Panic, the studio behind the crank-driven Playdate handheld, has told customers it is refunding the tariff surcharges it charged them earlier this year. The money is coming back after the company secured its own refund from the United States government, and it is passing that along to the people who paid it.
The refunds follow a US Supreme Court ruling that President Donald Trump's tariffs were not a legal use of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act. Companies affected by the tariffs had to individually apply for their share of the refund, and Panic did exactly that before returning the cash to buyers.
What Panic charged, and why
According to Game Developer, Panic added a clearly labeled tariff line item to Playdate orders during a specific window this year, later confirmed at 19%. The company even set up a website explaining the surcharge. Before that, it tried to eat the cost on its own.
"There was a specific window of time this year where we charged tariffs to customers," co-founder Cabel Sasser said in an email to Game Developer. "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 labeled line item on checkout for any customer affected."
The amount each person gets back depends on how much they bought. Sasser framed the decision in plain terms: "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."
A lot of paperwork for a small studio
Sasser was candid that the process was a slog. "Still, 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," he said. He noted the odd feeling of a tiny company doing more legwork than far larger firms on the same issue, adding that Panic's small size makes it "far more directly affected by something like a tariff."
He also made clear he would rather have spent the time elsewhere: "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."
Panic stands out because few companies are returning the money. Retailers including Target, Home Depot and Walmart were refunded billions of dollars, and Nintendo confirmed a $300 million tariff refund in its quarterly filings, money it has opted to keep. Nintendo and several other firms are now facing lawsuits over that decision, with plaintiffs arguing customers knowingly paid the tariffs at the time of purchase. Beyond Panic, it is mostly shipping companies like UPS refunding customers, along with PC cooling maker Arctic.
What this means for players
If you bought a Playdate during the surcharge window, check your email, because a refund is on its way based on what you spent. More broadly, this is a rare case of a hardware maker giving tariff money back rather than pocketing it, and it sets an awkward contrast with larger firms sitting on their refunds. For anyone tracking physical gaming hardware, from niche handhelds like the Playdate to boxed consoles, tariffs remain a real factor in what you pay at checkout, and how a company handles them is worth watching.