Industry Group GAMA Fights Tariffs With Limited Results

Tariffs are taking a toll on many industries, but few sectors have been hit as hard or as unexpectedly as board games. Jamey Stegmaier, one of the most celebrated board game designers in the business and the creative force behind games like Scythe and Wingspan, announced this week that he was “livid” over a recently imposed 54 percent tariff on goods made in China for import to the US.

In a no-holds-barred blog post, Stegmaier wrote, “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 a designer whose work is among the most popular in the world, this was uncharacteristically raw and truly felt across the industry.

An Industry Built to Order in China

The modern board game industry, in America at least, is designed to make China its primary manufacturer. Germany has board game factories too, as does England, and Germany can claim to be the spiritual home of the modern tabletop renaissance. But when it comes to the full package for board games, publishers almost universally turn to China: printed cards, sure, but also custom plastic miniatures, wooden tokens, die-cut boards, and specialty dice.

There are reasons this has happened. It’s possible to make all those things in the US, but for the most part, not cost-effectively. Stegmaier recounted how a US-based manufacturer he’d worked with for years gave him a $10 quote for a standard, empty game box. “With that $10, I can have an entire game made and shrink-wrapped in China,” Stegmaier writes.

It’s this cost differential that’s been the biggest source of shock and frustration in the community now that the tariff has been announced. Most publishers, especially the small and mid-sized ones that dominate the industry, work with very thin profit margins. A tariff with immediate effect means no time to adjust for smaller companies.

Other Industry Voices

Meredith Placko, the CEO of long-running company Steve Jackson Games (Munchkin, Hacker, Phoenix), hit similar notes. Placko’s company produces games overseas for all the same reasons as the rest of the industry.

“I get it,” Placko wrote in a recent statement. “Manufacturing in the US is important, and we all want to support our fellow Americans.” But the domestic infrastructure just isn’t there. “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 Placko, who grew up on the hobby and worked in her family’s business since age 14, it’s as much an existential moment as an economic one. “This isn’t just a policy change,” she wrote. “This is a seismic shift for an industry that’s produced record-breaking games each of the last four years.”

Rob Daviau, the co-founder of Restoration Games, designer of the Pandemic Legacy series, and one of the most prominent names in the industry, has been sounding the alarm for some time. On his social media accounts, Daviau has described almost every recent business meeting as “an existential crisis about our industry,” and he has been raising the alarm about tariffs for months.

In an interview with BoardGameWire, Daviau said that if tariffs like the ones the industry is now dealing with were put into place, he could “easily see a great collapse in the hobby gaming market in the US.”

Gamers May Feel the Pain, Too

Of course, the impact of these tariffs won’t stop with publishers and designers. Gamers themselves could soon be in for a world of hurt. Retail prices of new games will almost certainly rise, and some publishers may make cost-cutting moves to avoid price hikes. Gamers should expect, at best, a rough-and-ready feel to new games, and, at worst, companies scaling back on planned releases altogether.

Concern has also been raised about the impact on local game stores, which have struggled in recent years against online retailers and streaming. If gamers look to their existing collections (many of which will include, as fans ruefully call it, a “shelf of shame” of unplayed games) or purchase online in search of better prices, local stores could face a major hit.

“I think within a few months, US companies will lose a lot of money and/or go out of business,” Stegmaier wrote in his initial post. “And US citizens will suffer from extreme inflation.”

Potential Loopholes and Deadline Frustration

Publishers can try to find potential loopholes, such as having shipments go through non-US distributors, since European markets, for example, are not as heavily impacted. But this doesn’t work as an actual solution for US-based companies: as Stegmaier points out, 65 percent of his company’s sales are US-based, and those will be feeling the hit.

Even more galling for publishers has been the deadline for the tariffs. For games that are still in the design or even early production phase, they can adjust budgets and absorb, or shift, the cost. But for games that are already produced and in the process of shipping from China, there’s no escaping the tariff. Chris Solis, head of Solis Game Studio, based in California, wrote, “I have 8,000 games leaving a factory in China this week and now need to scramble to cover the import bill.”

A Hopeless Horizon?

The industry as a whole has largely stayed quiet on the tariffs. The Game Manufacturers Association (GAMA), a trade association representing publishers and manufacturers, has been lobbying for tariffs to be limited and as long as possible, but to no avail as of yet.

As for how the industry will weather this storm, it’s early days yet, and impossible to know. But for an industry founded on playing, on joy, on community, it’s hard to see this new policy as anything but an existential threat.