What Game Publishers Are Saying About The Tariffs

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Many tabletop game companies have already spoken out about the recent US tariffs and how they will be affected. I will add to this thread as and when I hear of new statements.

Game Manufacturer's Association (GAMA) -- "The latest imposition of a 54% tariff on products from China by the administration is dire news for the tabletop industry and the broader US economy. As an industry highly dependent on producing goods overseas and importing them into the US, this policy will have devastating consequences. Tariffs are essentially taxes on consumers, not on the countries where the products are produced. Publishers will be forced to pass these costs along to their customers or face the prospect of ceasing operations. Nearly a third of all US consumer goods — including clothes, food products, appliances, cars, and entertainment items like games — are imported. This means higher prices across the board as all these products will need to increase prices to compensate for these new Trump Taxes... This one-two punch is likely to put many of our members out of business or force them to downsize and lay off employees to survive."

Steve Jackson Games -- "Some people ask, "Why not manufacture in the U.S.?" I wish we could. 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. We aren't the only company facing this challenge. The entire board game industry is having very difficult conversations right now. For some, this might mean simplifying products or delaying launches. For others, it might mean walking away from titles that are no longer economically viable. And, for what I fear will be too many, it means closing down entirely."

EN Publishing -- "We at EN Publishing have four Kickstarters fulfilling (Voidrunner's Codex, Gate Pass Gazette Annual 2024, Monstrous Menagerie II, and Split the Hoard) which have been paid for, including shipping, by the customer already. Two of those (Voidrunner and Split the Hoard) involve boxes and components, which meant they were manufactured in China. The other two are printed in the EU (Lithuania, specifically). All four inventory shipments will arrive in the US after the tariffs come in. We haven't yet worked out exactly what that means, but it won't be pleasant."

Chaosium -- "First, we will certainly need to raise the price of our books and board games. We simply cannot afford to absorb the cost of these additional tariffs. We wish it were otherwise, but that’s just the reality of the situation. Second, this may result in delays. We need to look at potentially new manufacturing locations, new supply chains, etc. This may delay manufacturing of some anticipated products until we know how to deal with the changing environment."

Kobold Press -- "The short and sweet reality is that each hardcover printed outside the US will cost from 20% to 54% more to produce, and like a lot of TTRPG companies, we simply can’t absorb that tax hike and stay in business. The Steve Jackson Games statement makes it abundantly clear; while tariffs can be part of a national strategy, this is a very high, very sudden tax hike for a printing industry that doesn’t have a lot of US capacity. There’s no way to “just move” these projects to the US. So, prices are going up to allow game publishers to pay the new import taxes. There’s very little we can do about it. If you are unhappy with the price hikes, we strongly recommend that you contact you representatives in Congress."

The Arcane Library (Shadowdark)-- "The current tariffs, severe though they are, are not going to impact pricing or deliverabilty of [The Western Reaches]. We planned for this in our margins and can safely absorb the costs."

Evil Baby Entertainment (The Broken Empires) -- "Those of us living in the U.S. know that a whole bunch of new tariffs (read: taxes) have been levied on many imports. There’s no question that I’m going to get hit with at least an extra 20% tax on every product that comes in from my overseas manufacturers. I have heard horror stories about other Kickstarter creators who charged backers additional fees to cover such unanticipated costs. Rest assured: my backers will NOT be charged any additional fees. I will eat the cost of the tariffs myself. Not gonna lie, that’s gonna hurt — but we had a deal, and I have no intention of altering it in the face of this unwelcome development."

Stonemaier Games -- "65% of our sales are in the US, so this will take a heavy toll on Stonemaier Games. We’re fortunate that yesterday’s launch product, Tokaido, arrived in the US just before the original 20% tariffs took effect. We won’t be so fortunate when Vantage–a project I’ve worked on for 8 years–ships from China in May and June. I’m not sure yet what we’ll do about that... Manufacturing the types of games we make is not an option in the US. People have tried, even recently. Even if a company wanted to invest in the infrastructure to try to make it happen, the short-term losses from the tariffs will eat too deep into their cash to make it possible (plus, many of the machines used to make games are also made in China, so you’ll pay a huge tariff even if you invest in the machines needed to make games in the US). Plus, many publishers currently have print runs in production in China–it simply isn’t possible to change course for those print runs. So with costs (tariff taxes) due to skyrocket in a few months, prices will also significantly increase."

Coyote & Crow -- "Osiyo, friends. Not to make this all about Coyote & Crow, but yesterday's news from the US Gov may have some devastating impacts on C&C Games as a whole. A cumulative 54% import tariff on goods from China will essentially kill my company (and the games industry). Sadly, it's partially our own hobby's fault that we're in the worst position to weather this storm. For years, board games have operated on razor thin margins because many fans are resistant to price hikes. But even with the amazingly generous and awesome folks that support Coyote & Crow, we won't survive this. I'm not going to ask anyone to "dig deep" or to in any way stretch themselves to support us. We're /all/ going to be in bad shape in the coming months and years if this plays out like it look like it will. Instead, I'm going to do what Natives always do: we adapt, survive, and carry on. What that exactly means in this situation, I don't know, but I have ideas and in the coming months, I'll be working on those behind the scenes. For now, we have a "fair" amount of inventory of existing games here in the US and Canada, we'll continue working with our digital partners, and we'll be pushing on with Ahu Tiiko - if nothing else to at least get you the PDF. The fate of the print edition is up in the air for the moment, but I will get back to you and all of the backers as my options start to come into focus. I hope you all are planning for your own situations as best you can. We're going to need community to get through this. Stiyu (stay strong)."
 

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Now, crowd-funding, as I understand it, is essentially people pre-paying for goods in order to enable the company to produce the products.
That is something of a bone of contention among many people. I've only participated in Kickstarters run by established companies like CMON, PEG Inc., and Free League, and I tend to view it as a pre-ordering system. But I think the fine print on most Kickstarters say something about it being a risk and there's no guarantee.

He has another post explaining his stance and it's also terrible and his stance is not political (it totally is). RPGElite YT is doing the same act. The dishonesty and lengths gone to not appear "political" are getting old...thanks for the link. I learned quite a bit from the commenters, they had some good info and added clarity.
For a lot of people, it's only political when it's something they don't like. I watched RPG Elite's video about not having anything to do with Mongoose from here on out, and he didn't spell it out his reasons other than a vague statement about keeping politics out of gaming.
 

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That is something of a bone of contention among many people. I've only participated in Kickstarters run by established companies like CMON, PEG Inc., and Free League, and I tend to view it as a pre-ordering system. But I think the fine print on most Kickstarters say something about it being a risk and there's no guarantee.
Crowdfunding is not a pre-order system. You are an investor, not a customer, and because of that you're accepting a risk that the project you're investing in may fail. If it really was a pre-order there would be a lot more legal options to use when something fails to delivery, which is why so few kickscammers wind up being forced to do refunds.
 

He has another post explaining his stance and it's also terrible and his stance is not political (it totally is). RPGElite YT is doing the same act. The dishonesty and lengths gone to not appear "political" are getting old...thanks for the link. I learned quite a bit from the commenters, they had some good info and added clarity.
Politics and economy are inseparable. Both impact each other throughout the spectrum.
 

Now, crowd-funding, as I understand it, is essentially people pre-paying for goods in order to enable the company to produce the products.

But is it usual to over-produce to the tune of 4x? Wouldn't that be unethical?
Overproduction is absolutely standard and normal for every Kickstarter of course. The whole idea is to leverage preorders to, well, kickstart the production run. I have no industry experience so I don’t know what the usual amount of overproduction is.

But bear in mind a couple of things. First is that the costs tend to be front loaded. You need to pay for art, design, mould making, playtesting, go through the whole drafting/approval process etc before you can even think about printing, and kickstarter money is often required to make this happen. Second is that it’d be wrong to assume that all the money used to pay for the print run was kickstarter money. It’s very likely, even probable, that the company would kick in cash of its own in order to print extra copies over and above what was required to fulfill commitments to backers. I mean, they want a bunch of extra copies to go into the retail system after all, so why not print these and the backer copies all at once?
 

Overproduction is absolutely standard and normal for every Kickstarter of course. The whole idea is to leverage preorders to, well, kickstart the production run. I have no industry experience so I don’t know what the usual amount of overproduction is.
OK, I didn't know that overproduction was normal.
But bear in mind a couple of things. First is that the costs tend to be front loaded. You need to pay for art, design, mould making, playtesting, go through the whole drafting/approval process etc before you can even think about printing, and kickstarter money is often required to make this happen. Second is that it’d be wrong to assume that all the money used to pay for the print run was kickstarter money. It’s very likely, even probable, that the company would kick in cash of its own in order to print extra copies over and above what was required to fulfill commitments to backers. I mean, they want a bunch of extra copies to go into the retail system after all, so why not print these and the backer copies all at once?
Yeah, I understand overhead. But the question I was asking, was that the blog post claims that the 400% was funded by Kickstarter.

So I guess the adjusted question is: how much overproduction with crowd-funding is considered standard? Obviously, you ant a company to remain in business, that's why crowdfunding evolved, but what is the 'usual practice'?
 

So I guess the adjusted question is: how much overproduction with crowd-funding is considered standard? Obviously, you ant a company to remain in business, that's why crowdfunding evolved, but what is the 'usual practice'?
There isn't one. Every project will overproduce based on the publisher's expectations about sales to non-backers, balanced against their ability to tie up money and warehouse space until the extras sell down. There are usually volume discounts involved that may encourage making more rather than less as well. And even the most experienced and savvy company will occasionally guess very wrong about the numbers and winding up either having to do a hasty reprint as they run out too soon, or sitting on product for much longer than desired - which where some of those seemingly random deep discount sales stem from. There were a bunch of savagely discounted Sentinel Comics RPG core books online - I think at Half Price Books? - a year or two back that might be the result of an overrun. FRG probably has the kind of connections that would make moving them that way relatively easy.
 



To be flat bleeping honest, you're a gambler. If you can't think of money spent on a kickstarter as gone, it's healthier for you not to spend at all.
I mean, realistically kickstarting games has the same relationship to preordering them as Uber does to taxis. It is functionally the same thing, but gets away with being less regulated by claiming to be different.

I'm a little more sympathetic to the KS case, but it's absolutely trading on the consumer perception that it's the same as a preorder.
 


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