Placko and Stegmaier Speak Out on Looming Industry Collapse

The board game industry is often recognized for its creativity, its sense of community, and its, well, relative unprofitability. But one thing it wasn’t known for until very recently was being subject to a massive tax hike, one that many worry could effectively kill it. Designer Jamey Stegmaier, who in the last year alone saw his games Scythe and Wingspan become worldwide sensations, did not mince words in his shock this week when the news came down about a new 54 percent tax on Chinese-made goods imported to the US.

“I tried to work on a new game I’m brainstorming last night,” he wrote in a blog post, “but it’s tough to make 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.” The post was an unusually raw, emotional confession for someone who makes his living designing games for others to play. But it’s also one that speaks for more than one game designer these days.

The US Board Game Industry Isn’t Just a US Industry

To understand how the American board game industry has become so dependent on manufacturing abroad, in China in particular, is to understand the nature of modern production itself. Germany is the spiritual home of the modern tabletop game, and Germany is also where you can find a lot of board game production factories. But when it comes to the whole package of cards, custom plastic miniatures and buildings, wooden tokens, die-cut cardboard boards, and specialty dice, few options match China on cost and production time.

It’s possible, at great expense, to have domestic producers make those elements, Stegmaier pointed out in his blog post, but the business just doesn’t work. He related that he’d been quoted $10 by a US manufacturer for “nothing more than a standard empty game box with no inserts or anything. I could pay that $10 for a game’s printed-and-packaged production and shipment from China.” Add a 54 percent import tax on top of that, and you can see how this new tariff is set to utterly upend the status quo. Most US board game publishers, many of them independent or at least not multinational behemoths, have little to no margin. The extra costs and the fact that the rule change goes into effect immediately, with no grace period for the industry to absorb or adapt, have the collective community reeling.

Designers Weigh In

Meredith Placko, CEO of Steve Jackson Games (which, like many American publishers, is best known for its Munchkin line), also took to her blog to weigh in on the tariff’s ramifications.

Some people ask, “Why not manufacture in the US?” 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.

Placko lamented this new tariff not as merely a way of doing business, but as a potential disruption of the fundamental economics of board game publishing.

A similar concern is shared by Rob Daviau, co-founder of Restoration Games and designer of the hit Pandemic Legacy. Daviau has been decrying the very possibility of such a tariff on social media for months, calling “literally every single business meeting” he’s been a part of lately “an existential crisis about our industry.” In an interview with BoardGameWire, he ominously said that, were the 54 percent import tax to take effect, it would “lead to a great collapse in the hobby gaming market in the US.”

Gamers Feel the Impact

Consumers aren’t going to be immune to all this either. Game prices are set to go up. Companies that cut costs to keep prices down will simply be producing lower-quality games. Companies may hold back on new titles entirely. In what may be an additional unintended blow to game stores still suffering from online competition, gamers who now can’t or won’t buy new games may just look through their collections and play some of the many games they have on their so-called shelves of shame. Or they may start buying imported games online.

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

Workarounds, Minimal

The good news is that there are, at least in theory, some workarounds, particularly for publishers with existing distributors outside of the US. European markets, for example, are not as affected by the tariff news. The bad news is that those workarounds aren’t exactly feasible for US companies themselves. 65 percent of Stonemaier Games’ sales, for instance, come from within the United States, as Stegmaier pointed out. The US game company will feel the financial pain.

Even worse, the timing for all this is going to hurt companies that have existing games either still in the design phase or early production phases. Both of those can, just barely, be adjusted in production and design budgets. What is in China, already in production and effectively on its way to the US, cannot avoid the tariff and ensuing cost increase.