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.

Yes, yes he does.

I'm going to assume its genuine and not a spoof. Some of Kirby's rambling are difficult to credit. Assuming then it's genuine, it's all bluster and misdirection. He seems proud of spending an 'indecent' amount of money on protecting their IP. It's a funny thing to parade around the fact you've wasted money on a legal case demonstrating that you don't own many of the things your business is based on. As much as he says they need to protect these things for themselves, anyone with any sense can see that it's an admission of how vulnerable they are.

Maybe they have to be open about the Chapterhouse case costs because it's big enough that they cant hide it any more on the report. As are their other costs. £4 on that website, what a waste. How's White Dwarf or Warhammer Visions doing, that shaping up to be a hole to piss money down too? As much as he dresses up the restructuring, cutting staff to the bone with one man stores and axing regional offices, that they did this at 'ferocious' speed reads to me as 'panic'. It's clear they they are doing all these things to prevent losses in the short term.

Then he wastes half a page rambling about the threat of 3D printers a decade away, and then says they'll be rubbish and slow anyway. Firstly, all technology accelerates in quality, similar dismissive attitudes were common towards home computing or the internet and look where we are now. Who knows how 3D printing technology will improve. You won't be printing a single crude figure per day in ten years I'm sure.

Then, the 3D printer stuff is just nonsense. GW are losing market share right now to their multiple competitors, Warmaching, Infinity, X-Wing, all of them that fill game shops. It's not printers and computer games in ten years time, but other games and miniature manufacturers that are the threat right now. He says nothing about that and instead parades that they as good as lost a hugely expensive legal case to third party they claim was impinging on their profits.

I'm sending a letter to Games Workshop, if they don't need a CV or any previous business experience what so ever, I think I can nail a interview.

 infinite_array wrote:
"It is a very difficult thing to do when it is done through a legal system designed to prevent people stealing hogs from one another. "

Translation: The legal system didn't let us win, therefore the entire system must be gak.

Good lord.

I've just watched the Hatfields & McCoys mini-series for the first time. Is he referencing the hog thieving from that?

he uses the phrase 'Kirby and his cronies'. He does read DakkaDakka

 Howard A Treesong wrote:

As are their other costs. £4 on that website, what a waste. How's White Dwarf or Warhammer Visions doing, that shaping up to be a hole to piss money down too? As much as he dresses up the restructuring, cutting staff to the bone with one man stores and axing regional offices, that they did this at 'ferocious' speed reads to me as 'panic'. It's clear they they are doing all these things to prevent losses in the short term.
.

Best.
Typo.
Ever.

Or is that how much it looks like they spent on it?

 Azreal13 wrote:

 kronk wrote:
Yeah, I think you and I are saying about the same thing. I think flat sales (or slightly down), but negative year on year revenue due to the expenditures (and/or slightly down sales).

I might be needlessly pedanting all over your post, but revenue wouldn't be affected by expenditure, only profit and net profit at that.

No, you're right. Kronk has the dumb. I meant Profit.

I honestly thought 7th would make their numbers (at least appear to) look fine. Hmm...

Barfolomew wrote:
- Profits are going to be down because he focuses on long term, not short term. This means the upcoming financial report is going to be bad.

That's basically the opposite of how GW operates. They're not just about short-term, but the extreme short term. If they're changing horses mid-race (again), then that's something significant and shows things might be a bit more rotten in the state of Nottingham than first thought.

This really does sound like trying to propaganda spin everything to be good to deflect the fact it's going to be dire. Kind of like WW2 propaganda saying that the German army was doing great while it was getting its butt kicked. Just something about that, reading between the lines perhaps, seems to indicate things are really bad.

Maybe it really is worse than we thought.

 Howard A Treesong wrote:

Maybe they have to be open about the Chapterhouse case costs because it's big enough that they cant hide it any more on the report. As are their other costs. £4 on that website, what a waste. How's White Dwarf or Warhammer Visions doing, that shaping up to be a hole to piss money down too? As much as he dresses up the restructuring, cutting staff to the bone with one man stores and axing regional offices, that they did this at 'ferocious' speed reads to me as 'panic'. It's clear they they are doing all these things to prevent losses in the short term.

Maybe they hadn't paid their bill until now.

 Azreal13 wrote:
It is stuff like this, and let's face it, it isn't the first time we've had total mind fethery from Kirby in a report, which is a matter of public record, that causes me to regard anyone who argues so hard in defence of GW with such disbelief.

But Az, can't'cha hear the hooves'a thundering? Can you not see the glint of the polished white armour on the horizon, as these grand Knights rush forward to defend King Kirby and all the crazy stuff he's saying? If they're not already here they certainly will be soon.

 Paradigm wrote:
"If your measure of 'good' is the current financial year's numbers, you may not agree [that GW have had a good year]". Well, the year's numbers are kind of the point, are they not?

Pay no attention to the lack of gold behind the curtain!

If this is legit, then this is the most rambling, incoherent business type document I've ever read...since the last one Kirby wrote.

Also, if true, then things are worse than I imagined.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 Azreal13 wrote:
It is stuff like this, and let's face it, it isn't the first time we've had total mind fethery from Kirby in a report, which is a matter of public record, that causes me to regard anyone who argues so hard in defence of GW with such disbelief.

But Az, can't'cha hear the hooves'a thundering? Can you not see the glint of the polished white armour on the horizon, as these grant Knights rush forward to defend King Kirby and all the crazy stuff he's saying? If they're not already here they will certainly be here soon.

Here they come.

Preamble not on the investor relations section now?

 Grimtuff wrote:

Davor wrote:
Is this real? It seems no so professional.

Well, it is published by GW...

Should'a let FFG take a crack at the report.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 Azreal13 wrote:
It is stuff like this, and let's face it, it isn't the first time we've had total mind fethery from Kirby in a report, which is a matter of public record, that causes me to regard anyone who argues so hard in defence of GW with such disbelief.

But Az, can't'cha hear the hooves'a thundering? Can you not see the glint of the polished white armour on the horizon, as these grant Knights rush forward to defend King Kirby and all the crazy stuff he's saying? If they're not already here they will certainly be here soon.

You know their MO. We won't see so much as a silvered tip for a few days, and then someone will jump on something that nobody actually said and strawman the feth out of it.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 Azreal13 wrote:
It is stuff like this, and let's face it, it isn't the first time we've had total mind fethery from Kirby in a report, which is a matter of public record, that causes me to regard anyone who argues so hard in defence of GW with such disbelief.

But Az, can't'cha hear the hooves'a thundering? Can you not see the glint of the polished white armour on the horizon, as these grant Knights rush forward to defend King Kirby and all the crazy stuff he's saying? If they're not already here they will certainly be here soon.

I'm not so sure this time. I mean, I usually am one who prefers to not take much of a stand (strong enough opinions on both sides here at Dakka anyway), but even I am a bit concerned at this. That said, I'm holding my judgment until I see two things:

1 - The numbers themselves. The preamble can set a tone, and serve as a test of one's communication skills (or lake thereof) but it is not quite the meat of the report.

2 - What their plan is for the future. This is the big one.

I'm withholding judgment til I see that, good and bad.

 kronk wrote:

Hollismason wrote:
I thought a pound was 2 dollars? Of course I only know the currency exchange from 1993.

Oh, I see. It's about 1.6 conversion rate, so 4 million British Pound Moneys is ~$6.4 million in 'Merica!

Man, I remember when I first started seeing my missus, I would go to the ATM, get 500 bucks out, and it would cost me about 247 quid. I miss those days...

And then I moved over here, get all my currency changed, its only at 1.60

I now live here, and we are going back for three weeks of drinking (visiting my mates) in September, and apparently it is climbing again!

It will be just my luck if its back down to 2 for 1 now that I am earning dollars.

Jeebus. I hope it's a fake just because reading that was actually painful. It's probably not though. Maybe we'll get lucky and the new CEO (as if Kirby is actually going to hire one that won't be a toady) will straighten things out.

::sigh::

Love the product, not the company management.

 Grimtuff wrote:
Just to remind everyone of the madness from last year.

How about other games like Pokémon or role-playing games? (Who can remember them, now?).

And to comment on this, I want to point out that at San Diego Comic-Con, arguably the single biggest pop-culture convention on the planet, has the following companies represented:

Privateer Press (Warmachine/Hordes)

Wizards (D&D Next! or 5th or whatever they're calling it this week)

Fantasy Flight Games (X-Wing & the Star Wars RPGs)

Topps/Catalyst Game Laps (BattleTech)

Where are GW, the supposed industry leader? Who can remember RPG's? A lot of people, it appears, given they're at Comic Con, GW, and you're not.

Interestingly enough, if you go to the GW main investor relations page, the annual report is posted, but the link is broken.

http://investor.games-workshop.com/

My guess is someone was supposed to post the Preamble and used the wrong link, but the document was uploaded.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 Grimtuff wrote:
Just to remind everyone of the madness from last year.

How about other games like Pokémon or role-playing games? (Who can remember them, now?).

And to comment on this, I want to point out that at San Diego Comic-Con, arguably the single biggest pop-culture convention on the planet, has the following companies represented:

Privateer Press (Warmachine/Hordes)

Wizards (D&D Next! or 5th or whatever they're calling it this week)

Fantasy Flight Games (X-Wing & the Star Wars RPGs)

Topps/Catalyst Game Laps (BattleTech)

Where are GW, the supposed industry leader? Who can remember RPG's? A lot of people, it appears, given they're at Comic Con and you're not.

They are a passing fad. Like Gamesday..........

I hope that someone snagged it when they did post it.

This has to be a satire surely? You couldn't write this better if you tried.

My only thought after reading that was "Jesus Christ riding a bicycle", because really there is no other way to put it..

I would probably expect the worst come the financial report. If there was even the slightest bit of upward turn there, it's the norm to trumpet it from the roof-tops in releases such as these.

I bet anything the Annual Report for 2014 got posted in a directory instead of the supposed preamble

Okay, I hope this is fake because a) why do you have typos on a formal letter and b) I question the sanity of the one who wrote those.

But in his defense, he can't just say "Hey our numbers aren't very good. Sorry! Hope you don't leave because we'll die, thanks."


AND THAT WEBSITE COSTED 4 MILLION? I think my web developer friends are severely underpaid. Anyone here who likes the new website? Anyone?

The 3D printer stuff... I mean, just replace 3D printer with any of the other things GW gets so unbelievably wrong:

Marketing

Promotion

Communication

Barrier to Entry

The Internet

Social Media

... and on, and on, and on, and on...

He sounds like a proponent of HD-DVD combined with that Iraqui "information" minister.

"There are no Warjacks in Nottingham! The valiant (and trade-markable) Astra Militarum are solidly holding the invaders back! 3D printers, like the Internet, social media, Pokemon and RPGs before it, is a fad!"

 Pacific wrote:
This has to be a satire surely? You couldn't write this better if you tried.

My only thought after reading that was "Jesus Christ riding a bicycle", because really there is no other way to put it..

I would probably expect the worst come the financial report. If there was even the slightest bit of upward turn there, it's the norm to trumpet it from the roof-tops in releases such as these.

I agree.

I'll be shocked if it's real. It reads like something someone here would post up mocking them.

Man, when I'm this torn on whether or not it's a satirical piece, that is not good at all.

If it's true, then it doesn't look good at all for GW. My feeling is that most of things they've done this year have hurt their long term prospects. I was sort of expecting the release of Knights and 7th edition to cover the hurt this year, and was expecting to see it mentioned in this preamble. The fact that it's not there might suggest that I was overly optimistic about that!

Well. Tomorrow will be interesting!

Pretty sure it's real and official.

What a bizarre and unprofessional document. I can understand people thinking it's fake, but Kirby's other output has been so weird I don't think it is.