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30th October 2021
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/boycott-threat-is-a-hammer-blow-to-games-workshop-f976rp0nh

Britain’s largest manufacturer of miniature wargames and fantasy figurines has become embroiled in a running battle with some of its fans that has sent its share price tumbling.
Games Workshop has angered a section of its customers after clamping down on unauthorised websites dedicated to its Warhammer franchise, according to analysts at Jefferies, the US bank.
The FTSE 250 group has faced a wave of negative online reviews, with some fans even calling for a boycott of the dwarf-and-goblin fantasy game, the analysts said.
Shares in Games Workshop tumbled by 7.7 per cent, or 805p, to £96.45 yesterday.
Games Workshop has been one of the stock market’s best performing companies over the past five years.....

29th October 2021
https://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/markets/article-10145481/MARKET-REPORT-Games-Workshop-shares-drop-sharply.html

Games Workshop, the maker of Warhammer battle figurines, dropped sharply amid signs it could be facing a customer revolt.
The FTSE 250 business and stock market darling saw profits boom during the pandemic as fans stuck in lockdown splashed the cash on its miniatures of goblins and orcs.
Since the onset of Covid-19 last March, the stock price has ballooned by over 160 per cent. However, the company is facing the ire of its legions of fans amid plans to clamp down harder on the use of its intellectual property (IP), according to analysts at Jefferies.
'Having spent time trawling through forums and fan sites, it seems there is a fair bit of discontent in the Warhammer fan base at present,' the broker wrote.
'The catalyst for this seems to have been a much more aggressive approach to protecting IP, particularly around the creation of fan sites and animation.
This change has led to popular fan content creators ceasing their involvement (under pressure from Games Workshop), a lot of negative community feedback, a raft of downvotes to Warhammer video content, and, with other factors also rolled in (price increases, employee pay), calls to boycott the business.'
The impetus for the crackdown appeared to be Warhammer+, Games Workshop's subscription service that provides access to exclusive Warhammer TV shows as well as figurines and apps unavailable elsewhere.
Jefferies said while the current noise seemed to be from a 'vocal minority', they trimmed their target price for the group to 12,250p from 13,200p, saying they would be 'keeping a close eye' on the situation.
Investors also seemed unnerved by the sabre-rattling as the shares dropped 7.7 per cent, or 805p, to 9645p. The FTSE 100 slipped 0.16 per cent, or 11.9 points, to 7237.57, while the FTSE 250 tumbled 0.4 per cent, or 93.26 points, to 23106.61.

And on the same day they do a surprising clearance sale… *makes conspiracy-like noises* (no I don’t know what that means either)

Holy moly, this is great. Hopefully it will make gw.think twice before doing these.kind.of.moves again

I honestly think this just bites fans more, unless it’s a sustained sales drop. GW won’t be hit.

But it’s interesting to read after seeing people speculating about the sales all over the place all day.
The age of sigmar starter is super cheep in Aus, was Sus to me but I didn’t really think much more about it being linked to anything potentially like this.

There’s a boycott on?

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
There’s a boycott on?

There was, until GW revealed- well, literally anything new, at which point the fanbase's horrific lack of impulse control kicked in.

Any boycott of people who weren't already not buying GW products would never last longer than the Black Templar reveal.

 Arbitrator wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
There’s a boycott on?

There was, until GW revealed- well, literally anything new, at which point the fanbase's horrific lack of impulse control kicked in.

Any boycott of people who weren't already not buying GW products would never last longer than the Black Templar reveal.

Indeed, i dont expect this boycott to last long

 streetsamurai wrote:

 Arbitrator wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
There’s a boycott on?

There was, until GW revealed- well, literally anything new, at which point the fanbase's horrific lack of impulse control kicked in.

Any boycott of people who weren't already not buying GW products would never last longer than the Black Templar reveal.

Indeed, i dont expect this boycott to last long

I know it's fun to act cynical and self-superior about stuff like this (I do it too), but the fact is, any amount of action enough to get legitimate financial websites to talk is an effective amount of action, especially considering this boycott has presumably been going about a month.

As shocking as this may seem, there are enough Warhammer fans who value community creators over new toys to make a difference in this field, and GW are clearly feeling it.

Anyone with half a brain can see where this thread is going.

*flies off into the night*

Eldar 2022, it was GW's plan all along to have the long-maligned Xenos save the day.

 Flipsiders wrote:

 streetsamurai wrote:

 Arbitrator wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
There’s a boycott on?

There was, until GW revealed- well, literally anything new, at which point the fanbase's horrific lack of impulse control kicked in.

Any boycott of people who weren't already not buying GW products would never last longer than the Black Templar reveal.

Indeed, i dont expect this boycott to last long

I know it's fun to act cynical and self-superior about stuff like this (I do it too), but the fact is, any amount of action enough to get legitimate financial websites to talk is an effective amount of action, especially considering this boycott has presumably been going about a month.

As shocking as this may seem, there are enough Warhammer fans who value community creators over new toys to make a difference in this field, and GW are clearly feeling it.

I hope you're right, don't get me wrong, but 8th edition showed GW don't need to do much more than click their fingers and people will come running back with open arms.

OK, if it wasn't so clunky, I too would from now on refer to GW as "the dwarf-and-goblin-fantasy-game".

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
There’s a boycott on?

Yep but its one of those gamer boycotts wherein they only buy half what they planned too...(but twice as often)

 Turnip Jedi wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
There’s a boycott on?

Yep but its one of those gamer boycotts wherein they only buy half what they planned too...

I've been watching a few places that discussed it and watching the shift to normality has been depressing but kind of amusing.

"I'm not buying GW products anymore!"
"I'm only buying GW second hand off Ebay!"
"I'm only buying GW from my LFGS to support a small business!"
"I'm only buying GW from online discounters because I'm trying to give them as little as possible!"
"BY THE EMPEROR, THE BLACK TEMPLAR BOXSET IS GLORIOUS! PURGE MY WALLET, GW!!!"

 Flipsiders wrote:

 streetsamurai wrote:

 Arbitrator wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
There’s a boycott on?

There was, until GW revealed- well, literally anything new, at which point the fanbase's horrific lack of impulse control kicked in.

Any boycott of people who weren't already not buying GW products would never last longer than the Black Templar reveal.

Indeed, i dont expect this boycott to last long

I know it's fun to act cynical and self-superior about stuff like this (I do it too), but the fact is, any amount of action enough to get legitimate financial websites to talk is an effective amount of action, especially considering this boycott has presumably been going about a month.

As shocking as this may seem, there are enough Warhammer fans who value community creators over new toys to make a difference in this field, and GW are clearly feeling it.

I hope it does make a difference, and that the boycott last long enough to really make gw think about their business practice, but im very doubtful. When gw killed whfb and gave us these insulting joke rules, the call for a boycott was much much louder than i ever saw. But it didn't last very long and pretty much everybody got back to buying in droves once gw released a few minis they liked

 streetsamurai wrote:

 Flipsiders wrote:

 streetsamurai wrote:

 Arbitrator wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
There’s a boycott on?

There was, until GW revealed- well, literally anything new, at which point the fanbase's horrific lack of impulse control kicked in.

Any boycott of people who weren't already not buying GW products would never last longer than the Black Templar reveal.

Indeed, i dont expect this boycott to last long

I know it's fun to act cynical and self-superior about stuff like this (I do it too), but the fact is, any amount of action enough to get legitimate financial websites to talk is an effective amount of action, especially considering this boycott has presumably been going about a month.

As shocking as this may seem, there are enough Warhammer fans who value community creators over new toys to make a difference in this field, and GW are clearly feeling it.

I hope it does make a difference, and that the boycott last long enough to really make gw think about their business practice, but im very doubtful. When gw killed whfb and gave us these insulting joke rules, the call for a boycott was much much louder than i ever saw. But it didn't last very long and pretty much everybody got back to buying in droves once gw released a few minis they liked

I think the change in rules was big there, it was a response that people did see they could listen and change.
So it did work, but how long and did it change anything internal is probably more the debate.

People still joke about how bad those rules sounded. But it’s more in a thanks they learn something now.

A UK based manufacturer and distributer of goods has a drop in its share price and its down to a half arsed boycott that's more about making noise on social media? Not the global supply chain being bent out of shape due to the ongoing global pandemic and the rolling cluster of Brexit? Sure

 streetsamurai wrote:
I hope it does make a difference, and that the boycott last long enough to really make gw think about their business practice, but im very doubtful. When gw killed whfb and gave us these insulting joke rules, the call for a boycott was much much louder than i ever saw. But it didn't last very long and pretty much everybody got back to buying in droves once gw released a few minis they liked

With the death of WHFB a lot of people just left and never came back, so you might have heard their voices initially and then eventually new players came in, but many of those old players just stayed away.

It's always challenging to tell with boycotts, maybe the people who boycotted it were weak and came back, or maybe they genuinely did stay away but it wasn't impactful. It also doesn't matter too much if you boycott GW for 6 months when they don't release something you want in that window anyway.

I've never "boycotted" Games Workshop, but there's certainly been time when years have passed without me purchasing anything from them either because I didn't agree with the path they took or they made their games too unpalatable. I've only really come back to GW because of Blood Bowl and Aeronautica Imperialis.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

GoatboyBeta wrote:
A UK based manufacturer and distributer of goods has a drop in its share price and its down to a half arsed boycott that's more about making noise on social media? Not the global supply chain being bent out of shape due to the ongoing global pandemic and the rolling cluster of Brexit? Sure

To be fair, a nerd boycott of a nerd product can in many areas be impactful and is perhaps good reason to be concerned. It's just GW specifically it probably doesn't make much difference, but perhaps enough to make stock holders nervous (at least the stock holders that aren't themselves gamers, lol).

I also think that gw have such an advantage quality wise when it comes to plastic models, that it's nearly impossible for us nerds to boycott them for long.

But now, it seems like things are starting ti change. Im really impressed by Conquest plastic models. Some of them seems to be on par with gw quality

Don't forget, there'll be a slight drop in sales.

All those rich Dad's on furlough that 'got back into GW' (on BBC articles) because they were stuck in furlough and hoped to get some game time with their kids. They're back at work now, have no time, and the semi-painted stuff will be on a shelf/cupboard somewhere gathering dust.

No doubt a slight drop like that will make the boycotters think they're winning. Lol.

 streetsamurai wrote:
I also think that gw have such an advantage quality wise when it comes to plastic models, that it's nearly impossible for us nerds to boycott them for long.

But now, it seems like things are starting ti change. Im really impressed by Conquest plastic models. Some of them seems to be on par with gw quality

Huge amount of people outside the GW bubble don’t care about plastic, when people say on par with GW quality it scares me off the product now : )

Apple fox wrote:

 streetsamurai wrote:
I also think that gw have such an advantage quality wise when it comes to plastic models, that it's nearly impossible for us nerds to boycott them for long.

But now, it seems like things are starting ti change. Im really impressed by Conquest plastic models. Some of them seems to be on par with gw quality

Huge amount of people outside the GW bubble don’t care about plastic, when people say on par with GW quality it scares me off the product now : )

Yes for sure, but i would say most gw customers do care about plastic. And if a boycott is too work, it's current customers that have to stop buying

 streetsamurai wrote:

Apple fox wrote:

 streetsamurai wrote:
I also think that gw have such an advantage quality wise when it comes to plastic models, that it's nearly impossible for us nerds to boycott them for long.

But now, it seems like things are starting ti change. Im really impressed by Conquest plastic models. Some of them seems to be on par with gw quality

Huge amount of people outside the GW bubble don’t care about plastic, when people say on par with GW quality it scares me off the product now : )

Yes for sure, but i would say most gw customers do care about plastic. And if a boycott is too work, it's current customers that have to stop buying

Last few years I have seen the plastic is the only way crowd thining and more willing to try. So it may be the perfect time.

But I am debating getting the sigmar box why it’s not stupid expensive lol, just to muck it up and then go back to never buying again.

I dont think people who are encouraging IP infringement for personal profit will have enough leverage to make GW do anything. They have a better chance of inflicting damage to the company by getting employed by GW and pulling off sabotage at the workplace than by crying online.

Sorry but I have zero sympathy for this sort of stuff. WH+ came and took away your free bolter pron, deal with it.

The more likely explanation for the share drop is that GW got pumped, and now they're getting dumped, but I guess standard stock market behaviour doesn't make for a good headline.

It's also the actual sculpting and designs. None of these other companies have a Seb Perbet or Martin Footit working for them just like they never had a Jes Goodwin or Brian Nelson in the past.

I wouldn't really say I'm boycotting anything, TBH. I'm just not enthused by their offerings enough for me to buy their stuff.

Part of it is that I feel I can't really justify what I need to pay for what I get, part of it is already having lots of stuff from lots of manufacturers. Part of it is the rules treadmill, which has simply gotten ridiculous.

And W+, well... I mean, there's basically nothing there, so...

 tauist wrote:
I dont think people who are encouraging IP infringement for personal profit will have enough leverage to make GW do anything. They have a better chance of inflicting damage to the company by getting employed by GW and pulling off sabotage at the workplace than by crying online.

I would, but sadly i don't want to go to jail.

Also IP and copyright law and the lot were invented by the rich and powerfull to protect the rich and powerful and give them more power.

 His Master's Voice wrote:
The more likely explanation for the share drop is that GW got pumped, and now they're getting dumped, but I guess standard stock market behaviour doesn't make for a good headline.

And this gives them a narrative they can respond to and "fix" the "problem".

JSG wrote:
It's also the actual sculpting and designs. None of these other companies have a Seb Perbet or Martin Footit working for them just like they never had a Jes Goodwin or Brian Nelson in the past.

I’m almost certain Jes is still there btw, unless he left recently.