by the tariff, is working with non-U.S.-based distributors to process the shipments. But, as Stegmaier points out, that still wouldn’t necessarily make much difference for his company, as 65 percent of their sales are domestic.

Stegmaier is lucky in a way that the games affected were in an early stage of production, so he can at least have a meaningful conversation about the numbers with his printers and manufacturers. But for the games that have been produced, completed, and are in the process of shipping from Chinese factories, there’s no recourse for avoiding the new tariff. “It’s just…tariff,” wrote Chris Solis, head of Solis Game Studio in California. “I have 8,000 games leaving a factory in China this week and now need to scramble to cover the import bill.”

The larger industry response to the tariffs

The Game Manufacturers Association (GAMA), the trade association for board game publishers, has been fighting against the tariffs for some time now, organizing letters to Congress and testifying at hearings. So far, they have not seen any relief on that front.