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Looted wagons were pulled from the codex because of the CHS case (no models). The WD rules were a bandaid for vet players who owned their own converted models.

Scions are in the Guard codex.

And I don't really feel his example works because Codex Assassins was not a supplement to add them back into the Inq book like he claimed. It took them from the Inq and gave them to ALL the armies. Also if you're feeling silly you can run something like a 15 Vindicare list at 1500pts.

Torga_DW wrote:
I think it's more likely that they know *something* is wrong, and they'd like to fix it (without changing what they do).

They're very clear in the report about this under the prospects section:

GW Report wrote: For this reason, the principal risks and uncertainties for the balance of the year lie in the ability of the sales channel managers to deliver sales growth and for the product and supply chain to maintain gross margin.

As discussed in the 2014 annual report, for Games Workshop to continue to be successful we need motivated, hard-working managers in all parts of the business who understand Games Workshop’s niche business model, are aligned with its values and are committed to getting things done. The biggest risk for Games Workshop is that we don’t have enough of these managers to continue to grow the business globally.

This risk has been mitigated by recruiting people who fit with our culture, helping them to develop and to fulfil their potential and training them with the skills we need. During the six months to 30 November 2014, we closed a net four stores (12 opened and 16 closed). We need to improve the rate of recruitment of competent new store managers on a consistent basis.

Emphasis mine.

They think that what is wrong is that the managers aren't hitting their sales targets and sales channel managers aren't delivering that growth they want. They want the product and supply chain to hit its margins, so that means cutting costs and raising prices to protect the margins. I'd also expect sales targets for store managers and trade sales reps to be increased and staff turn over to increase as they fail to meet them.

I don't think they'll ever admit that there might be an issue with the product, their pricing model or their policies. Not when there's incompetent store managers and sales channel managers to blame.


.

How can licensing cost them more than it takes in, especially given GW's rather "hands-off" approach?

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
How can licensing cost them more than it takes in, especially given GW's rather "hands-off" approach?

People sitting in chairs...

I admire your optimism Zion, but frankly what you're saying speaks to a level of wishful thinking rather than looking at the facts of who's running GW and the recent trends with their business practices. They're not acknowledging and fixing problems, they're putting fingers in the damn whilst proclaiming, as my sig always says, that everything is fine and that nothing is broken.

When you solution to flat/falling sales and stores not making targets is "raise prices/fire managers", leading to worse sales and even more missed targets, then you have a systemic problem.

 Sean_OBrien wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
How can licensing cost them more than it takes in, especially given GW's rather "hands-off" approach?

People sitting in chairs...

I'm not trying to be a dick, but can you explain that a little further? As someone who works quite often with one of the companies using the GW IP, I am genuinley interested in what this means.

The People In Charge of the department (IP?) costing more than the department makes?

I could, of course, be wrong!

 Alpharius wrote:
The People In Charge of the department (IP?) costing more than the department makes?

If so, that's daft. That's like a gold mine costing more to run than the gold it extracts*.






*This could be a terrible analogy. I know next to nothing about gold mines other than glum sounding peasants use them to help me build human footmen and seemingly sentient catapults.

It could be that they were expecting to have actually made money from some of the licensed video games and the like.

Clockworkziion, I think some of GW's actions can actually be attributed to malice. They've shown malice before in the past so it wouldn't be unreasonable to assume that they continue to do so.

And where's RunicFin's super secret evidence that proves GW isn't actually in a decline? He said he'd PM it to Musashi.

 Kanluwen wrote:
It could be that they were expecting to have actually made money from some of the licensed video games and the like.

In which case it is once again a problem of their own creation. Want to make money off video games? Find a developer worth a damn and a publisher willing to publish it. Do not hand out the license to every two-bit mobile shovelware creator from here 'til the end of the earth.

 MWHistorian wrote:
And where's RunicFin's super secret evidence that proves GW isn't actually in a decline? He said he'd PM it to Musashi.

We're not still bothering with that guy are we?

The IP team making a loss sounds unlikely, but is perfectly plausible.

IP licences are contracts, so GW will need some legal heads in order to draw them up etc, now, despite the fact that law students seem more common than cockroaches, solicitors still aren't cheap. Plus you'll need some admin staff, GW is a medium-sized organisation so almost definitely there'll be some essentially irrelevant middle managers in the dept trying desperately to justify their salary by fiddling with things that don't need changing, plus all the associated tech, furniture etc, etc.

It doesn't take a huge leap for the combined salary and capital investment of the department to be higher than the income it generates. Especially if they anticipated an uptick in income from the dept and invested in expanding it, only for things to fall through.

 Azreal13 wrote:
The IP team making a loss sounds unlikely, but is perfectly plausible.

Well, in the last half year report they made £700,000 and £1,400,000 in the year before that.

So how likely is it that the total cost of salaries, offices, supplies, travel to meetings, legal fees, etc., are high enough for the department to not make money? I honestly have no idea how many people they have in that department. There would be a contract/legal person, a manager, admin staff, sales people who negotiate deals and sell people on the idea of using 40k or WFB for their project. People who review and sign off on what their licensees create. I'm sure I'm missing a few more.

It's also possible that through the magic of inter-departmental billing, part of the cost of the chapter house case got foisted onto them because the protection of their properties might be part of that department's role in the company. "We protecting 40k trademarks in court so you can license them out, so your department gets to pay for part of it!" That sort of thing.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 Alpharius wrote:
The People In Charge of the department (IP?) costing more than the department makes?

If so, that's daft. That's like a gold mine costing more to run than the gold it extracts*.






*This could be a terrible analogy. I know next to nothing about gold mines other than glum sounding peasants use them to help me build human footmen and seemingly sentient catapults.

That's actually not a bad analogy. There's a former mining town in the deserts of California that has a large rock with something like $5,000,000 worth of silver in it. The reason the rock hadn't been crushed into powder at the time I heard the story was it would cost $7,000,000 to get all the silver out (numbers may be off somewhat- I heard about it 20 years ago).

 Azreal13 wrote:
The IP team making a loss sounds unlikely, but is perfectly plausible.

IP licences are contracts, so GW will need some legal heads in order to draw them up etc, now, despite the fact that law students seem more common than cockroaches, solicitors still aren't cheap. Plus you'll need some admin staff, GW is a medium-sized organisation so almost definitely there'll be some essentially irrelevant middle managers in the dept trying desperately to justify their salary by fiddling with things that don't need changing, plus all the associated tech, furniture etc, etc.

It doesn't take a huge leap for the combined salary and capital investment of the department to be higher than the income it generates. Especially if they anticipated an uptick in income from the dept and invested in expanding it, only for things to fall through.

Pretty much. Most of GW's internal legal falls under the Licensing department. They handle both outside licensing (to shovelware companies and to respectable companies like FFG) as well as inside licensing (LotR). You have a pretty good sized staff who are largely higher up on the internal corporate ladder, with a combined salary and benefits of around £2.5 million. When you add in peripheral costs (office supplies, equipment, communications, outside legal...pretty sure it doesn't include litigation, just a US expert for a contract dealing with a US company for example...) the total budget is just shy of £3 million. When they were getting £2.75-3 million a year from THQ (and a bit more from some others), it was a pretty good return...no one really noticed. Now, not so much.

They still are operating under the premise that they have a £3 million plus property to license out. Unfortunately for them, no one has stepped forward wanting to pay that. Most those who picked the bones of THQ have not shown any interest, and just before that went to pot - they had increased the department size counting on the IP becoming more valuable with the Dark Millenium MMO, a couple of possible Space Marine Sequels and as I understand it, the next Dawn of War installment. 3 years later...bunch of people twiddling their thumbs, surfing Dice and Monster looking for their new jobs instead of shopping around the IP to companies who can actually pay a decent amount.

Not sure if they have canned enough of them to get back in the black though. I would be surprised if they have - that isn't the way GW does things. If anything, they probably expanded the department even more...since it is obvious that the only reason no one is buying is because they don't have enough people selling it.

Why do I think the solution to the "problem" with the managers will be GW firing any manger than isn't short term sales oriented. Customer Lifetime Value, bah!

 MWHistorian wrote:
And where's RunicFin's super secret evidence that proves GW isn't actually in a decline? He said he'd PM it to Musashi.

It's under a bridge.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 Kanluwen wrote:
It could be that they were expecting to have actually made money from some of the licensed video games and the like.

In which case it is once again a problem of their own creation. Want to make money off video games? Find a developer worth a damn and a publisher willing to publish it. Do not hand out the license to every two-bit mobile shovelware creator from here 'til the end of the earth.

As it was described to me, their licensing department works a bit like so:

You have the people who are working on the Tolkien license. They deal with the movie studio and the inside studio to make sure what they make passes the approval of the movie studio. They have there own management team, and contract specialist who have been working it for over 10 years now.

You have a group who try to sell the IP. These are the ones who are attempting to resuscitate the IP in a AAA video game title for the most part, though as I understand it, there is at least one who is trying to sell a movie...with an actual budget...

The bulk of it are types who receive people who come calling though. Mostly shovelware, the occasional serious video game developer - though no one with a real budget and publisher to back it up with (that I have heard of at least).

Over them all, you have a pretty good stack of management types and IP specialists. These are the ones who sign off on content to make sure it fits the grand vision.

Top of that heap is Jones, who has his own lackeys. Above him (outside the department though) is Merret. And finally Kirby.

The people who are trying to sell, are not familiar with the process of selling an IP. Most of them are, from what I have gathered, promoted from within with no real experience dealing with those sorts of things or regular off the street sales people. It is a bit of a different process to sell a studio on dropping 7 figures on your idea to develop a product than it is to sell a super market to carry your brand of paper towel... The Tolkien team is probably best placed to actually do the job, but they are also most likely to get canned and or leave right now.

 MWHistorian wrote:
Clockworkziion, I think some of GW's actions can actually be attributed to malice. They've shown malice before in the past so it wouldn't be unreasonable to assume that they continue to do so.

Well that's the first time someone has mispelt my name.

I know I'm more optimistic than some of the rest of the people here, and I freely admit that. I guess it's because I've seen enough stuff that's starting to move in a positive direction to go "I'm willing to see if they're pulling their head out of their ass finally" and am waiting to see what the next move is. I'm not going to claim they're perfect (maybe when they bribe me with plastic Sisters but not until then), but at the same time I don't see them as a malicous entity where everyone involved is just running the company into the ground. Honestly I'm not even sure that Kirby is. Are they making a lot of decisions I don't agree with? Sure. But at the same time that doesn't mean it's a sinking ship either. We've come out of a recession with more wargames than we went in with and with a wide range of variety. And that's great for the player, but a lot less great for GW since they're going to lose market share as new things catch player's attention.

As for the financial statement, I can't really say if they truly believe it or not. Maybe there is something internally that shows that they need more competent sales people who can help sell the game better than they have. But at the same time I really just don't buy the idea that they're 100% ignorant of what's going on. I won't claim that there is a greater plan going on we just can't fathom or anything, but I just feel that there is probably more going on behind the scenes that we're giving credit for right now.

Either way rumors of Sisters getting an update finally got me to get off my butt and start painting them again (and pick up a Knight Errant because the army is sorely lacking something to balance out it's weaknesses right now) and I like what I see from 7th edition so far. So I'm not leaving the game just yet. And if GW really does fold I've got an X-Wing Imperial Fleet now (5 TIEs, 3 Interceptors (two from Imperial Aces), 1 TIE Advance, 1 TIE Bomber, 1 TIE Phantom, 1 TIE Defender, 1 Shuttle and 1 Decimator and plans to pick up some Scum stuff when it gets released) and maybe it'll be the thing that makes me finally sit down and play Warmachine.

So basically what I'm saying is while I want GW to get better and I'd love to see them reverse course on some things under this new CEO (as I haven't really seen enough of GW under him so far to know if he's like Kirby or not) if they really do go down the crapper I've got stuff to play with (or at least make look nice and put in a display case) and there is other stuff out there I'd either pick up, or will keep playing.

That said I still want to see BFG using the X-Wing system.

I have been privy to a leaked internal report that shows the damning and shocking state that Games Workshop doesn't want folks to know.

If anyone wants to know and i'll post here.

 ClockworkZion wrote:
So basically what I'm saying is while I want GW to get better and I'd love to see them reverse course on some things under this new CEO (as I haven't really seen enough of GW under him so far to know if he's like Kirby or not) if they really do go down the crapper I've got stuff to play with (or at least make look nice and put in a display case) and there is other stuff out there I'd either pick up, or will keep playing.

But you have.

Rountree has been COO since 2011. That made him the #2 (or 3 depending on how you view Kirby's hold on things) from then till 2013 when Wells retired. When wells retired, he moved solidly into the #2 spot behind Kirby. He has been a Chief since 2009, so working hand in hand, on a daily basis with Kirby for the last 5 years.

As COO, he has been the one who has spearheaded...well, pretty much everything since then. Sort of what the COO does. As a former CFO, that makes him a bean counter...so it is less likely that we will see anything change in the value added direction, as the cost/benefit calculation is difficult to figure. With his background, it is unlikely that you will see anything new - or even adjust course at all...since it is the course he happily plotted during his time as CFO and COO.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Achaylus72 wrote:
I have been privy to a leaked internal report that shows the damning and shocking state that Games Workshop doesn't want folks to know.

If anyone wants to know and i'll post here.

Make sure to sanitize it as needed (no reason to get your mole fired by accident).

 Achaylus72 wrote:
I have been privy to a leaked internal report that shows the damning and shocking state that Games Workshop doesn't want folks to know.

If anyone wants to know and i'll post here.

This sounds suspiciously like click-bait or a tabloid headline...

So, where is it?

 Achaylus72 wrote:
I have been privy to a leaked internal report that shows the damning and shocking state that Games Workshop doesn't want folks to know.

If anyone wants to know and i'll post here.

Why can't this site be like Neo-Gaf, where anyone who claims to be an insider but can't back it up gets perma-banned...

 agnosto wrote:
So, where is it?

I think he was referring to the recent half-year sales report.

 Sinful Hero wrote:

 Achaylus72 wrote:
I have been privy to a leaked internal report that shows the damning and shocking state that Games Workshop doesn't want folks to know.

If anyone wants to know and i'll post here.

This sounds suspiciously like click-bait or a tabloid headline...

I don't care. It'll be entertaining satire, or entertaining schadenfreude, either way.

So please do post it!

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 Alpharius wrote:
The People In Charge of the department (IP?) costing more than the department makes?

If so, that's daft. That's like a gold mine costing more to run than the gold it extracts*.






*This could be a terrible analogy. I know next to nothing about gold mines other than glum sounding peasants use them to help me build human footmen and seemingly sentient catapults.

How about 'like using mercury to extract gold from rivers'? Sure, you get the gold, but you poison the river for miles downstream....

The Auld Grump

*EDIT* Ye gods... people still do it....

MWHistorian wrote:

And where's RunicFin's super secret evidence that proves GW isn't actually in a decline? He said he'd PM it to Musashi.

Seconded.

Runic, the Ball's in your court.

Achaylus72 wrote:I have been privy to a leaked internal report that shows the damning and shocking state that Games Workshop doesn't want folks to know.

If anyone wants to know and i'll post here.

This I would like to see.

Yeah, I'm still waiting for Runic's PM disproving GW's own financial reports. Just to re-cap...Runic claimed to have secret knowledge with documented proof that GW's sales are increasing.

The faith that some people put in GW seems equivalent to the blind fanaticism the citizens of the Imperium have in the Emperor. It's actually quite impressive.

Deadnight wrote:

Achaylus72 wrote:I have been privy to a leaked internal report that shows the damning and shocking state that Games Workshop doesn't want folks to know.

If anyone wants to know and i'll post here.

This I would like to see.

You and me both, but I think we'll see it as soon as we see Runic's proof...

Even if such a report existed, it would only be privy to the board of directors. The chances that something like that leaked to a random guy in the internet are minuscule.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 ClockworkZion wrote:

You do know they're locked into a deal with LotR right? It's not the same thing as fantasy. Plus they can't just run off and remake LotR into something else if they feel it's not working as is anymore.

And personally I think you're putting too much malice into their actions.

It is the same thing as Fantasy, sure they can't remake the LoTR IP, but they sure as hell could revitalize it in other ways, the least of wall would be trying to return to the model that made the original LoTR game into the astounding financial success that it was in its time.

And I'm not putting any malice in their actions, what I am putting is greed and incompetence, both of which we have more than enough proof of from all of their previous actions.

As a last stab at the IP team costing more than it took-in: those filling chairs maybe they are lawyers?
That could explain how money can be used up so fast, interesting way to categorize that form of overhead as well.

I love it when someone says "I can post damning evidence if you like", yeah, make us beg, just do it or keep quiet about it.

It pains me to read their report.

Their main "prospects" continues to be hiring "motivated one man store managers".
How does a store manager grow sales?
Some form of advertising is needed to get people to enter the door, what, is the budget for advertising or expanding the IP in electronic games not even thought of?

Their "income" certainly shows what a new rule book can do to increase sales.
Usually around Xmas should be the main income time period.
To be down 10% in gross profit from last year's period is not good.
Looking like rule-book releases may be the tried but true panic button to hit if revenue is tanking.

"Assets" are still going down by "5,000" each half, it still looks like they are losing on "deferred tax assets" and cash.
It really boils down to they are willing to look bad overall in order to pump-out dividends.
They are spending the same in product development as last year so no new rule book for a while yet!

They are running out of wiggle-room since they have slowed selling stuff off so true revenue from sales or choosing to hold off on dividends is all they can do to make "profit" look good.

Yeah, no death of GW, just a slow downward spiral, nice for Kirby to change the names of who is in charge around December: I suspect this year is going to be an ugly one: they are backed into a corner financially unless they can stimulate people to buy other than "highly motivated managers".