Pandasaurus Moves, Flat River Group Pauses, and Greater Than Games Gets Lesser Than It Was | BoardGameGeek News

by W. Eric Martin

▪️ U.S. publisher Greater Than Games has suspended all new projects and let go of most of its staff. Here’s what was posted on the GTG website on April 17, 2025:

A BGG user quotes GTG co-founder Christopher Badell from a fan Discord channel saying, “Due to the uncertain tariff situation, Greater than Games has made the difficult decision to eliminate many positions within the GTG Publishing team. At this time we are going to suspend production of our podcast schedule. We will provide updates as appropriate… Everyone was fired other than Paul, Adam, and myself”, with Paul Bender and Adam Rebottaro being the other GTG co-founders.

▪️ A Reddit user claims that French publisher IELLO “is pausing all U.S. releases” — but since that information isn’t posted on IELLO’s website as the user states, I contacted Flat River Group, which distributes IELLO titles in North America.

In her response, FRG senior marketing manager Danni Loe said the pause extends far beyond IELLO titles: “For now, all of FRG’s import business and game productions are on hiatus. It is not feasible or responsible to print/ship games right now with tariffs as they are. We, like many other publishers, are pausing new projects until things return to some level of stability.”

FRG’s website lists publishers that partner with FRG, but don’t take it as a given that every publisher listed on that page has paused production. Sit Down!, PlayPunk, Matagot, Ludonaute, Pendragon Game Studios, and others are located in Europe, for example, so their titles will likely still be released in Europe.

Time for another survey to see who’s now releasing games everywhere but the United States. Gosh, this reminds me of when I got into hobby games in the early 2000s and had to order games from Germany because that was the only way to get them.

▪️ Nathan McNair, co-owner of Pandasaurus Games has summarized how the company is responding to tariffs:

This Facebook post from McNair follows one on April 4, 2025 in which he urges publishers not to add tariff costs directly to production costs in order to earn the same margin on each game sale:

You will destroy our industry if this is the path that you take. You are going to have to take a margin hit here. My strong suggestion is to calculate a new MSRP that will recoup the tariff paid per game sold. This will have negative repercussions for company’s cash flow — I know it is affecting mine.

What we cannot do is allow the tariffs to turn 25 dollar games into 40 dollar games or 80 dollar games into 120 dollar games. It’s going to be painful, but we have to maintain the value proposition of our hobby, or we will send our customers packing for greener pastures.

My request is that you at least run the numbers. Take your cost of goods, multiply it by the tariff, and divide that number by what you charge distribution. It will lead to cost increases to the consumer but much more manageable ones, but you cannot take a 5x multiplier on the tariff. Print leaner and more often if necessary so that your time to profitability stays roughly where you can afford it.

First, I don’t think we should be profiting off the tariffs and this would be doing exactly that – by maintaining your margin you would be increasing your total revenue and total profit. You can maintain your anticipated net revenue per unit without passing along untenable price increases to your customer. Yes, it will cost you more money up front to ultimately get back to where you wanted to be in the first place, but any other path is madness that will crater your sales volume to levels that are not sustainable.

I think we offer an insane entertainment value to our customers relative to dollars spent. Even in times of economic struggle like the 2008 collapse or Covid lockdowns, we saw our industry thrive because the value proposition we offer to our customers is good. We cannot destroy that, or we risk our entire sector collapsing in the U.S.