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http://icv2.com/articles/news/view/33314/asmodee-fantasy-flight-days-wonder-consolidate

As part of their continual consolidation business operations for Asmodee (headquartered in Montreal), Days of Wonder, and Fantasy Flight Games will be consolidated at Fantasy Flight’s headquarters in Roseville, Minnesota

they're pulling distribution from a number of the Fantasy Flight distributor roster (gone are Aladdin Distributors, E-Figures Miniatures Distribution, Golden Distribution, and Mad Al Distributors) to leave only ACD Distribution, Alliance Game Distributors, GTS Distribution, PHD Distribution, and Southern Hobby Supply. In addition to selling through five distributors, Asmodee North America will also sell directly to retailers. Canadian distribution will be unaffected by the changes.

however here's the kicker New sales policies for specialty retailers will take effect on April 1. Those policies will restrict sales by game stores to “consumer transactions through retailers’ physical retail locations” and at cons. Online sales and mail order will be prohibited with exceptions granted for online retailers that “contribute either significant scale, unique service, or other exceptional differentiation,” the company said. Those sales will take place under separate terms of sale from the Specialty Retail terms.

So it looks like the days of picking up xwing and similar for big discounts online are gone

Edit: As well as the above news release, other folk involved in the distribution industries have said the main aim of these changes is to lock down discounted online sales, so more stores can be encouraged to stock without having the competition or push to cut prices)

So, they're planning to cut off the Warstore and Miniature Market? What about Amazon? Or does Amazon qualify for the special exceptions?

From what I've heard Amazon is certainly on the list of those that they don't want selling (unless it's at full price)

The warstore and MM would be able to get stock for their physical locations, I don't know about whether they'd qualify for an online exception

First they cancel almost all of their 40K RPG lines and now this.. Oh FFG, you're really hard at work on getting disliked aren't you?

Game Classy talks a bit about it at the end of their podcast too

http://planetarbitrary.com/2015/12/game-classy-103-the-butthurt-awakens/

try from 1:15 onwards or so if I remember right

This could be irritating.

So I order my X Wing from my nearest stockist, but because they're over an hour away, and they have a low free shipping threshold, I normally order online.

Now I'm going to either have to make the drive, or employ some other method of ordering which is still essentially ordering online but less convenient or more time consuming for both parties?

Way to GW everything up FFG!

Is this effective world wide, or only North America?

Regardless, FFG now starting moves like that is... annoying. Especially when I just decided to get over my dislike for them to dip into X-Wing.

the article talks mainly about NA, and the other folk I've heard from are American too, so it might be,

but since they are merging the two businesses properly now it could be worldwide

I'm not certain from the info I've got (certainly the loss of e-figs and golden will hurt as I know a few EU based suppliers found it easier to get stuff from them than other FFG distributors)

Does seem a little high handed.

I'll decide how to support my FLGS thank you very much, by choice, not by having my arm twisted by a ill-thought out idea of how you think I should

Will by interesting to see the spin on this

I think this has been an unpopular move with other companies in the past, but there really is something to the idea that game stores market the product, and treating them differently from an online retailer isn't out of line.

The real question is if this is intended to help the FLGS, or just funnel sales to the manufacturer website

Will be interesting to see how they ban eBay.

I think FFGs shipping is so high that nobody with any local option would want to go to them,

(although I guess that might change too?)

So my guess is it really is intended to boost sales by getting more stores to take stuff

 scarletsquig wrote:
Will be interesting to see how they ban eBay.

They don't have to. An individual selling on ebay can't get stock at the retail store discount, so they can't sell at a significant discount and still make a profit.

Since I have no local game stores and don't attend conventions, I guess I won't be buying any more FFG product.

Unless MM/Warstore qualify under their exception.

I can sort of understand the wish to only have web sales from physical stores as they support the games and provide venues, tournies and the like. In an ideal world I'm sure that is what all games companies would want.

The problem actually doing this is that you cannot put the genie back in the bottle, the internet is not going away so whatever they do is really never going to be effective long term, it mainly ends up annoying customers.

NoggintheNog wrote:
The problem actually doing this is that you cannot put the genie back in the bottle, the internet is not going away so whatever they do is really never going to be effective long term, it mainly ends up annoying customers.

How can it not be effective long term? The publisher has full control of who they sell to and at what prices, if they want to remove internet discount sales they can easily do it. And honestly, they might lose a few sales from people who are outraged about losing their discount sellers but I suspect it's a tiny price to pay for keeping their physical store networks intact.

It was a douche move when Gw did it and is now with Asmodee/FFG. It seems when a games company reaches a certain size, the greed blooms uncontrollably. This no more is a real reason than it was with Gw. I guess in a few years we'll see similar follow up moves like cutting out distributors further then direct only xwing ships.

 Peregrine wrote:

 scarletsquig wrote:
Will be interesting to see how they ban eBay.

They don't have to. An individual selling on ebay can't get stock at the retail store discount, so they can't sell at a significant discount and still make a profit.

But stores selling on eBay, or more likely, individuals who run companies with a wholesale account, will do just fine.

 Azreal13 wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:

 scarletsquig wrote:
Will be interesting to see how they ban eBay.

They don't have to. An individual selling on ebay can't get stock at the retail store discount, so they can't sell at a significant discount and still make a profit.

But stores selling on eBay, or more likely, individuals who run companies with a wholesale account, will do just fine.

Though surely in that case they can just go "Oh, looks like X store is using eBay to sell our products at discount and undercut other sellers against the terms of our contract. I guess they're not getting any more product then"?

Sure, if they're actually going to put the effort in to track down individual names of eBay account holders and cross reference them to people whose businesses have the same name as an account holder and then find some evidence that they're the same person.

All the control is in the account opening procedure. If you're in possession of the requisite things needed to open an account (ie a physical shop) then it is ridiculously easy to dispose of the stock any way you want and not have any sort of record that a supplier would have any sort of right to inspect. Selling them on your own store's website would be a dumb move, but selling them via a separate eBay account and simply putting the money generated back into the business as an anonymous cash sale would be very simple to do.

I can understand it for places like America where there is this wide independent shop network that is an important sales driver, but in other countries which don't have such shops, like the UK, it's effectively like asking your customers to suddenly eat a large price rise for no benefit.

 Azreal13 wrote:
Selling them on your own store's website would be a dumb move, but selling them via a separate eBay account and simply putting the money generated back into the business as an anonymous cash sale would be very simple to do.

And also a rather stupid move. Is picking up a few sales on ebay really worth the risk of getting blacklisted by FFG and losing your access to inventory from a major (and very popular) publisher? Because that's the situation a game store is going to be in if FFG does investigate and catch them. And we've seen from GW's similar policies that there aren't too many people willing to blatantly violate the rules.

YouKnowsIt wrote:
I can understand it for places like America where there is this wide independent shop network that is an important sales driver, but in other countries which don't have such shops, like the UK, it's effectively like asking your customers to suddenly eat a large price rise for no benefit.

I'm yet to read anything that suggests this affects the rest of the world. The source article only talks about US distributors, and states that Canada won't be affected - which leads me to conclude that the ROW most likely won't be either.

 warboss wrote:
It was a douche move when Gw did it and is now with Asmodee/FFG. It seems when a games company reaches a certain size, the greed blooms uncontrollably. This no more is a real reason than it was with Gw. I guess in a few years we'll see similar follow up moves like cutting out distributors further then direct only xwing ships.

It has nothing at all to do with greed, especially in this case. Remember that, unlike GW, FFG does not sell directly to customers*. They're selling their products at the same price whether it's an online discount seller or a physical retail store buying them. The actual reason for this policy is that FFG recognizes the importance of physical stores in marketing and supporting their products. An online discount store is cheaper, but doesn't host tournaments, persuade new customers to buy stuff, put up a rack of games in a prominent location, etc. And if the online discount stores are free to undercut the people who are doing all the promotion and support those stores have much less incentive to stock FFG products. The real greed here is the customers who care more about saving 10% today than having a game to play in the future.


*Technically you can buy directly from FFG if you have to, but hardly anyone does.

Seems like a fine idea to me. If 20 online-only stores go out of business to save 1 brick and mortar gaming store.. so be it. The hobby needs physical stores and does not really need online only stores.

 Peregrine wrote:

 Azreal13 wrote:
Selling them on your own store's website would be a dumb move, but selling them via a separate eBay account and simply putting the money generated back into the business as an anonymous cash sale would be very simple to do.

And also a rather stupid move. Is picking up a few sales on ebay really worth the risk of getting blacklisted by FFG and losing your access to inventory from a major (and very popular) publisher? Because that's the situation a game store is going to be in if FFG does investigate and catch them. And we've seen from GW's similar policies that there aren't too many people willing to blatantly violate the rules.

That's impossible to say, as if they're being sensible about it then there's no way you'd know.

I hope this is solely aimed at removing non-physical stores as GW's was, and we should hopefully see stores with both online and physical presences continue as before.

 Kirasu wrote:
Seems like a fine idea to me. If 20 online-only stores go out of business to save 1 brick and mortar gaming store.. so be it. The hobby needs physical stores and does not really need online only stores.

Physical stores are useless to those of us without easy access to them.


The hobby doesn't need physical stores. It needs easy access to product, and encouragment for gaming communities to grow. Unfriendly policies like this provide the exact opposite of that.




Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Peregrine wrote:

 Azreal13 wrote:
Selling them on your own store's website would be a dumb move, but selling them via a separate eBay account and simply putting the money generated back into the business as an anonymous cash sale would be very simple to do.

And also a rather stupid move. Is picking up a few sales on ebay really worth the risk of getting blacklisted by FFG and losing your access to inventory from a major (and very popular) publisher? .

That would depend on how 'few' sales it actually amounted to.

When GW's online embargo went up, there were certainly accounts that kept selling. Whether they were physical stores selling on alt accounts, or online sellers finding 'helpful' suppliers to continue trading is impossible to say, but clearly they were still getting stock from [i]somewhere.

And that's exactly the problem with this sort of policy: It doesn't protect physical stores, it just removes their ability to play in the same sandpit as the online sellers... because they have to play by the rules to keep their accounts, while the online sellers who have found a way around the rules don't.

 insaniak wrote:
It needs easy access to product, and encouragment for gaming communities to grow.

Which, in the US (where these new policies actually apply), are provided by physical stores. Online stores in the US are parasites leeching off the hard work done by physical stores, and getting rid of them is good for the community.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 insaniak wrote:
When GW's online embargo went up, there were certainly accounts that kept selling. Whether they were physical stores selling on alt accounts, or online sellers finding 'helpful' suppliers to continue trading is impossible to say, but clearly they were still getting stock from somewhere.

Sure, but at what percentage of the sales volume compared to before the changes? And at what discount level?

And that's exactly the problem with this sort of policy: It doesn't protect physical stores, it just removes their ability to play in the same sandpit as the online sellers... because they have to play by the rules to keep their accounts, while the online sellers who have found a way around the rules don't.

But physical stores can't compete with online discount stores on price. They have to pay higher rent costs, more employee salaries, etc. The only way for the physical store to compete, outside of depending on people making charity donations out of a sense of obligation to support their local businesses, is to limit the amount of sales volume the online stores can have as much as possible.

 Peregrine wrote:

 warboss wrote:
It was a douche move when Gw did it and is now with Asmodee/FFG. It seems when a games company reaches a certain size, the greed blooms uncontrollably. This no more is a real reason than it was with Gw. I guess in a few years we'll see similar follow up moves like cutting out distributors further then direct only xwing ships.

It has nothing at all to do with greed, especially in this case. Remember that, unlike GW, FFG does not sell directly to customers*. They're selling their products at the same price whether it's an online discount seller or a physical retail store buying them. The actual reason for this policy is that FFG recognizes the importance of physical stores in marketing and supporting their products. An online discount store is cheaper, but doesn't host tournaments, persuade new customers to buy stuff, put up a rack of games in a prominent location, etc. And if the online discount stores are free to undercut the people who are doing all the promotion and support those stores have much less incentive to stock FFG products. The real greed here is the customers who care more about saving 10% today than having a game to play in the future.


*Technically you can buy directly from FFG if you have to, but hardly anyone does.

Do they sell direct to consumers? Yes (as you said above with a strange distinction). Do they sell direct to retailers? Yes. Are they limiting their distributors AND disallowing online sales at a penalty of losing access to their products? Yes. Those moves are exactly from GW's playbook 10 years ago and the next step will be to cut out distributors completely. Those moves are designed to increase their own profits and control over their products, not to benefit FLGS except as a potential side effect (and of course at the definite detriment of any FLGS that sells online as well). The "spin" is otherwise of course. I hold all companies to the same standards (with some exceptions for truely small companies) and if GW doesn't get a pass on those then neither should FFG when they do the exact same thing using the exact same pretense. Have those moves ultimately "helped" local stores when GW did them? No, they didn't. They did temporarily help GW though. The only difference is that FFG doesn't have a chain or retail stores or at least public plans for them so I suspect we'll likely see a not so gentle and steady push towards buying direct from them (both retailers and consumers).

There are four local stores in my area which could be reasonably classified as "friendly local game stores" to one degree or another.

Of those four, one has a website selling their merchandise at the same price that they sell it to you if you walk in the door (10% off MSRP), and the other three have varying degrees of online presence. Now, I don't know how much volume the new game store does in online sales, but the store with the online shop is also currently the one with the biggest area set aside for playing games in the store.

Then again, of the four stores, it's two of them which have significant areas set aside for playing games in the store. But one of the reasons why those two stores do so is to be able to host card game tournaments.