How to return an object for a function in react?

Have been following this tutorial to build a checkers game with React and JavaScript and have this function here for initializing the board and then returning an object but then i run into this error`enter image description here

export const createboard = (columns) => {
  let board = {};

  for (let key in columns)
  {
    if (columns.hasOwnProperty(key))
    {
      for (let i = 1; i <= grid_size; i++)
      {
        let row = key + i
        board[row] = null
      }
    }
  }
  
  board = initPlayers(board);
  console.log(board)
  return board
}

`
Is there anyway to bypass this and be able to return an object in this form? enter image description here

I tried converting the board to an array but my entire game logic is built on a board being an object in this form so nothing renders if I do that. I was expecting this to be an easy fix, as objects seem to be able to be returned in a similar project using React 16.4.