Damages: Handling Issues with Care

Explore how we handle damaged game components and missing pieces, and see how a clear support process helps us keep your playing experience intact.

You might already know me – I’m Réka, MCG’s customer service rep. We might have already exchanged emails if you contacted me about the Pledge Manager, your webshop order, or a request for a replacement piece for your game. In this blog post, I’ll share everything I know about damages. It might not be the most uplifting subject, but we think it’s important to be transparent about our processes and capabilities when it comes to replacing lost or damaged boxes, components, or games.

The MCG Policy 

Firstly, I’d like to express our gratitude when backers share their positive experiences with our customer support. On a realistic level, we know we can’t solve every problem and always have the answer a customer or backer wants to hear. We always do our best to offer a solution or handle the issue with care and empathy. 

Our main goal is always for people to enjoy playing our games with all components in good condition so the full experience is intact. Alongside gameplay and mechanics, the aesthetic quality of our games is also very important to us. The high quality of components, as well as design, graphic design, and illustration are key features of our products. We understand how disheartening it can be to see a beautiful piece of the game torn, scratched or otherwise damaged. Especially our core titles, our games have a lot of stuff in them. And they are in our games for a good reason: to make the game enjoyable, balanced, replayable, and fun to interact with physically as well. Having a curved board, a torn card, or a miniature soldier missing an arm can lead to a negative first experience and overall opinion of the game. 

Replacement possibilities and limitations 

Despite our best efforts to replace damaged or lost pieces, we have some limitations to work with, and these affect how quickly we can provide replacement components when something arrives damaged or goes missing.We usually receive an extra 1% of the game components – this includes punchboards, cards, dice, minis, and everything else. Manufacturers understand that some damage is inevitable and offer to include these extra pieces as a replacement for any damage caused during manufacturing. 

Damages and defects during the manufacturing process

Some mistakes will always slip in when you are often creating more than 10.000 copies of a product. As you may know, we recently became exclusive partners with Panda Manufacturing. For the past ten years, they have been our most consistent partner in ensuring the high quality of our games and providing sufficient insight into their manufacturing processes. They are always ready to improve the quality of a piece if it didn’t turn out perfectly on the first try. In a nutshell, our companies very rarely settle for the “this will do” solution. 

With all this said, there is still a level of human error we need to take into account. The most common issues in manufacturing relate to the cutting of the individual pieces. Sometimes a sheet of cards is cut a bit off, resulting in the graphics not aligning with the dimensions. Or sometimes half of a meeple can be mixed in with the full pieces. We do sometimes receive funny emails about the citizens of Septima getting into some sort of trouble and losing a limb or two in the process.

Even if the printing, cutting and overall manufacturing process were 100% perfect, there is still another step that is almost entirely done by hand by the wonderful people at Panda – assembly. We all know that a lot of attention to detail is needed to assemble one copy of a game. You need to count all pieces and put them into their designated bag or tray. Now imagine packaging thousands of games, and needing to perfectly count the meeple pieces, wooden tokens, card decks and miniatures for each ziplock bag and box. I personally think it’s a miracle that assembly goes this smoothly and that no more issues are coming from this part of the process! 

Especially when it comes to our bigger games, like the Voidfall Galactic Box. 

Nonetheless, these are all issues we are well prepared for, and can easily substitute pieces from the extra replacement pieces.

The saddest of all – box damages

During the next step of production and logistics, we often lose control over how expertly and with how much care our products are treated. Everything is safely packaged onto pallets by our manufacturer, then handed over to freight shipping companies and put onto huge container ships. All we can do at this point is pray that no major weather event knocks over our plans. We don’t only worry about the timing, but also about the safety of our (and your) products. Despite being terribly frustrating, we are thankful that the timing delays are more common than the damage. 

Our products are the most vulnerable during home delivery. The games are packaged separately, one by one, and their fate is in the hands of the courier personnel only. It is very saddening when a backer who supported our project and has been waiting for their game for more than a year receives a package that is clearly damaged even before opening. A small corner dent is often not a big deal, as it does not affect the functionality of the box. However, we have received photos of a deluxe game that looked like a forklift had gone through it, and it was delivered, even in that state. These are the two extreme ends of the spectrum, but I will tell you how we can offer support in both cases.

We regularly have three ways of handling box damage issues.

Prevention 

Preventing damage is arguably the most important step. It limits bad experiences and headaches, and can, in the end, save money for the company. Aiming for a sturdy box is crucial, and discussing packaging options with our fulfilment partners is essential. We have tried everything, from tight packaging boxes to bubble wrap and corner protectors. We need to consider the game’s weight and parameters, and select the best option that still fits into our budget. We’d be happiest if we could deliver the games in boxes filled with the softest pillows, but we also need to stay realistic when fulfilling a large number of orders in a short amount of time. 

Replacements

Most of the time, we do request extra, empty game boxes to be manufactured for our deluxe and exclusive games, which likely won’t be reprinted in that form again. When a game box is damaged in a way that it can no longer function as a safe vessel for the game components, and we have a replacement box on hand, we immediately send it to the customer who reached out. In all cases, we need to see photos of the damage to make an informed decision. The photos help us understand whether we need to replace a single component, the game box, or in rare cases an entire copy. If it is clear that the package was handled poorly, our shipping partner can also file a claim towards the courier service.

We do not produce replacement boxes for our retail products, which is common practice in the industry. Unfortunately, the manufacturing and storage costs of empty game boxes for our ever-growing retail portfolio would be unmanageable. 

Reimbursements 

If we are unable to resolve the damage with a replacement (in extreme cases, by replacing the entire game), we can only turn to financial compensation as a solution. In these cases, we usually refund an amount somewhat equivalent to the shipping fee. Reimbursement is only an option in very unique circumstances. Throwing money at the problem is a last resort solution, because we understand that what everyone wants first and foremost is a game and a box in good condition. We know that some of our games are in people’s collections and sometimes purchased as investments. Having a damaged box is particularly painful for collectors.

Accidents happen! And we are not one to get mad about them

It would be reasonable for a for-profit company to stop “caring” about their products after delivery. The package was handed over, and the pledge was honoured, it is your responsibility to take care of this product now – done and dusted! But as gamers ourselves and people who put in a lot of effort into our products, it would be hard not to care what happens to them at the user end. It makes us very happy to hear how often our games get to the table. And pieces can easily get lost or damaged with regular use, so we always make sure to honour these requests as well. To my delight, some people do share how it all went down, and some of these stories are really funny. I’ve heard of miniature pigs chewing up Voidfall punchboards and toddlers taking over gaming tables. My favourite part is that we usually receive a photo attachment of the culprits rather than the damaged pieces, and I assure you, it brightens our day. 

From these, you can also see what kinds of processes are going on behind the scenes to get the game from us to our player community. Whether a game has arrived to you damaged, or it was delivered in perfect condition, you can still see everything a publisher has to do to ensure that their games can reach players’ tables in the form they deserve.

Our aim is to support players whenever damaged components, missing pieces, or box issues arise, so our games can reach the table the way they were meant to.