Donald Trump Set to Kill Gaming Industry with New Potential Tariffs

Donald Trump Set to Kill Gaming Industry with New Potential Tariffs

Not even a month into 2025, and the United States of America has already taken a few rough hits, starting with the temporary ban of TikTok, and now it has been reported that Donald Trump could be introducing a new tariff regarding imports from Mexico and Canada . Ultimately, this could lead to a major hit to the gaming industry as a whole in the United States of America, with further implications world wide.

Donald Trump’s Potential New Tariffs Could Lead To a Massive Change in the Gaming Industry

At the time of writing, President Donald Trump has stated that a new 25% tariff could potentially be introduced regarding imports from both Mexico and Canada on February 1st.

Unfortunately, this could be a major issue for gamers within the USA, as a large portion of disc-based games that are sold within the USA are manufactured in Mexico and imported over.

Alright, well, video games. With 25% tariffs on imports from Mexico on the way, I can see a sharp downtick in the number of disc-based games that get released physically in the US, as much of that production infrastructure is in Mexico. If they do get made, I expect higher prices both phys & dig.

— Mat Piscatella (@matpiscatella.bsky.social) 21 January 2025 at 14:38

This could mean that for gamers who live in the USA, a potential price hike could be possible in the near future to compensate for the increased import costs, at least according to experts such as Mat Piscatella, who suggests/predicts that a price hike could be possible for both physical and digital copies of games if physical editions continue to be manufactured within Mexico.

However, this is all speculation at this point, as Mat Piscatella has also mentioned that there is the possibility for the manufacturing process to be relocated to the USA, but this is with the dip in interest regarding physical media over recent years, this itself may not be likely.

This can be seen all throughout the gaming industry as consoles are no longer being developed with disc drives and now require an external disc drive to allow for physical copies to be played, as well as game developers choosing to completely remove the option of a physical copy by only creating a digital version, completely taking the option away from gamers.

Alan wake 2 in The Dark Place.
Alan Wake 2 didn’t originally receive a physical release. Image Credit: Remedy Games.

The most recent examples of this practice taking place are by companies like Remedy Entertainment with the development of Alan Wake 2, which was only released as a digital version with no physical version available at the time of release (only recently remedied) leaving many gamers only one option, and that is to follow the industry into the digital domain.

Even though the gaming industry seems to be pushing gamers towards a more digital world, there are still those who enjoy purchasing physical copies of games, which is why the manufacturing process is still active to this day. But if this tariff does take place, it could lead to a major hit for the video game industry as well as push gamers further into the digital age, and therefore towards far less control of what they actually own.

For more Thumb Wars Gaming coverage, check out how Shuhei Yoshida saw the live-service ending that Sony didn’t or how a Marvel Rivals leak led to the canonisation of a Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 story.

Leave a Comment

Comments

No comments yet. Why don’t you start the discussion?

    Leave a Reply

    Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *