Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

So looks like my FLGS manager managed to get out of GW's burning factory at the last minute with a pile of loot and probably didn't even turn to look at the explosion.

I just picked up my Cursed City and there was still a towering pile of them left.

 Dysartes wrote:

Rihgu wrote:

Spoiler:

 Dysartes wrote:

StraightSilver wrote:
The main reason for all of the issues at GW right now is this:

https://www.theregister.com/2021/01/15/games_workshop_erp_saga/

An earlier post about the same thing:

https://www.theregister.com/2020/01/14/games_workshop_warns_of_risks_in_microsoft_dynamics_365_erp_project/

This is a big deal for any company and if you read the first article can be devastating if not implemented correctly.

Frankly, it hasn't gone swimmingly and now a 3rd party has been drafted in to help (now on GW payroll permanently).

This has affected absolutely every aspect of their business and is causing quite a few headaches.

Combine this with the move into the new distribution hub (delayed by COVID and the above), Brexit (GW is being hit hard because it's products are manufactured in multiple countries of origin), Nottinghamshire Council not playing ball relating to GW's need for extra electricity supply so it can ramp up manufacturing, COVID causing all sorts of delays/problems, and Ever Green and you have a perfect storm that is hitting GW really badly right now.

Given the so-called journalists couldn't be bothered to do the thing you're meant to do with acronyms - explain what they mean the first time you use them in a piece - in either fething article, can someone explain in plain English what ERP is meant to mean in this context?

ERP stands for Enterprise Resource Planning and refers to software and systems used to plan and manage all the core supply chain, manufacturing, services, financial and other processes of an organization

A better description in plainer english than I can give. I mostly worked with/on the back end of them so am only barely familiar with what they actually do from a user perspective

Thanks for that, Rihgu - always annoys me when people doing news assume that anyone reading an article automatically knows what the acronyms mean.

People reading the Reg generally know what entry-level IT acronyms stand for, it isn't a general news site it's a fairly specialist tech industry news site

Billicus wrote:

 Dysartes wrote:

Rihgu wrote:

Spoiler:

 Dysartes wrote:

StraightSilver wrote:
The main reason for all of the issues at GW right now is this:

https://www.theregister.com/2021/01/15/games_workshop_erp_saga/

An earlier post about the same thing:

https://www.theregister.com/2020/01/14/games_workshop_warns_of_risks_in_microsoft_dynamics_365_erp_project/

This is a big deal for any company and if you read the first article can be devastating if not implemented correctly.

Frankly, it hasn't gone swimmingly and now a 3rd party has been drafted in to help (now on GW payroll permanently).

This has affected absolutely every aspect of their business and is causing quite a few headaches.

Combine this with the move into the new distribution hub (delayed by COVID and the above), Brexit (GW is being hit hard because it's products are manufactured in multiple countries of origin), Nottinghamshire Council not playing ball relating to GW's need for extra electricity supply so it can ramp up manufacturing, COVID causing all sorts of delays/problems, and Ever Green and you have a perfect storm that is hitting GW really badly right now.

Given the so-called journalists couldn't be bothered to do the thing you're meant to do with acronyms - explain what they mean the first time you use them in a piece - in either fething article, can someone explain in plain English what ERP is meant to mean in this context?

ERP stands for Enterprise Resource Planning and refers to software and systems used to plan and manage all the core supply chain, manufacturing, services, financial and other processes of an organization

A better description in plainer english than I can give. I mostly worked with/on the back end of them so am only barely familiar with what they actually do from a user perspective

Thanks for that, Rihgu - always annoys me when people doing news assume that anyone reading an article automatically knows what the acronyms mean.

People reading the Reg generally know what entry-level IT acronyms stand for, it isn't a general news site it's a fairly specialist tech industry news site

And in fairness, ERP has been around for a very long time, and isn't a hugely niche defined term.

Anyone else think the spate of new shinies today is a smoke and mirrors ploy due to the cluster feth of this release?

 Rinkydink wrote:
Anyone else think the spate of new shinies today is a smoke and mirrors ploy due to the cluster feth of this release?

What else could it be?

Yeah, I don't buy the "copyright issue" theory thats been making the rounds around the web for one bit. Nothing has been "scrubbed", most if not all the relevant content is still online, certain countries even still have it listed on the relevant online store, etc.

Wayland are reading two english copies of Blackstone Fortress; Deadly Alliance?

Been here before, done the order for the same product and then it was pulled as they didn't have it in stock and due to an error.

Sigh.

 Rinkydink wrote:
Anyone else think the spate of new shinies today is a smoke and mirrors ploy due to the cluster feth of this release?

It’s literally a continuation of articles that have been happening for weeks.

chaos0xomega wrote:
Yeah, I don't buy the "copyright issue" theory thats been making the rounds around the web for one bit.

haven't seen one of those yet, you have a link for the laughs?

I don't know, I'm just a bit skeptical with Geedubs recently; especially with the burying/purging of the old tweets saying this was going to be a line item.

Another strange sight on Wayland is the english edition of BSF: Escalation, that is unavailable to order...

Both Escalation and Deadly Alliance has been long out of print and abscent from the Wayland site since last year...not sure if this is an error on the Wayland site or GW might be reprinting the BSF expansions, maybe squeezing copies where they can?

 ImAGeek wrote:

 Rinkydink wrote:
Anyone else think the spate of new shinies today is a smoke and mirrors ploy due to the cluster feth of this release?

It’s literally a continuation of articles that have been happening for weeks.

Plus it's probably to make up for a lack of releases for the forseeable future. Not saying that they weren't planning to do these articles, but the "thing" stalling releases probably helped

 Rinkydink wrote:
I don't know, I'm just a bit skeptical with Geedubs recently; especially with the burying/purging of the old tweets saying this was going to be a line item.

Wouldn't make sense to have inquiring customers find two contradictory statements, would it?

StraightSilver wrote:

callidusx3 wrote:
I'm a little late to this Cursed City fiasco, but here's a thought...

Being an intellectual property attorney with experience in trademark and copyright infringement litigation, it occurred to me that this behavior by GW, particularly the scrubbing of its websites of all Cursed City content, could mean that GW received a legitimate cease and desist letter. There is no good PR to address such a mess so late in a products release cycle. If the models are coming back later, then the issue is with the game setting (i.e. copyright infringement) or junior trademark (i.e. TM infringement).

This is very unlikely, especially as the Cursed City website is still live.

I think the reason they have removed the product from the webstore and the links on the Warhammer Community pages is simply because people can't get the game. The WarCom articles are also still active though, you just can't link to them from the main page. And the YouTube videos are also still active.

If they had removed all online content I would agree it sounds plausible, but there still official GW content available online.

Thanks, I didn't notice that. However, settlement agreements often give a party time to take down offending content (15-30 days is common). It has only been a week.

callidusx3 wrote:
Thanks, I didn't notice that. However, settlement agreements often give a party time to take down offending content (15-30 days is common). It has only been a week.

Ah, finally a proper conspiracy theorist. You put my feeble attempts to shame, sir.

"A happened and that means B"
"A didn't actually happen"
"Sometimes it takes a while for A to happen, I still believe B despite the original basis for my belief being disproven"

Ok, what is a mold broke?

I stopped by a FLGS Sunday night to grab a few paints and they had about 8 copies of Cursed City sitting out.

 IGtR= wrote:

And in fairness, ERP has been around for a very long time, and isn't a hugely niche defined term.

They also tend to vary from country to country, so it can be a lot more niche than someone expects (not to mention different industries and gov't agencies have their own word salad that doesn't necessarily overlap). It certainly isn't Erotic Role Play, which is what I expect when I see those letters.

hotsauceman1 wrote:
Ok, what is a mold broke?

Wasn't that just the standard GW/fan excuse in the 90s/00s when an item goes out of print? Someone dropped the mold and it broke?

callidusx3 wrote:
I'm a little late to this Cursed City fiasco, but here's a thought...

Being an intellectual property attorney with experience in trademark and copyright infringement litigation, it occurred to me that this behavior by GW, particularly the scrubbing of its websites of all Cursed City content, could mean that GW received a legitimate cease and desist letter. There is no good PR to address such a mess so late in a products release cycle. If the models are coming back later, then the issue is with the game setting (i.e. copyright infringement) or junior trademark (i.e. TM infringement).

Seems unlikely. When that sort of things happen, it makes the rounds very fast. For example Zenimax (or Bethesda) had a writer that used an old D&D module for a questline in Elder Scrolls Online, and people just jumped on that in a matter of hours/days. The game industry is too small (and obsessive) to keep that kind of claim quiet. Someone, somewhere would have posted a 'Well, actually... character <blah> is from publication X, first seen in chapter 27 of ....' and various game/hobby/etc sites would have been screaming by now.

Stop trying to make copyright infringement happen, its not going to happen. Theres a long list of reasons to explain why the product line *might* have been axed, many of them which are more immediately relevant and more likely than GW being hit with a C&D.

Voss wrote:

hotsauceman1 wrote:
Ok, what is a mold broke?

Wasn't that just the standard GW/fan excuse in the 90s/00s when an item goes out of print? Someone dropped the mold and it broke?

It certainly was for the Voss-patterned Battlefleet Gothic imperial warships *grumbles*

I work in IT for a large global co, and if they are stealing DXC people...then this has truly gotten dire. really i have never seen one of these projects go well. but HP/DXC or in my case IBM handling our SAP migration, or all the outsourcing i deal with to TCS. none of it is smooth, none of it is efficient.
This really does seem to be a bit of a death by a thousand cuts. coupled with the numerous other factors over the last year.
GW has clearly been trying to push themselves to the mainstream and this was a mainstream product sent out to board game youtubers and the like. its was meant to reach a larger audiance...so something is up.

Wait. Who did they send this to that they don't normally send things to?

lord_blackfang wrote:

callidusx3 wrote:
Thanks, I didn't notice that. However, settlement agreements often give a party time to take down offending content (15-30 days is common). It has only been a week.

Ah, finally a proper conspiracy theorist. You put my feeble attempts to shame, sir.

"A happened and that means B"
"A didn't actually happen"
"Sometimes it takes a while for A to happen, I still believe B despite the original basis for my belief being disproven"

and still, this is something that GW has never done before, no matter if something was sold out on release and not coming back for very long time, or just not being available any more
it is unusual even for GW and something is going on why they are doing it that goes deeper than any "did not made enough copies"

I mean this is GW, if the main problem would have been that they made too less for whatever reason it would have been sold as limited pre-order special Edition and the main product announced for "later"

H.B.M.C. wrote:Wait. Who did they send this to that they don't normally send things to?

I have seen 1 YT channels reviewing the game that usually don't have Boardgames at all (still refuses to talk about Mantic Deadzone although it comes as request from watches because for him it is a Boardgame and his channel is about wargames, yet he reviewed Cursed City and it was not very positive) but don't know if he just got his copy early on the regular way

 lord_blackfang wrote:

callidusx3 wrote:
Thanks, I didn't notice that. However, settlement agreements often give a party time to take down offending content (15-30 days is common). It has only been a week.

Ah, finally a proper conspiracy theorist. You put my feeble attempts to shame, sir.

"A happened and that means B"
"A didn't actually happen"
"Sometimes it takes a while for A to happen, I still believe B despite the original basis for my belief being disproven"

I haven't been labeled a conspiracy theorist before... how novel.

I couched my statement as a possible occurrence. I was not claiming to have any facts or definitive understanding of the situation, nor is it my belief. This is wild speculation, much like what everyone else is bandying about, but perhaps from a perspective many would not consider. And sure, it is unlikely to be correct given all of the logistical issues at play. But those logistical issues do not explain why a company would abandon a trademark it has spent months advertising.

As for your simplification of our conversation to make me sound like an obtuse twit, it mischaracterizes my position. I presented facts about how settlement terms often function. Based on this, your factual clarification (though welcome) did not in fact disprove my original speculative theory.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Voss wrote:

Seems unlikely. When that sort of things happen, it makes the rounds very fast. For example Zenimax (or Bethesda) had a writer that used an old D&D module for a questline in Elder Scrolls Online, and people just jumped on that in a matter of hours/days. The game industry is too small (and obsessive) to keep that kind of claim quiet. Someone, somewhere would have posted a 'Well, actually... character <blah> is from publication X, first seen in chapter 27 of ....' and various game/hobby/etc sites would have been screaming by now.

Good point Voss. The gaming community/market is relatively small. As I said above, mine is wild speculation.

I did loosely speculate about the possibility of some kind of IP being behind it, so I hope that bit of spit balling didn’t grow legs.

After all, we’d know. Even if it was just a baseless rumour, SpikeyBitz would be clickbaiting it as fact by now. If even they haven’t, I think we can call it as not being true.

So we’re left with bafflement that a well promoted, well received* and in demand item has ceased production. Seemingly against GW’s original intent (see Kirioth’s video here for evidence) as well.

The why and wherefore of this bizarre decision is all just speculation, based on the (not exactly unsafe) impression that something is going on.

But whatever it is, how GW has handled it has left a bad taste in the mouth of many, including myself, and I’ve got my copy.

Part of my umbrage is that I was assuring people they’d said it was a stock item (and they did, again Kirioth’s video is evidence to that), and now I look like I was just making it up. I wouldn’t say I’ve been made to look a fool - but they’ve certainly gone back on and taken pains to actively cover up they said this was a BSF style stock item.

Why aren’t they telling us what the problem is? Who knows. It seems given Indomitus and their “chill guys, it’ll take time but we’ll make as many as you want” response, which came on swift wings, they’re squandering a lot of good will they’d worked hard to build up over the past few years.

Pure speculation here (just for a change), but I wonder if it's turned out not to be profitable enough with new post-Brexit tariffs and paperwork. I believe there are now some fairly complex rules and can be some fairly high tariffs for shipping into Europe when you've got stuff coming in from outside the EU, which get even more complicated when you have a mix of things produced in different countries (I believe the cardstock is made in China but I think the miniatures are manufactured in the UK).

Presumably Cursed City would have been designed and manufactured long before the trade deal was agreed so that wouldn't have been known about. Could be that now that has all been taken into account they've decided it's just not worth it to produce any more and that if they increased the price to whatever level was required to make it profitable enough it would reduce sales too far (it's not exactly cheap as it is).

I can see why they might not want to admit that as a reason though!

Well, that is a possibility. And for everyone about to say “they should’ve prepared”, nobody knew what Brexit was going to look like until a last minute deal was hashed out, which managed to disappoint everyone. So there was little to plan around thanks to the Government’s abject bungling.

But.

The only reason card stock was printed in China (and some magazine stuff in Poland if memory serves) was that it was cheaper than getting it done in the U.K.

Yet GW own the files, so the most work that would be needed is rejig going/reformatting them into a format usable by a U.K. printer. Sure that industry isn’t what it was, but it still exists. So there’s little stopping GW getting it printed here.

They also have a factory in the USA (Memphis, I think?). Now I don’t know what it’s capacity is, but if push came to shove, make another set of molds, punt them over to the USA, and have international stock made there, where the government wasn’t stupid enough to drop trou, poop on international trade agreements and then wonder why there are now tariffs.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:

The only reason card stock was printed in China (and some magazine stuff in Poland if memory serves) was that it was cheaper than getting it done in the U.K.

Yet GW own the files, so the most work that would be needed is rejig going/reformatting them into a format usable by a U.K. printer. Sure that industry isn’t what it was, but it still exists. So there’s little stopping GW getting it printed here.

They also have a factory in the USA (Memphis, I think?). Now I don’t know what it’s capacity is, but if push came to shove, make another set of molds, punt them over to the USA, and have international stock made there, where the government wasn’t stupid enough to drop trou, poop on international trade agreements and then wonder why there are now tariffs.

Yes, those options sound possible, but obviously they also increase the cost, as you say, the reason GW get stuff made in China is that it is cheaper than getting it done in the UK, so moving production might also increase the cost to a point that it's not worth manufacturing. Though obviously if tariffs etc. are the problem with Cursed City then that could potentially affect anything that has a similar mix of items, so GW will obviously need to do something to deal with that in the future.

Also, I believe shipping costs have increased massively as well recently, so that might be another factor impacting the profitability if they were to order a second run (though again, that would be mitigated by moving production to the UK).

At the moment there is a real lack of printing facilities in the UK, capacity has been an issue for years and Brexit has made it much worse.

All depends on the tipping point, really.

There’s a difference between it being cheaper to print and import from China (or indeed anywhere for sake of argument), and it not being economically viable at all to print in the U.K.

I suspect the biggest hurdle is whether or not there are printers in the U.K. who can print on the card stock GW needs, in the quantities GW needs.

Broadly speaking, that’s an odd combo. We might think that being the biggest manufacturer in their niche, GW would need high levels of product. But, for print? Well, small run stuff remains well covered, as that’s rarely economically viable for overseas printing. And that’s what the remaining print shops I’m aware of tend to specialise in.

But for high quality, short to middling run? I don’t know. There may very well be printers capable in the U.K., but whether or not the job is worth their while is anyone’s guess.

Which is why I advocate GW sorting out their own in-house printers. Greater control over quality, timing and quantity. And hey, it’s even a facility they could potentially use for other U.K. based companies.

Yes. My employer makes consumer goods, and the volume of highly-specialized printed cardstock we need is massive. GW's volume will be a small fraction of that, and I'm sure it would be possible for them to organize supply from within UK/EU which should not cause major problems in relation to tariffs. Maybe at higher costs than from China, but the incremental additional costs per unit should not be prohibitive, especially when compared to the final product's price.

But if they have relied on their established Chinese printers up to now, it might take a while to find and contract other suppliers. I suspect they closely monitor the quality of supplied components, and if they are anything like us, there will be all sorts of audits and every component (including that component's supplier) might need to be analysed and qualified.

Try organizing a factory visit for your auditors at the moment, probably in a different country. It might actually be easier to buy the equipment and do it in-house. But then you still need to find suppliers and hire new staff.