Photo: Charlie Hall/Polygon
President Donald Trump unveiled sweeping tariffs on foreign goods Wednesday, with the reportedly “arbitrary” levies exceeding 60% in some cases. While the tariffs were long expected, one business analyst told CNBC that the administration’s plans are “worse than the worst case scenario.” With most tabletop games produced overseas, many in China, the impact could be devastating. Developers and publishers are sounding the alarm.
The games you play are likely to become much more expensive. Nearly 20 organizations that Polygon spoke with said that profits will be severely impacted. Many said jobs will be lost, companies shuttered, and games that have been in development for years may simply never come to market.
Tabletop gaming, which includes board games, card games, and role-playing games, has enjoyed a roughly two-decade renaissance brought on in part by crowdfunding. Nevertheless, much of the industry consists of individual creators, sole proprietors, small family businesses, and remote teams of creatives. The Game Manufacturers Association (GAMA) said Thursday that the impact of these tariffs will be nothing short of a disaster.
“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,” GAMA said in a news release. “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,” it continued. “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.”
It went on to add that as prices rise domestically, discretionary spending will necessarily decrease, further constraining consumer spending on games.
“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,” GAMA concluded.
The U.S. has a very small industrial capacity for manufacturing tabletop games — especially board games. That was made clear in a statement issued Thursday by Steve Jackson Games CEO Meredith Placko.
“Some people ask, ‘Why not manufacture in the U.S.?’” Placko said in an impact statement. “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.”
Nearly a dozen organizations expressed dismay in emails to Polygon. A member of the leadership team at an established tabletop role-playing publisher said uncertainty instigated by the incoming administration had impacted their revenues since at least January. Now the tariffs are poised to deliver a knockout blow. They asked for anonymity, citing concerns over reprisals from other U.S.-based businesses.
“The news is bad from every angle, but especially so for card games and RPGs printed in China,” they said. “The choice seems to be either 1) a massive price hike to pay the new import taxes, or 2) go to a direct sales model that removes the hobby distributors from the equation.”
Distributors are the connective tissue that helps keep GAMA’s nearly 5,000 independent member retailers stocked with the latest games. Without their involvement there may be fewer titles on store shelves, causing further stress on an industry still recovering from the COVID-19 pandemic.
The situation is especially problematic for companies that have used crowdfunding. Their products were bought and paid for years ago with backer dollars on platforms like Kickstarter, Gamefound, and BackerKit. Now as they near the final push to manufacturing, through overseas logistics networks, and into the hands of eager consumers, what little margin was available has all but vanished.
“In the short term, I just have to eat these costs to fulfill the Kickstarter,” said Joshua M. Simons, founder of Broken Door Entertainment, who baked in an extra margin in anticipation of the tariffs. He says it wasn’t enough.
“The tariffs will erase 20% of my expected profits off this initial print run, making it much harder to get my next round of products developed,” Simons said. “That hit to my budget means I will probably only be able to afford making one product instead of two for the rest of this year.”
As spreadsheets begin to bleed red, it’s the capricious nature of the Trump administration that continues to bedevil small businesses like Hit Point Press.
“Right now, HPP is prepping for our next Humblewood Kickstarter campaign launch next week,” said CEO and founder Ricardo Evangelho. “This news has me revising everything in advance of the campaign. But even then, with how things are going, we can’t be sure that even this adjustment is correct. Trump could come out tomorrow with additional tariffs which makes everything uncertain.
“We have high hopes for this next campaign,” Evangelho continued, “but if everyone is afraid of buying because they don’t know the final cost, I have concerns we’ll raise what we need to continue building to the scale we currently are.”
Still other publishers are literally stopping the presses, terminating the production of games already promised to consumers.
“I had to cancel a print run of one of our board games this morning,” said Michael Addison, whose Nerdy Pup Games is currently supporting the TTRPGs for Trans Right Bundle with the inclusion of Rebels of the Outlaw Wastes. “We’re basically putting all manufacturing on hold. We currently make both board games and TTRPGs. There’s a chance we are simply done making board games for the foreseeable future.”
Tariffs on China aren’t the only problem. Dozens of other international trading partners have also had tariffs levied against them.
“We had been looking at printing in either South Korea or Vietnam instead of China but with the all encompassing nature of the planned tariffs, I have no idea how feasible that would be,” said Liana MacKenzie, owner of Valorous Games. She said the company may be forced to begin publishing digital-only content in the short term. “We’re entirely self-funded through my day job and whatever we can earn through conventions, so not having a physical book is not at all ideal but that may just be where we’re at.”
Others, like Coyote & Crow founder Connor Alexander, say this might simply be the end — for now.
“[The proposed tariffs on China] will essentially kill my company,” Alexander wrote in a deeply pessimistic post on Bluesky. In a follow-up email to Polygon, he sounded only slightly more hopeful: “I’m not panicking yet. Emphasis on yet.”
In its statement, tabletop trade organization GAMA was clear that the time to act is now — before the tariffs have been firmly locked into place, and before more game publishers bow out of the industry entirely.
“GAMA will continue to oppose this policy and calls on Congress to show common sense and work together to avoid wrecking the US economy in a misguided tariff war that is neither necessary nor needed,” the trade organization said in its news release. “We urge all US members to contact their representatives and senators to step in and vacate this damaging policy. You can find your representative and senators’ contact information at house.gov and senate.gov. Please write or call them to express your concerns and demand action to protect our industry and the broader economy.”
