Games Workshop Boycott!!! (Online Store Freedom)

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**Platuan4th**

Sean_OBrien wrote:
(and strangely otherwise...had someone swear up and down that ultramarine blue would be liable for trademark violations if GW ever found out about it...).

I've seen that one myself(or rather, that it wasn't a paint name GW came up with). I and another friend(who used to paint other models before playing army mans) had to take them to a Hobby Lobby to show them the truth.

**H.B.M.C.**

People don't really believe that these measures are a reaction to recasters on eBay?

Come on...

**Bullockist**

Hasn't GW effectively put a boycott on their own products in Aus? It's time the rest of you caught up! (because 1 day soon your prices will..)

Boycott GW before they force you to do so with more inane company policies.

**Kyrolon**

How about a song for the boycotters Les Mis style:

Do you hear the gamers sing
Singing the songs of angry nerds
They will be storming off to Lenton
Like a horde of angry Zergs.

Do you hear the gamers sing
Say do you hear the distant dice
We wil stop buying all your toys
Until you be nice!

We have played your games for years now
In the basements of our moms.
We have painted all our troopers
In your colors bold and strong
But you have betrayed us
So now we are all moving on!

Do you hear the gamers sing
Singing the songs of angry nerds
It is the music of the people
Who will not be led like herds

Do you hear the gamers sing
Say do you hear the distant song
It is the sound of all of the sales
That will soon be gone.

Ahhhhhhhhh
Ahhhhhhhhhh
Ahhhhhhhh

That will be gone!

**Jehan-reznor**

It will not work GW does not care, another price rice will deal with that.
maybe this will make an impresssion on GW?

Spoiler:

**Sean_OBrien**

H.B.M.C. wrote:
People don't really believe that these measures are a reaction to recasters on eBay?

Come on...

Of course they are, GW said so. People don't know if the plastic bits that they buy from Neal at the Warstore are really genuine GW bits or if they are resin/metal recasts...or, wait - I am pretty sure a one armed blind man could tell the difference between resin or metal and plastic.

**SagesStone**

In fact GW use one in QA just to be sure of it.

**Mr. Burning**

Jehan-reznor wrote:
It will not work GW does not care, another price rice will deal with that.
maybe this will make an impresssion on GW?

Spoiler:

Headline:

Disgruntled nerd Immolates themselves in front of store. Wasted money on petrol rather than buying plasticrack.

**tgf**

Thank you op, I needed my daily laugh. This is like asking addicts to boycott their drug dealer because he over charges. Not going to happen.

**Arschbombe**

Sean_OBrien wrote:
To the point of the thread, if it is something that you are serious about - then you should go about it in a concerted manner.

At the very least, you start a Facebook page which allows you to actually track boycott members in a reasonable manner. The other plus of that is that corporations have an irrational fear of Facebook. If you manage to get enough people on board their, and then follow up with concise goals for your boycott - you will likely get GW's attention. I think it was at around 800 or so members that the Australian Facebook Price concern got GW's attention.

Follow that up with a twitter hashtag and frequent (but poignant) use of it. Again, corporations have this weird view of social media...it is voodoo or magic to them.

Get everyone to fax, mail or email copies of receipts when you buy goods from other companies to GW Nottingham. Again, if one person does it...not much impact. You get 500-1000 people cramming up inboxes or fax lines with copies of receipts and it gets the attention of management...if for no other reason than it slows their secretaries down.

It isn't something that will be an overnight impact - but actions like those have caused significant changes in corporate policies. A retailer based movement would be more effective faster - just a question of whether or not any of them are in a position to stand up or roll over.

Oh, look. Reasonable discourse. Absolutely unacceptable in this kind of thread. We need dramatic calls for action. We need great and futile plans to teach GW a lesson. Something like a global conspiracy to do smash and grabs on all the little one-man GW stores around the world at the same time. It would be so awesome. People already "steal" from GW with recasting, but no one really knows how much. If people start knocking off the little one-man stores and carting away boxes of plasticrack we could start putting a dollar value on the losses to GW. Plus think of the cool made-for-TV movie that will get made after the FBI and Interpol catch everyone involved.

**kronk**

rhothy wrote:

I say stop the bully by hitting them where it hurts by Boycotting the GW online web store from now until they change their policy.

Agreed! I'm just buying Forge World for the rest of this year. Except for a Forge Fiend and a Hell Drake from my local store.

Unless they don't have it. If not, I'll buy it from GW instead. Oh, and I'm using a lot of plasma on my Chosen squads, so I'll need to buy those GW Plasma Gun packs, too.

But other than that, I already have what I need for my Chaos army.

Unless a Black Templar or Space Marine codex comes out. I'd like a Limited Edition Black Templar Codex. A lot, actually.

**Sir Pseudonymous**

Don't boycott GW, just switch to a different system. The more GW's marketshare decreases the better for everyone, and the less their inevitable fall will hurt the industry as a whole.

**pretre**

kronk wrote:
rhothy wrote:

I say stop the bully by hitting them where it hurts by Boycotting the GW online web store from now until they change their policy.

Agreed! I'm just buying Forge World for the rest of this year. Except for a Forge Fiend and a Hell Drake from my local store.

Unless they don't have it. If not, I'll buy it from GW instead. Oh, and I'm using a lot of plasma on my Chosen squads, so I'll need to buy those GW Plasma Gun packs, too.

But other than that, I already have what I need for my Chaos army.

Unless a Black Templar or Space Marine codex comes out. I'd like a Limited Edition Black Templar Codex. A lot, actually.

/slowclap

Automatically Appended Next Post:

Sir Pseudonymous wrote:
The more GW's marketshare decreases the better for everyone, and the less their inevitable fall will hurt the industry as a whole.

How is a decrease in GW's market share good for anyone involved? Bad for GW, bad for us, bad for FLGS... It would be much better if they kept their marketshare and became sensible again. Also, nothing is inevitable.

**Balance**

Sir Pseudonymous wrote:
Don't boycott GW, just switch to a different system. The more GW's marketshare decreases the better for everyone, and the less their inevitable fall will hurt the industry as a whole.

That's pretty much boycotting without making a big deal. I'm cool with that.

Automatically Appended Next Post:

pretre wrote:

Sir Pseudonymous wrote:
The more GW's marketshare decreases the better for everyone, and the less their inevitable fall will hurt the industry as a whole.

How is a decrease in GW's market share good for anyone involved? Bad for GW, bad for us, bad for FLGS... It would be much better if they kept their marketshare and became sensible again. Also, nothing is inevitable.

Unless the FLGS is a GW store, the only way it's "bad" for them is if they're stuck with a bunch of unsellable 40k stock. They can switch to other games pretty easily... Most smaller companies treat their retailer accounts pretty well, or use one of the big distributors.

Automatically Appended Next Post:
Note that I am a bit biased, of course.

**Sir Pseudonymous**

pretre wrote:
[
Sir Pseudonymous wrote:
The more GW's marketshare decreases the better for everyone, and the less their inevitable fall will hurt the industry as a whole.

How is a decrease in GW's market share good for anyone involved? Bad for GW, bad for us, bad for FLGS... It would be much better if they kept their marketshare and became sensible again.

How do you figure? GW's marketshare is decreasing. From various threads here: in the past decade, GW's revenue has increased by less than 2%, despite (and probably in good part because of) the constant price increases (~35-100% in the past two years, depending on the item) and lose sales (they saw a profit increase of less than half their price increase last year), in an industry that grew by 20% last year.

The more we move over to the other companies in the industry, the better off everyone involved becomes; LGS stop relying on a product sold by a collapsing company that actively hates its customers and retailers, instead resting on a broader base of product lines; we stop having to put up with a company that takes 80's stereotypes as a recommendation instead of a cautionary tale; and the industry as a whole becomes better insulated against the coming collapse of its currently largest player.

Also, nothing is inevitable.

Games Workshop's fall kind of is at this point. It has no growth, boasts a profit by way of slashing expenses, destroys its market base through psychotic price hikes, and is facing a thriving industry of companies that actually know what they're doing. I say let it die already, so someone competent can buy up warhammer.

**pretre**

Sir Pseudonymous wrote:
How do you figure? GW's marketshare is decreasing. From various threads here: in the past decade, GW's revenue has increased by less than 2%, despite (and probably in good part because of) the constant price increases (~35-100% in the past two years, depending on the item) and lose sales (they saw a profit increase of less than half their price increase last year), in an industry that grew by 20% last year.

I'm not debating that they have tighter margins and have made poor business decisions. That really has little to do with Market share though since it doesn't address the size of the market.

The more we move over to the other companies in the industry, the better off everyone involved becomes;

This is the part I'm debating. I don't want to play other games so moving to other companies is not really an option.

LGS stop relying on a product sold by a collapsing company that actively hates its customers and retailers, instead resting on a broader base of product lines; we stop having to put up with a company that takes 80's stereotypes as a recommendation instead of a cautionary tale; and the industry as a whole becomes better insulated against the coming collapse of its currently largest player.

Do not attribute to malice what can adequately be explained by incompetence.

Games Workshop's fall kind of is at this point. It has no growth, boasts a profit by way of slashing expenses, destroys its market base through psychotic price hikes, and is facing a thriving industry of companies that actually know what they're doing. I say let it die already, so someone competent can buy up warhammer.

And yet they are still here despite people saying the same damn thing for 20 years. I guess we'll see when it does or doesn't happen. Luckily, this thread will pop up at least 4 times a year for us to check that claim until doomsday.

**Formosa**

htI'm all for a boycott, thing is the 40k "community" isn't actually a community in the sense that they will band together in one voice, for every person on here that whines and moans, there are others who dont even use any forums, the only way to get tohear there opinion is to literally stand outside gw and get a Sig on a petition or other similar thing.

Not gonna happen.

**Sir Pseudonymous**

pretre wrote:
Sir Pseudonymous wrote:
How do you figure? GW's marketshare is decreasing. From various threads here: in the past decade, GW's revenue has increased by less than 2%, despite (and probably in good part because of) the constant price increases (~35-100% in the past two years, depending on the item) and lose sales (they saw a profit increase of less than half their price increase last year), in an industry that grew by 20% last year.

I'm not debating that they have tighter margins and have made poor business decisions. That really has little to do with Market share though since it doesn't address the size of the market.

They have no growth in an industry that increased by 20% last year alone. That sounds like pretty drastically falling marketshare to me.

This is the part I'm debating. I don't want to play other games so moving to other companies is not really an option.

Fair enough, though Malifaux seems absolutely amazing, and Infinity looks quite nice. Warmahordes looks kind of meh though.

Games Workshop's fall kind of is at this point. It has no growth, boasts a profit by way of slashing expenses, destroys its market base through psychotic price hikes, and is facing a thriving industry of companies that actually know what they're doing. I say let it die already, so someone competent can buy up warhammer.

And yet they are still here despite people saying the same damn thing for 20 years. I guess we'll see when it does or doesn't happen. Luckily, this thread will pop up at least 4 times a year for us to check that claim until doomsday.

It was a silly thing to say when GW was a monopoly. When the industry is thriving and they're imploding? The guy calling the shots at GW seems dead set on driving the company into the ground and squeezing as much blood from it and its customers as possible before he retires.

I don't think it's a question of if, but when, and I feel a moral responsibility to help it along. A thread like this led me to look into other games, and I'm glad for that. If just one person reading this follows suit, it'll have been worth having taken the time to type this.

**daedalus**

kronk wrote:

Unless a Black Templar or Space Marine codex comes out. I'd like a Limited Edition Black Templar Codex. A lot, actually.

Better get two. One to make sure everyone else knows you're better than them. The other one to leave in the shrink wrap for the resale value.

That's what I did with my D&D 3.5 limited edition books.

**kronk**

I don't really care about reselling them. Its for me.

As for the "One to make sure everyone else knows you're better than them" comment, I don't know you, so I have no idea if you're joking, serious, or trolling, so I'll assume innocence.

For NOW!

**daedalus**

kronk wrote:
I don't really care about reselling them. Its for me.

As for the "One to make sure everyone else knows you're better than them" comment, I don't know you, so I have no idea if you're joking, serious, or trolling, so I'll assume innocence.

For NOW!

Apologies, I was joking. I was hoping the obviously silly comment about the resale value of a 40k codex would be an indicator. No troll intended.

AND NOW YOU KNOW!

**kronk**

And knowing is what, boys and girls?!?

**Scipio Africanus**

One cuts off one's nose to spite his face, not despite it.

**Nucflash**

Not hard for me personaly to join the boycott

. Dont play Games Workshop games, because the company has become crap over the years.

There are also alot of better games out there to play, made by companies that care more about their customers then GW do theirs.

Personaly I have only been talking trash about GW for years now. Long before these recent events.

**Howard A Treesong**

Boycotts never get anywhere because there's no unified support for anything in the hobby and most people don't care. They're plastic men, it's not some gross ethical violation from some food producer that turns their customers against them in droves.

I don't know what lies in GW's future, I don't think they are doing themselves any good and I think their attitude to placing themselves in the hobby is toxic to other companies and for customer choice. But there's nothing I can do, I don't buy their stuff any more anyway do that's as far as it goes.

**kronk**

Yes. As vocal as people are on sites like Dakka Dakka, we're probably only 5% of the 40k and Fantasy players, if that.

**Byte**

Scipio Africanus wrote:
One cuts off one's nose to spite his face, not despite it.

Aleady been covered.

**Sean_OBrien**

kronk wrote:
Yes. As vocal as people are on sites like Dakka Dakka, we're probably only 5% of the 40k and Fantasy players, if that.

Not sure if it has changed in recent years (likely with Facebook...it has, but forums are not Facebook...which is why I recommended Facebook as opposed to forums to organize your boycott)...but it used to be a rule of thumb that each person online spoke for roughly 1000 people who didn't go there. Although the opinions of the active forum members tend to be more strongly held - they are strongly held in a manner which is reflective of those who do not participate in online forums.

**Typhus the Betrayer**

Would this ban of products being sold on sites like Dakka Dakka also count as bring banned from selling stuff on ebay?

**pretre**

Typhus the Betrayer wrote:
Would this ban of products being sold on sites like Dakka Dakka also count as bring banned from selling stuff on ebay?

You might want to read up a bit on what's going on. None of what you asked about is occuring.

1) Dakka doesn't sell things.
2) People on dakka and e-bay wouldn't be affected unless they bought directly from GW.