We've created a companion webpage to this post that you can access here.
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One of the aspects I love most about games is the way they reflect life. In a single evening, we’re able to experience despair, elation, and a million tiny emotions in-between.
At this moment of time, I’m reminded of a sentiment we’ve probably all felt at some time or another. The feeling when a beautifully conceived plan is brutally derailed by another player’s absurd actions.
“Why would you do that? WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT?!?!”
So rings a chorus sung at dining room tables throughout a galaxy.
Were your opponent’s actions actually a good strategy? Sometimes it’s hard to say, but its tremendous effect transcends the cardboard and plastic with which the battle was waged. You’re not simply left with a broken strategy, you’re now forced to unravel a question that’s much more comfortable hidden behind the facade of ‘winning.’ How do you respond when things don’t go your way?
Do you get vengeful and start planning ways to reciprocate for an outcome of mutually assured destruction? Adopt a practiced apathy that accompanies emotional resignation from the impending loss? Take on a stance of truly unbridled anger by flipping the table and walking away? Are you unfazed, singularly focused on reimagining your path to dominance?
Whether there’s a right or wrong approach is a question we’ll leave you to contemplate on your own. But, time doesn’t stop and you have to respond somehow.
Over the past month, things have not gone our way and we’ve spent the last three weeks contemplating how we want to respond.
And I can tell you right now, we’re still fighting for the W.
Here’s how.
Tariffs Suck
Just like that devastating moment when things take a terrible turn in the game, there’s no avoiding the reality of the situation—tariffs really suck for us. We’ve let ourselves feel this and, to some extent, will continue to feel it as long as they remain in place.
However, we’re not letting these feelings guide us, which is partially why we’ve waited three weeks to share our response.
We’re approaching the situation as reality and making the best decisions we can at any moment to lead us toward the path of success. And just because the sun isn’t shining and the birds aren’t chirping doesn’t mean we shouldn’t have some fun—fun is what we do here! So, while we take this situation seriously and understand that it impacts a lot of people’s lives in immeasurable ways, we’re going to stay positive and soak up whatever fun we can find.
The Situation
(There’s some misinformation being shared in some board game circles about the tariffs stating that they are only 20-40%. This is incorrect. If you’ve encountered this, we recommend listening to the 99% of industry veterans that agree it’s wrong.)
A little background on the situation for anyone just joining us. The United States recently imposed and currently enforces (April 23rd, 2025) a 20% tariff of board games produced in China via their HTS code and an additional 125% section 99 tariff on all goods imported from China, creating a 145% tariff on board games imported into the United States from China.
The tariff is on the cost of manufacturing the product (known as Cost of Goods or COGs), not the retail price. This doesn’t make it small, but it’s important to understand that we would not be paying 145% the cost that was charged to backers.
We make all our games in China, making us subject to paying the 145% tariff upon entry of the games into the United States. Sales in the United States account for 60-70% of our sales depending on the product, so this has a large impact on us.
As an example, a shipment of games with COGs of $100,000 would incur a tariff of $145,000, making the total cost of that order $245,000.
The topic of whether board games can be produced in America has been thoroughly covered in other industry writings, so I’ll leave you with the short answer—it's not really an option at the moment.
We encourage you to do some research on why almost all board games are produced in China, which range from the density of multidisciplinary manufacturing, minimum order quantities, competitive economics, and more.
Our Options
We currently have multiple Kickstarter projects, reprintings, and new projects in production at our factories in China. We have two options for the games destined for the United States:
- Wait — Store finished games in China and ship them only if/when tariffs drop.
- Pay — Absorb the 145% tariff cost and move forward with U.S. imports.
How Are We Responding?
We’ve spent three weeks working through the possible scenarios to move forward and here’s how we plan to move forward as of April 23rd, 2025.
We do not plan to require crowdfunding backers to contribute more money to specifically cover tariffs
We maintained this stance during the COVID shipping crisis and still maintain it today. You support us and we support you. More specifically, when we ask you to share your hard earned money with us, we always want to provide specific and tangible value in exchange.
Imports into the United States will be paused until June 18th
Due to the rapidly changing nature of the tariffs, we believe it would be irresponsible to move forward with importing games to the USA when the amount of the tariffs are fluctuating weekly. We are pausing all imports and storing USA-bound games in China until 1) tariffs reach a level below 50% and there is global consensus they will stay there or 2) we reevaluate our position on June 18th. Depending on the perceived permanency of tariffs on June 18th, we will either extend the delay or begin making plans to import under the permanent level of tariffs. Currently, Brink is the only project affected by this delay.
Luckily, both Scott Bessent and Donald Trump signaled yesterday that tariffs would be reaching much smaller levels soon. We’re crossing our fingers.
Deliveries of all non-USA orders will continue as planned
The USA is our largest sales market, so not delivering here may have some effects on the timeline of all other deliveries as we sort out the logistics of the situation.
However, all non-USA deliveries will continue as close to the previously communicated schedule as possible.
It’s our expectation that some amount of tariffs will stay in place and we will pay them on behalf of backers
We expect some amount of tariffs to remain in place permanently—likely 10-20%—and plan to pay those on behalf of all USA backers.
In what we view as the unlikely event that tariffs remain a permanent 145% or somewhere between 20% and 145%, we plan to pay them on behalf of backers as well. This would be an incredible financial strain on the studio, but something we believe is viable.
We need your help
If you have some expendable income and want to support the studio, we have a way! And it’s a real win-win scenario—we get cashflow to cover tariffs, you get some amazing new games.
We have five products available for pre-order starting today. We will use the would-be profits from these items to cover any tariffs we end up being required to pay.
- Time to Panic: Limited Edition — History has been shattered! Work together to carefully reconstruct the timeline by manipulating events into chronological order. TTP is a cooperative card game that is easy to learn and great for solo or groups of up to 4.
- Graft: Limited Edition — Farm, fish, and forage to gather the perfect harvest in this game for 3-5 players. Draft cards, collect sets, and fill your cargo with valuable goods to send back to Zenith, but don't wait too long to ship it or risk busting!
- Pillars of Fate: Limited Edition — Deduction meets lane battler in this 2 player showdown. A game with hidden information and asymmetric powers that will leave you wanting to win AND lose your battles. Choose when and where to play your heroes wisely.
- Brink: Section 99 — Trade tensions have reached the stars—each ship upgrade now comes with a cost paid in resource cubes to the UA. Players may recover these taxed resources, but only by sacrificing hard-earned Prestige. What’s power without a little pain?
- Moonrakers Playing Card Deck — A 52-card (plus jokers) playing card deck.
We’re in the incredibly fortunate situation to have three new small games (Time to Panic, Graft, Pillars of Fate) already developed for direct-to-market release at Gen Con this year. Our in-house game and graphic design also let us develop a new Brink micro-expansion and a Moonrakers playing card deck in just a few weeks. We’re opening pre-orders for these five items through the Scales of Fate pledge manager. You can also late-pledge for Scales of Fate, but you are not required to in order to purchase the other items.
Maybe most exciting, the small games and playing card deck will ship in September of this year. You’ll also have the alternate collection option to avoid shipping costs of picking up the small games at Gen Con or including them in a Scales of Fate shipment.
Pre-ordering some or all of these products is the most impactful thing you can do to help us today and we would be immensely grateful.
In what will forever be known as the terrific tariff trade (ttt), you can help stimulate our cashflow to be ready to bear the burden of any amount of tariffs in exchange for some very satisfying gaming goods.
Also, can we all take a minute to revel in the beautiful coincidence, some might say prescience, that we have a game called TIME TO PANIC secretly fully developed for a time such as this? It’s beautiful. Beautiful, I say.
Explore all five products in more detail on our website here.
Importantly, delivery of these products will be unaffected by tariffs at the current 145% level or lower.
Honestly, Zac’s a little sad about having to open pre-orders on these items (as are we all). He was excited about foregoing the pre-order process altogether for the first time and giving these games a proper launch. They are games we're super proud of and deserve more attention than this situation allows. Send him a kind note and tell him you love him if you get the chance.
Brink (and possibly Tend) are the only deliveries affected
Brink is in the final stages of production and the import for USA orders is delayed until June 18th or until tariffs are lowered.
Tend has the potential to be delayed. The game is not expected to finish production until at least June, so we’re hopeful that the USA deliveries will not actually be delayed at all if the tariff situation stabilizes in the next month.
All other projects are unaffected by the current level of tariffs
Deliveries of Scales of Fate, Terrific Tariff Trade products, and any future crowdfunding campaigns are unaffected by the current level of 145% tariffs.
A tariff of 145% is immensely painful, but not outside of our ability to handle. The only reason Brink and Tend are affected is because it wasn’t possible to plan our cashflow for an unprecedented level of tariffs.
We’re not raising prices at this time
For the same reason we’re pausing imports until June 18th, we’re not adjusting our base product prices at this time. The situation is still unstable and, in our view, any long-term decisions shouldn’t be made in such an environment. We may revisit this decision when we’re more confident that we’ve reached a steady-state for import relations between China and the USA.
We are planning to continue launching crowdfunding projects
Our next project is slated to launch on June 24th and we’re currently still planning to move forward with the release. As of this moment, game and shipping prices will not be altered to account for tariffs. Should tariffs remain in place at the time of the campaign and then also at the time of delivery, we would plan our cashflow to account for them and pay them out of our earnings.
It’s currently our goal to have no one, in any country, be burdened by ill-advised tariffs.
If tariffs are so bad, why aren’t they affecting you more?
We don’t want our positive disposition to mask the realities that this is having real consequences for us and the world around us. It takes years for small businesses, including us, to arrive at a truly healthy steady-state, and these tariffs have the potential to immediately set us back years in that progression—with a lot of businesses not even able to stay afloat.
We’ll be reducing the amount we spend in almost every area of the business to accommodate tariffs. Some examples of the secondary effects of this reality are not hiring new staff, spending less at conventions, having fewer games in the world, cancelling orders to retailers, and spending less in our local community. And all those decisions have effects on other people’s jobs, businesses, and lives.
As we’ve already said, tariffs suck.
Could We Have Prepared for This?
We kind of did. Trump has been talking about tariffs for a while now and we were prepared to shoulder a 20% tariff, and even planned to move forward as planned under a 54% tariff. The current 145% tariff is simply beyond any expectation and requires some adjustments.
Can you pay more to get your game earlier in the USA?
No, there’s no logistically economical way to pick-and-pack individual orders from the bulk assembly until it’s been organized at a fulfillment warehouse.
Thank you
As always, thank you for your unwavering support. We started making games in 2018 and never would have guessed the turmoil that would embrace this industry across the following 7 years. It’s only because of your kindness and positivity that we’ve made it here. We hope that together we can continue to bring fun and joy to the world for at least another 7 years—and hopefully many many more.
Sincerely,
Samuel Cowden & The IV Team
TL;DR
— Most importantly, we do not plan on any backers of current or future crowdfunding campaigns to be required to pay additional money to receive your pledge. We maintained this stance during the COVID shipping crisis and still maintain it today. You support us and we support you.
— Tariffs suck. We were prepared to shoulder the burden of a 20% tariff, and even planned to continue importing without project delays under 54% tariffs, but 145% tariffs are untenable and require a measured approach.
— Brink is the only project currently delayed and Tend could potentially be delayed by tariffs in the USA.
— Non-USA fulfillment will proceed as planned for Brink and Tend.
— Due to the rapidly changing nature of the tariffs, we believe it would be irresponsible to move forward with importing games to the USA at this time. We are pausing all imports to the USA and storing USA-bound games in China until 1) tariffs reach a level below 50% and there is global consensus they will stay there or 2) we reevaluate our position on June 18th.
— If tariffs remain a permanent 145%, we plan to pay them on behalf of backers. This would be an incredible financial strain on the studio, but something we believe is viable.
— We expect some amount of tariffs to remain in place permanently—likely 10-20%—and plan to pay those on behalf of all USA backers. To financially prepare for whatever level of tariffs persist, there are 5 products, available worldwide, that you can pre-order to help us raise money to be in a healthy position to pay these tariffs. Pre-ordering some or all of these products is the most impactful thing you can do to help us today.
- Pillars of Fate: Limited Edition — Available for pickup at Gen Con, shipping in September 2025, or shipping with Scales of Fate.
- Graft: Limited Edition — Available for pickup at Gen Con, shipping in September 2025, or shipping with Scales of Fate.
- Time to Panic: Limited Edition — Available for pickup at Gen Con, shipping in September 2025, or shipping with Scales of Fate.
- Brink: Section 99 — Expected to ship in September 2025, or with Scales of Fate.
- Moonrakers Playing Card Deck — Available for pickup at Gen Con, shipping in September 2025, or shipping with Scales of Fate.
— Scales of Fate, Pillars of Fate, Graft, Time to Panic, and any future crowdfunding campaigns will proceed as scheduled and deliver as scheduled under current tariffs. The only way this changes is if tariffs increase further.
— We still plan to launch our next crowdfunding project in June and its delivery would be unaffected by the current levels of tariffs.
— We are not making pricing adjustments to current or future products at this time. The world needs fun more than ever and we’ll do everything in our power to keep the fun of board games accessible to as many humans as possible.
