From China to Crisis: Game Studios Slam Tariff Spike

The board game industry is taking a hard financial hit that could spell disaster for the future of an industry known for being innovative, collaborative, and operating on relatively slim profit margins. Designer Jamey Stegmaier, one of the most prominent game designers of all time and the man behind industry juggernauts Scythe and Wingspan, shared his deep concerns this week following the announcement of a new 54 percent tariff on all goods imported to the US from China.

“I just can’t bring myself to care about making new games today,” Stegmaier wrote in a heartfelt post on his blog. “Last night I tried to work on a new game I’m brainstorming, but it’s 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.”

Steamaier is one of the biggest names in the business, but for him and most game designers, this is personal. The post—admitting to feeling powerless in the face of macroeconomic policy—was strikingly personal and introspective for a designer with a long list of the most globally popular titles, and it wasn’t just him.

A Global Production Pipeline Faces Headwinds

The industry is, simply put, built around products manufactured in China. Of course, other countries have board game factories too—Germany, for one, the spiritual home of modern tabletop gaming—but China is far and away the default for overall production. Not just printed cards but full, custom plastic miniatures and wooden tokens, die-cut game boards, and specialty dice too.

It’s not that these things can’t be made domestically. It’s that the entire production apparatus for doing so at a viable price and quality point just doesn’t exist in the United States. Stegmaier told of getting a $10 quote from an American manufacturer on, wait for it, an empty game box. A plain empty game box, that “we’d be shipping back to us empty from China.” $10, for the domestic production of a box that’s shipped back from China to be filled. Compare that with the quote Stegmaier says he got to produce, package, and ship a finished game from China: $10.

It’s little wonder the industry is reeling. Publishers, especially smaller and medium-sized publishers, work on thin margins at the best of times. Suddenly, new costs in the tens of percentages with no lead time to adjust to them have them scrambling.

Leaders in the Industry Weigh In

Meredith Placko, CEO of Steve Jackson Games (Munchkin, Hero Quest), posted something similar to Stegmaier this week. The gist was the same: the board game industry, as in many industries, depends on overseas manufacturing for a combination of historic, practical, and economic reasons.

“It’s a question I get a lot,” Placko wrote. “ ‘Why not manufacture in the US?’ The answer is we absolutely would, if it were viable to do so. But the infrastructure to support full-scale boardgame production—specialty dice making, die-cutting, custom plastic and wood components—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.”

For her, it’s more than just shuffling the supply chain; it’s a fundamental change to the foundations of how things are done. This is, as she put it, “not just a policy change” but “a seismic shift in the underpinnings of the industry itself.”

Rob Daviau, co-founder of Restoration Games and designer of Pandemic Legacy, a big name in the hobby scene, has long been vocal on social media to the point of alarm. He’s been reporting for months that almost every business meeting these days in the industry amounts to “an existential crisis about our industry.” Daviau has for months been warning in interviews, like one with BoardGameWire this week, that if tariffs on Chinese-made goods in the tens of percent ever come to pass in earnest, the US hobby gaming market will be forced into a “great collapse.”

Price Pass-Through and Retail Ripples

All of this will impact consumers as well. Prices on new releases are going to go up. Some publishers will try to absorb costs by cutting production values to maintain existing retail prices, which means worse games. Others will scale back new releases entirely. This last has serious concerns for local game stores already fighting against an internet-empowered paradigm shift for brick and mortar retail: if gamers can get better prices online or turn to their “shelves of shame” of unplayed games from prior years, game stores are in for a rough ride 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.”

Workarounds? Not Really

You can get around it by routing products through a non-US distributor, but that’s not the same for a company that depends on domestic sales. As Stegmaier points out in his blog, 65 percent of Fir volume happens in the US. A workaround is a nice dream, but in this context is a PR stunt.

Perhaps more annoyingly, this all comes with no lead time for companies to adjust to it. There’s room to re-budget for games that are still in the pipeline or early on in production, but any games already manufactured and on their way from China won’t be able to avoid this tariff, one way or another.

Chris Solis, owner and head designer of the Solis Game Studio in California, took to social media to detail his frustration, noting that he had 8,000 games leaving a Chinese factory this week and had to “rearrange my life” to make an extra payment to cover the new tariff.

Industry Voices Lament

GAMA, the Game Manufacturers Association, which represents the collective interests of board game publishers, has already put out several communications objecting to the policy and lobbied members of Congress against it. So far to little avail.

The future for the board game industry, one of the fastest growing parts of the games industry in the US and one of the largest in the world, now looks, at least in the short-term, very grim.