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.

Hi,
People always give GW a lot of hate for some of the decisions they make, such as to expensive or unfair rules. Are these the only reasons why people hate them or are am I missing something?

I dont like them because they are constantly wasting potential. What they do wrong is they never seem to quite get things right.

Such as cutting corners to make faster releases. Yay we have our stuff faster, nay its kinda crap a lot of the time.

Or adding new content outside of codices. Yay we have more than just the book to use. Nay its usually taken out of the book then sold to us or its a paragraph of rules in a huge ass book.

Or many of their new models. Yay the details are great and the kit is nice. Nay its usually a lame remake and costs and arm and a leg.

Those are some rough examples, but looking at the guard I have a lot to be annoyed about in my opinion. Simply because of all the wasted potential. Wasted potential is why I dislike GW. Everything they do, other companies seem to do better.

I think this sums it up: http://www.belloflostsouls.net/2013/06/legalwatch-games-workshop-vs_10.html

Watch these quotes:
-Mr. Merrett described Games Day to the jury as a Games Workshop event that allowed customers to perform their "favorite hobby activity; buying things from Games Workshop".

-It was explained that Games workshop uses no traditional advertising outside of word of mouth and social media based online communications. Customers could simply google for their products and find thriving communities of eager fans on websites such as "Dakka Dakka and Bell of Lost Souls".

I mean.. Don't we all love to throw money at them?
And if Dakka Dakka is their biggest source of advertising, they are going down.. hard..

- GW takes pride in the "quality and originality" of their products. They do not like when any other company makes miniatures that are based on their own product line, viewing many of these to be of inferior quality. Me mentioned the aftermarket for add-ons "makes us jolly-cross indeed"

Don't we all love how unique the Tau are? And don't we all love the perfect quality of their models?


All of this can be summarized in one single sentence: "GW has a different view on the game than most of their customers do."

Oh boy...just browse the discussions forums...just a few points coming straight to my mind:

- overblown prices
- zero communication
- openly express hate / mock their customers
- disinterested in creating and maintaining a balanced ruleset
- rushed game versions to increase profits
- extremely poorly written rules / army books / codices
- Mat Ward still has a job
- 1-man-store policy
- no playtesting

I think it'd be easier and faster to list the good decisions GW's made.

Mainly it's because GW *could* have a product that justifies its price tag, if they'd only actually expend the effort to do so.

But they don't.

Sorted in order from most important to least important, in my eyes.

Overpricing their models.
Imbalanced and poorly-written rules.
Not supporting and later canceling Specialist Games.
Treating FLGS badly through inane policies.
A lack of any reasonable discount/bundle system.
Absolutely no communication with their fanbase.
Over-saturating the market with many worthless 'limited edition' products, as opposed to releasing fewer, actually valuable limited edition content.
No adequate sharing of their release schedule or overreaching plans, meaning that leaks are the only real way to know about GW's release schedule ahead of time.
Pimping out their IP to every third-rate mobile game developer.

 Mysterious Pants wrote:
To discuss Games Workshop's bad business decisions. You could contribute by choosing to contest or discuss some of things people are saying. Or alternately, choose not to participate or give reasons why GW is not making any mistakes. If you want to hear blind optimism or positivism, don't click on a thread that says "What 'bad' decisions has GW made?" This is a valid discussion.

Completely correct.

Stay on topic, folks.

 Mysterious Pants wrote:
Sorted in order from most important to least important, in my eyes.

Overpricing their models.
Imbalanced and poorly-written rules.
Not supporting and later canceling Specialist Games.
Treating FLGS badly through inane policies.
A lack of any reasonable discount/bundle system.
Absolutely no communication with their fanbase.
Over-saturating the market with many worthless 'limited edition' products, as opposed to releasing fewer, actually valuable limited edition content.
No adequate sharing of their release schedule or overreaching plans, meaning that leaks are the only real way to know about GW's release schedule ahead of time.
Pimping out their IP to every third-rate mobile game developer.

I would use the same list, but flip the order of your first two. I think a balanced, concise ruleset... in an ideal world, as complex as is currently presented, but where there is no confusion as to when and how a rule works, and how it interacts with other rules, because it is clearly and concisely written... could justify the price of the models used to play the game.

Removing specialist games. Perhaps they were making a loss on them, but if they were to put more effort into them they could of done so much more. They definitely alienated part of their fanbase there.

Complete rip off price wise and some of their ideas on build-ability are laughable.

I've seen more secure kinder egg toys than some of their buildings.

Some stuff they do great, but they're waaaaaaaaay overpriced.

That and how they hit us all with the nerfbat regularly/eventually.

Ignoring the obvious prices issue and poor rules my biggest problems are:

* They are legal bullies.

Sports the Space Marine (where GW sent a C&D claiming to own the term space marine and had a book taken off Amazon) and Chapterhouse (where GW expected CH to close shop that day, and when they got a fight resorted to illegal tactics to try and kill off CH anyway).
There is also a list of dozens of other companies GW wants to go after but have been tied up with the CH case (they actually said that in court). I genuinely believe if CH hadn't tied them up for the last 3 years in a fight they never thought they'd get and where enter unprepared for GW would have been throwing their legal weight around left right and center, trying to shut down companies like Scibor and Victoria minis.
They have a habit of C&Ding anyone for anything, in fact I think Dakka has revived one or two, and using the threat of a suit that the defendant can't afford to win, even when it's obvious they are in the wrong. This is exactly what would have happened if CH didn't get pro bono council, and still might have happened if GW stopped and thought 'hey, maybe taking the claim that we own roman numerals and skulls to court is a bad idea'.
Utterly despicable. Then there was the whole trying to retroactively coerce an artist to give them the rights to his work, and then swearing they didn't have his contact information, and telling the court they hadn't spoken to the copyright office about if shoulderpads can be copywritten, AFTER they had been told no they can't.


* They are also non-legal bullies.

If a GW store opens in your town expect your FLGS to suddenly stop getting new product on time.
GW for some reason hate their trade partners, they see a sale to them at 60% RRP and they don't see product being sold, they see 40% of their profits being stolen by someone else. They have been known to cut off trade partners for SELLING TOO MUCH for gods sake. They treat these stores like dirt, forcing them to carry stock they will never sell, forcing them to have a storefront in order to sell anything online, stopping them from having a cart system to sell things online, stopping people selling outside of their country (in order to force Australians and Canadians to buy locally at an arbitrary and often extreme mark up).
Beasts of War and Wayland Games had to sever a close working relationship because GW didn't like Beasts of War reporting on upcoming GW releases. After sending some C&Ds telling them to remove all GW related videos they simply changed the terms of their trade contracts so that Wayland would be cut off if BoW didn't play ball.


* Quality.

They claim to be the makers of the best models in the world, something that is objectively untrue because personal preferences aside there are other companies out there producing more detailed and more complex kits. Seriously. They should not be able to make that claim. Especially with Finecast.


* One man stores.

Once upon a time they weren't called stores, they where hobby centers, and they where just that. You could game paint, talk to staff, ect. Under the one man store system they have stripped so much of the hobby out of the hobby and it is little more than a store and somewhere for new players to get a quick painting lesson.


* Intentionally isolating customers.

Instead of dealing with competition in the way companies are supposed to in capitalist markets (attempt to provide better value for money and thus beat out their competitors in a way that benefits customers) they do everything they can to make new people think that GW is the hobby. Seriously, you hear that all the time from them. They refer to themselves as 'the hobby' as much as they do 'GW". They pretend that they have no competition, they don't speak about the other companies eating their market share, and they hope you don't find out about them so you continue buying GW products exclusively.


I fell like there is a lot that I could continue talking about but for now that seems like a plenty big post.


*Edit*
Hang on one more.

* Closing all channels of communication with fans.

I've recently been trying to find out which old Lord of the Rings characters are still in metal. So far I've emailed customer service and not got a reply, and I've spoken to my local GW redshirt who said he'd look into it. My next action will simply be to start ordering them through my local store and return anything that shows up as finecast immediately because there are no other ways for me to communicate with GW.
In an age where companies are hiring people to sit on facebook and twitter all day talking about their company, and apparently making it work quite well for them, GW have stuck their heads in the sand.
Why are they doing this? They don't want to hear criticism. People dogpiled them for the Spots the Space Marine thing and they have been shutting down lines of communication since. If we want to speak to anyone from GW now our only options are customer services or a GW storeman, neither of whom have any sort of power to change anything and who's opinions mean nothing to people who do have that power.

The Spots the Spacemarine debacle also lead to them closing their main facebook page because of the ****storm they received. One of the reasons for this was that Spots was a partial charity project with a portion of the revenue going to the Wounded Warrior Project, a charity to help wounded veterans. So they're attempt to pull the book from sale was directly taking money from a charity.

I was part of a bloodbowl fan community that got a legal threat from GW because they claimed we couldn't have bloodbowl in our URL because it was their trademark. As a fan community that wasn't selling products, these claims were complete BS, but what fan wants to pay for a legal battle with the company they want to be fans of?

When someone legally bullies you for being their fan, you stop being their fan and walk away.

I think this move lead to the complete explosion of alternative miniatures for Bloodbowl. There were a decent amount before this bonehead move by GW, but the giant middle fingure GW gave their bloodbowl fans sent them running into the arms of the competitions.

I also know three people who worked for GW that had their employment termination arranged in a fishy manner. One guy was in retail and as he was leaving at the end of his shift, his store manager asked him to paint a new release for the display case and have it done in a the day after next. He didn't work on the intervening day. He took it home and painted it and brought it into work with him on the day it was needed. When he arrived, the manager's boss was waiting for him and fired him for employee theft. He was asked to produce his permission in writing to remove store property from the store. He obviously couldn't because the manager put the sprues in his hand as he was walking out the door and they had all painted display case stuff at home without these supposed permission slips before.

One local guy owns a comic shop and months before the first LOTR movie came out, GW's trade sales were pushing him hard to carry their product. He was worried they'd just open up a store in the same town, but the trade sales guy assured him that if he carried the product, they'd have the market covered and they wouldn't need to. A few months later a GW store opened up less than 10 minutes from his location. He started getting new releases late and shipments delayed.

They're just a scummy, dishonest company.

---