Tariff Talk from Publishers on Costs, Sales, Conventions, Projections, and More | BoardGameGeek News

by W. Eric Martin

I’ve received more than 150 responses from publishers regarding the tariffs announced by the U.S. government on April 2, 2025, and the collective mood among respondents is almost universally a mixture of despair, frustration, confusion, and anger. (I did receive one survey stating that the publisher “in general” agrees with the tariffs.)

For example, DPH Games tells me that while manufacturing has recently been completed for four titles — with Legacy at Sea being new, in addition to three restocks — “I will likely have China hold the games until the tariffs change.” As a result, DPH Games will have less to sell at Origins Game Fair and Gen Con, which means they’re unlikely to cover the costs of those shows as originally planned…although plans in general have gone out the window: “The plan is not to plan since there is no predicting what will happen next.”

This answer hits most of the aspects of the game industry where tariffs will have an impact. Let’s look at these aspects individually:

Scaling Down

Some publishers are taking a blunt approach of delaying releases or cancelling them outright. Says one, “We’re not sure if the administration will even stick with the tariffs, so we may store games in China for a month or two to see what happens to the tariffs. The administration doesn’t have a good record of sticking to anything, so these may just go away at some point.”

One German publisher is more pointed in its effort along these lines, noting that it’s “delaying U.S. delivery as long as possible for current running projects”.

A UK publisher says it will both reduce the number of titles it releases and reduce the quantity manufactured. A German publisher is thinking along the same lines with regrets: “The only thing to do is to stay away from huge games for a while, but is that really what we want to do here?”

U.S. publisher Coin Flip Games had anticipated running another crowdfunding campaign in late 2025, but now has to figure out whether that’s even possible considering that costs can’t be accurately anticipated: “[I’m] looking into alternative manufacturing strategies. Releasing card-only, print-and-play only, or Cheapass Games-style games in the future — or Indie Night Market style games where there are only 20-50 copies in existence, and they were handmade by me.”

A Canadian publisher writes, “The idea of making costly adventure or campaign games at this moment will be more challenging as the more expensive a game is to manufacture, the more you are affected by the tariffs. Little card games made and sold for $25 are affected very little by the new changes.”

This sentiment is echoed by a U.S. publisher of small games that are primarily sold directly to customers: “The tariffs currently are charged on the printing cost, so we’re talking maybe $1 impact per unit, which turns into me rounding up to the nearest $5 for MSRP.”

“I anticipate more small box, standard-size card games, cheaper packaging such as tuck boxes vs two-piece telescoping boxes, and fewer custom components”, says U.S. publisher Copper Frog Games. “Right now I’m looking at eliminating the chipboard tokens in one of my designs to make it entirely card based, just in case I can’t manufacture overseas.”

Of course, that isn’t all a publisher can scale down. Copper Frog Games notes that while it had planned to manufacture three games and a gamer tote bag in 2025, “Now I have to decide whether to wait another unprofitable year out in the hope that tariffs are repealed in the next few months, or whether to simply stop making games and game accessories permanently and find a new line of work. I’ve been in the tabletop games business for ten years, and this is the most scared I’ve ever been in that time for this industry.”

U.S. publisher Galen’s Games seconds that thought: “I may rethink publishing completely depending on how this goes.”

Losing Money

Many of the smaller game publishers are secondary businesses, with their designer proprietors now at risk of seeing their work buried.

Coin Flip Games expects to take “a massive loss” on its crowdfunding project for Trickadee, which was crowdfunded in December 2024 and scheduled to be shipped from Shanghai on April 10. Here’s an excerpt from an April 3 update on that project:

That feeling of throwing away money for nothing is echoed by multiple publishers, such as this one in Canada: “I have an ongoing crowdfunding to fulfill in August 2025 for which the [pledge manager] was complete before the first set of taxes, so now I’m seeing all profits out the window.”

And another in Canada, which will also fulfill a crowdfunding campaign in mid-2025: “More than 80% of my backers are in the U.S., so when those units hit the U.S. I will be forced to pay the tariffs, eliminating a significant amount of the profit margins. I will never require the backers to pay for this, but I will make an option for them to help chip in if they would like.”

Here’s another such publisher in Europe: “[W]e are currently delivering a project for which we received shipping payment a year ago. This means that we now have to cover the tariff costs ourselves since it would be unfair to reach out and request more from our backers who supported us over a year ago when this topic didn’t exist yet.”

I’ve seen several publishers state that they plan to cover the tariff costs themselves, with backers of their projects asking that the publishers make it possible to chip in since the projects were funded under an economic model that has pulled out from under them.

Raising Prices

Publishers won’t be the only ones paying more for games, with one U.S. publisher writing: “Our only options are ordering less stock at a time, lowering game quality, and/or increasing costs.”

A UK publisher suggests that “[p]rices for U.S. customers will likely now be anywhere from $2 to $8 higher per game” — which doesn’t sound like that much, but as another publisher points out, people buy a lot more than just games: “The massive inflation from so many staples going up 20-50% in cost is going to be really tough for the working and middle class, which is the bread and butter of the board game industry.”

Says another U.S. publisher, “Early guesses are an increase of $7-9 per game for USA backers shipping (given a standard size box and weight for a medium-weight euro). The anticipation is that more folks will wait for retail releases of games, instead of backing them outright on crowdfunding — which inevitably means fewer games will actually fund by small publishers.”

A German publisher feels the same way: “I am planning a huge campaign for the end of May 2025, and it seems potential backers around the world, but mainly from the U.S., are now afraid of additional costs. I am also afraid of these additional costs as board games do not have a huge margin as it is. I fear that more and more people will be turned away from crowdfunding.”

One solution to this problem would be to not go through distribution at all, which is what UK publisher Alley Cat Games already announced it would do for crowdfunding projects, limiting later sales to conventions and its website so that it can sell directly to buyers.

Another is to run a separate crowdfunding project that’s a combined goodwill exercise and fundraiser. U.S. publisher APE Games has three games that were at the printer prior to the 2024 U.S. election and are now scheduled to ship from China within the next month. Says APE’s Kevin Brusky, “We had already decided to set the MSRP for the games slightly higher, assuming a tariff. This new tariff amount on China is completely unreasonable, and we’re looking at other measures to help offset the tariffs.”

He continues, “One idea is to have an ’emergency tariff Kickstarter’ that will offer these three games — Whale Riders, Whale Riders: The Card Game, and Storytailors — to U.S./CA backers only. These games were originally going straight to retail, but if we KS’ed them, we would make them available at a price lower than the expected MSRP (assuming tariffs don’t go even higher after China reciprocates) but high enough to help us recoup money for tariffs.”

And Brusky’s comment seems prescient given that U.S. President Trump is insisting on an additional 50% tariff on goods from China as of April 9, 2025 following China’s declaration of a 34% tax on all U.S. imports in response to Trump’s promise of a 34% tariff on all Chinese imports. With a total tariff of 104% on goods coming from China, where do publishers go from here?

Shifting Production

Most likely…nowhere. Says one U.S. publisher: “I would move production to the United States if it were a feasible option. The few facilities here that can make the components needed do not have the bandwidth to take on additional titles, especially when it’s a smaller production run for a small business.”

Another U.S. publisher seconds this opinion: “[W]e have already been researching since the end of last year options for producing in India, Vietnam, Eastern Europe, and the U.S. We do that every year, but we’ve had an increased focus in that area since last fall. The end result is that the comparable production capacity does not exist in those regions without substantially increasing the end price of the products.” Of course, given the tariffs, prices on this publisher’s games will be higher than previously planned anyway, both in retail for U.S. customers and at its Gen Con and PAXU booths.

U.S. publishers aren’t the only ones to hold this opinion. “There’s nowhere else to manufacture games”, says a Canadian publisher, with a UK publisher saying, “It’s unlikely that we will move out of China as the quality and price is still better than manufacturing elsewhere.” Adds another, “We produce in China and Europe, so we have no alternatives. We believe that this will force us to produce cheaper games (with fewer components) if we want to export to the USA.”

Says APE Games’ Brusky, “I got U.S. printer quotes for Whale Riders and Storytailors in January, and the price was 6x the China cost — and the U.S. manufacturer could not produce Storytailors at all because it lacked the ability to create the wire-bound board book.” That said, Brusky has received samples from a Mexican printer that seem promising, so that might be an avenue to take for some projects.”

Rethinking Conventions

With costs increasing for both publishers and customers, some are wondering anew whether conventions will be worth the cost. “We had finally done well enough at PAX Unplugged 2024 that I was going to splurge on a 10×20 booth at Unplugged this year,” says Copper Frog Games, “but with no new products coming out this year (assuming the tariffs stay in effect through the end of June), I’m likely going to cut back down to a 10×10 if possible.”

Coin Flip Games is also re-considering an appearance at PAX Unplugged in November 2025: “I still need to look at the numbers to decide if there’s any world where I could even break even now.” Echoing that thought, a UK publisher mentions reducing its Gen Con budget, and a German publisher writes, “I had planned on attending Gen Con, but now I really don’t know if this is an option. With Trump casually doing what he wants and changing it every few days/weeks, nobody can plan ahead right now.”

I imagine that all 2025 U.S. conventions will be impacted by tariff costs, not to mention fears by international visitors that they might be arbitrarily detained at the U.S. border and denied entry.

A Canadian publisher has already cancelled its presence at Unpub and BGG.Spring and is considering cancelling its Origins, Dice Tower East, and BGG.CON booths unless they can find local staffing: “As a Canadian, I don’t feel safe traveling to America right now… I was going to go to Gen Con for the third time to run events, but will not be doing so this year.”

Avoiding America

More generally, the tariffs will drive publishers to consider markets outside the United States. That same Canadian publisher writes, “I will be reducing the amount of extra copies I am sending to the U.S. and re-directing them to Canada, Europe, Australia, and New Zealand and am exploring ways to increase my presence in those regions. I decided to book a booth at SPIEL in Essen and am on the waitlist for a booth at PAX Australia.”

Speaking of SPIEL Essen 25, one publisher says, “We expect great difficulties in Essen in selling our licenses to partners in the USA.”

Other publishers feel that U.S. sales will move into the realm of “Wouldn’t it be nice” without too many expectations of those sales materializing. Says one European publisher: “For as long as the current situation continues, and given the almost certain drop in sales from the U.S. in our future projects, we will most likely be focusing our marketing and products toward other markets like Europe and Asia.”

“We will not sell any new licensed games in the U.S.”, says a German publisher. “U.S. Kickstarter backers will have to pay the cost for the taxes in future projects; we can’t make all the international Kickstarter backers suffer higher costs from what happens in the U.S. In general, we will shift our focus to Europe. The margin in board games is not that high, and everybody’s gotta live.”

A European publisher took more direct action, cancelling all of its U.S. orders by distributors and giving up $117,700 in sales to avoid a massive tariff charge. They note, “I will try to find solutions (Cartamundi, Ludofact, Delano) to produce in the U.S. in order to provide goods to the U.S. market. We will import by air only the necessary components that cannot be produced in the U.S. so that the impact of the tariffs, even though high, will be kind of ‘limited’.” (Yes, one example of game production that might move partly to the U.S.)

Michael Orion with Vietnamese publisher Rolling Wizards says that all new releases will be launched in Asia first, which will avoid any issue of tariffs, but “when we want to sell into the U.S. it creates many challenges. Shifting the strategy to be crowdfunding only for global releases or localizing via licensing will help — but the free-trade agreement with Vietnam and the EU is still in place and allows us to do business there more easily.”

“Easy business” is not a phrase that you’ll hear from many game publishers, with one Canadian company listing a dire to-do list: “Raise MSRP, estimated over $50,000 of tariffs, have to collect extra funds from crowdfunding backers in the next 1-2 months, survival of our company”.

A small U.S. publisher is equally frustrated, saying that all future releases are on hold, with no help being hired for its Origins booth in order to save money: “I’ve worked my ass off for five years to build a business that I can be proud of, and now it’s all in jeopardy because [someone] doesn’t understand basic economics.”