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@Krazy

First, you presume the folks posting are all currently GW customers. I, for example, have been boycotting GW for three years. So you can go ahead and listen to my opinion I suppose, which is substantively similar to those above:

GW is cost-cutting by phasing out German-language products. The cost savings seem to be relatively low versus the harm to the company's goodwill. I do not see the point in alienating a significant population of paying customers, but GW's MO for the past 5 years has been to cut costs at the risk of alienating customers and tarnishing goodwill. Hence threads like this become more and more common.

Second, Games Workshop is not "the hobby," not even if you so narrowly define it as Warhammer/Warhammer 40,000. One can be a fan of the setting and/or the products, not wishing to stop enjoying them, and also be upset about the company's policies and practices. In fact, it is far more likely that those who express such concerns are in fact fans of the setting/products rather than the reverse. 'If you don't like it then get out,' is not a terribly productive sentiment. Discussion about topics such as this is not only a way to vent, but also a step towards taking the sorts of actions you suggested, such as "complaining" to Games Workshop.

It would actually be far more productive to simply tell you, "If you don't like talking about this subject, then stop participating in the discussion." Now, I am not suggesting that you stop participating, the purpose for the above statement is rhetorical. The point is to illustrate the manner in which your sentiment is not only annoying/offensive, but also not terribly productive. Certainly it would have been much more productive for you to simply suggest that those who have concerns about GW's policies and procedures go to the company about them, rather than pairing it with a 'practice what you preach sentiment'. Indeed, I saw no one in the thread suggesting that one stop buying GW products while they themselves are buying GW products. That would be Hypocrisy akin to someone eating fries while advocating that the fries not be sold.

A more apt analogy would be someone eating fries while complaining about the low wages paid to McDonald's employees. There is a subtle but important distinction. The hypocrisy is not nearly so clean because the eating of the fries has no relationship to the low wages except that buying the fries supported the company who pays the low wages. One could stop buying the fries, but the act would not be terribly meaningful unless the company knew why one stopped eating the fries. On the other hand, one could also eat the fries and at the same time inform the company, as an interested consumer of the company's products that you disagree with the wages paid to the employees. One could suggest, for example, that you would be happy to pay more for the fries in order to allow the company to offer a higher wage. One could consume the fries, but advocate that the Government raise the minimum wage, indirectly forcing the company to offer a higher wage.

In the same way, it is perhaps a stronger position to criticize Games Workshop abandoning German-language products as a German-speaking consumer of those products! So in comparison to the many ways in which GW has decided to tarnish its goodwill, this is perhaps an instance in which a "if you don't like it get out" sentiment is the least apropos.

 Agamemnon2 wrote:
It's interesting if GW is in fact stopping the localizations of their rules, since it might influence their accessibility among the grade-schooler demographic they're otherwise trying pretty hard to recruit. The 40k rulebooks aren't the simplest texts for a 2nd or 3rd grader to read in a foreign language, after all. On the other hand, translation is an expensive business

I don't think it's expensive in the context of the size of GW as a business, and the amount of money we are talking about here.

weeble1000 wrote:
@Krazy

First, you presume the folks posting are all currently GW customers. I, for example, have been boycotting GW for three years. So you can go ahead and listen to my opinion I suppose, which is substantively similar to those above:

GW is cost-cutting by phasing out German-language products. The cost savings seem to be relatively low versus the harm to the company's goodwill. I do not see the point in alienating a .................blah blah blah.......

Too much to read.....

I find it funny that I can get such a rise outta people like this.....on such a useless point.....

If this is all so moot, and you can't even be bothered to read what people post, why are you wasting your time in this thread instead of putting more models together?

Troll.

Is it just me or is declaring TLDR makes you look like an idiot? you're basically saying to the world that you're lazy and/or have an attention span of a goldfish.

From Cracked.com:

I just can't stomach another preachy, soap box, we are the 99% diatribe on an issue as trivial as that of missing languages on a model box..... By someone who has claimed he hasn't gamed GW for three years, yet still follows them to preach the vile deeds they are doing.....

I think after 8 pages there's really no news here now.

Let's hope for our less blessed brethren that the instructions and sides of the boxes will still have the relevant information in a tongue understandable to them.