Disclosure
Affiliate disclosure
The short version: we earn a commission when you buy through a link here, it costs you nothing extra, and it does not decide what we recommend.
By Scooter M. · Published · Last updated
What that means in practice
Most of the links on this site that go to a retailer are affiliate links. If you click one and buy something, the retailer pays us a small percentage of the sale. You pay exactly the same price - the commission comes out of the retailer’s margin, not out of your pocket, and using our link never costs you anything.
That is how this site is funded. There is no subscription, no advertising, and no sponsored content.
What it does not change
- Which games we recommend. Picks are chosen against the rules set out at how we pick, and the commission rate is not one of them. It is not recorded anywhere in the data this site is built from.
- The order they appear in. Rankings are editorial. The highest-scoring gift on this entire site is one of the cheapest games on it, which pays us less than anything above it.
- What we say about them. Every game carries a “who should skip it” section, and every roundup names something we deliberately left out. Those sections cost us money and they stay.
Where the disclosure appears
Not just here. A short disclosure line renders above the first buy link on every commercial page, so you know a link is an affiliate link before you reach it rather than after. Individual buy buttons are also marked #ad.
Outbound commercial links carry rel="sponsored nofollow" and open in a new tab. They route through a redirect on our own domain, which is how the commission is attributed - it does not change where you end up or what you pay.
How prices work on this site
The number inside a buy button is a live retail price, refreshed daily, and it carries the date it was checked. If our data is more than 48 hours old the number disappears automatically and the button reads “Check price”.
Prices change and the retailer’s price at checkout is the one that applies. A price shown here is a snapshot of a moment, not an offer. Where a table on this site shows a publisher list price, it is labeled as one and read from the publisher’s own store - it is not what a shop charges.
We do not print a price we cannot verify. That is the reason a button sometimes says we do not hold a current price rather than showing a number: the alternative is a stale figure, and a stale figure on a page about gift budgets is worse than none.
Which retailers we link to
Amazon, at present. We are not currently part of any other affiliate network, and we do not build tracked links for programs we have not joined. If that changes, this page changes with it.
We link to a retailer because it is where a reader can actually buy the game, not because of what it pays. Where a game is cheaper elsewhere and we know it, we would rather say so than route you to the more profitable option.
Questions
Email info@meepleandmat.com. If you think a recommendation on this site has been influenced by commission, that is exactly the message we want to receive, and our editorial policy sets out how we handle it.