GW: Why do they do it?

[bubbles15Participant 2298xp 0]

I’m done with GW because I’m sick of the business model they use. I thought it had changed, but it was just a ruse, and I fell for it.

Could you explain what you mean here? They want to sell products. What is it about their business model you disagree with? The creating and marketing products to sell? This belief that Workshop are inherently evil or sinister is absurd.

@carlospicter – I wasn’t referring to you being entitled, rather limbergers post. I thought your post was absolutely fine and presented disappointment at hoping but missing out.

[totsuzenheniParticipant 5651xp 3]

For me, when it comes to miniature games and living card games and roleplaying games and the like, whether or not i think that a company intends to support a product as indefinitely as they can and thus enable me to collect it over time at my leisure is, in practice, one of the main reasons why i will or will not buy into a game or other product line. Indeed, thinking back over my purchases, i think it has been the first decision gate, and will continue to be so. The comparison with Fantasy Flight Games is interesting for me because when i first bought into Android Netrunner there were sporadic dearths of all of the expansions (and even occasionally of the core box set) that could last months but that didn’t matter to me because i did not have the impression that these dearths were permanent and that the game had been or would be discontinued. It was only later when Fantasy Flight Games did start culling product lines that (as far as i’m aware) were ‘healthy’, as it were, that my impression of the bases (or balance of bases if you will) upon which Fantasy Flight Games would support a game had changed to be more … focussed on short term profit for hopping share holders and also determined, alas and not, i think, coincidentally, on licencing decisions and licencing ‘realities’. Whilst i have a number of things i dislike or like less about Games Workshop’s products these days that could be reasons why i haven’t bought a (new) Games Workshop product such as the (new) Necromunda game or started collecting a faction of miniatures for such a game, in practice i don’t think about most of those dislikes as part of a buying decision because the decision whether or not to buy has already been decided because i have the impression that the product line will not be around long enough for me to invest in as a collection and as a hobby, or indeed because by the time i’ve found out about the product line it is already ‘no longer available’.

[redscopeParticipant 2701xp 0]

@totsuzenheni No Company will support a game indefinitey. That is setting the bar too high. Games have to change, new versions will come out and product lines will need to be updated. Often that does not stop you playing the old game at all. You can still play the old Necromunda if you have a copy. You can still use the old models and just buy the new rules if you want.

The expection that a company will remain static and just keep making the same game and the same models indefinity is just not realistic at all. No game is “permanent” in stock at best you will get games which are re-printed but even those simple games get updates, new rules, different boards etc.

Everything has a shelf life that the product will be in stock for a limited time, but once you have the game and own it nothing is stopping you playing it forever.

 

[totsuzenheniParticipant 5651xp 2]

@redscope What i wrote was ‘as indefinitely as they can’, which is not the same as ‘indefinitely’. Nothing i wrote excludes or implies that i expect or require a game or product line to remain static. Nor did anything i wrote imply that i expect a product to remain permanantly in stock and indeed i stated that “there were sporadic dearths of all of the [Android Netrunner] expansion[ product]s (and even occasionally of the core box set) that could last months but that didn’t matter to me”.

Some games lose something when they stop being supported by an/the authoritative organisation (and/or when they stop being supported by a wider community, which could be caused by, or be the cause of, no longer being supported by an/the authorative organisation) whether or not someone has the core parts of those games.

[redscopeParticipant 2701xp 0]

Well I am not sure you understand what indefinitely means in that case.

Companies will keep products as “long as they can” That long is defined as being limited either by the product providing a profit to keep it going or does it just have a defined shelf life.

Indefinitely is the opposite of limited it means it has no time limit, no limit to it at all. So that is what you suggested

“collect it over time at my leisure is”

You made this statement as well above. If the product is limited then you dont get the option to buy at your leisure you have to buy it during its limited run. Both aspects cannot be true.

You use Necromunda as an example that came out 1995 and is still around today. Even if you take the current version that came out in 2017 and is now 4 years old and still going strong. If you have not decided after 4 years to pick the game up likely you never will.

What you seem to be asking from the companies is to work sololy to a time scale of your choosing which just is not how the real world works.

Everything has a limited time and if you really want it go out and buy because you dont know if it will be around in a month, 6 months or 2 years even the companies making the games dont know that far in advance in a lot of cases.

 

 

[totsuzenheniParticipant 5651xp 2]

@redscope I wrote ‘support a product as indefinitely as they can’ (by which i think it should be clear i meant ‘product line’, but in any case) not ‘keep products as indefinitely as they can’. Again the two are significantly different. Taking the word ‘indefinitely’ out of the phrase ‘indefinitely as they can’ changes the meaning of the word. Words mean different things when used differently, in this case when used in conjunction with a adjoining clause or caveat.

I didn’t use Necromunda 1995 as an example of anything, nor even refer to it. I very specifically referred to ‘(new) Necromunda’.

At no point have i written about my expectations.

Given that you’re misrepresenting what i wrote and responding to things i didn’t write, nor imply, i probably shouldn’t have responded to you in the first place, but because i did i think i should note i’m not going to respond to you any further, not least because i don’t want to put the onus on myself to keep correcting your representation of what i wrote.

[redscopeParticipant 2701xp 0]

Sorry but noooo Indefinitely means without limits. If you said what you mean is as long as the company can that makes sense. You cannot say they have to support it without any limits and then try to suggest their are limits and that you just get to collect it at your leisure. I am not misrepresenting you at all this is what your wrote. It just does not make any sense.

I suspect you dont mean to use indenfinitely at all.

The reason I bring this up is not personal but this is just an example of the community setting expections which are way beyond reality. Necromunda even if you talk of the new game is already 4 years old, they have release soild updates for it during those years. Some how that is still not good enough. I know GW make errors and things could be better but how is any company expected to match up to these insane expections we are setting for companies.

Take Stargrave models from Northstar they are pretty much sold out in every store. Not because Northstar are some evil empire restricting sales just simply because they are selling them faster than the kits can be made in China and shipped to the stores in the UK.

That is just reality things in life are limited, they take time to produce and ship. If you dont think that is good enough by all means start your own production company and let us all know when you have this amazing range of models we can buy without any limits on time, production etc.

[phaidknott 7012xp 5]

I think there’s a difference however in being able to purchase something sporadically, and then something being OOP after just 10 minutes of going pre-order at 10am on a Saturday?

 

This happens time after time on GWs website, and I can only reference MY experience in having to jump through proverbial hoops to try and obtain something GW has been trying to “sell” me for the previous month. It’s not about “entitlement”, nor is it “unfounded expectations”. It’s more that it should be this hard for someone to “take my money” at the end of the day.

 

Take for example Necromunda, Adeptus Titanicus, Bloodbowl. If you suffer from the “collector gene”, all three of these games are usually available (sporadically). However many items for these games are OOP (usually the card packs with rules associated with them (and these rules aren’t reprinted in the main rulebooks, so although these rules are “optional” it just seems strange that GW don’t maintain them as a line item that’s in stock).

 

I think partially it’s due to GW being a victim of it’s own success, it’s inventory/product line is MASSIVE compared to what it had 30 years ago (so room for stock is probably an issue). However all companies grow over time and GW doesn’t seem to have handled EVERYTHING as well as they could. Being unable to obtain a warehouse for 20 years (which is something they’ve referenced when challenged about things selling out never to return over this period), seems a little strange (as other companies seem able to do it).

 

All it all this thread is just about the frustrations of customers trying to get GW to “take my money”. It’s shouldn’t be as hard as it is for both customers and the FLGS. GW produce products that people want, but even if they sell out in 10 minutes (which most companies would LOVE to see happen), seem disinclined to reprint/reproduce it months down the line to cater to customer demand.

[limburger 21535xp 1]

@bubbles15 I’m not ‘entitled’ to anything … nor did I mean to imply I was.
It simply sucks that when things are advertised and then you can’t buy them unless you are awake at the moment the preorders are allowed. I can accept such situations for collectible bits that are advertised as such.
I can’t accept such situations for things that are supposed to be core SKU’s for a game.
It gets worse when the communication about general availability and available quanties is spotty or absent.
Cursed City being prime example … we still don’t know if this was a mistake or intent.

It is anti consumer … and I hate it as it has the potential to harm our hobby.

It’s tricky to get tone across in plain text and with multiple culture/language barriers.
I’ve been told that us Dutch can be pretty brutal and direct in such matters …

@carlospictor I’d argue that what GW does is not a ‘pre order’ in the traditional/literal sense which implies them starting manufacturing after the ‘pre-orders’ are locked in)
This is more like a regular order in advance of actual availability. As a result stock may not match demand at all, because they don’t have time to adjust production process …

@phaidnott
Finding and buying a suitable building/location is trivial.
Getting the correct licenses/permissions (or whatever) so you can actually use the building like you want/need to may take longer.
And I wouldn’t be surprised if internal office politics played a part in that.

I’ve heard stories about one company which was both fined for having their manufacturing inside city zones, but at the same time they weren’t allowed/given permission to move to a new location … (IIRC they went bankrupt as a result).

I’ve heard about a house with horse stables attached that couldn’t be used for horses , because zoning laws prevented that (a fact that the real estate agent didn’t mention … ) effectively making said property useless for its (original) purpose.

I’m sure there’s examples of that sort of thing all over the world, because (local) politicians love to show that they too have power over the peasants in their domain.
And while GW is big (within our hobby/industry) .. it’s not as big as more ‘normal’ companies out there.

//
A bit off-topic and possibly related.
The shortage of integrated circuits appears to be caused by factories not having any room for additional orders as they are running at maximum capacity.
Pre covid these factories would have a bit of spare capacity that could be used to satisfy temporary increased demand or short production runs of specific items.
I wouldn’t be surprised of the factories used to produce the cardboard & minis for GW (and the rest of our hobby industry) suffer from a similar situation.

I know for a fact that factories aren’t running at peak effectiveness (I’ve seen numbers as low as 2-4% for certain pharmaceuticals … !)
With Covid regulations reducing the amount of people that can work at the factory floor you’d likely see even less effective use of available production capacity. If you were at 10% effective use pre-covid and are currently at 5% … you have lost 50% of your capacity.  It’s easy to see that there’s plenty of issues that will happen under those circumstances.

[jamescutts 6821xp 3]

Just for a bit of context, heres GW’s location in Nottingham, right being warhammer world, forge world and main factory?

Euro Hub (left) is main distribtion center I believe and the under construction area at the bottom is the new factory/warhouse.

Its a while since ive been down there so I might be incorrect on some of these uses and the actual buildings, either way its quite a constrained location between rail and rivers.

And for some addtional context, the blue area below is Warlord Games new location

[holly 12044xp 1]

It’s exactly this @phaidknott “difference however in being able to purchase something sporadically, and then something being OOP after just 10 minutes of going pre-order at 10am on a Saturday”

GW literally spend weeks informing us of upcoming releases, then a week of information before the pre-order (which is a week before the retail release) – for it to all be gone by 10:30 that morning.

I don’t believe I have a sense of entitlement, but I do think that pre-orders advertised that heavily should at least be available to pre-order for the week before they hit retail.

[jamescutts 6821xp 1]

difference however in being able to purchase something sporadically, and then something being OOP after just 10 minutes of going pre-order at 10am on a Saturday

I dont think theres any sense of entitlement when thats the case as mentioned.

I didnt really follow the Cursed City thing that much as I had little intrest in it but i remember seeing loads of marketing for it and then it disapearing off the face of the planet for whatever reason, while they didnt state it was a one off they didnt state is wasnt either, the marketing certianly gave the impression it was going to be a new range or set based off the quantity of it and previous games.

Its almost false advertising in a sense to your perception (im not saying it technically is) and treating a customer base with comtempt in some cases. I have every sympathy for annone who became excited only to have those hopes annoyingly crushed. Similary companies exist to make a profit (in most cases) you should always be aware that they want your money more than your happness, generally companies try to make and keep happy customers and those are well regarded and avoid controversy but that doesnt always need to be the case.

Also GW in all fairess have been perfectly capable of handling these sorts of things even recently, their Made to Order/Last Chance to Buy system never really had these issues, open up orders for X amount of time, produce and dispatch these once made, make that clear to customers. They even corrected a issue they had on  recent LoTR Made to Order/ReIssue which was limited quantity, that sold out in by 10:15, the following week they annouced the products would be either available made to order for the next X days/weeks or would be permamently added back into the range. Theres certianly internal politics and book-keeping in play in many of their decisions.

 

 

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