How the Trump Tariffs Are Impacting Board Game Publishers

By Keith Law | July 23, 2025 | 2:45pm

Trump photo courtesy of Getty

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How the Trump Tariffs Are Impacting Board Game Publishers

The chaos created by the arbitrary application, revocation, and re-application of tariffs this year, especially those targeting China, have had a particularly negative impact on the board game publishing industry. The vast majority of tabletop games are published in China at one of a small number of specialty manufacturers, and with some games already printed, waiting in warehouses in China or sitting on container ships, at the time of the initial tariff announcements, publishers were left facing higher costs than they anticipated, and the potential for higher losses, too. Several publishers spoke out about how badly these tariffs were going to hurt the industry, with Jamie Stegmaier, owner of Stonemaier Games (Wingspan, Scythe, and the brand-new Vantage) filing a lawsuit against the Administration.

The upshot for consumers is that we might see fewer games coming out next year, once the games currently in the pipeline are cleared out; we might see a shift in the types and price points of games publishers pursue; and, of course, we have already seen some publishers bump up their prices to cover tariff costs. (This is just more evidence of what prominent economists have said from the start: the cost of tariffs is borne by the American taxpayer, not by the countries supposedly being “taxed.”) Three board game publishers have at least temporarily ceased operations: CMON, Greater Than Games, and Underdog, with the latter two laying off all staff, while CMON sold off several major properties to Tabletop Tycoon and Asmodee this spring. Flat River Group owns Greater Than Games and announced other layoffs and departures while also cancelling their attendance at Gen Con, where they’d had a sizable floor presence the last few years.

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To get a better sense of what’s coming for board gamers in the next year or so, I spoke to four publishers about what’s happening and what they foresee if the current tariff environment of both high rates and unpredictable changes to those rates continues (as it probably will until 2028): Kevin Bertram of Fort Circle Games, Rob Daviau of Restoration Games, Chad Elkins of 25th Century Games, and Molly Johnson and Shawn Stankewich of Flatout Games. All four are smaller outfits by number of games released per year, and all four had Kickstarters somewhere in process when we spoke.

The fundamental problem with this unilateral tariff war is that nearly all board games are, or at least have been, produced in China by a small number of manufacturers who have the specialized facilities to make board games. “We use Panda manufacturers—they’re a good-sized player who does Stonemaier’s games, Leder’s games, some Asmodee,” says Kevin Bertram of Fort Circle Games, publishers of historical board games including Votes for Women and the upcoming First Monday in October. “They’re more expensive but we used them because their quality is pretty high. We are going to be shifting our production from China to Brazil because of tariff roulette—we’re a small publisher and we can’t play tariff roulette. With about $200,000 in games in the pipeline, and freight prices spiking, if I have to play 30% of 55% or 145% all those numbers are bad for us. I understand there are certain reasons why we might want to decouple from China as a country, but it would have been nice if that had happened in a more orderly way.” (After I spoke to Bertram, the Trump Administration announced punitive 50% tariffs on Brazil for the latter country’s prosecution of its corrupt ex-President Jair Bolsonaro, tariffs that current Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has called “blackmail.”)

“Things are so weird politically, economically, and environmentally that I don’t know how anything’s going to go,” said Molly Johnson of Flatout Games, publishers of Point Salad, Calico, and Cascadia. Her business partner Shawn Stankewich added, “The rate of change in life and the level of volatility we’re experiencing with a lot of global and local factors coming to a head is making it very challenging to plan. When the uncertainty hit, everything we knew in terms of the way to plan changed, and it’s impacting our whole community, artists, game designers, and publishers.”

“If every three weeks, tariffs and everything else can radically shift, you have no true way to properly plan for it,” said Chad Elkins of 25th Century Games, publishers of Three Sisters, Resist!, and the latest edition of Ra. “You have to hope for the best and adjust on the fly. If things come in way higher because of a tariff situation, it presents cash flow problems. Any company strapped for cash flow is going to find it extremely difficult to operate.”

The near-impossible task of planning in this environment isn’t just limited to the mercurial nature of the tariffs and the one person who seems to decide anew each day what those tariff rates might be. “It takes 18 to 30 months to design a game, and it is nearly impossible to plan what you’re going to pay for a game, what the market will be like, or if we’ll be in a recession,” says Rob Daviau of Restoration Games, publishers of Return to Dark Tower and Thunder Road. “Even though tariffs have stabilized at 30%, everyone from publishers to consumers is saying, ‘hold on let me think about that for a minute.’ And there was some concern if the tariffs lingered that freight would shut down [as it did in 2020], and when it spun back up people would overpay to get into Walmart.”

All four publishers seemed to agree that games at lower price points—and typically with lower manufacturing costs—are likely to rise in popularity over the next year-plus. “For this year, I think it’ll be a combination of higher prices and slightly fewer games coming out,” says Elkins. “Going into next year you’ll start seeing more companies shifting to smaller games with lower risk and lower price points. This is a luxury hobby; will consumers look for $40 to $60 games or play what they have and just buy some smaller-box games. Because of the length of the supply chain time, [tariffs] will impact you for two years, so a lot of publishers are just shifting to $25 and under games.”

For companies like Restoration, that shift in price point may necessitate a shift in focus. “We only have one game in that price point, a fun little game called Dinosaur Tea Party [a remake of a 1976 game called Whosit?],” says Daviau. “We’ve tried to do others and haven’t had success; our wheelhouse is people who spend for spectacle. Do we design and ‘shove’ a cheaper game into our line for next year? If people want games at that price, are we shooting ourselves in the foot if we don’t? (But) if you do and it doesn’t work, you’ve pushed something more profitable into the future.”

The tariff roulette is also impacting crowdfunding campaigns and increasing the incentives for publishers to try to sell directly to consumers, bypassing the retailers—affectionately known in the hobby as Friendly Local Game Stores, or FGLS—who are a critical part of the board gaming community. “With the new economic situation with tariffs and things, a lot of companies now are trying to sell direct to consumer. I make the most money when I cut out distribution and retail to sell right to the people who play the games,” says Stankewich. “Brick and mortar plays a vital role, so as we move to more direct sales channels it’s important that we don’t abandon that sales stream. Maintaining an understanding of the sales channels that are healthiest to keep the hobby and industry sustainable in the long term is important.” Johnson added, “A game store might have regulars, that’s the kind of connection we all want. The ‘Norm!’ moment in your game store, and the people who work in the store who are excited to talk about games with you.”

Bertram noted the concerns that people may spend less on crowdfunding due to economic uncertainty. “People are starting to become a little more cautious in what they fund, and that’s natural, especially when a couple of high profile games don’t get delivered.” For one example, Elf Creek Games has several unfulfilled Kickstarters, including one for Santa’s Workshop, as the company struggled to recover from inflated shipping costs from the pandemic, and it appears they’ve been bought out by Genius Games. “Crowdfunding is great,” continued Bertram, “because it helps forecast demand, it’s a marketing channel in and of itself, and it’s helpful for cash flow for smaller companies. [Tariffs] causing more delays may not be the publishers’ fault, but it’s going to undermine faith in the crowdfunding system.”

If this all sounds vaguely depressing, it may help to hear that none of the four publishers felt like this was the end of the Golden Age of Boardgaming. “I don’t think this is an existential threat to the industry,” said Bertram. “I’m still very optimistic about my company and our industry. I think there will be a healthy, diverse board game industry, but it’s going to be tough for a little while.”

Daviau pointed out that some contraction was inevitable anyway. “I’ve said for 10 to 15 years that the explosion of the game industry has been great, with more people playing, but it comes at a cost of a lot of publishers—quality control goes down, even great games that would have had sticking power in the past get drowned by the next game. I kept predicting this bear market and it wasn’t happening. Was it just time, or did the tariffs kick something off?”

Stankewich expressed more concern for smaller publishers, including the potential for more consolidation, like we’ve seen with Asmodee gobbling up a number of publishers over the last five years. “There’s more uncertainty, and I worry about the small indie publishers who are making experimental stuff that make our industry grow. We’re big proponents of that, of small indies making cool creative stuff, the innovation that happens. That becomes more challenging” in this environment, he said, although he and Johnson both noted that they’re seeing or hearing of rising attendance at conventions, and their most recent Kickstarter, for the small-box games Point Galaxy and Propolis, topped $250,000 in pledges.

It is impossible for any business to plan in an environment where the ground is constantly shifting under your feet, to the point that any investment you make could go from profit to loss at the stroke of a pen held by a capricious and arbitrary President. Daviau, whose business runs the largest crowdfunding campaigns among these publishers, was the most cautious among them, despite his own personal love of the industry (and his legacy, literally: he invented the legacy board game). He summed up his company’s situation in a way that could apply to anyone in the industry, and really in any industry, in a world where a new tariff or other obstacle could appear at any time: “We’re flying blind in a lot of fog, and where do we think the mountains are?”

Keith Law is the author of The Inside Game and Smart Baseball and a senior baseball writer for The Athletic. You can find his personal blog the dish, covering games, literature, and more, at meadowparty.com/blog.