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Jesus Christ, it's like they want local scenes to die.
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Sep 26, 2018 02:12
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That is remarkably lovely as well as short-sighted.
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Sep 26, 2018 02:14
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canyoneer posted:I guess Wizards is selling Magic boxes directly on Amazon now for way under MSRP, at ~$95/box. Stores are paying between $79-92 wholesale per box (depending on volume), and some of them are in full freakout mode. OH poo poo, this is bad for game stores if true. I know my old customers would shop on line at the drop of a hat to save any amount of money.
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Sep 26, 2018 02:15
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And my local store is doing well enough they moved into a bigger place just last weekend. Ouch.
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Sep 26, 2018 02:38
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My FLGS is selling them for less than Wizards. and I know they're going to be making Bank this weekend with the prerelease. Smaller stores might get hit a lot worse though.
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Sep 26, 2018 02:39
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canyoneer posted:I guess Wizards is selling Magic boxes directly on Amazon now for way under MSRP, at ~$95/box. Stores are paying between $79-92 wholesale per box (depending on volume), and some of them are in full freakout mode. I haven't seen any (competently run) stores complaining about it. Booster boxes haven't been a money maker for stores in a loooong time. Online competition drove prices down to incredibly low levels several years ago. Most stores make their money through the singles market. Stores are generally buying boxes for $82 from a distributor and then reselling them at ~$90 because of low margin high volume sellers on ebay. Stores generally make their money by opening lots of boxes and then selling singles on the secondary market while prices are highly inflated due to hype around set releases (as well as buying up as many singles as they can after prerelease and the like) and then after that boxes are kept on hand for the purposes of limited and for prize payouts. Stores will continue to buy up any singles that they can and resell online and in store while at the same time selling snacks and drinks during tournaments in order to actually make money. The two biggest money makers for (at least the Magic portion) LGS's are singles and snacks/drinks. Your LGS shouldn't be impacted by booster sales declining or whatever.
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Sep 26, 2018 03:09
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Here's the announcement https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/news/experimentation-2018-09-21 And a screenshot of the Amazon page for a Guilds of Ravnica box  (amazon collects tax in my state) A core principle of marketing is that a company can add value to customers by choosing the place in which their products are sold and tailor it to ~*~an experience~*~*. If a community of players is what they want, they need independent retailers. I'm sure there are a lot of people who buy MTG products at places like Target and never set foot inside an independent game store or get a DCI number. This is fine for them. But there's very little incentive besides social guilt keeping people from buying boxes on Amazon instead of at their local store. You may recall that the retailers are still pissed that as of a month or so ago, Wizards no longer sells directly to stores and are doing everything through a distributor now. Stores that used to pay $76/box direct are now paying more than that through distributors. As much as I like getting cheap product, the best thing that companies in this industry can do is be hardcore about MSRP like how Games Workshop and the Asmodee brands are. It's the best thing for the long term health of the brand and their products. If stores can't make decent margins selling things, they will cease to sell those things, and Amazon.com does not host Friday Night Magic.
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Sep 26, 2018 03:11
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This, alongside the wizards-only promo boxes with exclusive versions of cards, is a completely 180 from their stated goal of trying to get players into game stores to play the game. You can add value with promos but that doesn't drive sales.
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Sep 26, 2018 03:17
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Yeah that's a bit of a misunderstanding of how Magic-focused LGS work nowadays. Booster boxes are not the thing you are selling, you are selling singles. Amazon isn't depreciating the price at all; $90 has been standard for a hot minute. WotC also does things like BaB-promos in order to promote LGS. I think WotC has a much stronger understanding of how the LGS markets work than y'all seem to think. I know that we generally don't like reddit around here, but this is a pretty good explanation of things by an actual MtG LGS owner.
shades of blue fucked around with this message at 03:23 on Sep 26, 2018 |
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Sep 26, 2018 03:18
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Yeah, the hobby shop in my hometown that actually runs FNM and stuff still carries up to date product, and has a lot of older stuff too. But the smaller hobby shop that my friend works at might get a box of the most recent set and once it's sold out they're done.
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Sep 26, 2018 03:25
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Honestly this Bezos guy looks like he runs a small business that isn't really that threatening. I'm sure the Hobby Stores can take some competition with his company.
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Sep 26, 2018 03:27
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Plutonis posted:Honestly this Bezos guy looks like he runs a small business that isn't really that threatening. I'm sure the Hobby Stores can take some competition with his company. Do you have any understanding of how the MtG market works? How LGS's make money? They haven't made money off of boxes for years. You don't know what you're talking about if you think Amazon is going to beat up all the LGS's by selling booster boxes. Amazon isn't even competing against your LGS. They're competing against Channelfireball, Cardkingdom, Starcitygames, TCGPlayer, and Ebay. Not your local game store, but the giant gently caress off businesses that sell in massive bulk who had already brought the price down to where it is now. Amazon didn't do that. Amazon will never be competitive with your LGS because they don't sell singles and your LGS makes money by selling singles.
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Sep 26, 2018 03:34
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Wizards isn't even the cheapest seller on Amazon. FLGSs were already being undercut, all WOTC's doing is giving an official channel. If anything this will help FLGSs by taking away some business from the undercutters and hurting their margins.
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Sep 26, 2018 03:42
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$94 isn't necessarily going to hold. Amazon can sell them for cost plus 50 cents all day every day, and they're in the habit of getting stuff cheaper than others can get it. Dude at my LGS has ordered board games from Amazon before to resell in his store because the Amazon price with free shipping was cheaper than his wholesale cost to get the same title from the distributor. Channelfireball is probably happy to sell at $90/box if their cost is $78, but they can't hang at $79.25 with Amazon. Stores have margin with singles because they are getting the key ingredient to singles (booster boxes) earlier than and cheaper than the public can get them. If there's little to no difference between box wholesale price and amazon street price on new release product, how are they going to command the same margins they used to have with new release singles? It's not going to be the death of these stores, but I don't see a way to spin this as a good thing for the LGS.
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Sep 26, 2018 03:54
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If Amazon could sell at $80-85 per box, they would probably already be doing so. I wouldn't be surprised if WotC has a clause in their contract telling Amazon that they can't undercut the market. Aside from all of that, your LGS will still have earlier access to product and can still buylist singles in order to resale (which is already the most common way for them to get singles).
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Sep 26, 2018 04:18
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Sampatrick posted:Do you have any understanding of how the MtG market works? How LGS's make money? They haven't made money off of boxes for years. You don't know what you're talking about if you think Amazon is going to beat up all the LGS's by selling booster boxes. Amazon isn't even competing against your LGS. They're competing against Channelfireball, Cardkingdom, Starcitygames, TCGPlayer, and Ebay. Not your local game store, but the giant gently caress off businesses that sell in massive bulk who had already brought the price down to where it is now. Amazon didn't do that. Amazon will never be competitive with your LGS because they don't sell singles and your LGS makes money by selling singles. woosh
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Sep 26, 2018 04:38
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canyoneer posted:$94 isn't necessarily going to hold. Amazon can sell them for cost plus 50 cents all day every day, and they're in the habit of getting stuff cheaper than others can get it. Dude at my LGS has ordered board games from Amazon before to resell in his store because the Amazon price with free shipping was cheaper than his wholesale cost to get the same title from the distributor. There's a pretty good chance that that's because he'd bought counterfeits. https://icv2.com/articles/news/view/39296/icv2-interview-asmodee-execs-counterfeiting
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Sep 26, 2018 11:16
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So was it confirmed anywhere non-chud that Matt Loter is in fact the second person banned? Because Hambley's whining about it involved an email saying he and someone else (who was not named) were banned from Gencon. People assumed it was Loter, but it could have just been another of the shitlords trolling the gencon twitter feed or something.
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Sep 27, 2018 01:39
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canyoneer posted:$94 isn't necessarily going to hold. Amazon can sell them for cost plus 50 cents all day every day, and they're in the habit of getting stuff cheaper than others can get it. Dude at my LGS has ordered board games from Amazon before to resell in his store because the Amazon price with free shipping was cheaper than his wholesale cost to get the same title from the distributor. As a professional Comic Book Retailer with one of the highest discount levels possible from Diamond, yeah this is absolutely a thing. I remembered during the hight of Walking Dead fever it was cheaper to get the Compendiums from Amazon, especially because paying for slower shipping made it more expensive. Margins are razor thin, so I don't see how smaller stores with worse discounts manage.
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Sep 27, 2018 01:51
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Desiden posted:So was it confirmed anywhere non-chud that Matt Loter is in fact the second person banned? Because Hambley's whining about it involved an email saying he and someone else (who was not named) were banned from Gencon. People assumed it was Loter, but it could have just been another of the shitlords trolling the gencon twitter feed or something. According to the chud's own email which Hambly bitches at length about, Loter was also banned
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Sep 27, 2018 03:06
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some youtubers got passed over for a sponsorship from Roll20 in favor of a black woman streamer in the name of diversity now they are recording awful video responses and Trumpers are running with it https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VK-H0dDeG38 I can't imagine why anyone would ever watch this guy's content
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Oct 1, 2018 13:30
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alg posted:some youtubers got passed over for a sponsorship from Roll20 in favor of a black woman streamer in the name of diversity lol what a dweeb.
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Oct 1, 2018 13:34
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I still can't get over the fact that in every single one of these grognard-speaks-to-the-camera videos, the person looks and sounds exactly like you expect them to.
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Oct 1, 2018 13:44
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I think Roll20 dodged a big neckbearded bullet here.
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Oct 1, 2018 14:01
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alg posted:some youtubers got passed over for a sponsorship from Roll20 in favor of a black woman streamer in the name of diversity Man, gently caress these shitheads. When you apply for jobs, sometimes you don't get them. If you can't deal with that without throwing a tantrum like a baby, then you definitely didn't deserve the job. Imagine if Roll20 had given these assholes the nod - how much Roll20 would be regretting it once their bigoted views came out.
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Oct 1, 2018 14:02
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Almost seems like the only reason wasn't diversity, eh?
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Oct 1, 2018 14:03
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I'd love for this to be part of the interview process. Ie: Tell the candidate they didn't get the job to gauge their character. 
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Oct 1, 2018 14:07
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This related to that Redditor who deleted their account in a glorious fit of righteousness indignation?
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Oct 1, 2018 14:21
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Jimbozig posted:Man, gently caress these shitheads. When you apply for jobs, sometimes you don't get them. If you can't deal with that without throwing a tantrum like a baby, then you definitely didn't deserve the job. 
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Oct 1, 2018 15:38
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moths posted:I'd love for this to be part of the interview process. I agree these guys are assholes but the last thing we need is to give interviewers more bullshit, demeaning tactics to hold over potential hires.
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Oct 1, 2018 15:49
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Twits: quotas are bad, the best person for the job should get the job, that's not racism Also twits: if a black person gets a job on merit it's racism against whites
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Oct 1, 2018 15:51
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Jesus, that video... So they reached out to Roll20 for sponsorship and got rebuffed for being "five white guys". (I'm going to take his word for that.) Let me translate that for you: These guys approached Roll20 and said, "please give us free stuff and we'll namedrop you just like we've done tons of time in the past", but Roll20 realized that the white guy segment of the market was already pretty well catered to, and they now want to branch out. As such, the value of handing out free stuff for Roll20 to these people is actually quite low in their estimation. So instead of giving away free stuff for relatively low returns, they want to give free stuff to someone who they think might give them bigger returns. As such, in this case the sentiment that the best person should get the job, means that for this marketing strategy the best person isn't a white guy for a change. And you know, sure, I get it. It sucks when you don't get something because of an inherent trait like ethnicity or sex, rather than your actions or ideas. That feels unfair. But it can be a totally legit thing. Like, they're not going to cast Samuel L. Jackson to play a straight-up version of Goldilocks, now are they? And if Roll20 decided that they've already given enough sponsorship to white guys and now wants something else, that feels bad. Of course it does. That's how human instinct works. But this happened during the first season of Save or Dice, he said. Which was a year ago. You had to release a video about it last week, and you still feel this strongly about it? Get the gently caress over it already.
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Oct 1, 2018 16:31
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Sage Genesis posted:But this happened during the first season of Save or Dice, he said. Which was a year ago. You had to release a video about it last week, and you still feel this strongly about it?
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Oct 1, 2018 16:37
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Sage Genesis posted:But this happened during the first season of Save or Dice, he said. Which was a year ago. You had to release a video about it last week, and you still feel this strongly about it? Roll20 has already been a subject of controversy for different reasons recently, largely over the reddit thing, he probably just wanted to weigh in with his own experiences. Besides that, his story itself isn't anything outrageous either: he went to Roll20 with a business offer and they weren't into it due to them being white dudes, so they went to FantasyGrounds, who were down. He's not even saying people should do a boycott, or that roll20 itself is a bad platform for games, he's establishing a personal preference after an interaction. I will at least say that I hate his stupid LOTR poo poo in the background.
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Oct 1, 2018 16:44
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Bedlamdan posted:Roll20 has already been a subject of controversy for different reasons recently, largely over the reddit thing, he probably just wanted to weigh in with his own experiences. Besides that, his story itself isn't anything outrageous either: he went to Roll20 with a business offer and they weren't into it due to them being white dudes, so they went to FantasyGrounds, who were down. He's not even saying people should do a boycott, or that roll20 itself is a bad platform for games, he's establishing a personal preference after an interaction.
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Oct 1, 2018 16:58
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Comrade Gorbash posted:Do you have to practice being a mealy-mouthed apologist for bigotry and bad faith interpretations, or does it just come naturally? Dude outright said 'yeah roll20 was fully within their rights to not work with me for being a white dude, that was their decision so I decided to go somewhere else that did.' And he did. 
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Oct 1, 2018 17:01
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Comrade Gorbash posted:Do you have to practice being a mealy-mouthed apologist for bigotry and bad faith interpretations, or does it just come naturally? why not both
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Oct 1, 2018 17:05
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What's the Reddit thing that Roll20 did?
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Oct 1, 2018 17:24
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Lumbermouth posted:What's the Reddit thing that Roll20 did? https://www.newsweek.com/roll20-reddit-nolant-jones-apostleo-apostleoftruth-dungeons-and-dragons-ban-1142706 Some guy who was critical of the platform was banned because his username was similar to a previously banned user. That turned out to not be the case but the moderators in question weren't apologetic when that came to light.
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Oct 1, 2018 17:27
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Bedlamdan posted:Roll20 has already been a subject of controversy for different reasons recently, largely over the reddit thing, he probably just wanted to weigh in with his own experiences. That's a good point. I don't keep track of reddit so this had kind of slipped by me, that would explain why now of all times he made a video. I still maintain he's casting himself too much in a victim role here though, and his feelings on the matter seem... not appropriate? Misguided? There's a word for what I want to say here, I'm sure, I just can't think of it right now.
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Oct 1, 2018 17:28
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