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Bought by Blizzard Entertainment on July 13th, 2015. That way there won't be any IP issues anymore from Games Workshop copying Starcraft 1 and 2.
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Jan 25, 2014 01:32
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September 30th 2015.
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Jan 25, 2014 02:59
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I'm gonna go ahead and guess third quarter of 2015, so... 15th September 2015 will see a major part of the company die out in some capacity.
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Jan 25, 2014 04:38
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Something spectacularly dumb, or detrimental to the company happens on the 12th of November 2015.
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Jan 25, 2014 04:50
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July 7th, 2015. Awww yeah.
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Jan 25, 2014 05:11
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December 25 2014 The best Christmas.
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Jan 25, 2014 05:12
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July 20th, 2015
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Jan 25, 2014 05:16
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January 2nd, 2015.
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Jan 25, 2014 06:49
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in like 20 minutes from now or so I'd like to think that games workshop stores were a really good way for alienated youth to buy spraypaint for doing graffiti without worrying about age restrictions, but it was probably too expensive. Wrestlepig fucked around with this message at 13:08 on Jan 25, 2014 |
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Jan 25, 2014 13:04
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chaos rhames posted:I'd like to think that games workshop stores were a really good way for alienated youth to buy spraypaint for doing graffiti without worrying about age restrictions, but it was probably too expensive. Also even graffiti artists probably want good coverage on their paint.
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Jan 25, 2014 13:54
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Why does everyone think they're about to die? According to their half-yearly report they made nearly £8m in the last six months (before tax). Wouldn't they have to be losing money for a while to go belly-up? What am I not getting here?
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Jan 25, 2014 14:38
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Fargo Fukes posted:Why does everyone think they're about to die? According to their half-yearly report they made nearly £8m in the last six months (before tax). Wouldn't they have to be losing money for a while to go belly-up? What am I not getting here? GWs prices are sustained by one thing; their domination of wargaming, particularly in the UK. They can charge so much for their product because they have very little (or used to have very little) competition. Over the past few years their sales have been slipping, but that's been covered up by cutting costs and increasing prices. That means that the either the number of people playing Warhammer/40k is dropping, or people playing those games are spending less. It's looking more and more likely that it's more the former than the latter. At some point GW will lose their critical mass that sustains the high prices, since players can play other games at a fraction of the cost. The past few years have seen a steady decline, and the latest six months show a sharp drop which could be the number of players dropping below that critical mass. Why pay £200+ to get started playing 40k if you can drop £25 with any of the other competitors and get started? A full size army will often set you back well in excess of £300, with another £100 on top for rulebooks while competitors aim for the £100-£150 for full-size army + rules. The only reason up until now as because it was so much easier to get a game of 40k than Warmachine, Kings of War, Infinity, Bolt Action etc, but by all accounts those games are now reaching their sustainable mass where you can easily get a game in. A lot of commentators don't seem to see the difference between "losing money" and "not making as much money" true, but the downward trend seen over the past years has accelerated. The next two reports will make for very interesting and much more indicative reading.
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Jan 25, 2014 15:19
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GW also made like 2 million less just on licensing, so the numbers are a bit skewed.
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Jan 25, 2014 15:28
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SUPER NEAT TOY posted:GW also made like 2 million less just on licensing, so the numbers are a bit skewed. From £0.4m in 2012 to £1m in 2013... The royalties actually went up which cover up some more of the drop in sales. Unless I'm reading the wrong part of the document?
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Jan 25, 2014 16:12
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SUPER NEAT TOY posted:GW also made like 2 million less just on licensing, so the numbers are a bit skewed. Wasn't all of this money effectively cancelled out by taking a bunch of people to court over their IP and losing (ex. Chapterhouse)?
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Jan 25, 2014 16:30
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They lost more than money on the Chapterhouse suit (although a cool million pounds in the drain is pretty bad). They lost a whole bunch of the IP rights they've claimed and have been paranoid about for years. They antagonized a lot of people in the process, earned no fans and don't seem to have learned any kind of lesson from the whole mess. There's also how "they've been doing well" for years and could just "weather" this. GW exhibits a whole lot of the signs of a company experiencing a bubble far beyond its actual value and the bubble has been waiting to burst for a long time, and recently they lost 25% of their stock price which to me shows that it finally did. Since they've been steadily eating away at the infrastructure, goodwill and customer base that would allow them to weather struggles as they have in the past, I doubt they have the ability to do so nearly as effectively this time around. And also the company heads are so out of touch that they think Pokemon is dead. That's a literal thing they put in a shareholder report.
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Jan 25, 2014 17:08
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Stick me down for August 8th 2015
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Jan 25, 2014 17:27
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April 14th 2015
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Jan 25, 2014 17:35
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Business Gorillas posted:Wasn't all of this money effectively cancelled out by taking a bunch of people to court over their IP and losing (ex. Chapterhouse)? What is this Chapterhouse thing?
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Jan 25, 2014 17:44
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Night10194 posted:What is this Chapterhouse thing? IIRC Chapterhouse sells addons like alternate weapons and heads for GW kits and GW tried to throw the book at them for infringing on their IP. I just looked up the verdict of the lawsuit and GW lost a bunch of rights, got a bunch of stuff pulled from Chapterhouse, and Chapterhouse had to pay them $25k. Basically, GW spent a large amount of money trying to hunt their IP down and they got nothing for it, as Chapterhouse is still around and they're directly advertising as addons for GW kits now as opposed to not-tau and not-eldar.
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Jan 25, 2014 18:08
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I still don't know how that worked.
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Jan 25, 2014 19:36
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SUPER NEAT TOY posted:I still don't know how that worked. Basically instead of suing Chapterhouse for individual trademark and copyright breaking, they threw the entire GW 40k IP at them, including stuff like how they trademarked the term "Space Marine". By doing that they made the court not just challenge whatever specific IP Chapterhouse was messing with, but the entire GW line, which in turn meant the court had to strike down vast swathes of said IP trademarking. It's telling how stupid this idea was when all of the general IP infringement suits GW actually brought to the table were ruled in their favor. As for the rest, they lost upwards of half to two-thirds of the rest of their infringement claims, and in many cases invalidated their own trademarks. "read this for more posted:-The ruling of no infringement for the use of the underlying shape and size of GW shoulderpads is now on the legal record.
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Jan 25, 2014 19:50
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I can live without the minis but I hope a worst-case scenario wouldn't take Dark Heresy/Rogue Trader/Only War/Deathwatch/Dark Crusade with it.  6-16-2015. THE NUMBAH OF THE BEAAAAST~! InfiniteJesters fucked around with this message at 21:41 on Jan 25, 2014 |
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Jan 25, 2014 20:37
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All the good dates are getting taken so I'll also birthday-vote. Feb 24, 2015
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Jan 25, 2014 21:30
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I'm going with March 31st, 2015 Since that's the end of the fiscal year in the UK.
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Jan 25, 2014 22:43
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Daedleh posted:The only reason up until now as because it was so much easier to get a game of 40k than Warmachine, Kings of War, Infinity, Bolt Action etc, but by all accounts those games are now reaching their sustainable mass where you can easily get a game in. I have no idea what it's like in the UK, but in my area of Seattle it's significantly harder to get a 40k game than a Warmachines game. I'm sure that's just an indication of my own local game store and not a general trend, but Games Workshop should be considering changing how they treat their customers if they want to continue to exist over the next 10 years.
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Jan 25, 2014 23:32
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I have literally never seen a Warmachine miniature in any of the game shops I've gone to. It's actually kind of weird because my shop has a fair amount of Reaper.
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Jan 25, 2014 23:34
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SUPER NEAT TOY posted:I have literally never seen a Warmachine miniature in any of the game shops I've gone to. It's actually kind of weird because my shop has a fair amount of Reaper. Really? We had two shops in town that basically specialized in Warmachine/Hordes stuff. Unfortunately, both went under because 1) it's hard as gently caress to get a game store afloat and 2) all of the Warmachine players bought online because it's way cheaper. The main shop we have left has about a quarter of the store devoted to 40k/Fantasy and maybe a single 8 foot shelf devoted to Warmachine. But apparently the players from the other stores have sort of adopted that store now, so they play Warmachine two or three nights a week. That said, every single time I go into that store, there's people bitching about GW's prices. Every single loving time.
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Jan 25, 2014 23:46
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Comedy option: 29 Feb 2016. Leap years are motherfuckers.
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Jan 26, 2014 01:52
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Rulebook Heavily posted:Basically instead of suing Chapterhouse for individual trademark and copyright breaking, they threw the entire GW 40k IP at them, including stuff like how they trademarked the term "Space Marine". By doing that they made the court not just challenge whatever specific IP Chapterhouse was messing with, but the entire GW line, which in turn meant the court had to strike down vast swathes of said IP trademarking. At one point, IIRC, the judge in the case told GW straight up that if they went into this case without trying to reach a settlement with Chapterhouse, their entire IP range was potentially going to be looked at, with large portions of it very likely to be struck down. I think the judge also added that he knew GW was not going to reach a settlement because (I think he even said these exact words or close to them), the only "settlement" acceptable to GW was one where Chapterhouse stopped making products, closed up shop, and went out of business. Since Chapterhouse wasn't willing to do that (and had the weight of a very experienced law firm behind them doing pro bono work), the case continued to proceed, with GW ultimately scoring a $25,000 award that is widely viewed as a slap in the face (along with the loss of two-thirds of their copyright infringement claims). There were some other legal fumblings on GW's part that I don't recall offhand. Ultimately it ended up being such a legal disaster for GW that shortly after the verdict was handed down, the head of their legal department in the UK decided to leave/was let go/was asked to resign. I think the case is still ongoing, too; I believe Chapterhouse obtained additional pro bono representation from a second law firm, and they filed an appeal over the $25,000 they were supposed to pay GW (I believe the judge also recently quashed any requests for payment of legal fees, saying both sides were responsible for paying their own). Also I think one of GW's bigwigs (Alan Merrett?) basically went on the stand and said that the hobby of GW's customers was buying GW products.  Apologies for the derail, and to get things back on topic: is October 5th, 2015 taken? If not, then put me down for that date, for the heck of it. Sydney Bottocks fucked around with this message at 09:50 on Jan 28, 2014 |
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Jan 28, 2014 09:43
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I would love it, if there was a thread that dissected this in great detail, starting with the large number of "famous" games-workshoppers who have over the years left and formed their own companies.
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Jan 28, 2014 10:19
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xutech posted:I would love it, if there was a thread that dissected this in great detail, starting with the large number of "famous" games-workshoppers who have over the years left and formed their own companies. Isn't the creation of Mantic itself a direct result of GWS ditching them as a supplier? I do have to say, if true, that's a bold bit of schadenfreude. "Well, poo poo are we going to go bankrupt because our main client is gone and we have millions of dollars worth of plastic miniature equipment lying around?" "Nah, let's just make knockoffs. I mean, we have millions of dollars worth of plastic miniature equipment lying around free now."
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Jan 28, 2014 17:51
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Something I came across on 1d4chan while searching for information on the whole Chapterhouse lawsuit that I thought was amusing:quote:Recently, their bullying came back to bite them in the rear end after a failed attempt at suing the third-party manufacturer Chapter House; when they refused to back down from GW's threats to sue them for making unauthorized models (specifically Mycetic Spores, the Doom of Malan'tai, and the Parasite of Mortrex), the lawsuit went to court- and GW LOST. Apparently just writing up the rules for a model doesn't give you the sole rights to making that model after all. Undaunted, GW did the next best thing-they removed the offending models from the Tyranid codex, cutting off its nose to spite its face. Obvious slant aside, if this is true it's almost farcical that GW would cut units from its codices to spite a 3rd party manufacturer.
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Jan 28, 2014 18:01
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boom boom boom fucked around with this message at 23:40 on Oct 5, 2014 |
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Jan 28, 2014 18:09
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In fairness, it could be both.
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Jan 28, 2014 18:14
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Kai Tave posted:Something I came across on 1d4chan while searching for information on the whole Chapterhouse lawsuit that I thought was amusing: I feel like this isn't actually true; the major issue was how GW approached the lawsuit. Ostensibly, you can't manufacture Jenga blocks, brand them as Jenga blocks, and say they are for playing the game Jenga. You can't manufacture Monopoly boards and Monopoly pieces and say 'these are pieces you buy to play the game Monopoly'. GW botched the lawsuit hilariously badly, but it's not like what Chapterhouse was doing wasn't already toeing the line.
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Jan 28, 2014 18:15
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Didn't Chapterhouse say rather than "This is a Tyranid bugmonster" say "This is an alien bugmonster, that might make a good Tyranid?". So a company could also produce 'Paper money, for use in popular games'. And, more importantly, GW couldn't say "They stole our design!" because they never released one.
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Jan 28, 2014 18:24
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Thundercracker posted:Isn't the creation of Mantic itself a direct result of GWS ditching them as a supplier? Ummm, no? Ronnie left GW. I don't know whether he left or was pushed, but I know he didn't like the culture and business practices that had emerged. Knowing him he would have kicked up a stink. Given GWs comments about only hiring Yes-Men in their financial reports then he would have either been kicked out or strongly hinted that he should leave. He travelled for a year, came back and started up Mantic to compete with GW completely afresh. He didn't get any equipment or anything for free and I'm not sure where the original cash injection came from, but he started from scratch. He used Rendedra (another bunch of ex-GW guys who specialise in plastic production) to make plastics and hired a bunch of ex-GW sculptors to sculpt the actual models. The only in-house production that Mantic runs is metals.
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Jan 28, 2014 18:25
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Elfface posted:Didn't Chapterhouse say rather than "This is a Tyranid bugmonster" say "This is an alien bugmonster, that might make a good Tyranid?". So a company could also produce 'Paper money, for use in popular games'. Basically, yes. That's what Chapterhouse was doing beforehand. They didn't make Space Marine shoulderpads, they made Astro Knight shoulderpads (wowee they sure do look like SM shoulderpads though, what an odd coincedence!). I think GW could have won the suit (if they handled it better), but instead they pulled the usual GW poo poo and acted like toddlers. Now the courts say that GW is not the only people allowed to make poo poo for GW games (which still strikes me as hosed up).
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Jan 28, 2014 18:32
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SUPER NEAT TOY posted:Basically, yes. That's what Chapterhouse was doing beforehand. They didn't make Space Marine shoulderpads, they made Astro Knight shoulderpads (wowee they sure do look like SM shoulderpads though, what an odd coincedence!). I think GW could have won the suit (if they handled it better), but instead they pulled the usual GW poo poo and acted like toddlers. I thought originally Chapterhouse was being cagey about their names but the thing that pushed GW over the edge was when CH started flat out calling their stuff "Trygon conversion kits" and "Salamander conversion kits"? That was the difference between CH and other 3rd party bits manufacturers (other than quality) which meant they incurred GWs wrath.
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Jan 28, 2014 18:40
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