French retro game publisher Broke Studio has announced that it is suspending all orders to the United States following new customs regulations introduced between the US and Europe.
Broke Studio releases physical games for old systems, and helped bring the utterly brilliant Changeable Guardian Estique to the NES / Famicom. It also launched its Homebrew Factory initiative recently, which aims to make physical publishing of new titles for old systems even easier.
"It truly breaks our hearts to share this news, but we will be temporarily suspending all orders to the United States starting Sunday, August 17th due to new customs regulations introduced between the USA and the European Union," said the company in a statement on social media.
"Under the current conditions with our shipping provider, and until further notice, US customers would need to pay around $80 in customs fees per item upon receiving their package. We feel these charges are unreasonably high and simply not fair to you. We never want your support for our games to come with such a heavy cost, which is why we've made the difficult decision to pause shipments for now."
Broke Studio has confirmed that the last day for US shipping will be Monday, August 18th, so there's still time to get your order in – especially if you'd like to show the company your support.
"If you already have a pre-order with us, please don't cancel it," adds Broke Studio. "We have already found a short-term solution for our pre-order campaigns that will keep extra costs minimal, so your order should be reaching you without such high fees. At the same time, we are actively working on a long-term shipping solution that will allow us to resume regular orders to the USA at a fair and reasonable cost.
Your support means the world to us, and we're doing everything we can to fix this as soon as possible. Thank you for standing with us through this, and we'll keep you updated every step of the way."