The recent policies of the US government have created significant turmoil in the world, particularly over the last week with tariff announcements and retaliatory tariff actions. While the impact is widespread, and this impacts many, there is a particularly significant impact to the board game industry who rely on the huge printing capacity and quality of Chinese printers to provide economical products.
Null Signal Games has used a printer based in China for many years now. As of writing, 145% tariffs are now imposed on importing Chinese manufactured goods to the United States: this has significant and impactful repercussions for producing our cards. For a detailed explanation of the impacts, we highly recommend this explanation by the team behind Gloomhaven—notably, this was written while tariffs on Chinese goods were at 104%, and so understates the current situation. The result of this is that our production costs have more than doubled.
These tariffs have been imposed without a coherent plan or end, and come at a particularly significant time for us with the release of Elevation and our pending store reopen/restocks. We are forced to take action to address this direct and substantial impact.
As we import our sets for non-US markets directly from China, these regions are not directly impacted by the tariffs. Unfortunately, the costs associated with freight have continued to rise, continuing the trend we’ve observed over the last several years. Unusually compared to our industry peers, we’ve borne the full cost for shipping products as we’ve endeavored to keep our pricing and availability as fair and equitable as possible. However, offering free shipping is no longer sustainable in its current form. We were planning to evaluate this later in the year, but current events have forced us to search for solutions sooner than we’d anticipated.
The MSRP price of games will not be impacted, and all existing orders and pre-orders will be fully honoured with no adjustment. As always, all of our products remain available to print-and-play for free. We will be enacting the following changes:
US Only: Tariff surcharge – Effective Immediately
While we previously communicated that price changes would not come into effect during the preorder period, unfortunately the scale of the costs created by tariff changes has surpassed the financial burden we are able to bear while still being able to fund future sets, art and major events like Worlds.
As the tariffs are directly aimed at Chinese imports to the US, we must pay the 145% tariffs on our products, and unfortunately we must partially pass this on to customers. For the duration of this tariff policy by the US government, a tariff surcharge will be applied to all US orders of $10 USD per set.
We will aim to immediately adjust or remove this surcharge as and when the US government changes its tariff policies.
All Regions: Flat Rate Shipping – Effective April 24
Effective from April 24th, free shipping will no longer be available via our store in all regions. This will be replaced with a flat rate shipping fee of $8 USD or converted regional currency equivalent. We expect this shipping charge to remain in effect for the foreseeable future.
An Update on the EU and UK Stores
Our VAT registration progress is unfortunately still underway. Regardless, we will be able to open the stores for pre-orders over the coming weekend. Prior to this, all submissions to the pre-order registration form will be entered. The form is now closed while those orders are added.
PLEASE NOTE: The email you receive will be an invoice request. Completing the order process and payment will generate your final order. Please ensure to add support@nullsignal.games to your contacts so you don’t miss the invoice request and then complete the order to secure your position.
Our initial shipment of Elevation and System Gateway is currently in transit from China to both the EU and the UK. At this time, we anticipate them arriving at our warehouses either just in time for fulfillment to begin on launch day or within the week following. We are continuing to monitor the progress and will provide further updates as we are able.
Moving Forward
Our initial print run of Elevation has sold out in all regions. We have a second print run on the way, but it’s been delayed due to the tariffs causing additional coordination overhead for our printing partners. We currently expect delays of about one week for preorders that are being fulfilled from the second print run.
This has similarly affected our sets being restocked for all regions. We regret to say that while the stores will fully open on April 24th with the release of Elevation, we will not have our full breadth of products until later into May.
All of our products remain available to print-and-play for free. Elevation will be available for print-and-play on release day, April 24th.
As always, we appreciate your support.
