The results of the Stonemaier Games’ 2025 survey showed evidence that their followers want to buy their games from FLGS.
The 2025 survey was conducted on about 8,000 followers of Stonemaier Games. This survey asked these two following questions (the second is a follow-up to the first):
- “Which place did you use the MOST for buying games this year?”
- “If it’s different than your previous answer, which place are you hoping to use more for buying games in 2026?”
While only 21% of the respondents to the first question bought their games via LGS, hobby, and book stores in 2025, 33.2% of the follow-up question respondents said that they were hoping to buy their games from their LGS, hobby, and book stores in 2026. Additionally, as part of the data collected from these two questions,16.2% of respondents bought games from crowdfunding in 2025 while around 2% said they were looking to buy their games in 2026 from crowdfunding campaigns.
It is encouraging to see data showing that tabletop fans would prefer to buy their games at LGS in 2026. This is also in line with the trend of independent retailers flourishing in 2025 heading into 2026 (see “Five Huge Trends“). The data from this survey indicates that crowdfunding may not be a preferred method of preorder for game buyers in 2026; however, that conclusion should to be taken with a grain of salt as Stonemaier Games does not utilize crowdfunding platforms to solicit their games (which may affect the opinion of Stonemaier’s followers).
Source: ICv2
