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Remember Donald Trump's tariffs? They caused all kinds of aggro for manufacturers and consumers, only for the US Supreme Court to rule that they weren't a legal use of the 'International Emergency Economic Powers Act', allowing impacted companies to apply for refunds.
Some of those companies decided to bank the money – which hasn't gone down all that well, in retrospect – but Playdate maker Panic has decided the right thing to do is refund customers who had to pay more for their crank-based handheld.
Speaking to Game Developer, Panic co-founder Cabel Sasser said:
"There was a specific window of time this year where we charged tariffs to customers. We tried absorbing the cost for a while, but that was financially difficult for a small company like ours. We made the tariff a very obvious and clearly labelled line item on checkout for any customer affected.
It's just not our money to keep, and it felt really good to give it back. That's an easy way to know you made the right decision."
Sasser adds that "it took a lot of work for us to file all the paperwork to get the refund from the government, and it took work to build a little system to process the refund, and sometimes it felt like, wait, why are we seemingly doing more work than even gigantic companies are on this issue? That felt weird. But I guess it makes sense in a way, because our small size means we’re far more directly affected by something like a tariff. From start to finish on this whole tariff whim, all I could think about is all the cool stuff we could be working on instead."
The Playdate was announced in 2019 and launched in 2022. It features a mechanical crank and a monochrome display and lets players download games through a digital store.