Import Bill Panic Hits Small Game Publishers After Tariff Change

For the board game industry, known for its creativity, sense of community, and famously low profit margins, a recent announcement feels like a body blow that could threaten its future. Designers and publishers are struggling to work out what it might mean, both for their own companies and for the hobby they love.

In a series of posts on social media this week, designer Jamey Stegmaier, creator of hit games such as Scythe and Wingspan, revealed his frustration and confusion at the news that a 54 percent tariff is to be applied to all goods manufactured in China and imported into the United States.

“I’ve been doing some numbers,” Stegmaier wrote 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.” For the creator of some of the world’s bestselling games, it was an uncharacteristically personal and even raw statement from a designer typically reserved on social media. It also rang true with all those in the industry.

A Global Supply Chain, Severed

Steelmier’s blog post revealed something many in the industry already know: Most American board game publishers send their goods to China to be manufactured. It’s not only China, either. Germany has a number of board game production facilities; it is the spiritual home of modern tabletop gaming, after all. But in a country with fewer barriers to Chinese imports, it’s often just faster and easier for the same manufacturer to handle the entire production process. That means everything from printed cards to custom plastic miniatures, wooden tokens, custom die-cut boards, and specialty dice.

None of those things, designers and publishers freely admit, are realistically made in the United States. You can find U.S.-based manufacturers that claim to do it, but the cost is staggeringly higher. As Stegmaier recalls, the first time he got a quote from a domestic manufacturer, he was offered a price of $10 for a standard empty game box. In China, he could have produced and boxed a whole game for the same price.

It is precisely because of this that the newly announced tariff has such destabilizing potential for the industry. The vast majority of U.S. board game publishers—especially the small to medium-sized ones most at risk—are working on small profit margins to start. This kind of massive cost increase, with no lead time to adjust, is sending ripples of shock through the industry.

Industry Voices

In a recent post, Meredith Placko, CEO of Steve Jackson Games, the design studio behind games such as Munchkin, posted a similar statement. Placko’s business, like Stegmaier’s and every other game company in the United States, is built around the same central premise as to why they outsource to overseas manufacturers.

“I get a lot of questions like this,” Placko wrote, referring to the idea of why she doesn’t produce her products in the United States. “I wish I could say yes! We are American game manufacturers, after all. But, until our government figures out that full-scale boardgame production is a thing we care about in this country, it isn’t going to happen.”

Placko has been running the company for some time and is used to working with overseas manufacturers. Still, she seemed taken aback at how destabilizing the change could be. “When tariffs like this are discussed in the news,” she wrote, “it’s easy to feel like ‘big business’ will absorb the hit with minimal impact. But from where I sit, this is not just a policy change. This is a seismic shift for American manufacturing, American workers, and the games industry.”

Rob Daviau, co-founder of Restoration Games and designer of the wildly popular Pandemic Legacy, had also been warning on social media for some time that the changes could be devastating. He has been posting on Twitter and Facebook for months, as every new business meeting or industry conference, he says, is “an existential crisis about our industry.” In an interview with BoardGameWire, Daviau said, “It’s going to be a great collapse in the hobby gaming market in the US if something like this ever comes to pass.”

Consumers and Retailers Also Hurt

As with many business discussions, the end consumers are not being forgotten in the tumult. Gamers may also find their experience with the hobby changing, for the worse. Retail prices for new games will almost certainly have to increase. In some cases, companies may attempt to absorb the blow, which would mean they’d cut costs elsewhere, likely in the quality of the games’ production. In others, publishers will simply have to scale back how much new material they release.

The policy may also hurt local game stores. Already facing competition from online sales and general e-commerce, these independent brick-and-mortar shops might find themselves squeezed by shoppers who, if they buy new games, instead purchase online, or choose to simply dip into their existing collections instead. (Fan groups have dubbed these games on the “shelves of shame,” the horde of unplayed games people tend to accumulate.) This is the prospect Stegmaier refers to in his warning that US citizens “will suffer from extreme inflation.”

Some workarounds have been discussed. Some publishers have already made a habit of sending shipments through a distributor in a non-U.S. market, such as Europe, which is less affected by the tariffs. As Daviau points out, though, that doesn’t change the math for an American company. As Stegmaier also said in an interview, 65 percent of his company’s business takes place in the United States. If your game is produced in China and the shipping containers head to the United States, the tariff is going to apply.

Many have also mentioned the fact that while publishers with games still in the design stage, or early production, can at least budget and plan for the extra costs, games that have already been manufactured in China and are in transit or on the sea can’t do anything about it. Chris Solis, head of California-based Solis Game Studio, revealed his current frustration on Twitter: “I have 8,000 games leaving a factory in China this week and now need to scramble to cover the import bill.”

The Industry in the Crosshairs

The Game Manufacturers Association (GAMA), a trade organization that advocates on behalf of board game publishers and manufacturers, has also taken a stand. GAMA has been in contact with the White House to ask for an exemption, to no avail so far.

In a sector known for its sense of community and with often more creative individuals than corporate executives, it’s hard to think of a more depressing or precarious time to be in the hobby game business.