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.

deano2099 wrote:

Dudeface wrote:

deano2099 wrote:
Going back to the original topic, is this just a weird artifact of GW not ever offering an actual monetary discount on anything they sell direct?
As in, what a normal company would do is just put the prices up on these things by 5% of whatever, both RRP and the sale price to retailers, but then just sell that stuff at a 5% discount on their own store?
Doesn't that effectively achieve the same aim, and no-one would bat an eyelid except for the fact that GW never do % discount sales?

I think there are some laws as to how long something can be at certain prices for before it can be advertised as "reduced" and likewise it ceased to be a "reduced" price if it's maintained at that cost for too long, which of course would then need to be passed on to their retailers.

That's true, but just because GW set the RRP, doesn't mean they have to sell at it. They'd just list it as a discount on RRP just like any other online store does.

Their price is the RRP, If they produce it and constantly and levelly undercut their own RRP they'd get a hefty slap for manipulating the market and misinforming customers. They cna sell their products at RRP and then have them reduced or on sale for limited periods of time, which they don't do, but they can't just blanket undercut themselves.

This decision by GW aligns with how I have seen them treat their employees. They did not treat them well. At a fundamental level I do not think they valued them.
The decision indicates that they value independent stockists less. Those stockists are performing the same work and services as before, but now according to gw they deserve less. Unlike gw, these stores are not raking in cash. Cutting pay to low wage earners and small business reprehensible.

GW could set terms to limit discounts. They could set pricing to retailers based on reverse volume, to give low volume retailers a better price than high volume ones. But no, they just screw over third party stockists.

GW could also decide to lower prices, considering we are infront of an economic downturn and keep their distribution and visibility system afloat and later profit from having maintained or even expanded their custommer base whith the next up turn.

Alas GW is gw and prices only go up in gw verse.

meanwhile Wargames atlantic had a nice article about "increased " cost for plastic and stated that they'd absorb the increase of 10 cents / box themselves... Whilest GW even hiked at the time the old khorne berzerker kit.

guess which company sold me 120 bulldogs and probably will do so again until i may be reach brigade strength with that army?

They actually can’t set terms to limit discounts in the UK, as a matter of law. And setting reverse volume pricing is a good way to suddenly triple the number of third parties you have to deal with yet keep the exact same number of delivery addresses.

Gue'vesa Emissary wrote:
Because if stores don't provide community support the game dies.

That which is presented without evidence...

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

Gue'vesa Emissary wrote:
Because if stores don't provide community support the game dies.

That which is presented without evidence...

The fact we have decades of evidence proving otherwise(Battletech, D&D pre-Hasbro, Oldhammer groups, etc.) makes the entire thesis suspect.

"Suspect". Yeah, that.

Games can 100% exist without local store support. It's much harder and often relies on either friend groups that might never expand much beyond the initial setup, but which stay true to playing for a long time; or a very keen few people at the top who organise, invest in and make sure the club advertises and keeps getting new blood in.

Local stores do make it a lot easier typically as the store acts as a marketing and focal point. New people walk in and buy stuff and can be told about the local club(s); the street advertising lures in new people and the direct model support can sometimes be beneficial with things like "club members get 5% discount" etc...


So no store can certainly work; but having a store is superior to not having one.

i think a community can exist without a store, but a community with a good FLGS is a richer community , not just for availabilty but also for access to the community at large.

However i do think that only applies to propper FLGS and not to just any LGS.

Not Online!!! wrote:
GW could also decide to lower prices, considering we are infront of an economic downturn and keep their distribution and visibility system afloat and later profit from having maintained or even expanded their custommer base whith the next up turn.

GW is hardly alone in being a company unwilling to lower prices during an economic downturn.

 Rolsheen wrote:
That has to be the most uneducated statement I have ever heard. If your local community can't arrange games in people's homes or local community centres that pure laziness on the part of the community not the fault of online sales.

Home games are great for an existing group. They're terrible for getting new players into the game because you won't even know the home game exists until you're already part of the community.

This is the issue people keep failing to understand. The catastrophe that happens if real stores are driven out of business by discount sellers is not that the game will instantly die tomorrow, it's that the long-term health of the game will be destroyed. Existing customers will benefit from cheaper toys for a short time, at least as long as they can arrange home games to make up for the loss of store space, but without stores to bring in new customers the community will inevitably shrink and collapse. And if GW enters the death spiral of trying to compensate for collapsing sales volume with higher prices per sale the end can come a lot faster than you might think.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Platuan4th wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

Gue'vesa Emissary wrote:
Because if stores don't provide community support the game dies.

That which is presented without evidence...

The fact we have decades of evidence proving otherwise(Battletech, D&D pre-Hasbro, Oldhammer groups, etc.) makes the entire thesis suspect.

Thanks for proving my point very nicely. Battletech is a niche game that has gone in and out of production under various owners, while old D&D and GW games are just plain dead even if a tiny handful of people still keep playing with their decades-old rulebooks and models. You can't buy them anymore, no new content is being made, and it's very difficult to find anyone to play with. Is that outcome really worth a temporary 20% discount on your 40k toys?

Gue'vesa Emissary wrote:
Home games are great for an existing group. They're terrible for getting new players into the game because you won't even know the home game exists until you're already part of the community.

This is the issue people keep failing to understand.

We're not. I think for many people is mostly a cultural difference. Local stores have NEVER been the focal social points for hobby communities that seem to be in the USA. So here, for many people, what you are trying to assert does not apply. People play at home, or at clubs, and could give a rat's ass that some store has a table.And even so, "the community" thrives.

Thanks for proving my point very nicely. Battletech is a niche game that has gone in and out of production under various owners, while old D&D and GW games are just plain dead even if a tiny handful of people still keep playing with their decades-old rulebooks and models. You can't buy them anymore, no new content is being made, and it's very difficult to find anyone to play with. Is that outcome really worth a temporary 20% discount on your 40k toys?

You... you are aware that the whole of the OSR and Oldhammer movements exist, are you not?

 Albertorius wrote:
We're not. I think for many people is mostly a cultural difference. Local stores have NEVER been the focal social points for hobby communities that seem to be in the USA. So here, for many people, what you are trying to assert does not apply. People play at home, or at clubs, and could give a rat's ass that some store has a table.And even so, "the community" thrives.

How do you get people into the game? In the US even people that play private games at home still probably discovered the game at a store or with friends who got into it through a store. Take away that element of "went in to buy MTG, came out with a 40k starter set" and you'd crash the player count.

You... you are aware that the whole of the OSR and Oldhammer movements exist, are you not?

"Dead game" doesn't mean literally not a single person ever plays it. Those "movements" exist but are a negligible player count with no products in stores and no public presence. If GW goes out of business and 40k production ends (at least until a series of increasingly poor quality kickstarter attempts from whoever buys the IP) the game will be dead even if a tiny handful of people keep playing with their existing models and books.

 Shakalooloo wrote:

Not Online!!! wrote:
GW could also decide to lower prices, considering we are infront of an economic downturn and keep their distribution and visibility system afloat and later profit from having maintained or even expanded their custommer base whith the next up turn.

GW is hardly alone in being a company unwilling to lower prices during an economic downturn.

yeah, sadly.

I would never get into 40k if I had to buy everything from GW direct only, given it inconveniences me thrice compared to just buying what I need online;

1. Obviously, it's way more expensive, around 20-30% more expensive buying directly from GW, not counting the price of shipping something from UK to Eastern Europe, which adds up pretty fast if you're going to buy several things in your lifetime - 30% off 200 pounds, aka the price of, idk, five-six smaller kits is 60 bloody pounds. That's not an insignificant amount of money!

2. It takes way more time, something shipping from GW direct will take on average, two-three weeks, maybe a month, even, instead of two-three days it would take for it to simply be shipped from an online retailer within my county.

3. It's also way less reliable shipping, given Games Workshop uses a bog-standard courier like UPS - who, as probably everyone who has dealt with them in the past knows, have a very fun and nice habbit of wasting your time by - instead of delivering your package - running up to the door and smacking a "Sorry we missed you!" notice, then running back to their truck (which is because UPS gives them an extremely strict time scheudle and it's just faster than delivering normally), which tends to add several days before I can actually get my hands on the product. Meanwhile, an online retailer can simply send my order to a Parcel locker, where it'll arrive within maybe one or two days, and where I can pick it up on my own pace, whenever I want.


Also, I have no idea how one, in good faith, can make the argument that the price of something doesn't actually have any bearing on it's affordability. It's just such a, blatant oxymoron of a sentence, I have no idea how one could expect a proper retort to it.

Gue'vesa Emissary wrote:
How do you get people into the game? In the US even people that play private games at home still probably discovered the game at a store or with friends who got into it through a store. Take away that element of "went in to buy MTG, came out with a 40k starter set" and you'd crash the player count.

We have clubs, usually in spaces lent by town halls and the like. Also, a lot of tournaments with open doors (Spain has the biggest Kill Team events in the world, for example... and that's not a fluke. It has historically been the same for many games).

"Dead game" doesn't mean literally not a single person ever plays it. Those "movements" exist but are a negligible player count with no products in stores and no public presence. If GW goes out of business and 40k production ends (at least until a series of increasingly poor quality kickstarter attempts from whoever buys the IP) the game will be dead even if a tiny handful of people keep playing with their existing models and books.

It's true that for Oldhammer there's not many in stores (although there's an incredibly strong presence online for Wasmaster, Epic or Ninth Age), but absolutely NOT for the OSR. Let's see, off the top of my head, you have OSRIC, Labyrinth Lord, Dungeon Crawl Classics, Old School Essentials, Mork Bork, Lamentations of the Flame Princess, Stars Without Number, Godbound... the amount of OSR products in stores is absolutely staggering, and not only in english, Her in Spain we have about a dozen of local OSR games in stores, like Tesoro y Gloria or Aventuras en la Marca del Este.

Gue'vesa Emissary wrote:

"Dead game" doesn't mean literally not a single person ever plays it. Those "movements" exist but are a negligible player count with no products in stores and no public presence. If GW goes out of business and 40k production ends (at least until a series of increasingly poor quality kickstarter attempts from whoever buys the IP) the game will be dead even if a tiny handful of people keep playing with their existing models and books.

Wow. So a company that could afford to purchase the 40k IP would resort to poor quality kickstarters. That's a pretty big jump you made there.

For a lot of people, the B&M (inc GW) stores are where they first came across GW stuff. I agree with you. However, at this point removing them would only remove new customers. That seems like a long term idea. These days it seems some companies only look short term at the next investor statements/profits.

Anyway, this new GW move on squeezing the non-GW stores and online stores won't have an effect on GW at all other than making an extra 5.8% profit per sale. It's the poor B&M stores that will vanish, but in small enough numbers not to matter to GW.

Gue'vesa Emissary wrote:

 Albertorius wrote:
We're not. I think for many people is mostly a cultural difference. Local stores have NEVER been the focal social points for hobby communities that seem to be in the USA. So here, for many people, what you are trying to assert does not apply. People play at home, or at clubs, and could give a rat's ass that some store has a table.And even so, "the community" thrives.

How do you get people into the game? In the US even people that play private games at home still probably discovered the game at a store or with friends who got into it through a store. Take away that element of "went in to buy MTG, came out with a 40k starter set" and you'd crash the player count.

I'm in the US and haven't discovered a game via a store or someone that saw it at a store in probably 20 years. It's been exclusively internet for a long time now. My group discovers more stuff via Dakka, facebook and Beasts of War then I ever would from a game store.

 Monkeysloth wrote:
I'm in the US and haven't discovered a game via a store or someone that saw it at a store in probably 20 years. It's been exclusively internet for a long time now. My group discovers more stuff via Dakka, facebook and Beasts of War then I ever would from a game store.

Highlighted the important part for you. An existing group can work just fine without a store, it's new customers that have a problem. That's why I keep saying it's a long-term problem. Losing real stores in favor of online discount sellers won't kill the game immediately but the drop in new customers will be catastrophic in the long run.

Gue'vesa Emissary wrote:

 Monkeysloth wrote:
I'm in the US and haven't discovered a game via a store or someone that saw it at a store in probably 20 years. It's been exclusively internet for a long time now. My group discovers more stuff via Dakka, facebook and Beasts of War then I ever would from a game store.

Highlighted the important part for you. An existing group can work just fine without a store, it's new customers that have a problem. That's why I keep saying it's a long-term problem. Losing real stores in favor of online discount sellers won't kill the game immediately but the drop in new customers will be catastrophic in the long run.

You're under the impression that the only way people ever buy things is by being in a store. That's really not how the world works anymore let alone our hobby. Information on these games is so easily accessible that its actually a huge hassle to go to a physical store that probably only carries 5% of what's out there and takes a month to get any stock in if you want something they don't have -- if you're lucky that they're even willing to do so. Several stores around me won't do special orders. You buy what they have, some at above MSRP, or you don't buy anything at all.

My group also formed 100% outside of a game store and has had the same group of people for over 10 years and a few of us for almost 20. Outside of 2 of us everyone when they joined had never played anything but boardgame before. It's very doable to build a group outside of a game store.

I discovered 40k without ever setting foot in an official Games Workshop store in my life - and where, online, where I get most of my hobby supplies.

Yeah right now the glory days of a local store that was stocked high to the rafters with stock from a whole host of lines with a shopkeeper who had worked there since they were knee high to a grasshopper and knew the market inside and out - those days are long gone.

Today the highstreet is super hard to trade on with the overhead costs and all. Heck a lot of model making firms have to deal with this problem of stores only wanting a small SKU range but customers wanting ever more models and diversity for their collections and forces.

It's hard to stock loads of lines and tie up money in stock and not have it trading quickly, which leans stores toward product lines that do sell well and fast. Plus it also pushes a lot of retailers to sell online to try and increase their catchment to overcome the costs of doing business in itself.




I'd love to have a return of the old highstreets bristling with loads of little diverse shops and all and maybe one day we will get back to that; but right now its hard to do that. Not impossible, but just a lot lot harder and that leads into it supporting things that sell well and not the niche specialist stuff

There's been more Warhammer interest than ever thanks to Total War, Dark Tide, Dawn of War, the novels being in major bookstores, Henry Cavill, etc. More people know of Warhammer and are interested in Warhammer than have ever set foot in a store that carries Warhammer.

I have an aburd amount of game stores in my area (has to be one of the highest concentrations based off of population in the US) with about 10 within a 30min drive that carry more then just CCGs (add another 5 that are CCGs only) and most of them are packed but only with Magic and D&D players. I think only two even have tablespace for wargames anymore.

They almost all switched to RPGs around the start of the pandemic and as restrictions lightened people that didn't have a place to play went to the stores (most, from what I understand are all groups formed outside of the game store -- but I've only talked to the employees at the closest stores) and it's been very profitable to sell time and food to the RPG players out here. Basically becoming clubs that sell RPG and magic more then a traditional store.

Want an RPG that's not D&D? Well tough luck, they don't sell it as there's no demand. So there's no discovery even possible.

My niece is (really my 3rd cousin? My cousin's daughter) 13. I hadnt seen them in a long while and found out at Thanksgiving dinner that she plays D&D (5th edition) through her school. She has maybe been to a game store twice, and her parents didn't let her buy anything. But she plays every week and has for the last year. I dont think that is an uncommon thing either. We are actually starting a Pathfinder 1st game (as I dont like d&d 5th) in the new year with her mom and some of my game group. She was over the moon when i gave her some minis, some dice and the pathfinder basic rule box...

Internet, clubs and what you call "parasites" do more leg work for the Hobby* than the traditional store.
Besides the world is not only the Stores in your area/state/country, it's a LOT bigger than that.
With 2 years Covid the hobby thrived and was not because people could go play in a store was it?.... some countries have little or no hobby stores, yet they manage.
Today more than ever the hobby is growing, loads of new games have visibility and reaching more people and it's not because of the stores that DO NOT stock them.
So yes the Hobby* is expanding its horizons and so should you.

*40k is only part of the hobby.

GW will be GW and try to squeeze as much as they possibly can from everyone involved with them, thats not news thats what they do.

The reality of the situation is that GW doesn't give a crap where you buy from. They get their money no matter the source of your purchase. GW always gets at least 100% of what they want if you get it from them or from the FLGS.

Coupled with their current FOMO/Splash Limited releases, they are getting paid.

IMHO the primary reason, and from research into opening a store, to go into the FLGS is for gaming space and clubs. The FLGS does not survive on minis, it lives on card sales/resales, and secondary purchases like vending. Which is also why you are seeing the rise of FLGS that serve pub style food and alcohol.

People that use the spaces and play in clubs tend to return the favor by making in store purchases or orders. Most B&M stores offer some sort of small discount or points system to get a discount. However, it is far more common, in the U.S., that people play in friends/coworkers/acquaintances homes or places that allow gatherings.

GW is also not the only manufacturer to require B&M as I know Battlefront does also and they aren't exactly a powerhouse in the industry.

Just have to say this thread is giving me a headache with the amount of incorrect information and generally uneducated guesses/statements.....

I'd argue the game stores are more of the parasites -- at least when it comes to taking advantage of some of their customers. Outside of Magic and some GW stuff I cannot think of a game store that actually organized any events themselves -- everything was done, for free, by their customers to build the communities and organize play. (granted I'm sure not all stores are like this but I'm sure a lot are).

One of my buddies use to run D&D organized play out here at one of the larger local chains and the store actually treated him like an employee -- calling him up and telling him to come in to run games for people that wanted to play and other nonsense. He wasn't the only one but just stopped running and organizing things after that (as they refused to stop) and the whole D&D scene there died up as soon as he did.

The scene only existed at the time because one person did it for free and the store profited. The store didn't care and put in zero effort themselves so what's the point of the store?

 Monkeysloth wrote:
I'd argue the game stores are more of the parasites -- at least when it comes to taking advantage of some of their customers. Outside of Magic and some GW stuff I cannot think of a game store that actually organized any events themselves -- everything was done, for free, by their customers to build the communities and organize play. (granted I'm sure not all stores are like this but I'm sure a lot are).

One of my buddies use to run D&D organized play out here at one of the larger local chains and the store actually treated him like an employee -- calling him up and telling him to come in to run games for people that wanted to play and other nonsense. He wasn't the only one but just stopped running and organizing things after that (as they refused to stop) and the whole D&D scene there died up as soon as he did.

The scene only existed at the time because one person did it for free and the store profited. The store didn't care and put in zero effort themselves so what's the point of the store?

I've seen this happen, too. Sure, the shop may provide a table and chairs, and let you buy snacks oftentimes, and of course the books are there. But most of the time they rely heavily on non-employee volunteer work to run events outside of sponsored Magic things on booster releases, etc. Thing is, like others have pointed out, RPG books and even minis are not the breadwinners of the majority of game stores; that's more often than not Magic.

And like others, I've jumped into more games from seeing them played or reading about them on the internet than ever picked up from an LGS. Sure, if one of the stores nearby carries it, I'll often buy from there, but at the same time, since I rarely play at them (for a variety of reasons, even pre-Covid), if the LGS will only do a special order for something I want and it's gonna take as long or longer than grabbing it online, welp, I'm going online. I honestly can't think of a single game I got into due to a "first exposure" at an LGS in a decade or more.

Edited to add:
Ok, maybe a slight change. I was heavily debating about getting into Shadows of Brimstone for a while, but had so far avoided buying anything. That is, until my usual FLGS decided, without any pressure/input from me, to suddenly start carrying it. I've gotten almost all of my Brimstone stuff from him, though there's been the occasional purchase from Amazon to use up gift cards from work, and did get some stuff at Dice Fest. That said, while I do go to that store semi-routinely, I haven't played there. That's like the only real "exception" in a very long time.

Provide a central location for play, finding products, linking with other players (about quarter of our players refuse to use social media, for example).