Cephalofair Games COO Releases Rambling, Panicked Statement On Tariffs On Recent 'Gloomhaven' Crowdfunding Update

Gloomhaven is a tabletop game that took the world by storm over the last decade with a tabletop RPG experience in a box with piles of miniatures, boards, tokens, and more that are all produced in China. Cephalofair Games has now made a long statement about how they may be in trouble because of the recent tariffs.

The board gaming industry is in a complete meltdown over tariffs. Most of these companies use cheap Asian labor to produce components such as cardboard tokens, miniatures, cards, and more for their games, exploiting the sweatshop labor for their products. Profit margins are thin for gaming, even with Kickstarters and the like making hundreds of thousands of dollars gross on a lot of these games, and so the tariffs threaten their business models based on what they currently charge for games.

We’ve seen leftist board game designer Eric Lang get salty when called out on using such slave labor, and Stonemaier Games issue a panic-driven statement about their games. Now, Steve Jackson Games has joined the fray with a warning to customers from their CEO after years of virtue signaling for leftist politics.

Munchkin producer Steve Jackson Games also sent an email to their supporters with a panicking message, promising massive price increases in the future.

Gloomhaven has been one of the more popular games of the last decade. It brings a dungeon-crawling tabletop RPG-style experience to a table with many complicated components, miniatures, boards, and more. It takes what used to be a pen-and-paper experience and exploits cheap labor to make blingy components for its game.

They posted an update to BackerKit on their latest campaign, Gloomhaven Grand Festival, to complain:

This is Price Johnson, COO of Cephalofair Games. I asked the team to let me take lead on this week’s update so I can give all our incredibly passionate and patient backers an update on the situation currently unfolding in the tabletop games industry.

Speaking bluntly, our industry, our jobs, and our projects are under attack by volatile, and self-inflicted, U.S. trade policy. Our manufacturing costs in the last two months have seen an increase of 104% due to U.S. tariffs.

The impact that 104% tariffs will have on our industry, and our company, are nothing short of devastating and are already having immediate consequences that will be felt knowingly and unknowingly by everyone who enjoys this industry - from the hobbyist, the retail store owner, the publisher, and ultimately our communities.

He elaborated on how this would impact the company later in the post:

Bringing this home: from the time Gloomhaven went into production our cost of goods has risen 104%.

For example, if a game costs $10 to produce, that company must pay the U.S. government an invoice for $10.40 on top, meaning the cost is now really $20.40 total.

“Yeah but the game is still $50, so you have lots of profit to work with”

Not really, no. To make games viable for nationwide distribution in retail stores (where most of our sales occur) publishers traditionally need to apply a x5 to x7 multiplier to our cost of goods to make wholesale pricing discounts viable and still provide us with a razor thin margin in which to cover additional costs and overhead such as freight, warehousing, staffing, product development, designer royalties, reprints, etc.

So that $50 game is really, typically, being sold at wholesale for $20, meaning a profit margin is gone.

If 54% or 104% tariffs hold and we don’t see reverse steps taken, this will all but eliminate our wholesale business as we know it today leading to some incredibly hard and scary choices to make.

P.S. Gloomhaven & Frosthaven cost considerably more than $10 to manufacture...

Much like Steve Jackson Games said, they claim domestic production is impossible for the company. However, domestic manufacturing does exist, so it seems to be a matter of getting companies to ramp up their facilities during this process, which the board game industry seems unwilling to try to accomplish, given they’ve been so accustomed to relying on cheap foreign labor.

For now, the game still seems to be in production, and the company says they’ll have a further production update soon. With the environment changing rapidly, by the time this game actually comes out from their foreign facility, tariffs may not even be in place, but the panic in the board game industry continues.

What do you think of the Gloomhaven statement on tariffs? Leave a comment and let us know.

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