I'm sorry for such an
INCREDIBLYlong post, but there is so much to cover.....
After 17 years, I'm just so fucking jaded that I've given up. I don't want to sell my 4 armies, but god damn I don't want to buy anymore of their shit either. Warma/Hordes has it's appeal, but I debate starting something else again.
Old bump but you are far from alone in feeling that way. Far, far from alone. GW might seriously bite themselves in the ass quite soon - after years of propping up their revenue by squeezing every penny possible from their Fantasy and 40K players people might finally be getting to the point that there is a large-scale movement away from GW to other game systems. I found out this weekend that a couple of my RL friends already started Warmachine I think it was and have shelved multiple GW armies.
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OK, on to the new/semi-new stuff:
I'm still not 100% clear on the
"$500 limit, per month, on direct order items"from GW and the associated calls for a GW boycott this spring. I've heard these calls before so I dunno. I hadn't been to one of our local stores in months but a friend of mine was telling me that he had been talking to the owner of one recently, and that the owner was angry about the $500 limit. A lot of GW's policy changes this year seem to be aimed at online retailers specifically so I'm not really sure how this will actually affect FLGSs, but since I'm hearing rumors of local store owners not being happy (and talk within the store of boycotting amongst gamers) I'll have to pop into one of the ones mentioned to me and see what their take on it is.
Of course GW has a long history of changing policies on a whim and generally dicking over FLGSs - for example, we once had to buy a minimum amount of GW merchandise per month to qualify for a discount, but we could only choose from a particular list, and forcing small retailers to buy hundreds of dollars of product each month that they might normally not have otherwise meant that we often had excess on our shelves.
There is a ton of blogs and sites that have been talking about this particular issue this spring, but I grabbed this one really quick:
http://www.wargamingtradecraft.com/2...workshops.html
Essentially, the issues can be summed up as:
a) Retailers are no longer allowed to break open boxes and sell bits separately.
b) No more sales of their products online. AT ALL. (except from GW)
c) No selling outside of your country even if someone calls you for an order
d) Retailers are limited to spending $500 /month on products in GW's standard line (1800-ish of the slower selling items, but still the bulk of the products available... and some new items go directly in to this category.)
Now here's another interesting point that many of you might not be aware of. I've personally (face to face) talked to a few different retailers in both Canada and the US who've told me that they were contacted by GW and offered a large shipment of free product on the basis that they sell it at full retail price.
Great deal right?
Well the retailer I spoke to in the US took the deal and was surprised to see product fly off the shelves. So naturally, he started carrying it. A few months later, GW announced they were opening their own store about 15 minutes away from him.
And I have to say that the argument at the end of
"GW versus 'Everyone Else'"is probably what we'll all remember when we'll think back to what is going on within the hobby right now. And at a grassroots level, I think GW is losing and I'm not sure how long they'll be able to sustain themselves. Maybe they'll always be around and they'll be able to adjust, but after 6-7 years of their business model being based purely on increasing their margins (per item) and forcing their customers to foot those increases, I'm not so sure that they'll be able to really compete now that they need to rely on gamers buying large plastic kits en masse. Especially when we're seeing such a large explosion of alternatives, with some focusing on "cheap" models and others focusing on ultra-high quality models. ESPECIALLY with Kickstarters now, you literally would need to dedicate significant amounts of time to keep abreast of all of the news that comes in regularly from all of these alternatives. I read a number of things here and there and I can't remotely keep up.
Not sure if I've linked some of these before, but thank God there are people who do try to keep a finger on the pulse of this type of gaming atm. Tabletop Fix is probably my favorite, but scroll down the list on the right-hand column of companies and categories. Anymore if you can sculpt (or even make 3D models) then you can put out models nowadays, and if the mainstream TT gamers move into that sea of options then GW is going to QQ.
http://ttfix.blogspot.com/
http://www.tabletopgamingnews.com/
The other thing I wanted to mention (well really, the main thing before I got sidetracked) is the recent spate of DMCA copyright complaints that GW has been sending straight to Google. I'm glad I waited a bit because when this first hit, I think that BOLS was down as well (and people were losing their collective shit) but now they are back up - that being said, Natfka's blog at
http://natfka.blogspot.com/is still down, but that
ISdirectly due to GW filing multiple DMCAs straight to Google. Now the blog at
Masterminishas an interview posted with Gary (Natfka) that is probably of interest to at least a few here, and confirms the DMCA issue. It's "kind of a big thing" since Natfka was one of (if not
THE) largest rumor and leak sources out there.
http://www.belloflostsouls.net/2013/...s-returns.html
We are back up and running - full steam ahead! We are working with Google to determine exactly what occurred over the last 24 hours with the BoLS frontpage, but I would like to clear up a couple of things for the record:
1) BoLS was never targeted by any DMCA, IP, or any other violation notices.While other 3rd party sites on blogger may or may not have been targeted by Games Workshop and/or Google, BoLS never was.We are currently awaiting answers from Google regarding some very *odd* coincidences in timing between our frontpage outage, and the punitive actions taken against some of the blogger sites that were the targets of DMCA letters such as these.
DMCA Letter Archive - Chilling Effects
2) We take our security and availability seriously. Steps are being taken to prevent such an occurrence from ever happening again.
Some of the DMCAs
here,
hereand
here.
What's kind of crazy is that if GW wants to claim that they are trying to protect their IP rights, from what I understand they have to COMPLETELY protect it, but they may be selectively targeting NATFKA because they not only didn't like some of the leaks, but possibly so that they can sit back and claim that they have actively attempted to do so (along with Chapterhouse I suppose). What I want to know is that since you can potentially lose your sole rights if you do not take action to protect your IP (dilution), then what could happen if you only go after one or two entities? Will GW eventually be forced to become some sort of IP Nazi (more than they already are) and file DMCAs on each and every Blog that even looks at them funny so that they don't run the risk of dilution? Also, it looks like NATFKA might be able to come back up due to the differences in international laws, so this might drag our for a really long time.
Oh, and if you thought that was all...WRONG!
I've been wanting GW to update a lot of the Specialist Games range for years now - in particular, Necromunda, Blood Bowl and BFG just to name a few. And these games, well, they've already been on life support for years, but we had a glimmer of hope with the rumors of a blood bowl re-release being in the works. But apparently GW has started removing Specialist Game products wholesale or labeling them as "OOP" on their website, while someone from the
UK Fulchester GW storeposted on the FB page:
"Because the our range of products and games are too complex and difficult to manage, we have begun to remove (and not replace) items from our Specialist Range. It's not like anyone plays games like Battle Fleet Gothic and Necromunda anyway."I thought this was some sort of bad joke or idiot post at first, but according to some (especially Euros) they're seeing a much different listings while we Americans see this stuff still stocked via the US page. So, I dunno, but I haven't seen anything to refute this either but you can find threads on the usual 40K forums about this. This DOES kind of tick me off, but as others have said in regards to this...other companies like Mantic Games are putting out similar systems, so maybe it wont be a huge loss for gamers. Best comment from that FB page though:
Because SG's didn't contain enough space marines, GW will replace the whole range, including all the WFB range with more space marines. And the paints. They need to be space marines too. And all the staff. Space marines.
In other GW news, advance orders of the new space marines start on Saturday. Be ready to order you new space marines and get your first look in the new look magazine: WHITE SPACE MARINE.
And dont forget that tickets to the Space marine day in the NEC go on sale, got to have your space marine painted and ready to enter in SPACE MARINE ON PARADE for your chance to win a golden space marine.
Spehss Mehreens!!!!