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Has anyone ever mentioned this idea before? A games company (like, say, Gamesworkshop) providing all of their rules via a monthly subscription service that’s automatically updated when changed with alerts etc. Maybe with separate services for each game? Is that economically viable? Although you wouldn’t make as much on book sales, you would have every person interested in your stuff paying in.

I'd be super happy to pay £100-150 per year to ensure that I had a hard copy of all of GW'S rules and codexs each year.
In reality its probably double that, citation needed if someone wants to do the maths that'd be great, but that's how it feels. That's too much imo. Give me the option of paying extra for hardback and minor fluff changes but don't try to make me buy it all to stay current ruleswise, I won't and don't.

It's not a bad idea, but don't most people play one or two armies? The number of people who need every codex and rules update must be quite small...

Even if it's a "good" idea, it will come across as a money grab, GW will implement it in a terrible way anyway, and GW has no incentive to do so since us idiots still buy unusable Digital Versions and/or instantly out of date Dead Tree Carcass versions so why would they stop selling codexes as they are now?

 Kroem wrote:
It's not a bad idea, but don't most people play one or two armies? The number of people who need every codex and rules update must be quite small...

That is true, but...it would mean that you’re extracting a little bit of money from everyone every month rather than a fair bit from some. Now whether that’s right or not...I don’t know.

It would have the advantage of allowing anyone to check anything out instantly. Plus, it could really help out with balance if points and rules could be adjusted on a monthly basis.

It feels like the future imo.

Privateer Press has free rules available online, a paperback copy of the rules in each $45 (CAD) starter box, free, printable “cards” for each unit online, and their War Room 2 app costs $12 CAD per faction or $120 for every faction in the game, for the duration of an edition.

The rules are ultra-affordable. both the free online cards and the app are updated regularly. I hear the models are expensive and hard to come by in Europe, but in NA they’re much more affordable than 40k... in part because the old communities are dying and people are selling stuff off cheap... but even at list price it’s cheaper to build 2 Themes @ 75 points each rather than 1500 points of 40k. In North America.

Yeah take my money. Give me a ruuning up to date ruleset and information. I'm one of the suckers who'd happily pay £60 a year for the convenience of having a one book reference type deal.

 Kroem wrote:
It's not a bad idea, but don't most people play one or two armies? The number of people who need every codex and rules update must be quite small...

Competitive players absolutely need every army rule because otherwise someone will play their army wrong against them, they won't know any better, and that could lead them to lose the game due to a misplayed rule. In an event like a tournament, that is unacceptable, and so competitive players have always collected every rulebook to stay on top of every rule so that being misplayed cannot happen.

 Future War Cultist wrote:
It feels like the future imo.

Wizards of the Coast tried it with D&D.
https://www.dndbeyond.com/
Bah, it's more like Army Builder or such, but you have to buy the books to use on it.
Buy just the class or item, or monster, if you don't want the whole book it comes in.
The subscription allows for sharing content and more slots.

auticus wrote:

 Kroem wrote:
It's not a bad idea, but don't most people play one or two armies? The number of people who need every codex and rules update must be quite small...

Competitive players absolutely need every army rule because otherwise someone will play their army wrong against them, they won't know any better, and that could lead them to lose the game due to a misplayed rule. In an event like a tournament, that is unacceptable, and so competitive players have always collected every rulebook to stay on top of every rule so that being misplayed cannot happen.

The competitive community isn't nearly big enough to sustain a service like this on its own. Also, I don't think they need access to every rulebook, just a good idea of how the rules work for each faction which often comes through practice. I think it's going to be extremely rare for aplayer to own every Codex and supplement out there, even among competitive players. When I played competitive WH I didn't own every book and supplement and it worked just fine at tournaments.

If we're talking about radical steps GW could take with their rules I think a much better approach would be to follow the general trend in the industry and make the rules free and freely available.

There are probably some serious collectors who buy all the codex's as well, but they might still be inclined to buy the hard copies rather than a subscription.

You know, the sort of guy that has a 'side project' of 4000 points of Dark Eldar to go with his 15,000 points of Chaos!