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Considering the disturbingly oppressive authoritarian-totalitarian stance of the anti-gaming and anti-gamer state that is the CCP regime ruled china, and the fact that Games Workshop is attempting to expand into the Chinese market, what do YOU expect to happen coming to pass considering the current clampdown on video gaming?

Will Games Workshop and wargaming itself be targeted or will it fly under the radar due it its niche status?

Will China attempt to interfere with GW's agency as a creator of artistic works and if so would GW yield to a censored version of its product in that market, running parallel versions of its products - one a pro-CCP approved anti diveristy version within the domestic chinese market and a mainline Warhammmer is for everyone version for countries that have governments that provide basic artistic liberties to its populace?

Or in this thought experiment, do you believe GW would retreat from the Chinese market, and if so accordingly would it do it silently like most cowardly corporations or actually stand up and take stock of its already declared "warhammer is for everyone" stance and actually do something brave and put out an anti censorship protest within its own industry?
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Personally I believe ANY gaming company should boycott the CCP's action against gaming and gamers. Personally I believe it's not within the realm of impossibility for this scenario to play out and I would predict that GW would silently retreati from the market if China expanded its video game censorship and applied it to wargamng.

Ah yes, China clearly went too far when they banned femboys in gaming! The wrath of the Gamers(tm) will be swift!

China is clearly authoritarian af, but I don't think THIS is quite what we should be concerned about in the humanitarian crisis that is Chinese treatment of minorities. Not like GW's "diversity" is that noticeable in the games themselves so there's not even anything to censor.

I wouldn't call most companies retreating from the Chinese market "cowards" when the Chinese government comes for them; its simply the practicality that companies based outside of China have such tiny real world influence within China that there really isn't much for them to "fight" with. Any big demonstration by a single firm is more bluster for their home markets and ultimately would be pretty "real world" meaningless.

China is vast and their government very powerful within those boarders. In the end any big demonstration would achieve very little; especially when GW would still likely need printing, casting and other production outputs from factories within China. You can't burn the hand that feeds even if it just slapped you. At least not without likely resulting in a panic to secure new contracts outside of China that could end up costing more.



Any big company demo would have to be coordinated with a LOT of firms to have any real impact in China; even then it would likely require multiple firms based within China to have any kind of traction.





Now could GW run two product lines; one for China and one for the rest of the world? Sure they could. Heck they already did it with those collectable marine models that came out only for the Asian market originally and then steadily got sold in the Rest of World. Granted that's a few optional themed models, but if the market uptake is big enough GW could make a separate product line. The real question would rather be would they retain production in the UK or outsource/invest in facilities within China to streamline production at a local level. There's no point paying to ship packaging and such from China to the UK then ship it all back again if you could source factories locally to print in-situ. Even if the product wasn't quite as high grade or a line that's as easily controlled the whole product support and reviews would be separate markets entirely.

Granted GW hasn't had the best of luck in setting up overseas factories under their own power; but China itself has a LOT of factories already dedicated to plastic production. GW might make the moulds and designs then ship them over.




And could the market influence the core product line; I kind of think it wouldn't. GW has always been designer led at its core. Giving their artists freedom to create has clearly worked well for them and whilst a specific market with specific restrictions could necessitate modified or alternate product lines; I think that if GW shacked their creators fully all the time it wouldn't pan out well in the long run fo the company as a whole.

I doubt they'd get noticed.

Cronch wrote:Ah yes, China clearly went too far when they banned femboys in gaming! The wrath of the Gamers(tm) will be swift! .

Let's see if GW will grow the balls to pull a "you will not be missed" to Xi Jinping and the CCP.
Or you know....remain silent cowards....

Overread wrote:I wouldn't call most companies retreating from the Chinese market "cowards" when the Chinese government comes for them; its simply the practicality that companies based outside of China have such tiny real world influence within China that there really isn't much for them to "fight" with. Any big demonstration by a single firm is more bluster for their home markets and ultimately would be pretty "real world" meaningless.

Market retreats are not cowardly but willful silent market retreats are. I don't need to explain why.

Self censoring is worse than being censored. If you self censor on behalf on an oppressor then you are essentially complicit in doing their censorship work for them, outside their original zone of censorship.

You're on the hilariously wrong side of the culture war if you think trying to tell China how to police its internal culture is going to do anything other than reinforce what it's going to do. It's about as productive in the long run as invading a middle eastern country.

 GoldenHorde wrote:

Cronch wrote:Ah yes, China clearly went too far when they banned femboys in gaming! The wrath of the Gamers(tm) will be swift! .

Let's see if GW will grow the balls to pull a "you will not be missed" to Xi Jinping and the CCP.
Or you know....remain silent cowards....

Of course we all know the answer don't we:

 Overread wrote:
especially when GW would still likely need printing, casting and other production outputs from factories within China. You can't burn the hand that feeds even if it just slapped you. At least not without likely resulting in a panic to secure new contracts outside of China that could end up costing more.

$$$$

And they probably got a nice boost of sales by virtue signalling to the choir.

Long and short, corporate interests always side with the most dollars. If they can get more dollars caving to China, cave away they shall.

 solkan wrote:
You're on the hilariously wrong side of the culture war if you think trying to tell China how to police its internal culture is going to do anything other than reinforce what it's going to do. It's about as productive in the long run as invading a middle eastern country.

Your logic and failure to comprehend that it is not about lecturing the CCP, but rather being honest within our own liberal societies about who we are dealing with and stop BS ourselves.

Companies should say honestly "We withdrew from the chinese market because the CCP are oppressive human rights abusers who do not respect liberty"

Don't speak about right side of history giving pass go collect $200 to authoritarian states. Ofc today we put them on human rights councils....

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
I doubt they'd get noticed.

They destroyed the entire print run of a $25,000 Cthulhu Kickstarter supplement a couple years ago. It wasn't even meant for the Chinese market.
https://www.geeknative.com/65006/the-chinese-government-just-burned-every-copy-of-this-cthulhu-kickstarter/

GW just announced back in July they were hiring Chinese translators, so they are likely gearing up to produce CCP acceptable material for the Chinese market and not miss out on that sweet sweet Chinese cash.

Be funny if a GW production run gets burnt because some random party nob takes personal exception to some random element.

Might teach GW a thing or two about choosing better countries to get your stuff printed in.

 GoldenHorde wrote:
Companies should say honestly "We withdrew from the chinese market because the CCP are oppressive human rights abusers who do not respect liberty"

Well, first we would need a western company that actually cared about human rights.

They like to pretend they do

Its a great idea for GW to boycott countries and respective leaderships who mistreat their own minorities and expressly deny climate change.....

 GoldenHorde wrote:

Cronch wrote:Ah yes, China clearly went too far when they banned femboys in gaming! The wrath of the Gamers(tm) will be swift! .

Let's see if GW will grow the balls to pull a "you will not be missed" to Xi Jinping and the CCP.
Or you know....remain silent cowards.... .

The ONLY purpose of GW as a company is to generate revenue and profit for it's owners/shareholders. I'm sorry, but capitalism leaves no space for silly emotional concepts like "cowardice" or "bravery".

We should all join the CCP they don't seem so bad

GW won't do anything.

Brexit already burned a lot of bridges for them, and to react against China would jeopardise their print-runs of pretty much everything they do.
Sure, they might be able to source a newer non-china printing buddy that also isn't europe, but their costs will rise commensurately.

Surely someone who isn't China can beat USA print quality...

https://www.reddit.com/r/Warhammer40k/comments/q1bto4/please_mr_workshop_my_codex_its_very_sick/

Ah yes, forget that Uyghur stuff, what we care about is how many hours people can play candy crush.

The $ censorship is here and well, when was the last time you saw a major studio film critical of China? (I believe it was over a decade ago.) Certain topics the CCP don't like either have to be absent or in a chunk of the film that is easily removed (then again no great loss, time travel in Star Trek always sucked).

GW will absolutely conform to any restrictions CCP gives them, either due to a desire to sell there or the ongoing reliance of the hobby game sector on Chinese manufacturing.

As an aside China is trying to promote regulated interest in Sci Fi and wargaming noting that the Russians allowed scientists freedoms in such areas and how many youths involved with that stuff went on to have significant scientific or other careers.

The_Real_Chris wrote:
Ah yes, forget that Uyghur stuff

It's easy, isn't it?

For clarity, this thread was potentially ok, so long as it stayed focused solely on the topic as it relates to wargaming. It didn't, and generated an incredible number of alerts in a very short time.

Real world politics are off topic for this forum.