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Old news, and probably very much discussed by now. But I can't find anything about this online, and I'm getting back into the hobby so I really want to know. Bear in mind that I haven't been into the hobby since 3rd or 4th edition, so I haven't had any reason to understand these things until now (didn't know anyone else that was interested in playing until recently).

So why has Games Workshop become so closed off? No Games Days, no social media, downgraded White Dwarf, etc. etc. What is THEIR reason, in their eyes?

This is a can of worms, can't wait.

What can be gathered from their own comments is that they believe customers will retain themselves and buy whatever they feel like making, because we all just want to buy GW so desperately. So they don't need to put out effort because we're all religiously devoted.

Best guess I can make is they think they have a big enough name for themselves "they will come".
I think Kirby thinks any time spent on all those items the OP listed was lost revenue = unnecessary.
Anything that would work toward any of those items would be something he would target for better "internal efficiency".
The dividend money does not come out of thin air you know....

White Dwarf is now released weekly and is more like a catalogue with some painting ideas and article about the new models. Warhammer Vision is a monthly magasine that looks much more like the old White Dwarf. In my part of the country, GW used to have an official Facebook pages where they used to engage with the community, but the three guys who managed the thing left after receiving enough hate mail, insults and plain rude behavior for a lifetime. I met one of the guy in charge and apparently it was the worst job he ever had. Apparently, the story repeated itself in many other area up to a point they decided it wasn't worth the trouble. Games Day are apparently over due to change in strategy to favorise smaller gaming groups based around their local store. These are the reasons I managed to scrap by on that subject. I leave it to you to judge them.

Netsurfer. Get the feth out while you can.

Whatever you loved about the game back then is gone. It is dead. Crushed under the weight of a thousand stock dividends.

GTFO while you still have your soul.

GW is dying.

LotR died a few years ago and is stinking up the place.

Warhammer experienced the apocalypse and chaos won.

40K is on the verge of entering the event horizon of the black hole at the center of the universe.

Leave now before it is too late.

Without going into huge amounts of detail, I'd honestly say it is a combination of two things.

First, there comes a time in every small business where it grows to a point where it is no longer a "small business". The difference being that while most businesses will never be titans of industry that set world wide best practices, they develop a culture and way of doing business none the less.

That culture can be customer centered, where the client is king and the company is fueled by customer goodwill, or it can be profit centered as most publicly held companies are. The former is thankfully becoming more common today, but the latter is more prevalent in my opinion.

I believe that games workshop adheres to the older method, where customers are not the number one focus of the company.

The second, is that I firmly believe that games workshop is stuck in a time warp. We live in a day and age where information sharing is so easy, if I want to read a book on advancing my career, I can have a paper copy in my hand within days or an ebook within moments. I firmly believe that their refusal to look at other ways of doing things is over of the reasons they are so out of touch.

Nearly every major business is connected to the pulse of how the world perceives them.

To give an idea of how even a smaller business can be jacked into relating to their customers let me share how the company I work for does this.

I work for a self defence and firearms training provider.

We've been in business 11 years and are on course to have our best year ever. Financially, We're about a quarter the size of GW and we have about 75 employees.

We have 2 Facebook pages, 4 twitter accounts, an instagram, a pinterest, AND we use social listening software to find out his members are feeling about us on a daily basis. Our member service team monitors all of this and helps create a good atmosphere and an open dialogue with our clients. In turn, these fantastic folks help to drive our profitability with trends
Tens of thousands of dollars in revenue each week.

Now part of that revenue is from marketing, but a part of what we believe used that our clients deserve world class service, which encourages them to do repeat business by maintaining their trust over time. ( linking back to point #1 here)

From my non expert analysis, GW does not embrace this style of service at a company wide level. The phone center may have the right of it, but the wider entity is not on board with this style of business. I can safely say that if it were to happen things would look different, but it HAS to start at the very top. Anywhere else and it does no good.

Tl;Dr version: company leadership is old fashioned and does not want to improve themselves or the company. Their way or no way.

My thoughts on the matter.

FM Argos

My guess is a combination of three factors:

1) Lack of understanding of how the modern world works. The internet is just a fad, social media is a waste, etc. GW's management learned how to run a business a long time ago and haven't bothered to change with society. This is probably one of the reasons why they're running such a small company instead of moving on to something bigger with a better salary.

2) Lack of confidence in their product. GW knows that they have unhappy customers with good reasons for being unhappy. So they want to close off contact and keep full control of their message. For example, those unhappy customers can't turn GW's social media posts into a discussion of GW's problems. And, as a nice side effect, if you don't hear about the new product until pre-orders go up you're less likely to think about it a little more and realize that you don't want one after all. Good companies are confident in their product and know that sales and a positive image are inevitable, GW isn't.

3) Lack of ability. It's simple: WD/games day/etc require someone who knows what they're doing to run them. If your employees working on WD aren't very good at their jobs then the quality of WD will suffer. But hey, at least they're cheaper than people with better skills. If games day is poorly managed and starts losing money you aren't going to fix the problem unless you have someone who knows how to run a more appealing event. And so you might as well stop having games day.

 Netsurfer733 wrote:
Old news, and probably very much discussed by now. But I can't find anything about this online, and I'm getting back into the hobby so I really want to know. Bear in mind that I haven't been into the hobby since 3rd or 4th edition, so I haven't had any reason to understand these things until now (didn't know anyone else that was interested in playing until recently).

So why has Games Workshop become so closed off? No Games Days, no social media, downgraded White Dwarf, etc. etc. What is THEIR reason, in their eyes?

Paranoia

Good question, and one I have wanted to ask for some time as well.

I also just reentered the hobby. I played 40K back in 2nd and 3rd edition. GW of yore seems different than GW of today. They were still arrogant pricks back then, but at least they weren't so closed about it.

GW of 2015 seems like they almost hate their customers. I remember back when their site wasn't just a store. There were forums and articles worth reading. And now WD seems like a sales pamphlet for this weeks release.

I know I shouldn't give them my money. But while I have looked at the other games out there, I have to admit that none of them reach the quality of GW. That's the sad truth.

It seems they have changed CEO recently. Perhaps that will result in a more open org?

rohdester wrote:
I know I shouldn't give them my money. But while I have looked at the other games out there, I have to admit that none of them reach the quality of GW. That's the sad truth.

I think that's subjective. I personally enjoy 40k more than any other miniatures game that I've tried, but the others have much tighter design and let people "get to the good part" more quickly if that's what they're into. Plus, some of the sculpts are surprisingly creative, and some people genuinely don't see the customizability of Citadel models as a feature.

(I personally enjoy it, but then I also like calculating exactly how many bits I'll have if I buy a second box and if I can make ___ special weapons in ___ squad and use ___ parts in ___ project, and a lot of stuff many people probably don't want to mess with.)

Probably the biggest feature games like Warmahordes and Malifaux have, though, is that their communities are a lot healthier. Like, by orders of magnitude. I've been on the forums for Privateer Press games and BattleTech in particular, and the "negativity" going around here has been more or less replaced with genuine excitement. Privateer even lists their releases months in advance, and they're all really good about working with the community and doing open betas and things.

If 40k were my only game, I'd feel like I was missing out. Fortunately, and speaking as someone who's done both, it takes less effort to try out pretty much any game other than 40k/Fantasy than it does to build and paint a single box of Citadel infantry, and it's not much more expensive. I like assembly line painting and deployment zones full of plastic as much as the next hobbyist, but a little novelty now and then doesn't hurt.

 Jewelfox wrote:

rohdester wrote:
I know I shouldn't give them my money. But while I have looked at the other games out there, I have to admit that none of them reach the quality of GW. That's the sad truth.

I think that's subjective. I personally enjoy 40k more than any other miniatures game that I've tried, but the others have much tighter design and let people "get to the good part" more quickly if that's what they're into. Plus, some of the sculpts are surprisingly creative, and some people genuinely don't see the customizability of Citadel models as a feature.

Totally agree. I only meant from my POW. And mileage may vary. But personally I have yet to find a game that gives me the same excitement as 40K - both fluff-wise and model-wise.

Originally, I think LoTR had a lot to do with it.

They signed lots of contracts with New Line to keep things under wraps. One leak spoiling stuff from the movies, and they'd be annihilated by a Hollywood giant. The company was too small to actually split game-design, miniature-manufacturing, etc. into not-LoTR and LoTR. The same people did both. Security applied to everything. Things eased a bit after the first LoTR bubble burst, but came back with a vengeance ahead of the first Hobbit movie.

After some 15 years, it's become part of the company culture. There're potentially people working at GW for 10 or 15 years now, rising up in middle management, who never knew different.

The problem with social media is that it allows the peasantry to share their discontent with their fellows.

GW tried to actively engage with the unwashed masses over the issue of changes to White Dwarf a decade or so back by asking for suggestions, they then promptly did the OPPOSITE of what the peasantry.. and wound up closing all of their official forums in the wake of the resultant ****storm.

Wonderwolf wrote:
Originally, I think LoTR had a lot to do with it.

They signed lots of contracts with New Line to keep things under wraps. One leak spoiling stuff from the movies, and they'd be annihilated by a Hollywood giant. The company was too small to actually split game-design, miniature-manufacturing, etc. into not-LoTR and LoTR. The same people did both. Security applied to everything. Things eased a bit after the first LoTR bubble burst, but came back with a vengeance ahead of the first Hobbit movie.

After some 15 years, it's become part of the company culture. There're potentially people working at GW for 10 or 15 years now, rising up in middle management, who never knew different.

The secrecy back when LotR was a thing only ever applied to LotR,though. Back then, they were still quite open about what they were working on otherwise.

The bigger issue at the moment seems to be this fear they have (amplified by the Chapterhouse case) that the rest of the world is just waiting to rip off all of their ideas , so everything has to be kept hidden until the last minute now that they know they can't rely on just sending legal threats to people they see as doing so .

 insaniak wrote:

Wonderwolf wrote:
Originally, I think LoTR had a lot to do with it.

They signed lots of contracts with New Line to keep things under wraps. One leak spoiling stuff from the movies, and they'd be annihilated by a Hollywood giant. The company was too small to actually split game-design, miniature-manufacturing, etc. into not-LoTR and LoTR. The same people did both. Security applied to everything. Things eased a bit after the first LoTR bubble burst, but came back with a vengeance ahead of the first Hobbit movie.

After some 15 years, it's become part of the company culture. There're potentially people working at GW for 10 or 15 years now, rising up in middle management, who never knew different.

The secrecy back when LotR was a thing only ever applied to LotR,though. Back then, they were still quite open about what they were working on otherwise.

The bigger issue at the moment seems to be this far they have (amplified by the Chapterhouse case) that the rest of the world is just waiting to rip off all of their ideas , so everything has to be kept hidden until the last minute now that they know they can't rely on just sending legal threats to people they see as doing so .

Sure things. Lots of factors played into it, and increasingly the whole secrecy-obsession has become its own thing, away from LoTR. But to answer the OP's question, in my theory, I think this is where the seed was first planted.

Most of the stuff that GW has out right gotten rid of is based around customer interaction. They view customer interaction as unnecessary and respond poorly to negative feedback. Instead of putting on their big boy pants or actually making changes, they chose to withdraw and dismiss the customer base. These items were also not deemed directly profitable, meaning they were down graded or out right killed.

I last played around 3rd edition too and have considered rejoining for a number of years. To answer your question, OP, it's mostly due to arrogance. They feel they are still king of the hill and that their fans/customers are so devoted to GW that they'll simply buy anything that GW sells, just because it's a GW product and "the best miniatures in the world". Things like having a good game, good support, social media etc. are secondary concerns, if concerns at all.

When they release something now, it's all secretive. Nobody knows anything until the week or so before the pre-order. Warhammer Fantasy's new edition/new game is supposed to be coming out July 4th I think and there's been basically no news at all about it from GW. I guess everyone is expected to just rush out and buy it immediately because GW makes it. That seems to be their motive now. Treat customers as braindead rubes and marks who are so insanely devoted that they'll buy anything with your logo on it, without wanting to know what it is.

 Gashrog wrote:
The problem with social media is that it allows the peasantry to share their discontent with their fellows.

GW tried to actively engage with the unwashed masses over the issue of changes to White Dwarf a decade or so back by asking for suggestions, they then promptly did the OPPOSITE of what the peasantry.. and wound up closing all of their official forums in the wake of the resultant ****storm.

Kirby: I love my peasants!
Pull!

The Auld Grump - there are certain scenes in History of the World Part 1 that do come to mind...

Honestly i can't help but feel that being so immersed into the background and development of their universes that they're mirroring more or less the imperium of man

A large lumbering beast that due to it's own arrogance and recklessness is dying a slow and painful death.

 Gashrog wrote:
The problem with social media is that it allows the peasantry to share their discontent with their fellows.

GW tried to actively engage with the unwashed masses over the issue of changes to White Dwarf a decade or so back by asking for suggestions, they then promptly did the OPPOSITE of what the peasantry.. and wound up closing all of their official forums in the wake of the resultant ****storm.

This issue was a little before my time, and I don't think I've ever actually held a White Dwarf. Just to sate my morbid curiosity, what specifically was the problem?

 TheAuldGrump wrote:

Kirby: I love my peasants!
Pull!

The Auld Grump - there are certain scenes in History of the World Part 1 that do come to mind...

It's good to be the Kirby!

What was that scene again? Oh yeah, the French Revolution. Appropriate.

 DarkHound wrote:

 Gashrog wrote:
The problem with social media is that it allows the peasantry to share their discontent with their fellows.

GW tried to actively engage with the unwashed masses over the issue of changes to White Dwarf a decade or so back by asking for suggestions, they then promptly did the OPPOSITE of what the peasantry.. and wound up closing all of their official forums in the wake of the resultant ****storm.

This issue was a little before my time, and I don't think I've ever actually held a White Dwarf. Just to sate my morbid curiosity, what specifically was the problem?

Customers demanded content rather than just filler pictures of stuff they could already see on the web.

Something about Ivory towers?

Some years ago they referred to their customers as 'followers' which says a lot. They really think interacting with customers doesn't seem to matter. They also seem very paranoid and arrogant, which is why they refuse to apologise for anything (like Finecast, attacking fan sites and trying to shut down that woman writing the unrelated book 'Spots the Space Marine') or even communicate with the press, and think everyone is out to steal their IP which is why they cannot preview anything or let retailers know what the hell is going on.

Bigging up the perceived value of their IP and bullying everyone they can has become a preoccupation of theirs, and paranoia seems to stem from the fact that it's all got a rather weak basis which they don't want challenged so try to frighten people off.

Just to throw my 2 pence into the fray, maybe part of the problem is that (IMHO) more and more of the staff at GW are more "corporate" and not "hobbyists"?

During my earlier time at GW I saw a lot of the hobbyists leave the company (willingly or not) and be replaced by non-hobbyists, people that were there to climb a corporate ladder so the had something to add to their resume.

Maybe they really don't understand the hobby because some of the people making and carrying out the day to day decisions aren't part of the hobby.

I don't think it's anything nefarious like Mr. Burns sitting at his desk wringing his hands going "Excellent" let's charge them for the paint and bottle separately, it will double our profits!

The business world left them behind and they are not really sure what to do in order to keep up with the times, or so it seems to me.

Its nothing to do with arrogance or paranoia as some would laughably have us believe.

Actually, that seems to be a legitimate observation:

Their culture is very much business/sales, "the right people".

Kirby himself emphasized that selection of employees are very important to him.

It very well could be that any hobbyist viewpoint do not fit in the corporate culture.

So with no "voice of customer" internally or externally they truly have created their own echo-chamber.

Yes, they have gone from callus to clueless... oh my.

The hubris that drips from Kirby's investor commentaries and the management that contributed to the CHS case does indicate arrogance in spades.

 mitch_rifle wrote:
Honestly i can't help but feel that being so immersed into the background and development of their universes that they're mirroring more or less the imperium of man

A large lumbering beast that due to it's own arrogance and recklessness is dying a slow and painful death.

Such an observation was made in this article.

I think a lot of people want them to operate like the small company they once were, but they just aren't anymore. Perhaps some people philosophically are opposed to large corporate entities, and consider them "soulless" or whatever.

Personally, I think it's much ado about nothing. I buy gas from Chevron, crops that have been modified by Monsanto, phones by Nokia, consoles by Sony, tablets by Microsoft, books by George Martin, Blu-Ray discs from HBO, and video games from Blizzard. None of those entities give a damn about what I think. They just make something, if I like it I buy it, if I don't, I don't. They might pretend to be customer-friendly, and all that, but at the end of the day, they just want my money, same as anyone else. If they make a good product, I'll be happy to give them my money.

Frankly, my expectation is that management at any company with more than 100 employees won't care about me personally, and will pretty much just do its own thing. Whether it performs market research or not -- that's for their benefit, not mine. Whether they flounder or flourish isn't really my problem; just whether I like their products or not.