Wise Wizard Games is the latest game company to downsize citing the impact of erratic U.S. tariff policies, the company announced. “We’re going through a difficult internal reorganization,” the company said in the announcement. While declining to provide the number of employees affected or remaining in response to ICv2 questions, the company did describe the remaining employees as a “smaller, focused team.”
We also asked for specifics on the tariff impact and were told that Wise Wizard Games manufactures its games in China and had experienced “significant tariff-related cost increases” this year, which was described as “…one of the factors influencing our reorganization.”
There are at least three unfulfilled Kickstarters, with Hero Realms Dungeons, which raised $1,043,799 from 6,741 backers, the largest. The campaign ran in early 2023, with delivery promised for February 2024, meaning that release was over a year late when tariffs were announced.
The November 2025 update on the Kickstarter page stressed that the company is committed to completing Kickstarter fulfillment and tied the layoffs to that goal. “We remain committed to fulfilling ALL of our crowdfunding campaigns,” the update said. “But in order to do that, we’ve had to make some very difficult decisions.” The Kickstarter update provided the additional information that the company’s owners have been working without pay.
Wise Wizard Games recently released Star Realms: 10th Anniversary Edition (see “’Star Realms“) to the trade, and it’s now sold out at the publisher level. The next trade releases are a reprint and Name That!, a new small box game under the Wacky Wizard imprint.
Wise Wizard Games has recently expanded its business to include U.S. distribution of games originally released in Europe, including Locus, recently released to good response.
On the macro front, the U.S. Supreme Court is currently considering a challenge to the President’s authority to impose the tariffs without Congressional approval, which could lead to reduced or eliminated tariffs (see “Supremes Skeptical“).
Source: ICv2
