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Dumb move by PP. I can see the argument - I buy from local shops because I like having somewhere to browse and meet other hobbyists.

But there are better ways to go about it than this sort of self righteous rhetoric and labelling of customers. Discounters still buy your stock, you're still making money off of them.

And honestly, PP, look at yourself in the mirror. You're charging premium prices for product often plagued by scaling issues, in inferior or inappropriate materials and with shoddy production in some cases. I know things have been improving, but the prices on PP kits have always been as bad or worse than GW without the benefit of being multi-part plastic. Heavy multipart metal minis are a stupid choice, as even with pinning and greenstuffing they come apart.

I enjoy PP games, but they're by no means the perfect company. That might be someone like the Perrys.

Huh, well, this thread surprised me. I was expecting the usual "It's bad when GW does it, it's fine when PP does it" spiel. Is the fanbase finally growing up?

That sueing comment... Trade contracts always work like this. Benefitting from fulfilling special terms is standard business practice in the western market.

 Yodhrin wrote:
Honestly the fact PP are following the other wargame industry lemmings off the cliff in their doomed collective attempt to pretend this is still the 90's is less surprising to me than the tone of the announcement.

I mean seriously, what kind of amateur-hour numpty announces a new trade sales policy by branding a non-trivial portion of your trade partners(and, by implication, their customers) as "parasitical free riders"? Even if that's what you think it's not what you say out loud in public.

This is Kirby-esque rhetoric, right up there with pig law, IP moats, and otiose nichery. Someone at PP needs a slap.

Yeah, it's really antagonistic. Also, to people like me who mostly play tabletop games on a dining room table, if we're going to start talking about which stores are parasites in this scenario and which I'd miss more, I think I'd be picking different targets than PP is. I like lower prices way more than I care about stores with play space.

 lord_blackfang wrote:
Huh, well, this thread surprised me. I was expecting the usual "It's bad when GW does it, it's fine when PP does it" spiel. Is the fanbase finally growing up?

The fanbase has always been grown up, it's just GW "does it" far more than anyone else.

Had always wondered at what point PP would start to go down the GW route and this looks like a good indicator; agree with previous posters who say that the tone of this is off

Does PP have shareholders? If yes, I'd jump the ship right now. They are literally telling people they want to sell less. Like...what? A business that tells you they want to sell less is a business you should not trust your money with...at all.

Idiotic attempt to fix prices. The world is what it is. You can't control the internet, but you can sell less. Seems they want to sell less.

They will sell less unless they do this. Stores will stop stocking it people will hear about it less and less then they die out. Thats why you need bandm stores.

When did Privateer Press get picked up by Apogee?

I'm really not convinced that the FLGS is the holy necessity for gaming that people seem to think it is, at least not in the modern age of social media. You really don't need a store to find players for things.

FLGS have a place, and I'd rather support them than a few big online retailers. I like to put money into the local economy.

PP's problems are (as far as I can see) that they are charging over the top prices for arguably inferior product. I know their game system is good, but their miniatures are not really worth the price in some cases, especially given the hassle involved in assembly and transport.

I'd like to see them ban ebay.

’ While this can be a viable business model for many mainstream products, it is common knowledge that in our industry it’s crippling and anticompetitive.”

I dont understand this line at all. Anyone care to explain?

They're saying that gaming relies on the network effect and finding other people to play with to a much greater degree (as well as shared spaces to actually game in).

So atomising communities by not supporting the "hubs" where people meet is bad news for gaming as a whole.

Now, there are arguments against this for sure. You can achieve a similar thing with social media and an organised club. Some might even feel that that is better than a gaming space tied to a commercial enterprise.

But it is true for sure that the current model in the US at least is heavily reliant on game stores as hubs to get people into hobby games.

 Ratius wrote:

’ While this can be a viable business model for many mainstream products, it is common knowledge that in our industry it’s crippling and anticompetitive.”

I dont understand this line at all. Anyone care to explain?

They misunderstand the term anticompetitive. What they mean is that the web-only stores can be more competitive and undercut the trad stores. That's the same in every industry though, so why PP think they're special and can "fix it" I have no idea.

 Zywus wrote:
Are we sure it's not a elaborate Aprils fool joke that somehow got published too early?

If it is an April Fools joke, someone still needs to be fired for gross incompetence. Good business practice doesn't take a holiday on April 1st, and a business that lies to you for their own amusement doesn't deserve your money.

Guess they don't like online stores competing like they've got a pair.

I also assume they will not be returning to KS then, as selling a product online for cheap and cutting out LGS is evil, right?

It was a bad move when GW started doing it (and I believe is *still* doing it), and it's a bad move that PP is now doing the same thing.

It is funny how the situations are starting to turn for these two companies as far as recent news. Who'd have guessed that companies doing dick things would build up ire in the customer bases? Here I was thinking people were just jealous of GW's past suceess.

I am not a fan of GW's decision to do this (or FFG/Asmodee's similar decision), but I understand it - to some extent. Building a community of players is paramount for the continued success of what are explicitly multiplayer games. Encouraging FLGS sales is one way to build that community... but I'm not sure taking away a benefit that a large portion of your fanbase enjoys is really a move that is going to be welcomed. It's one thing if you never let those discounts become the normal in the first place, but doing this so late in the game just makes it seem like a (significant) price increase.

And there's the issue that even deeply discounted, a lot of PP's miniatures are terrible quality. The All-in-One boxes I bought for Convergence and Retribution were the worst, most frustrating miniatures I've ever bought, and a number of figures, I considered just outright throwing away due to defects. Even at an extreme discount provided by the All-in-One box plus online discounts, they were a monumental waste of money. Before making what is sure to be an extremely unpopular decision, PP needed to get their gak together.

PP, you dumb, dumb gakkers.

 Sigvatr wrote:
Does PP have shareholders? If yes, I'd jump the ship right now. They are literally telling people they want to sell less. Like...what? A business that tells you they want to sell less is a business you should not trust your money with...at all.

"Sales are vanity, profit is sanity and cash flow is king".

One of the first things a small business owner is told by their accountant or bank business advisor is "find your niche, don't try to compete on high volumes and low margins". More profit on fewer sales is fine - keeps your variable costs low. It means the loss of each customer is more dangerous, but customer retention is another topic.

I don't think PP's statement is a great move either, BTW.

It is real. Here's an FAQ they've put out to show what they mean with this policy. http://privateerpressforums.com/showthread.php?248149-OFFICIAL-Free-Rider-Policy-FAQ

I can understand the desire, but I don't think this works so well.

I think supporting stores is a better way to do it, giving them incentives including ways for them to offer discounts in some ways.
People like discounts, even if they don't really save anything.

In the end people who don't have stores may end up feeling disenfranchised.
I don't have a store near me currently, so if it raises prices it won't do anything for me at all.

Online stores can help community's, one of the ones I buy from even sends a few free things for us as a community to use.
I will wait and see still, it may only be targeting a few people offering things at a extreme.

 Duncan_Idaho wrote:
There are quite some deep-discounters that only order stock when you order from them. In the end they will kill the market when left unchecked.

So Walmart's been killing the market for decades with their JIT inventory system. Got it.

Well, they started deleting any thread on the matter on their forums. Does Kirby have a new job at PP?

Maybe PP now stands for Palladium Posts..

While I'm not shocked at how many people disagree with this move, I do have to say that as a gamer who has spent a lot of time buying and selling PP products over the last decade, their products have devalued greatly in the last handful of years. Not only do they only seem to sell at ridiculous discount when still brand new (consistently 50% off retail), but they've become near worthless in the second-hand market. If you're trading it for products from another company, you pretty much always have to expect to be trading at a loss in retail value, assuming you can find anyone who wants it at all.

 Sigvatr wrote:

This is just ridiculous and even below GW levels. I don't even know what to say on this...they complain about people having /decided/ to have an actual store having to pay for overhead and thus being forced to sell models for more? Yeah...so...if you can't run a Brick n' Mortar in the internet age, don't run it. Duh. This is amazing - and is this even legal?

I guess it's according to each countries laws. In Greece it is not legal. You have absolutely no right to refuse sale. What you can do is limit the quantity i.e. "we can provide till x units per month, that's the limit of our production/handling capacity".
(Btw, with all respect to the OP, this news may not be valid due to the manner it has been written, so this is my opinion but I take it with a pinch of salt.)

As for online retailers, speaking for ourselves, we have refused collaboration with some due to their demanding even larger discounts than the ones we were willing to offer in our ToT (Terms of Trade). I'm not saying -and in no way can I know- if that's the case with PP, but companies that do succumb to this end up having only two choices; inevitably rise the MSRP or stop collaboration. Otherwise there is no profit, and with no profit... yeah, we all know how a business model works... :-)

 Yodhrin wrote:
I mean seriously, what kind of amateur-hour numpty announces a new trade sales policy by branding a non-trivial portion of your trade partners(and, by implication, their customers) as "parasitical free riders"? Even if that's what you think it's not what you say out loud in public

Which is why I think this may not have been written by them but instead may be a hoax.

 TheWaspinator wrote:
I'm really not convinced that the FLGS is the holy necessity for gaming that people seem to think it is, at least not in the modern age of social media. You really don't need a store to find players for things.

On the contrary I think it is *exactly* what people need to make the market grow. It's a whole different thing to see a picture, compared to seeing the models laying all out in front of you, aligned and ready for battle. No internet picture is ever going to capture the feeling when you hold your first metal miniature in your hands and say/think "oh! heavy!"
At least that's our take and we try supporting "live" events anywhere possible.


EDIT: I just saw the PP announcement on their page. Unless this is an April fool's joke, I stand corrected.

In the US this is perfectly legal in the UK it is very questionable. Especially as Cerberus cast the stuff in the UK and the actual punishment (delayed shipping) hits the distributors not the stores I can potentially see the distributors going after Cerberus, if they try and enforce this, as being anti- competitive.

This is all due to the US Supreme Court deciding that vertical pricing was legal in certain circumstances and game stores pretty much fit the definition of the circumstances.

There is no such exception in the UK/EU though so what it might come down to if implemented in the UK/EU is if there are any shops actually willing to challenge a distributor and basically accept they will never be supplied by them ever again. The distributors are often "on the edge" of existing competition law and have never been challenged so we'll just have to see.