Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

I didn't know GW had a facebook group. Too much trash talk I guess about the company.

I don;t find shutting it down a surprise at all. They've done this stuff since I started playing around 1998 and closed the forums on their website.

Games Workshop doesn't want our opinions they want our money. The less of the first and the more of the second they get, the happier they are.

I am old enough to remember GW before the internet existed. It was a glorious time when you had to wait for a whole month to see then next big thing in White Dwarf, someone you knew personally had to have a physical rule book and like you enough to let you photocopy it at the local library (which could cost more than the book itself), and no-one with anything bad to say was heard by more than a handful of people. Glorious.

Alabaster.clown wrote:
I am old enough to remember GW before the internet existed. It was a glorious time when you had to wait for a whole month to see then next big thing in White Dwarf, someone you knew personally had to have a physical rule book and like you enough to let you photocopy it at the local library (which could cost more than the book itself), and no-one with anything bad to say was heard by more than a handful of people. Glorious.

But GW was also another Company then, which engaged with their customers and had more diverse products. The WD was more interesting, with more stuff you could use and i was on a budget then so everything i bought didn't cost me an Arm and leg. (3 Rhino's in a box, 2 landraiders in a box)

Alabaster.clown wrote:
I am old enough to remember GW before the internet existed. It was a glorious time when you had to wait for a whole month to see then next big thing in White Dwarf, someone you knew personally had to have a physical rule book and like you enough to let you photocopy it at the local library (which could cost more than the book itself), and no-one with anything bad to say was heard by more than a handful of people. Glorious.

That's funny - I remember people complaining about GW before the internet existed. (Specifically the price of the miniatures for Talisman and the extraordinarily crappy plastic horses that came with their mounted figures.

It was indeed glorious!

Something else to bear in mind is that at the time Gee Dub was not nearly as badly run - yes, the minis were over priced, and, yes, those horses were really that bad, but White Dwarf had actual content - and not just for Gee Dub games. It had reviews for games by other companies - GW actually sold games by other companies.

So, when I say 'glorious' I am referring to the actual company - not to the lack of an internet.

White Dwarf used to be worth reading... and, hey! if you looked in the letters column... some of the letters that they actually printed had negative things to say!

The Auld Grump

I remember the Citadel Journal being completely full of useful game content for both 4th edition fantasy and 2nd edition 40k. Tons of terrain articles too. And it was all done by editing together fan submissions.

 jonolikespie wrote:

KommissarKarl wrote:

 Harriticus wrote:

 angelofvengeance wrote:
Could be due to the anti-GW troll crowd?

Victim-blaming never works.

This is just because GW thinks the internet is a passing fad, hates their own customer base, wants to control everything about "the hobby" to the point of controlling speech about it, and has no idea what public relations are. Every other company in the world manages social media despite "trolls". You think EA and Microsoft don't have "trolls"? You think the US military, Republican Party, and Israeli gov don't? Well, all of these aforementioned groups have prominent social media.

I've been around long enough to remember the GW forums...it really is the fanbase who is at fault here. Gw attract far more flak than companies who actually hurt/kill people (like Coca Cola murdering trade unionists in Latin America) and most of their efforts to reach out to the community have been ruined by the community itself. The community collectively gak its breaches over the Spots the Space Marine thing - which, regardless of your opinion of the studipidity of GW's actions, clearly isn't on the same scale as the crimes of say, the Russian Government - and as a result we lost our Facebook page.

It's amazing that so many people are so angry at GW...and yet put so much effort into wanting to complain about them. There are tonnes of things I regard as crappy/overpriced and yet I don't spend my free time on the internet complaining about them.

And yet coca cola still have a facebook page because they understand that shifting attention away from the bad stuff they do is a necessary part of business...
You can't blame a customer base for being upset with a product if they feel they are seeing much more bad than good and no one within the company is doing anything to try and change that...

I can blame a customer base for being far angrier than than the company's actions should warrent however. As I said, GW, a company who makes toy soldiers, has attracted more hate and vitriol than a company who's been proven to murder people in the third world. Clearly the fact that the former has attracted more rage than the latter is entirely down to the fanbase, regardless of what flaws GW has, because the actions of the former are utterly incomparable to the crimes of the latter.

Or you can honestly sit there and pretend that shouting at the poor bastard on minimum wage who has to maintain the facebook page is actually a productive way of getting change from GW. Your choice.

To be honest you will never see any vitriol directed at Union Carbide on DakkaDakka because this is a wargames forum and such a subject would be off topic.

However you can if you like compare the amount of vitriol directed at GW versus other games companies.

KommissarKarl wrote:

I've been around long enough to remember the GW forums...it really is the fanbase who is at fault here. Gw attract far more flak than companies who actually hurt/kill people (like Coca Cola murdering trade unionists in Latin America) and most of their efforts to reach out to the community have been ruined by the community itself. The community collectively gak its breaches over the Spots the Space Marine thing - which, regardless of your opinion of the studipidity of GW's actions, clearly isn't on the same scale as the crimes of say, the Russian Government - and as a result we lost our Facebook page.

It's amazing that so many people are so angry at GW...and yet put so much effort into wanting to complain about them. There are tonnes of things I regard as crappy/overpriced and yet I don't spend my free time on the internet complaining about them.

Of course, the thing for a multinational company to do, when faced with criticisms both legitimate or ridiculous, would be to shut up shop and run away. Blaming the community for GW's retreat from social media is staggeringly asinine. Explain to me why, when faced with a backlash over an issue, the best defense is to leave the floor instead of explain your actions and your stance?

Also your comparisons of GW's actions to Coca Cola and the Russian Government are some of the best strawmen I've seen in a long time. If somebody punches you for no good reason, do you shrug and say 'well at least you didn't give me AIDS'... Relative issues remain issues.

 MeanGreenStompa wrote:

KommissarKarl wrote:

I've been around long enough to remember the GW forums...it really is the fanbase who is at fault here. Gw attract far more flak than companies who actually hurt/kill people (like Coca Cola murdering trade unionists in Latin America) and most of their efforts to reach out to the community have been ruined by the community itself. The community collectively gak its breaches over the Spots the Space Marine thing - which, regardless of your opinion of the studipidity of GW's actions, clearly isn't on the same scale as the crimes of say, the Russian Government - and as a result we lost our Facebook page.

It's amazing that so many people are so angry at GW...and yet put so much effort into wanting to complain about them. There are tonnes of things I regard as crappy/overpriced and yet I don't spend my free time on the internet complaining about them.

Of course, the thing for a multinational company to do, when faced with criticisms both legitimate or ridiculous, would be to shut up shop and run away. Blaming the community for GW's retreat from social media is staggeringly asinine. Explain to me why, when faced with a backlash over an issue, the best defense is to leave the floor instead of explain your actions and your stance?

Also your comparisons of GW's actions to Coca Cola and the Russian Government are some of the best strawmen I've seen in a long time. If somebody punches you for no good reason, do you shrug and say 'well at least you didn't give me AIDS'... Relative issues remain issues.

Hey, walking off the floor worked well for Michael Bay, didn't it?

Agreed - saying 'hey, GW isn't as bad as Russia under Stalin, now is it? GW is fine' does kind of miss the point.

Gee Dub is being bad for a games company - not Mandelbaum bad, but bad.

So, compare it to games companies that are worse, like... Defiance? Maybe?

The Auld Grump

My older brother does PR consulting for the firearms industry. He messaged me this morning with a "Is this true?" He was shocked that a company could be so flagrantly stupid in their PR. No other company acts as foolishly as GW and stays in business long.

You want to know why Coke doesn't get the heat that GW gets? It's because Coke actually understands PR and customers. They talk to them, have cute commercials with fluffy polar bears. They communicate with the customers. If there's an outcry, you bet Coke's doing what it can to give an explanation (real or false) to appease the public. GW stays necessarily silent on everything, even simple, mundane things. Their silence and lack of explanation draws frustration and theories from the fans.

If this was an isolated indecent it would be "Oh, that sucks." But since this is a pattern of GW to shut their gates against the outside world and pretend the internet, social media, advertising and customer satisfaction don't exist, this is a symptom of a very sick company.

KommissarKarl wrote:

I can blame a customer base for being far angrier than than the company's actions should warrent however. As I said, GW, a company who makes toy soldiers, has attracted more hate and vitriol than a company who's been proven to murder people in the third world. Clearly the fact that the former has attracted more rage than the latter is entirely down to the fanbase, regardless of what flaws GW has, because the actions of the former are utterly incomparable to the crimes of the latter.

Or you can honestly sit there and pretend that shouting at the poor bastard on minimum wage who has to maintain the facebook page is actually a productive way of getting change from GW. Your choice.

This is a strawman, as noted. What other companies in completely unrelated industries with completely different scales of operation is irrelevant.

Let's look at an example. I don't interact with Coca-Cola's products the same way I interact with GW's. I don't sit there and pour over Coca Cola literature and books. I don't spend uncounted hours talking about, buying, building, painting, and using Coca Cola products. I don't get see new Coca Cola products every month. Coke doesn't drastically change every few years. Coca Cola is not a hobby nor the cornerstone of many of my social interactions. I don't recall ever having seen anything like a "Coca Cola" store to hang out with friends for a few hours. Ultimately, I buy a drink they license the recipe for from a local licensee when I get a burger and that's about it. Coca Cola doesn't shut down their Facebook page when people say bad things about them either.

My problem with GW is their product and interaction with me as a customer and customers as a whole. I may not like what Coca Cola does as a corporate mega-giant in other areas of the world, but I don't have a problem with their product or my exchanges with them as a customer.

GW's problems are of their own making. They never seem to respond to gameplay problems with their products in any logical manner, have an incredibly spotty history of product support (oh yeah lets just not update anything in this product line for ten years, oh editions changed and that wargear item doesn't quite work right? Well it just doesn't do anything anymore, we're not gonna fix it, etc ad nauseum), nor interact with their community the way every single other company in this industry does, and are priced way above everyone else in their industry.

You don't see the same vitriol at other gaming companies because they don't respond the way GW does.

 MeanGreenStompa wrote:

KommissarKarl wrote:

I've been around long enough to remember the GW forums...it really is the fanbase who is at fault here. Gw attract far more flak than companies who actually hurt/kill people (like Coca Cola murdering trade unionists in Latin America) and most of their efforts to reach out to the community have been ruined by the community itself. The community collectively gak its breaches over the Spots the Space Marine thing - which, regardless of your opinion of the studipidity of GW's actions, clearly isn't on the same scale as the crimes of say, the Russian Government - and as a result we lost our Facebook page.

It's amazing that so many people are so angry at GW...and yet put so much effort into wanting to complain about them. There are tonnes of things I regard as crappy/overpriced and yet I don't spend my free time on the internet complaining about them.

Of course, the thing for a multinational company to do, when faced with criticisms both legitimate or ridiculous, would be to shut up shop and run away. Blaming the community for GW's retreat from social media is staggeringly asinine. Explain to me why, when faced with a backlash over an issue, the best defense is to leave the floor instead of explain your actions and your stance?

Well how the hell can they explain their actions or stance when the community forced them to shut down their facebook presence? Games Workshop clearly wanted a presence on facebook or they wouldn't have tried it in the first place, and rather than letting that evolve into a medium that would help them genuinely communicate with the fanbase, the fanbase decided to unleash its rage upon GW, which led them to shut it down.

KommissarKarl wrote:

Well how the hell can they explain their actions or stance when the community forced them to shut down their facebook presence? Games Workshop clearly wanted a presence on facebook or they wouldn't have tried it in the first place, and rather than letting that evolve into a medium that would help them genuinely communicate with the fanbase, the fanbase decided to unleash its rage upon GW, which led them to shut it down.

Probably a bit of a crazy idea here, but bear with me...

Maybe, just maybe, they could read all of it, pick out the issues, respond in a reasonable manner (ignoring the comments with no substance) and maybe work to address those issues people are upset about?

Probably crazy, and it would take actual work they'd have have to pay someone for, but hey, there it is.

I mean, its not like there are other wargaming companies that do just this.

Oh wait.

KommissarKarl wrote:

Well how the hell can they explain their actions or stance when the community forced them to shut down their facebook presence? Games Workshop clearly wanted a presence on facebook or they wouldn't have tried it in the first place, and rather than letting that evolve into a medium that would help them genuinely communicate with the fanbase, the fanbase decided to unleash its rage upon GW, which led them to shut it down.

Nobody forced them to shut down. They chose to do so rather then dealing with the cause of customer ill feeling.

A good example of a similar situation is Mantic. They still have all their social media presence, despite getting plenty of flak for production issues relating to at least two kickstarters, they didn't run away, they dealt with the problems.

The correct response to the Spots The Space Marine fiasco was to apologize and make a donation to the veterans charity that book supported (The Wounded Warrior Project), not to shut down the facebook page.

watch the language please. Reds8n

Sorry! I thought the autofilter would catch that and didn't notice it didn't. My bad!

 Blacksails wrote:

KommissarKarl wrote:

Well how the hell can they explain their actions or stance when the community forced them to shut down their facebook presence? Games Workshop clearly wanted a presence on facebook or they wouldn't have tried it in the first place, and rather than letting that evolve into a medium that would help them genuinely communicate with the fanbase, the fanbase decided to unleash its rage upon GW, which led them to shut it down.

Probably a bit of a crazy idea here, but bear with me...

Maybe, just maybe, they could read all of it, pick out the issues, respond in a reasonable manner (ignoring the comments with no substance) and maybe work to address those issues people are upset about?

Probably crazy, and it would take actual work they'd have have to pay someone for, but hey, there it is.

I mean, its not like there are other wargaming companies that do just this.

Oh wait.

Well since virtually everything GW does is met with howls of anguish from the fanbase, I don't think that would satiate them. IIRC GW did drop the Spots the Space Marine lawsuit - did the community thank them? Was there a massive wave of positivity in response to this? Or did they instead go on to complaining about something else entirely?

Every day there's another red line that GW crosses, every day the fanbase become more and more incredulous at GW's actions. It's been this way for at least 20 years, GW can't do anything to "address those issues people are uspet about" because 95% of the complaints are white noise. They have always attracted way more vitriol and hatred than companies who make video games or what-have-you (I know they're not as hated as other wargaming companies but those companies are a fraction of their sie), I have no idea why.

They don't have to individually address each complaint.

Some are white noise, some are baseless, but I'd argue that if there's that much noise overall, there's clearly some merit to the grander themes.

Prices, rule design, balance, specialist games, bad PR...all of these things can be improved upon in tangible ways.

Each small step won't be met with waves of grateful customers, but I can assure you that it won't be making ti worse.

Running away from the problem won't make it any better either. That I can also assure you of.

That's really a shame that they're shutting down.

KommissarKarl wrote:

 MeanGreenStompa wrote:

KommissarKarl wrote:

I've been around long enough to remember the GW forums...it really is the fanbase who is at fault here. Gw attract far more flak than companies who actually hurt/kill people (like Coca Cola murdering trade unionists in Latin America) and most of their efforts to reach out to the community have been ruined by the community itself. The community collectively gak its breaches over the Spots the Space Marine thing - which, regardless of your opinion of the studipidity of GW's actions, clearly isn't on the same scale as the crimes of say, the Russian Government - and as a result we lost our Facebook page.

It's amazing that so many people are so angry at GW...and yet put so much effort into wanting to complain about them. There are tonnes of things I regard as crappy/overpriced and yet I don't spend my free time on the internet complaining about them.

Of course, the thing for a multinational company to do, when faced with criticisms both legitimate or ridiculous, would be to shut up shop and run away. Blaming the community for GW's retreat from social media is staggeringly asinine. Explain to me why, when faced with a backlash over an issue, the best defense is to leave the floor instead of explain your actions and your stance?

Well how the hell can they explain their actions or stance when the community forced them to shut down their facebook presence? Games Workshop clearly wanted a presence on facebook or they wouldn't have tried it in the first place, and rather than letting that evolve into a medium that would help them genuinely communicate with the fanbase, the fanbase decided to unleash its rage upon GW, which led them to shut it down.

Complaints are free feedback.

If you're doing your job, if you're keeping sharp and wish to retain customers, you take the complaints, all of them, from the quiet and polite expression of dissatisfaction to the 15 page sweary rant, and you conduct root cause analysis on them, you do that to look for patterns in the chaos, repeating identifiers that show you the things that are causing the complaints. Once you've disseminated that data, you can begin to work on process improvement, to stem the root cause in the future, this improves your business, reduces complaint and therein increases customer satisfaction, increasing customer base.

So when you have a PR disaster with something like 'spots', you need to contain it, you need to placate your customers, you need to have a rationale explanation as to why you acted as you did. Closing shop and legging it looks even more dubious and fans the fire. It also, along with all the other social media withdrawal, creates more distance between the customer and the company, breaks lines of communication and allows the potential for more negativity as:

a: you're not there to state your case.
b: in your absence and silence, you allow rumor and conjecture to take the place of fact.
c. if you are contributing to the conversation, you have a degree of control over it.

KommissarKarl wrote:

Well since virtually everything GW does is met with howls of anguish from the fanbase, I don't think that would satiate them. IIRC GW did drop the Spots the Space Marine lawsuit - did the community thank them? Was there a massive wave of positivity in response to this?

You wanted the community to THANK GW for dropping a lawsuit that was malicious and useless in the first place?!

Do you thank a mugger for just robbing you instead of robbing you and beating you up?! Why on earth should anyone thank GW for making the least amount of effort possible to correct a mistake that they themselves caused in the first place?

If, like frozenwastes said, GW had apologized and made a donation to the charity that the book supported, then MAYBE they would have gotten back some praise, but as it stands they deserve nothing but scorn and mocking for the way that they handled that whole fiasco and their subsequent retreat from social media.

KommissarKarl wrote:

 Blacksails wrote:

KommissarKarl wrote:

Well how the hell can they explain their actions or stance when the community forced them to shut down their facebook presence? Games Workshop clearly wanted a presence on facebook or they wouldn't have tried it in the first place, and rather than letting that evolve into a medium that would help them genuinely communicate with the fanbase, the fanbase decided to unleash its rage upon GW, which led them to shut it down.

Probably a bit of a crazy idea here, but bear with me...

Maybe, just maybe, they could read all of it, pick out the issues, respond in a reasonable manner (ignoring the comments with no substance) and maybe work to address those issues people are upset about?

Probably crazy, and it would take actual work they'd have have to pay someone for, but hey, there it is.

I mean, its not like there are other wargaming companies that do just this.

Oh wait.

Well since virtually everything GW does is met with howls of anguish from the fanbase, I don't think that would satiate them. IIRC GW did drop the Spots the Space Marine lawsuit - did the community thank them? Was there a massive wave of positivity in response to this? Or did they instead go on to complaining about something else entirely?

Every day there's another red line that GW crosses, every day the fanbase become more and more incredulous at GW's actions. It's been this way for at least 20 years, GW can't do anything to "address those issues people are uspet about" because 95% of the complaints are white noise. They have always attracted way more vitriol and hatred than companies who make video games or what-have-you (I know they're not as hated as other wargaming companies but those companies are a fraction of their sie), I have no idea why.

Good God, "howls of anguish?" The hyperbole you're using to defend GW's actions is excessive.

GW *does* get credit when it deserves it. The Imperial Knight is the most recent example of this- it was almost universally applauded for its quality as a model and generated massive hype. Heck, its rules didn't receive significant backlash as people thought it was fairly priced (though Jervis' comment in the WDW about how the set costpoints for models was a bit bewildering).

GW gets NO credit for the Spots the Space Marine book. What they did, and what they had been doing previous to the Chapter House case, was attempting to sue other groups who GW felt infringed on their copyrights and shut those competitors down through force and cost of negotiation, regardless of how strong their claim for a certain copyright was (usually flimsy). In a court case (and I'm pretty sure this is how is shook out with Chapter House), GW would never have won the sole use of "Space Marine," but their intention was not totally on gaining that word (though that would be a plus) but to shut down a small fish who couldn't fight back. GW went into the Spots debacle hoping to quickly crush the book's production and unfortunately it caught media buzz. Once they realized how badly this plan had backfired, they slunk off into the darkness to never talk about this again.

The whole thing really could have not been any shadier short of having the book's author shanked in a dark alley.

 Accolade wrote:
GW gets NO credit for the Spots the Space Marine book. What they did, and what they had been doing previous to the Chapter House case, was attempting to sue other groups who GW felt infringed on their copyrights and shut those competitors down through force and cost of negotiation, regardless of how strong their claim for a certain copyright was (usually flimsy). In a court case (and I'm pretty sure this is how is shook out with Chapter House), GW would never have won the sole use of "Space Marine," but their intention was not totally on gaining that word (though that would be a plus) but to shut down a small fish who couldn't fight back. GW went into the Spots debacle hoping to quickly crush the book's production and unfortunately it caught media buzz. Once they realized how badly this plan had backfired, they slunk off into the darkness to never talk about this again.

The whole thing really could have not been any shadier short of having the book's author shanked in a dark alley.

It's not quite as bad as having someone shanked but they could have sworn to a court that they own the right the rights to the term 'Space Marine' for months before someone discovers an email with GW's fingerprints all over it which prove that they knew full well they did not

KommissarKarl wrote:
Well since virtually everything GW does is met with howls of anguish from the fanbase...

Hyperbole will get you nowhere.

 angelofvengeance wrote:
Is there not some way to oust Kirby from GW?

Assassination.

What'd we just say about hyperbole?

I'd recommend Culexus as Kirby's Psychic might is beyond reckoning. He's in league with forces most foul...

Did we ever hear more about that job posting that was aimed at improving the retail experience or something?

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
What'd we just say about hyperbole?

I don't know, what did we just say about hyperbole?

 Medium of Death wrote:
I'd recommend Culexus as Kirby's Psychic might is beyond reckoning. He's in league with forces most foul...

Did we ever hear more about that job posting that was aimed at improving the retail experience or something?

I remember reading the job description and thinking it looked like a setup for the board i.e. Kirby to say they had done something but actually nothing would be done or the job holder would just be blamed.

I mean you don't do a proper survey of retail by hiring some keen bloke on a one year contract.

Whilst it's easy to take shots at Kirby about all this, being the top of the food chain, I feel he may well be far removed from the community relations, IP clashes and other such.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
What'd we just say about hyperbole?

Hyperbole is the worst thing in the universe?