The Hidden Cost of Board Games: How Tariffs Could Reshape the Industry

In a business famous for creative products, tight-knit communities, and notoriously slim profit margins, the financial hit feels like a hammer blow many fear could threaten the very existence of the industry. Designer Jamey Stegmaier, best known for global hits like Scythe and Wingspan, shared his anguish this week over an announced 54 percent tariff on goods manufactured in China and imported to the U.S.

“I mostly just found myself staring blankly at the enormity of the newly announced 54 percent tariff,” Stegmaier wrote in a blog post. “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.”

For a designer who has shipped games beloved by players and critics the world over, it was a distressingly unfiltered and emotional confession—and one that was quickly echoed by the industry at large.

A Globalized Production Pipeline, Threatened

America’s board game industry, like the nation’s board game culture at large, is heavily reliant on production in China. The nation of Germany has factories for board game production as well—board gaming, after all, has its spiritual home in Germany in the modern era—but they are best equipped for niche runs or specialty jobs.

In China, it’s a one-stop shop for everything from printed cards to custom plastic miniatures and wooden tokens, specialty dice, die-cut boards, and even the boxes that hold them all. It’s a symbiotic relationship that the United States can’t, for the most part, replace. Manufacturing those components domestically is only theoretically possible.

Stegmaier revealed in his post that he was once quoted $10 by a U.S.-based manufacturer for a standard empty game box, which cost that much alone. In comparison, $10 could pay for the production and packaging of a full game in China.

Which is why, to the designers and publishers that Stegmaier speaks for, the tariff represents a total and shocking derailing. A company’s finished goods might retail for $60 or $80, but the margins for board games are notoriously slim. With a few exceptions, for a board game to come in below the $20 retail mark is a rarity. Companies don’t make announcements until they have a budget, often no wiggle room at all, because it’s business as usual for the community to squeak by at best.

This sea change in the business, for which there is no cushion or adjustment period, came as a shock to the community. “This situation has stunned and horrified board game designers and manufacturers across the country,” Stegmaier continued in his post.

Echoes from Across the Industry

For an industry built on community, the voices are many. Other business leaders have stepped up to decry the move. Meredith Placko, CEO of Steve Jackson Games and mother of industry icon Jackson “Mr. Action Figure” Palmer, also wrote about the news.

Her company, a publisher behind hits like Munchkin, has the same reasons as most others for manufacturing overseas. “We outsource because manufacturing in the US costs too much,” Placko said in a recent post. “Some people ask, ‘Why not manufacture in the US?’ I wish we could.”

But, she continues, “The infrastructure to support full-scale boardgame production—specialty dice making, die-cutting, custom plastic and wood components, and so on—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 a business leader like Placko, who has built a company over a quarter of a century and shaped its direction for decades more, this is not just a change of policy or an inconvenience. “If this new policy stands,” she wrote, “this will not just be a policy change. This will be a seismic shift.”

Rob Daviau, co-founder of Restoration Games and designer of the immensely popular Pandemic Legacy, has been issuing similar warnings for months on social media. “I feel like I’m in a meeting almost every day that ends up being an existential crisis about our industry,” Daviau said. “If any of these tariffs go through, we will see a great collapse in the hobby gaming market in the US.”

Gamers Will Feel the Pain, Too

The pain may not stop with publishers and designers either. Gamers could also be in for a blow as a result. Retail prices on new games will almost certainly rise as a result; some publishers will simply cut costs to keep prices where they are, but that means lower-quality production overall. Other publishers will cut back on new releases entirely.

The worry also extends to the health of local game stores. Brick-and-mortar shops have been losing a fight against online retailers for some time. With many players simply choosing to leave their game boxes full and unplayed on what fans refer to with pride as their “shelves of shame,” or turning to online retailers for the best prices, a further blow to physical stores selling board games could be a death knell for some.

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

Limited Shortcuts, Continued Anguish

A few publishers, with the right distributors and enough demand in the right places, may route their shipments through non-U.S. distributors. European markets, for example, have not been hit as hard by the tariffs, but that doesn’t help American publishers, who sell to those markets as well. As Stegmaier points out in the post, 65 percent of his own company’s sales are domestic.

It’s a mark of how little time there is to adapt to this new business environment that, for games still in development or early production, publishers may be able to pare budgets. But goods that have already been produced and are en route from China simply can’t be rerouted. Chris Solis, head of Solis Game Studio in California, told the Washington Post that he has 8,000 games leaving a factory in China this week and now needs to scramble to cover the import bill.

The industry as a whole is, to the vocal frustration of many, stuck in the headlights of an immediate crisis. The industry’s owning group, the Game Manufacturers Association (GAMA), has been lobbying against the tariffs. As of writing, those efforts have not yet affected the situation.

For a community that often thrives on existential crisis, this is an uncommon moment of shared agony. The entire industry, over a few years, has seen business models completely upended and orders of magnitude more success than before. But for an industry built on, and fueled by, joy, the future now looks more tenuous than it has in recent memory.