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I suspected that GW would eventually cancel the majority of the scalped orders, but it's very satisfying to see it happen

did see an alternative captcha thing, it rejected "perfect" responses and only let close errors though

The Captcha thing may be a "one use" trick (unless they keep changing the system), because those pre-configured bots that scalpers use were not expecting a Captcha, so we may end up in a battle between the GW IT team (or contractors) tweaking the system and scalpers trying to reconfigure their scripts. But at least it seems this is a battle that GW is ready to fight, so props to them.

The article was quite nice because it acknowledged the situation (which is, IIRC, the first time GW does this and does not try to attribute obvious scalping to "this item was very popular"). I also received a reply to my email about scalping pointing me to the article and saying, in essence, that GW had been working for months to limit scalping.

As others have said I’m under no illusion that GW can “win” this long term, but it’s good to see some effort in addressing it rather than throwing their hands in the air.

RazorEdge wrote:

Hah, are they that dumb? Pretty sure GW records all calls and if so they have whoever that was admitting to having ordered ten copies of an explicitly one per customer item. Assuming that’s real of course.

 Mr_Rose wrote:

RazorEdge wrote:

Spoiler:

Hah, are they that dumb? Pretty sure GW records all calls and if so they have whoever that was admitting to having ordered ten copies of an explicitly one per customer item. Assuming that’s real of course.

I don't see it mattering, as I highly expect there is something under GW's terms and conditions that says they can cancel an order for whatever reason they feel like, and so long as you give they money back consumer protections aren't going to get in the way.

MaxT wrote:
As others have said I’m under no illusion that GW can “win” this long term, but it’s good to see some effort in addressing it rather than throwing their hands in the air.

An easy win for GW. Stop making things limited edition.
#drops-mic

 Gimgamgoo wrote:

MaxT wrote:
As others have said I’m under no illusion that GW can “win” this long term, but it’s good to see some effort in addressing it rather than throwing their hands in the air.

An easy win for GW. Stop making things limited edition.
#drops-mic

And then all the people who want limited editon complains gw doesn't say what they want to buy.

For them the value is in owning what only few have.

Thus gw couldn't sell higher price book for them as unlimited wouldn't be interest.

 Dawnbringer wrote:

 Mr_Rose wrote:

RazorEdge wrote:

Spoiler:

Hah, are they that dumb? Pretty sure GW records all calls and if so they have whoever that was admitting to having ordered ten copies of an explicitly one per customer item. Assuming that’s real of course.

I don't see it mattering, as I highly expect there is something under GW's terms and conditions that says they can cancel an order for whatever reason they feel like, and so long as you give they money back consumer protections aren't going to get in the way.

I would like to see GW put a note in their terms of service that anyone caught in violation will have their order cancelled and the funds donated to a charity of GWs choice. So a scalper will loose the resale and their money, but they can claim the loss on their taxes.

Warhammer.com/GB is under maintenance just now. I wonder what they broke.

I’m still getting “queue is paused”.

Going on the Warhammer Webshop site, why is there a preorder queue on a Wednesday?

They relisted End and Death.

More companies need websites that block people from going on them on a random Wednesday. Another genius move by Games Workshop. No weekend access, no Wednesday access, I say make it so you can only buy from your company one day a week, and close it at noon on that day too.

Yeah, cool queue system. I don't care about Horus Heresy at all, just let me look at the catalogue.

Then get mad at the scalpers DDOSing the website.

You could stop at just "Get mad at the scalpers".

 frankelee wrote:
More companies need websites that block people from going on them on a random Wednesday. Another genius move by Games Workshop. No weekend access, no Wednesday access, I say make it so you can only buy from your company one day a week, and close it at noon on that day too.

When did Aziraphale take over GW?

 Platuan4th wrote:
You could stop at just "Get mad at the scalpers".

I prefer to save anger for those who buy from them. No market would equal no scalpers.

Apparently GW are doing checks on sales to help identify multiple orders.

Scalpers really need to get in the bin.

Quick look on feebay shows about 50 listings for these End books, so all this que and captcha rubbish over 50 resellers or scalpers or whatever.

If GW wanted to do right by the fans they'd put out preorder systems for those that want to get these items instead of the constant churn of limited number releases.

Anger at scalpers is vastly overplayed and about as interesting as jumping through these artificial hoops that GW have put in place to pretend they are combating it.

Thanks for telling me my opinion.

Guess it’s time to go nuke my Loot Group.

I mean, 6k+ members clearly don’t really care about avoiding scalpers. You said so.

They should have a different site that is only for the preorders so it doesn't interrupt customers who want to shop normally.

With the constant releases they have now they could just put up a banner that says "Don't bother buying stuff on a saturday since it is preorder/queue day and you have 6 other days in the week to order everything else".

I find it pathetic that the site is still off-limits and locked behind a queue, even though sale of the item in question has been stopped hours ago now.

Smaug wrote:

 Dawnbringer wrote:

 Mr_Rose wrote:

RazorEdge wrote:

Spoiler:

Hah, are they that dumb? Pretty sure GW records all calls and if so they have whoever that was admitting to having ordered ten copies of an explicitly one per customer item. Assuming that’s real of course.

I don't see it mattering, as I highly expect there is something under GW's terms and conditions that says they can cancel an order for whatever reason they feel like, and so long as you give they money back consumer protections aren't going to get in the way.

I would like to see GW put a note in their terms of service that anyone caught in violation will have their order cancelled and the funds donated to a charity of GWs choice. So a scalper will loose the resale and their money, but they can claim the loss on their taxes.

I'd rather they put a note in their terms that scalpers will be taken out behind the woodshed. I put scalpers about on par with thieves as far as scumbags go.

 BrookM wrote:
I find it pathetic that the site is still off-limits and locked behind a queue, even though sale of the item in question has been stopped hours ago now.

It's 9pm in the UK right now. Chances are the website is managed by staff in the UK. So since it broke after-hours it might be the fix to get it back and running has to wait until staff are back on the clock.
GW likely hoped that their site wouldn't break in some critical area, however the trick scalpers used (plus probably the huge number of people using the site at once) must have broken a few things. So its likely better that its off rather than on.

It's nice that the queue page tells you the pre-order book is sold out, so at least you don't have to wait for nothing.,, but the fact that there still is a queue of over an hour for the full webstore in a timezone where the pre-order sold out hours ago does not seem entirely efficient. How much did this new website cost again?

 Kanluwen wrote:
Then get mad at the scalpers DDOSing the website.

Well originally they said they had 2500 copies and 500 were scalper copies that were going back for resale.
I guess the DDOSing are a majority of genuine customers.


EDIT.
And according to the GW website, it sold out of the SE book at 17:48
It's now nearly 4 hours later and I still have to queue for 3 quarters of an hour to look at a webstore?

 Manfred von Drakken wrote:


I'd rather they put a note in their terms that scalpers will be taken out behind the woodshed. I put scalpers about on par with thieves as far as scumbags go.

Whilst I dislike scalpers, I think advocating for their summary, extrajudicial execution is is worse.