Effects of tariffs on game sales (e.g. US/Canada shipments) (No Politics!)

[FitzTheRuke]

I hate to be a doomsayer, but I think we are in deep, deep trouble.

As far as I can gather (and I've been looking into this as a Canadian retailer of Comics and Games):

Anything PRINT in NA is in for a very tough time. If I am informed correctly, the USA cannot produce print product in colour (in any real quantity) without going to Canada or China. They have facilities to print B&W paperback books, but not the kind of quality that we expect of RPGs, or even comics.

And what little they CAN print of quality full-colour books, they need access to Canadian or Mexican pulp & paper. (I've heard mixed reports from none to only one producer of paper in the continental US). No matter how true my information is, it seems clear that their ability to do so will be limited, and expensive.

In Canada, we are faced with the likelihood that we will be struck TWICE with tariffs on Game and Comic products. Possibly more times. Not just because they are often printed here, sent to the 'states, and then sent back to us, but because they are US products that are made using Canadian resources. The publishers will be charged more to manufacture them, which will result in increased MSRPs, and then we will be tariffed on them as US goods when they come into Canada. AND our economy is likely to collapse, which will kill our dollar, so the exchange will also raise prices.

We are pretty seriously in trouble.

BUT... to answer the OP's question: The MM is already in warehouses. It's "safe". You shouldn't have to worry about that book. Worry about everything that isn't actually printed yet. That stuff might never even happen.

We're in for some troubling times.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

Just when through the list of products that Canada will be putting tariffs on. Can see anything about books but games are a category. The list is extremely long, so I might have missed something: List of products from the United States subject to 25 per cent tariffs effective February 4, 2025 - Canada.ca

While not unimportant, our retaliatory tariffs are of less import than the increased cost of production that all of the products are about to face. I mean, that's going to be a big deal to ME, but we are faced with the very likely prospect that the products will no longer be profitable to the big US corporations that pay to make them. In which case, they WON'T make them, or if they do, they'll jack the price so high that no one will want to buy them.

 

[Belen]

I hate to be a doomsayer, but I think we are in deep, deep trouble.

As far as I can gather (and I've been looking into this as a Canadian retailer of Comics and Games):

Anything PRINT in NA is in for a very tough time. If I am informed correctly, the USA cannot produce print product in colour (in any real quantity) without going to Canada or China. They have facilities to print B&W paperback books, but not the kind of quality that we expect of RPGs, or even comics.

Not true. There are several large printers in the US that do excellent color prints. A large number of medical journals are published in the US with color pictures, for example.

I work with a few large volume US-based printers.

 

[Warpiglet-7]

I buy lots of minis…I am wondering about how much this will hit prices since I know a lot of them are made in china.

I mean I am getting fleeced so bad already…don’t know how much I will notice…but I also wonder how long it will be in place vs be used as a bargaining tactic. We shall see.

But now more then ever we need games and toys damn it!

 

[kronovan]

What I'd like to know is if there'll be a difference between digital and print?
For some time I've been only buying print for the CRB and on rare occassions, for a player companion/handbook . Being a Canadian, going forward I'm for sure going to focus on buying print & digita that are from a Canadian, UK or Euro source. That's not a biggie for me, because I have near to complete libraries (print & digital) for my favorite RPGs. And conveniently enough, those that I don't are mostly UK publishers - Mongoose is going to be a big winner for my $s.

I'm guessing that even for digital, I'm going to have to buy direct from publishers to avoid getting dinged twice by online retailers like drivethru. That's also not a biggie, because I'm less than pleased with drivethru's policy changes after they were bought by roll20. And speaking of VTT's, so glad I ditched roll20 to focus on just Foundry & Fantasy Grounds with their 1-time, perpetual licenses. An annual pro level roll20 sub was already steep for me - can't imagine how ridiculously expensive it'd be for me now.

 

[Belen]

I am not too worried in the short term although raw materials costs are going to be awful for my print suppliers if this goes before 3 months. The just in time inventory models are what may break us first. No one carries sufficient supply anymore.

 

[Belen]

What I'd like to know is if there'll be a difference between digital and print?
For some time I've been only buying print for the CRB and on rare occassions, for a player companion/handbook . Being a Canadian, going forward I'm for sure going to focus on buying print & digita that are from a Canadian, UK or Euro source. That's not a biggie for me, because I have near to complete libraries (print & digital) for my favorite RPGs. And conveniently enough, those that I don't are mostly UK publishers - Mongoose is going to be a big winner for my $s.

I'm guessing that even for digital, I'm going to have to buy direct from publishers to avoid getting dinged twice by online retailers like drivethru. That's also not a biggie, because I'm less than pleased with drivethru's policy changes after they were bought by roll20. And speaking of VTT's, so glad I ditched roll20 to focus on just Foundry & Fantasy Grounds with their 1-time, perpetual licenses. An annual pro level roll20 sub was already steep for me - can't imagine how ridiculously expensive it'd be for me now.

What changes did they make? I did not see anything about Drivethru changes.

 

[kronovan]

What changes did they make? I did not see anything about Drivethru changes.

Firstly, drivethru support requests are now handled by the roll20 support team. Since that's happened I've noticed a decline in the quality of responses to my queries. Also...I was told by a developer that adapted a ruleset for a competing VTT, that publishers that also retail their PDFs on drivethru, forgo a bonus (paid as a %) on their sales revenue if they publish their product for a competing VTT. They still mainain it if they publish their products for roll20 though. That made it difficult for him to get one of the publishers for the ruleset he adapted, to agree to let their content be used.

I will qualify that I haven't investigated that any further than what the developer told me, but I didn't see any reason for him to not be telling the truth. Especially since it resulted in a lengthy delay in him providing ruleset content like an online reference book. Eventually he found a publisher that didn't care about the loss in bonus revenue - just really wanted to see their content available to GMs and players playing online.

 

[TwiceBorn2]

I'm Canadian, and I've noticed that many Free League, Cubicle 7, Chaosium, and Edge Studio products I've purchased in recent years from Canadian retailers were printed in Lithuania (though some Chaosium products were printed in China and Poland, as well)... so perhaps they come directly to us from those countries?

Regardless, I've already drastically reduced my D&D purchases in recent years (due to perceived drop in bang for buck in the face of rising prices for products that, IMO, are of lesser quality compared to those of the aforementioned publishers). The tariff wars will just accelerate that trend for me.

But what can I say... a lot of the tariffs the US is imposing on Canada and Mexico will also hit US consumers hard (even without the retaliatory tariffs). I don't think much of the American electorate understands this.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

Not true. There are several large printers in the US that do excellent color prints. A large number of medical journals are published in the US with color pictures, for example.

I work with a few large volume US-based printers.

Okay. Glad to hear it. I was told the above by US-based comic book publishers, but perhaps they mean "at a reasonable cost for their purposes" and have exaggerated it to "at all". I'm honestly not sure.

Do you think your printer can handle a massive increase in demand? And, do you know where they get their paper?