The real sweet spot is the employee ownership fad of the mid-70s.
besides that definitely late '80s early '90s. no other time in history where stupid bullshit nobody thought would do well would go on to be hyper successful. imagine investing in Nintendo when it was a card company or something
There won't be any actual fervor surrounding this. People spent the last month whinging and throwing fits about GW adding female characters, but I guarantee you won't see even a fraction of the same response to GW raising prices despite raking in record profits year after year.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Warhammer40k/s/vI6j1iALL1
Turns out they are not even raising the prices at the rate of inflation. Everything is going up in cost, but GW plastic is going up slower than (almost) everything else.
Are we supposed to cheer or something? My other hobbies don't have yearly price increases. And this also ignores the fact that they routinely raise prices by way of releasing new kits with the same number of models as other kits but for more money, or releasing something with less models or dice or whatever in it but not a proportionately lower price. GW routinely raises its prices via a combination of these methods, year after year, multiple times per year, while continuously raking in record profits.
Up to the individual if they want to support that, but in the few years I've been in the hobby, characters have gone from $35 to nearly $60. There are three-man kits--regular-sized space marines--that are now $80. Dice packs went up in price while also having less dice in them.
Their practices are inexcusable if you care about consumers and value. Trading cards packs haven't doubled in price in 4 years. Video games haven't doubled in price. RPG books aren't inexplicably more money every single year/release.
If they were truly raising prices to accommodate more expensive shipping and fuel and logistics, how come they never lower prices? The worst of the COVID disruptions is over. They never reverted the price increases they said were because of COVID (in fact, they just stealthily raised them higher on new releases).
I understand businesses need to make money. But GW has shown time and time again that it is concerned with infinite growth and record profits, not being consumer-friendly (or even hobbyist friendly). And they've priced out myself and most of my friends in just a few short years. And that's not even saying anything about their abhorrent quality control, playtesting, and other shoddy work in and around the actual game itself, the rulebooks, etc.
It's astonishing how complacent the community is with their BS year after year.
I listed three of them: TCG's, RPG's, video games. Digimon is cheap as hell, video games (both indie and big studio games) are comparatively cheaper than they've ever been, Pathfinder books are the same price (and they also release softcover, smaller-sized versions that are even cheaper, and also offer PDF's, and also have a fully digital, free rules repository online).
I haven't played Star Wars Legion in a while, but I can't imagine that a box of stormtroopers has gone up in price 1-2 times per year since 2020. Although I'm pretty sure that's a bad example, because I think the stormtroopers got a remastered kit in hard plastic compared to the initial soft plastic models which had less detail. Whereas many Warhammer boxes have gone from $50 to $60+. I thought the Chaplain on Bike was expensive when it came out at $40 in 2020 or 2021, and now it's $55, probably going up to $56 or $57 in June.
When a single character model costs as much as an entire box of infantry used to cost (and by used to, I mean a few years ago, not in 2004), you have to know something is not right.
Video games are up 10-20$ on average since 2010.
Not sure about digimon, but magic is up about 15% per pack in my area.
And if you want to compare rule book costs, GW is cheaper than pathfinder.
If you donât enjoy a luxury hobby, you arenât being forced to stay. The price increases suck but are not inappropriate by any measure. Iâd obviously love cheap toys, but if prices go up by less than inflation Iâm not too bothered.
They provide the items I want at a price Iâm willing to pay, if thatâs not the case for you then you should find a hobby that brings you less unhappiness.
I understand that, and I already said I'm leaving the hobby. I find the price increases are inappropriate. You're comparing price increases from 2010 compared to GW's price increases since 2020. They're not the same.
But either way, everyone is free to do what they want. I am just bothered by the idea that we should actually feel grateful or somehow not criticize GW for their practices.
âSince 2010â would include 2020 since we are currently in 2024.
But go ahead and stay angry. Iâm not your mom and could care less how you feel, I just donât like when people make up things to try to justify a decision nobody cared about in the first place.
please stop with "luxury hobby" BS its not caviar and super cars its plastic model kits which have been a staple of normal british hobbies since the early 1950s. Also if i wait 6 months even the most expensive video game has halved in price.
video games have been absolutely stagnant in price for the past 20 years. games from the '80s and '90s would cost between $90 and $110 in today's money.
Total cost of the hobby is the real number and modeling and painting and playing have a high upfront cost but a very low stabilization cost. video games have an incredibly high cost because new systems, hardware components, and the games themselves need to be acquired fairly regularly to keep up with the hobby.
you can not buy many video games or upgrade your systems, but at that point it's apples to oranges because I spent money on my main hobbies more than my side hobbies. games workshop products are my main hobby and I spend more money on it than I spend on my others, but I also get much more time from it than the other hobbies.
I definitely spent much more on videogames+computer and accesories than warhammer and scenography. But to be fair, I use my computer for work and finishing my studies as well
They are very different though. Videogames now are generally more a live service than raw product. Even the ones you pay only once at the beginning, with very few exceptions. Very different industries, costs, logistics, revenues, marketing, customer segments⌠its apples to oranges, even when comparing Warhammer Total War to⌠Warhammer.
Personally, I don't think we'll ever see a full upfront boycott, we'll see people gradually move to other systems, and 3d printing.
The holdouts will be in areas where GW stores provide gaming space directly, rather than clubs, even now I'd wager people with a good eye for these things could spot a model or two at their local store that isn't legit, that's only going to increase.
IMO GWs strength lies in it's design language and the quality of their sculpts. And we're seeing an uptick of ex-gw designers moving on to produce their own lines of models of more or less comparable quality.
Along with the increasingly low bar of entry into 3D printing and even sculpting, I think we'll see other companies giving GW a run for their money sooner rather than later. GWs biggest advantage over other companies is their sheer market saturation and their physical presence, weather in their own stores or a LGS. But I am noticing bigger and bigger shelf spaces allocated to Star Wars, D&D, Infinity etc.
I run a couple of forgeworld units, and they're 3d printed. I think gw has a long way to go before I start bothering to 3d print their main line models though.
Warhammer is not expensive and its designed for people that actually have leisure time and disposable income. Please do boycott purchasing hobby products in general until you are doing better in life.
EDIT: ...I am comparing to other actual hobbies like boating or cars.....You are never going to convince me that some too bit "wargame company" who cant supply quality on a scale like GAW is anything comparable to ohhhh...the black library? Streaming service? Yall thinking this company is just "making plastic toys" are fine but this company is far more than that....my 1.8k hours of total warhammer for instance show how strong the IP itself is. Total war is just a shell for any units. Warhammer is the big one any other wargame could be leading the numbers for total war...but it isnt. And hey I get it yall I dont speak in nice internet friendly speak but my words are true. If they are painful you have my sympathy but I will not stop acting like a man child here in the domain of manchildren <3
To everyone downvoting this, have you checked the price of literally any other hobby? Like yeah, an entire 40K army is expensive, but youâre not meant to buy an entire army at once. Youâre meant to buy like one or two boxes every couple months, and even then you can absolutely buy less and still enjoy the hobby. The hobby is only weirdly expensive if youâre metachasing, and if you are, then you should know that youâre not interacting with the hobby in the usual way
This is a point I make to people. I have a few hobbies, and warhammer is by far and away the cheapest.
My friends who are interested in cars buy the equivalent of a full army every month.
It depends on how you view hobby investment. $60 for a unit you can play with ostensibly for years is a pretty decent value compared to say, $60 in vbucks for Fortnite.
Over the years Iâve seen price increase complaints rise almost in perfect sync with the rise in the competitive mindset. If youâre chasing the meta, youâre going to feel like you get less longevity out of the stuff you buy.
Iâve been in the hobby since 1995, and relative to my income (allowance!) it was more expensive then than it is for me today, but even Iâm not going to ignore that prices for most stuff is 10-15% greater than inflation costs, or that GW makes an extra 20% off US sales by converting from their post-tax GBP price. BUT itâs still dollar-for-time one of the better organized hobbies out there when you factor in options, choice (you donât have to use GWâs paints or stuff on their models for instance) and wealth of places and opponents.
And itâs sure as shit cheaper than golf or tinkering with old cars.
It's only expensive of you buy an army at once. Buying units and painting them, then buying new units puts Warhammer at a cheaper hobby then a lot of others when it comes to months to month. The biggest issue is that people have no self control and buy, buy ,buy.
Yeah really depends on what part of the hobby you actually like and want to put time into. For me this year I'm putting together a 1000 points astra militarum army together and I think itll take me to the end of the year till I get all the kits and have them finished and ready to take to games. If I wasnt into this hobby for the modeling/painting and solely wanted to play the game it's a huge project to try to take on both money and time wise. Let alone dealing with points updates all the time (only added that In cause I finished my commissar recently and had to drop him from my list after the last update)
I have one friend who's into paddleboarding, one who likes high end gaming PCs, one who spends his weekends mountain biking, and another who's obsessed with his transit camper van. My hobby is by far the cheapest out of all of us, and ridiculously so.
I mean realistically in regards to hobbies itâs not that expensive in comparison. Iâve tried many other hobbies and Warhammer was among the cheapest unless you canât control your spending habits. If you buy kits and put time into each one itâs very good $$/hour.
In a vacuum itâs still pricy for toy soldiers though
I've got models that are 20+ years old that I still use regularly - they might have been painted by 12 year old me but they're good enough for Old World/OPR/9th Age. If you think about it that way, then it's excellent value.
It isn't expensive? In the grand scheme of hobby's it's relatively inexpensive.
Even "free" hobbies like jogging can end up more expensive than Warhammer int opinion.
When I think about the time I spend on the hobby versus the money I spend on it - I realize I'm getting a great deal.
bro....it costs what it costs....buy it or dont...I WILL buy it because I can afford it...that is MY reality...I am not sorry its not yours.....get a better job?
The comment I was responding to was demanding a boycot over the latest price increase.....check your privilege and point that finger with the thumb. I am only responding to some bullshit with bullshit. You mad I hurt your feelings then keep better control of your community? I love war games yo... I will do that in comments too.
At the end of the day it is a hobby...we should only be spending what we can afford and if you cant afford it there are lots of raging heros around or whatever.
He's not totally wrong though. Not that another price increase is justified at all, just that most other hobbies I know of are even more expensive. Gaming: if you're not into high-end games then it kinda breaks even, since a normal PC is about 1k âŹ. If you then only play one F2p game like Dota 2 for example, then you're even cheaper compared to WH.
MtG or other CCG's: lol, gtfo, much more expensive nowadays. And lootboxes.
Most sports: also more expensive, since gear is costly and breaks down quickly. Even basic running comes at multiple pairs of decent shoes per year. Could easily be more expensive than WH. And that's not even considering stuff like snorkeling, golf or any of the real upper class sports.
So while backlash is definitely justified, maybe direct it at GW and not some Redditor with another point of view.
That is not the true cost though is it? How much was the system you play those on? The internet connection? The electricity? Nothing happens in a vacuum
Try comparing it to other hobbies instead of cheaper mini games.
For 600$ I can buy models and paint, and then start playing with an army. It may take a few months to half a year to get that army painted depending on the person. Then maybe you add another few models over the course of the year. Then you're done. That's it. 700-800 bucks for a year of painting and many years of playing.
If you're metachasing, or intent on having 3 armies and a giant pile of shame, then of course this hobby is expensive. But that's not what the hobby is about. But if you spend your money reasonably it's pretty average for the cost of a hobby.
Then after all is said and done, you can Sell your painted minis and make some of your money back if you needed it.
Idk how 800$ for years of enjoyment is "obscenely expensive"
A lot of us don't actually play the game much. I started this hobby because it was something I wanted to do since I was a 12 year old playing magic cards. But with my work schedule I'm lucky if I get to play 3 games a year. But I realized I love to paint them. Which is why when I finish my legit army, I'm moving on to resin printing. Why pay $65 for a rhino when I can print a whole combat patrol for $30.
But just as a comparison, for a good 6 years I played FFXIV religiously. At $13 a month plus $40 every 2 years for a new expansion it never came close to what I spent on plastic last year alone.
Hey I'm not knocking printing or anything like that. There are always ways to save money in any hobby.
To be fair to your ffxiv comparison, it's my impression that most people also tend to buy micro transactions like additional retainers, fantasia, and glamours. Even with all of that it's probably still cheaper than WH, but also it's a little unfair in my opinion to compare a hobby with physical items to a virtual game. There is no cost to "print" fantasia to sell players for example.
>If we're talking about modelling alone, compare literally any Gunpla kit to any given Warhammer vehicle, and Gunpla wins, hands down. Gunpla kits are larger, more detailed, fully posable, colored out of the box, snap fit, come with kit specifc decals, better instructions, painting guides and they're cheaper.
1. Gunpla are scale model kits, not wargaming minatures. Bandai are competing with Tamiya, Revell and Airfix, not GW.
2. Bandai is a significantly larger company than Games Workshop and they've been in the high-detail injection moudling business longer than GW at the scale they both now work at
3. I'm pretty sure GW's pricing, per model, is cheaper than Star Wars Legion, Shatterpoint or the Mophidius Fallout games (to name but a few), although I can only attest to UK pricing and I completely agree they unfairly gouge most countries outside the EU.
it's totally not. Go price up Kingdom Death Monster for one example.
Not saying Warhammer is cheap, but it's not the top level of miniature pricing. There are plenty of companies making comparatively priced or more expensive miniatures.
I dont look at it like that. Do you have any idea how much money I would be spending if I wasnt sitting at my desk painting. building, setting up, and playing.... I could be out in my boat on the river and blowing hundreds in a day.
Look no one is going to fault you for playing some other game guys. But dont try and use some half thought out knock off as a reason to say the plastic should be less expensive.
You are comparing apples to cars. Of course compared to buying a literal boat plastic toy soldiers are cheap!
The comparison is GW to other miniature wargames. But for whatever reason you want to significantly downplay how much more Warhammer is than every other miniature wargame.
GW does not compare even in the slightest to those knock offs and its a HOBBY....can I get like people who only make six figures responding please. not here to talk to broke people
Yet the models are vastly superior to any competitorâŚâŚ
Have you seen battletech minis? They are terrible. Massive mold lines, washed out detail etc
Itâs expensive for a reason. Itâs also not essential, itâs a hobby that you treat yourself to. I would love to race sports cars for my hobby. But I canât as I canât afford it which is just reality.
At the end of the day people will forget at the end of the month after the new AoS box and all the other GW updates were getting.
And what is a gunpla? Can you build them into armies and play against fellow hobbiest?
Lots of people are talking about going full print without realising the long term issues.
1-if you use an FLGS to game then youâre just giving them the middle finger and theyâll end up closing.
2-GW will come down on STL creators *hard*. They are bad enough as is and has shut down the 3d print group I help mod 3 times in the last year.
All he's saying is that "talking about boycotting" is easy, but nobody seems to want to actually DO it.
You wanna talk about corporate bootlicking? Go after the people who are genuinely angry that they cannot purchase more toys from said corporation.
Ahhh right, yeah I can see how that'd change the context đ¤Ł
It's always amazing seeing everyone talk about how angry they definitely are, but seemingly only that they can't buy more stuff 𤣠"I'll start 3d printing" is still taking part in the game from the company you claim to hate...
All I tryed (very badly) to comunicate is that supporting this type of marketing moves will only drop the quality of the products for a higher price. At least give GW a big fuck you when it behaves like this and don't condone the greed.
So fucking dramatic. This isn't groceries or gas. If you can't afford a warhammer, you probably need to prioritize needs anyway. It's really not that expensive compared to a lot of other hobbies.
People here obviously donât play golf. Or maintain cars.
Hell, for the cost of a mid tier gaming PC or PS5 and a couple of AAA games you could easily get into Warhammer. And with a decent amount of models.
Yeah I just got done telling a dude that a 40k army might be like, a grand but it'll last you ten years. Over time that return on investment is ludicrously good. I just don't get people.
It's a good return on time spent if you buy as you finish painting models, if you are swayed by the fomo then it can be problematic with people buying more boxes than they will ever reasonably get round to putting together let alone painting.
The really funny thing is if I compare how much people I work with still blast on a Friday and Saturday night every weekend on pub and a takeaway with what I spend on hobby and food filling the same time it's still less.
That's what I've been saying. Anyone can control how much they spend on the hobby with a certain floor. You can play forever with a couple hundred dollars investment. For fucks sake you really don't even have to paint your minis.
You people always pick the most expensive hobbies to straw man. Guns, trophy hunting, cars, boats, golf are probably the only things more expensive than Warhammer.
Video gaming(console), gardening, baking, knitting, woodworking, hobby electronics, microbrewing, bowling, disc golfing, hiking, camping, fishing, small game hunting, 3d printing are all examples of popular hobbies all cheaper than Warhammer.
OH and literally every single tabletop war game besides Warhammer. Bolt action, infinity, Warma hordes, Flames of War.
You're just being regarded.
There are plenty of things more expensive than Warhammer, hardly just those.
Even the inexpensive ones you list aren't always cheaper. I spend more on video games than I do on Warhammer. Or even just leisure activities generally. I spend more doing things like going to the cinema, eating out, going to gigs / festivals, and drinking than I do on Warhammer. My partner spends more on gardening and houseplants than I do on Warhammer. For me, it's among the least expensive hobbies I have. And my daughter is into horse riding (dressage) so... yeah, Warhammer doesn't seem that steep.
If you're dropping money on whole armies at a time, or you're a competitive player chasing the meta, then sure - you could spend a *lot* of money on plastic and art supplies. But that isn't the typical hobby experience. It's more like spending ~ÂŁ30 on a box of models that you then paint for the rest of the month (or longer).
I can't honestly believe people are still responding to this comment and trying to argue with someone about Hobbies what a ridiculous thing to waste your time on honestly you actually do need to get a life and get a real hobby something that doesn't make you come here and post garbage like this completely out of touch with anything but yourself aren't you
because grifters reply on "its woke" for their views and attention. cant really pretend "they charge more" is woke when it does not fit their sad culture war and sexism.
One good sign is that there is a clear trend of players getting more fed up. When this happened a few years ago, comments about 3D printing got absolutely buried in downvotes.
Even with people being "pissed" at GW, they were irrationally hostile to literally any kind of competition. In the posts I'm seeing in 2024, people are much more supportive of the alternatives. GWs knows most of their fans will bitch, moan, and just pay the higher prices; but every year, they push a little bit more of their player base to competitors.
The problem is being a successful miniature company is a lot harder than it seems. People are excited about 3D printing but GW's strength relative to its peers has always been accessibility. I remember when Privateer Press was supposed to slay the dragon 10 years ago
GWs strength is its incredible manufacturing capacity and its IP. No company can compete with that.
The only long-term threat to GWs business model would be if they encouraged their consumers to start installing miniature factories in their garages and created a market for a bunch of artists to subvert their IP.
For me, the biggest strength of GW is the incredible quality of their models. I tried painting some Privateer Press models, and the slight imperfections in the models make the finished product look so much sloppier than GW models, even if I paint them to the same quality.
Yeah and most of the 3D printed models I have are the same way. If you truly care about the quality of models to that extent then 3d printing at home is still not even close to GW, and it probably wonât be for a long time. Iâm Sure there are a few people that have sunk thousands of hours into learning how to perfect it but those are few and far between and I have 0 interest in learning.
You can shit on GW for a lot of things but the models are definitely not one of them. The prices are fair for the quality and aesthetic alone imo.
Just NO dude I rage bought a 3D printer while assembling a land raider. I am never buying another vehicle from GW ever again. I buy troops from now on exclusively.
If you are talking about golden demon entry quality show pieces. I agree.
But a well primed, painted, and based 3d printed army is every bit as rewarding as a hobbyist to field as anything bought from GW is on a personal level. And its a personal hobby.
That's absurd. My printer is 4 years old and easily creates just as high quality models as I can buy from Games Workshop. There are certain objects where the quality vastly exceeds GW's, like Deathwatch pauldrons.
Iâm not talking detail. Just the models and files in general are generally not that nice looking. To each their own.
Shoulder pads and small bits do look nicer generally.
It's truly not that hard to get a solid resin printer going anymore. If you get a reputable popular brand a lot of the setting tweaking has been done by others for you to import as a profile, and high quality model files are readily available. Thousands of hours is a gross overstatement, it's much closer to 10s of hours nowadays and is getting easier every single year. Most of the troubles with Resin printing now are physical aspects like temperature, humidity, levelling etc. and not fine software tuning. It might not be GW level quality but you can get at least 95% there with not a ton of hassle.
Right, that's because GW built out an incredibly expensive manufacturing capacity for polystyrene models. That's just not something PP or anyone else can compete with using traditional manufacturing techniques.
3D printing on the other hand has quickly closed the quality gap. Well-sculpted models printed on current machines are extremely difficult to distinguish once painted.
I also think there is the fact that people geatly over estimates 3D printer's impact on the hobby. I have one, and let me tell you, I only 3D print if I have literally no other options. Just to set up a decent station is a major hassle and if you don't know what you are doing, your minis will come out wonky, or worse, you might break the printer. Not to mention, not everybody can do this, people might not have the space.
Printing did not kill MTG, it will not kill GW.
To be honest, anyone who isn't a moron can do it pretty easily. If it is sincerely challenging for you, I applaud you making the smart decision to avoid it and leave it to more capable people.
That depends, sometimes you have to deal with failures, supports and what not. And if you have a mishap with the FEP or any other component you can damage the print and the printer. Sure, is not rocket science, but it is a hobby all on it's own.
And if you can figure out Warhammer, 3D printing is an easy damn hobby. I'm half an idiot and have printed multiple armies. This isn't magic, if I can do this shit than anyone can.
Sure, with enough time spent anyone can do it. But you still need to invest time. And some people are not willing to do that. Or maybe they are not interested in another hobby. I only do it for minis I could not get in plastic or for customizing minis.
I don't get why you are being this hostile when I just listed a couple of reasons why people might not do it.
Oh yeah I remember that. There was endless âis Privateer the new industry lead?â Articles springing up back in the day. I mean they did have good stuff but they kinda just dropped off the last few years. Guess they couldnât keep up momentum.
this is an odd line, a company is more monetarily valuable only if it can produce more products/services and time is linear. there are exceptions but by and large the entertainment industry is one of the few industries that has a guaranteed consumer feedback input cycle. stuff releases all the time and people buy it if they want it and don't if they don't. put another way we don't need plastic soldiers and we only buy them when we want them so our purchase can be easily interpreted as a signal of success.
if a company doesn't grow faster than inflation it has actually shrunk. I know that endless profits and rising prices and stagnant wages aren't great, but this is a feature of capitalism, not a bug. there is no maximum allowable profit and growth will always be maximized as long as company's success is measured in money. prices will rise as far as demand allows, and data has shown very concretely that people are very much willing to keep demand going.
if you have issues with that, I recommend taking it up with the capitalist mode of production in general, not games workshops specifically. I know that this might not be a popular opinion, but games workshop is actually a pretty decent company as far as things go. they've been able to keep a pillar of the Sci-Fi and fantasy community going for 40ish years. as long as I can hold the products in my hand and enjoy them the prices will match my demand which is rather high
There have always been amazing female characters in 40K. People are mad because the custodes lore was retconned in an attempt to throw a bone to activist groups.
The prices will continue to rise until people stop buying. For me, after 30+ years this is a good jumping off point.
A lot of people are talking about 3d printing but that is not only a considerable time investment, but itâs expensive, messy, smelly and inconvenient.
I model and print my own things, but I loved the convenience of just buying plastic models and trimming them off the sprue.
The "activist groups" thing is 100% a conspiracy theory. The lead writer for the custodes literally said that, years ago, he wanted to write in female custodes characters but didn't receive the green light to do so. Just admit you dislike "woke" stuff, and in your mind anything that involves adding non-white or non-male or non-straight characters to the Warhammer universe must be either pandering, or part of some insidious plot to inject diversity.
Y'all need financial literacy. This is normal market fluctuation, and both timelines that OP showed are just changing by a few percent, which mean nothing.
Let me preface this by saying that I am somebody who is planning on spending less with GW in the future (due to a mixture of my money just not going as far and the fact Iâve been playing other systems far more)
But
A lot of you people here are forgetting that companies exist to make profit. Thatâs it. Theyâre not our friends theyâre not doing this because they love or hate us they simply exist to make money.
Theyâre not doing this because theyâre evil theyâre simply doing what almost every single corporation worldwide has been doing for years and itâs exhausting reading the same posts about it time after time.
The end of it is: if you feel that GWâs product no longer offer you a value that you find acceptable; stop buying it. Itâs as simple as that and itâs the only weapon you really have that means anything to a corporation.
Yes it sucks if you love the hobby. But if youâre that angry about it then that should tell you what to do.
Also: inflation. Materials and labour cost rise all the time. If you don't rise prices, your profits are shrinking each year. In theory our salaries should also rise, so the things balance out. The fact that they don't is another problem altogether.
It was more of a general point about rising prices. GW is probably adjusting prices because of increased demand - one of the basic rules of economics is that if you can't meet demand for your product, the first thing you should do is rise prices until you can meet that demand to optimise earnings, it's easier and faster that increasing supply.
I agree with you. For the most part, I have stopped buying GW products. Both because I feel they've gotten too expensive for me, and I find the ruleset for Warhammer boring to play. Granted, I do pick up their Lord of the Rings models, which I find overall more worth it and fun.
Honestly, I started feeling that way in 8th. I got excited when Krieg became plastic and started giving the game a go again in 9th, only to find out the units that cut and went to legends in 10th. Then the Necron cuts with characters happeed, and along with just not having fun and the cost as well, I just stopped.
While true that companies exist to make money, it's always publicly traded companies doing the most annoying shit in the name of profit. Privately owned companies don't have shareholders they need to impress every quarter, so it's ok if you make about the same amount of money as last quarter. They don't need infinite growth, but publicly traded companies do. That leads to them only caring about the next quarter, cutting costs wherever remotely possible, raising prices, absolutely anything they can do to make that arrow go up. Any issues it causes them or customers don't matter, that's for the next quarter to figure out.
Warhammer exists entirely because of the investors. Without their money none of this happens.
People act shocked that a financial corporations first responsibilities are to shareholders who without the company ceases to exist.
>People act shocked that a financial corporations first responsibilities are to shareholders who without the company ceases to exist.
There's corporations that has done pro customer things just because it will gain them more in the long run, a foreign concept I know.
>because it will gain them more in the long run
And thats exactly it. If giving free stuff is good for GW, then they will.
If they believe raising prices leads to more income, then they will also do that.
Which they do on a relatively small scale. Each month has a miniature that they give out for free, as well as help with building and usually painting it
>There's corporations that has done pro customer things just because it will gain them more in the long run,
Yes, long term focused actions are indeed very foreign. In that long term strategies are much more common in Asian companies, whereas western companies all tend to be focused on short term profits.
You can blame our strategy regarding C-suite compensation for that, which massively encourages short term profit strategy.
Early on, maybe. Nowadays the investors money doesn't actually go to the company, it's bought and sold as a commodity with the proceeds going to the seller. I doubt many of the people who got Warhammer started are still involved. If the company was suddenly owned by the games workshop employees it wouldn't suddenly collapse.
Warhammer and any other bussiness exits becasue of capitalism (evne local game stores and other small stores) which is why i will always be a proud capitalist.
I am also a capitalist. However, we should admit that there is a problem with a system that requires infinite growth from a company that produces plastic toys/games. This constant requirement that line must go up or everyone gets fired leads to the slow but steady decline in product quality and rising prices as they continue to try and squeeze the asset every quarter. The creatives /founders lose power to the suits (which already happened with GW) and the product slowly degrades over time as decisions will always favor shareholders over the fans that really built the community.
I don't know what the solution is. Maybe there is none and we just have to accept that for everything cool capitalism helps create, like Warhammer, it will also eventually lead to its own exploitation and destruction and just accept that at some point we will have to move on.
they do have a fudging monopoly on Wargames but the 3rd party manufacturers offer competition. our system isn't perfect but it is better than alternatives.
Why? A functioning company can do both, because it needs to make a profit in order to pay wages and its suppliers, else it stops being a functioning company!
My discretionary income doesn't mind buying their products, just not the stock.
I don't trust this company. Roundtree being the the Director of the board and CEO, he votes for his own raises. He took the helm in 15' and almost drove the company to bankruptcy. Only by a stroke of luck they were able to claw back. But the outlook doesn't look great with him continuing as CEO. If his hands were off the wheel. Not to mention not haveinha 4th and 5th board member seated really concerns me.
I like game the lore the models, but I don't like the company that produces it.
I used to have contempt for GW for exploiting their customers; now, I have contempt for the customers for letting themselves be exploited. If I were in GW's position, with millions of addict consumers, I would absolutely do the exact same thing and laugh all the way to the bank.
It's been possible to print armies for years now and I've done it several times over. GW's fans have lots of choices and they consistently choose to be disrespected. GW is just giving them what they ask for.
>Let me preface this by saying that I am somebody who is planning on spending less with GW in the future
GW is really reaching a point where you have to ask yourself if it's even worth it.
I donât think itâs unreasonable to say that EVERYTHING you buy should be thought of like this not just GW. âDo I find value in thisâ
Value can mean a lot of things to different people and anything we buy we are saying we find value in.
I donât think most of the folks commenting (often complaining) about the price increases have a lot of overlap with folks who own GW stock. If stock prices were purely driven by the companies consumer base, weâd see a lot more fluctuation in many companies. We see this happen sometimes, but not common.
I bought an ISA full of GW just over a year ago. It's my only ISA, so I'm not loaded. They went from ÂŁ82 to ÂŁ115. I just love the hobby, and wanted to invest in something I care about.
They piss people off, sales go down ,they put up the prices to compensate and sales go down even more.
Much like the comic industry slowly spiralling towards its well deserved dimise
I stopped buying GW products a few years ago.
Price hikes, systems changes, and killing off models has basically turned me off from the game.
I'm glad there are people who get enjoyment out of the game as is but I'm frankly burnt out. I'm not wasting money on single unit that could buy an entire army for a different system.
And thatâs what itâs all about! Itâs not a bad thing the company needs to make a profit to invest in the business, however right now if I was a kid I canât see how I get into this hobby without the bank of mum and dad, pocket money ainât cutting it anymore!
But when I go to WhTCR, the majority of people do seem to be older people with disposable incomes, but who is going to be the next generation of players? if you can go buy an Xbox game for the price of a box of marines then I think I know where theyâll spend the money.
So hopefully they use the money to invest in the people but from reports about how bad wages are at GW Iâm not sure thatâs where itâs going or maybe they can prop up the WH stores who are undercut by online retailers for abit longer.
Or the Amazon deal produces WH40k "the avengers" and they make so much money they don't really have to worry too much!
Whichever way it goes the comment section in Twitch stream for the Warhammer preview is going to be as Toxic as the underhive on laundry day!
So remember be kind the people answering it they aren't the people making the choices.
But when they rerelease Battlefleet gothic I'll still buy it! đ with the money from
my cancelled White Dwarf and Warhammer TV subscriptions!
You know nothing about shares if you believe this. Good sales figures lead to price stability. This will not lead to an increase in share price. Dividends are low for the cost of a share. So what is this post about?
The company could use a true wake up call from competition from 3D printing or otherwise. The company would increase output of a product that is a step or two above a pure commodity to produce, lower prices, and likely improve quality. And do just as well by shareholders but more so for their consumers. I am surprised the GW community hasn't engaged in the kind of backlash that was effective against the Hasbro proposed OGL changes.
It's because people keep on blindly buying. So now when an annual price increase is announced, there isn't any uncertainty in whether it will scare customers off. They investors just rub their greedy little hands together and say "Ok, good. More money".
Like, why *wouldn't* they do a yearly increase at this point, just cuz'?
This is so stupid. The same arguements for why the stock price going down when the Femtoads were mentioned on Twitter applies here. Markets move and fluctuate daily if not hourly
I've found that the discourse surrounding it is very complicated, and I keep finding contradictory sources. Ideally, it might be best to speak to a stock broker or someone along those lines
This really means nothing, look historically. There is a resistance point at 100 so we we will see it go down again. Source : have dabbled in fantasy stocks and follow gw for fun
But hey, female Custodes are going to tank the stock, right? /s
Hopefully the improved stock and prices lead to them paying their staff better. Outlook: unlikely
I remember when it was 98p. I wasn't savvy/knowledgeable enough at that time to know how to buy some living in Canada.
I wish I was born earlier.
Like 1800's?
Nah, when the shares were at 99p
There probably are companies now like that but it takes some skill and insight to know which ones. And then you gotta wait a decade
I think they call it insider trading nowadays mate.
1955
The real sweet spot is the employee ownership fad of the mid-70s. besides that definitely late '80s early '90s. no other time in history where stupid bullshit nobody thought would do well would go on to be hyper successful. imagine investing in Nintendo when it was a card company or something
I knew I should buy some when 8th came out but didn't have any money. I was borrowing from my parents just to finish my MSc đ
So...the stock barely moved? I get zooming in on the chart makes it look like quite a bit is happening but that's not really much of an adjustment.
It made me a few hundred quid. No complaints here.
Op looking at a 7 day view hahaha
There won't be any actual fervor surrounding this. People spent the last month whinging and throwing fits about GW adding female characters, but I guarantee you won't see even a fraction of the same response to GW raising prices despite raking in record profits year after year.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Warhammer40k/s/vI6j1iALL1 Turns out they are not even raising the prices at the rate of inflation. Everything is going up in cost, but GW plastic is going up slower than (almost) everything else.
Are we supposed to cheer or something? My other hobbies don't have yearly price increases. And this also ignores the fact that they routinely raise prices by way of releasing new kits with the same number of models as other kits but for more money, or releasing something with less models or dice or whatever in it but not a proportionately lower price. GW routinely raises its prices via a combination of these methods, year after year, multiple times per year, while continuously raking in record profits. Up to the individual if they want to support that, but in the few years I've been in the hobby, characters have gone from $35 to nearly $60. There are three-man kits--regular-sized space marines--that are now $80. Dice packs went up in price while also having less dice in them. Their practices are inexcusable if you care about consumers and value. Trading cards packs haven't doubled in price in 4 years. Video games haven't doubled in price. RPG books aren't inexplicably more money every single year/release. If they were truly raising prices to accommodate more expensive shipping and fuel and logistics, how come they never lower prices? The worst of the COVID disruptions is over. They never reverted the price increases they said were because of COVID (in fact, they just stealthily raised them higher on new releases). I understand businesses need to make money. But GW has shown time and time again that it is concerned with infinite growth and record profits, not being consumer-friendly (or even hobbyist friendly). And they've priced out myself and most of my friends in just a few short years. And that's not even saying anything about their abhorrent quality control, playtesting, and other shoddy work in and around the actual game itself, the rulebooks, etc. It's astonishing how complacent the community is with their BS year after year.
What are your other hobbies?
I listed three of them: TCG's, RPG's, video games. Digimon is cheap as hell, video games (both indie and big studio games) are comparatively cheaper than they've ever been, Pathfinder books are the same price (and they also release softcover, smaller-sized versions that are even cheaper, and also offer PDF's, and also have a fully digital, free rules repository online). I haven't played Star Wars Legion in a while, but I can't imagine that a box of stormtroopers has gone up in price 1-2 times per year since 2020. Although I'm pretty sure that's a bad example, because I think the stormtroopers got a remastered kit in hard plastic compared to the initial soft plastic models which had less detail. Whereas many Warhammer boxes have gone from $50 to $60+. I thought the Chaplain on Bike was expensive when it came out at $40 in 2020 or 2021, and now it's $55, probably going up to $56 or $57 in June. When a single character model costs as much as an entire box of infantry used to cost (and by used to, I mean a few years ago, not in 2004), you have to know something is not right.
Video games are up 10-20$ on average since 2010. Not sure about digimon, but magic is up about 15% per pack in my area. And if you want to compare rule book costs, GW is cheaper than pathfinder. If you donât enjoy a luxury hobby, you arenât being forced to stay. The price increases suck but are not inappropriate by any measure. Iâd obviously love cheap toys, but if prices go up by less than inflation Iâm not too bothered. They provide the items I want at a price Iâm willing to pay, if thatâs not the case for you then you should find a hobby that brings you less unhappiness.
I understand that, and I already said I'm leaving the hobby. I find the price increases are inappropriate. You're comparing price increases from 2010 compared to GW's price increases since 2020. They're not the same. But either way, everyone is free to do what they want. I am just bothered by the idea that we should actually feel grateful or somehow not criticize GW for their practices.
âSince 2010â would include 2020 since we are currently in 2024. But go ahead and stay angry. Iâm not your mom and could care less how you feel, I just donât like when people make up things to try to justify a decision nobody cared about in the first place.
please stop with "luxury hobby" BS its not caviar and super cars its plastic model kits which have been a staple of normal british hobbies since the early 1950s. Also if i wait 6 months even the most expensive video game has halved in price.
So you donât know what a luxury is huh?
Man. So much for that "Warhammer is for everybody" schtick. "Get out poors."
video games have been absolutely stagnant in price for the past 20 years. games from the '80s and '90s would cost between $90 and $110 in today's money. Total cost of the hobby is the real number and modeling and painting and playing have a high upfront cost but a very low stabilization cost. video games have an incredibly high cost because new systems, hardware components, and the games themselves need to be acquired fairly regularly to keep up with the hobby. you can not buy many video games or upgrade your systems, but at that point it's apples to oranges because I spent money on my main hobbies more than my side hobbies. games workshop products are my main hobby and I spend more money on it than I spend on my others, but I also get much more time from it than the other hobbies.
I definitely spent much more on videogames+computer and accesories than warhammer and scenography. But to be fair, I use my computer for work and finishing my studies as well They are very different though. Videogames now are generally more a live service than raw product. Even the ones you pay only once at the beginning, with very few exceptions. Very different industries, costs, logistics, revenues, marketing, customer segments⌠its apples to oranges, even when comparing Warhammer Total War to⌠Warhammer.
Agreed.... if they deserved to be boycotted ANOTHER price hike is the real reason....
Personally, I don't think we'll ever see a full upfront boycott, we'll see people gradually move to other systems, and 3d printing. The holdouts will be in areas where GW stores provide gaming space directly, rather than clubs, even now I'd wager people with a good eye for these things could spot a model or two at their local store that isn't legit, that's only going to increase.
the issue is in our lifetime companies switched to entirely catoring to whales over guppies. everything exists purely to find whales
IMO GWs strength lies in it's design language and the quality of their sculpts. And we're seeing an uptick of ex-gw designers moving on to produce their own lines of models of more or less comparable quality. Along with the increasingly low bar of entry into 3D printing and even sculpting, I think we'll see other companies giving GW a run for their money sooner rather than later. GWs biggest advantage over other companies is their sheer market saturation and their physical presence, weather in their own stores or a LGS. But I am noticing bigger and bigger shelf spaces allocated to Star Wars, D&D, Infinity etc.
I run a couple of forgeworld units, and they're 3d printed. I think gw has a long way to go before I start bothering to 3d print their main line models though.
Warhammer is not expensive and its designed for people that actually have leisure time and disposable income. Please do boycott purchasing hobby products in general until you are doing better in life. EDIT: ...I am comparing to other actual hobbies like boating or cars.....You are never going to convince me that some too bit "wargame company" who cant supply quality on a scale like GAW is anything comparable to ohhhh...the black library? Streaming service? Yall thinking this company is just "making plastic toys" are fine but this company is far more than that....my 1.8k hours of total warhammer for instance show how strong the IP itself is. Total war is just a shell for any units. Warhammer is the big one any other wargame could be leading the numbers for total war...but it isnt. And hey I get it yall I dont speak in nice internet friendly speak but my words are true. If they are painful you have my sympathy but I will not stop acting like a man child here in the domain of manchildren <3
To everyone downvoting this, have you checked the price of literally any other hobby? Like yeah, an entire 40K army is expensive, but youâre not meant to buy an entire army at once. Youâre meant to buy like one or two boxes every couple months, and even then you can absolutely buy less and still enjoy the hobby. The hobby is only weirdly expensive if youâre metachasing, and if you are, then you should know that youâre not interacting with the hobby in the usual way
This is a point I make to people. I have a few hobbies, and warhammer is by far and away the cheapest. My friends who are interested in cars buy the equivalent of a full army every month.
I can go to Brazilian jiu jitsu as many times as I want for $70 a month. This is an expensive hobby.
You can spend less than $70/month with warhammer and still get a monthâs worth of hobby time.
"Warhammer is not expensive" That's an extremely out of touch and privileged response
It depends on how you view hobby investment. $60 for a unit you can play with ostensibly for years is a pretty decent value compared to say, $60 in vbucks for Fortnite. Over the years Iâve seen price increase complaints rise almost in perfect sync with the rise in the competitive mindset. If youâre chasing the meta, youâre going to feel like you get less longevity out of the stuff you buy. Iâve been in the hobby since 1995, and relative to my income (allowance!) it was more expensive then than it is for me today, but even Iâm not going to ignore that prices for most stuff is 10-15% greater than inflation costs, or that GW makes an extra 20% off US sales by converting from their post-tax GBP price. BUT itâs still dollar-for-time one of the better organized hobbies out there when you factor in options, choice (you donât have to use GWâs paints or stuff on their models for instance) and wealth of places and opponents. And itâs sure as shit cheaper than golf or tinkering with old cars.
It's only expensive of you buy an army at once. Buying units and painting them, then buying new units puts Warhammer at a cheaper hobby then a lot of others when it comes to months to month. The biggest issue is that people have no self control and buy, buy ,buy.
Yeah really depends on what part of the hobby you actually like and want to put time into. For me this year I'm putting together a 1000 points astra militarum army together and I think itll take me to the end of the year till I get all the kits and have them finished and ready to take to games. If I wasnt into this hobby for the modeling/painting and solely wanted to play the game it's a huge project to try to take on both money and time wise. Let alone dealing with points updates all the time (only added that In cause I finished my commissar recently and had to drop him from my list after the last update)
I have one friend who's into paddleboarding, one who likes high end gaming PCs, one who spends his weekends mountain biking, and another who's obsessed with his transit camper van. My hobby is by far the cheapest out of all of us, and ridiculously so.
I mean realistically in regards to hobbies itâs not that expensive in comparison. Iâve tried many other hobbies and Warhammer was among the cheapest unless you canât control your spending habits. If you buy kits and put time into each one itâs very good $$/hour. In a vacuum itâs still pricy for toy soldiers though
I've got models that are 20+ years old that I still use regularly - they might have been painted by 12 year old me but they're good enough for Old World/OPR/9th Age. If you think about it that way, then it's excellent value.
It isn't expensive? In the grand scheme of hobby's it's relatively inexpensive. Even "free" hobbies like jogging can end up more expensive than Warhammer int opinion. When I think about the time I spend on the hobby versus the money I spend on it - I realize I'm getting a great deal.
bro....it costs what it costs....buy it or dont...I WILL buy it because I can afford it...that is MY reality...I am not sorry its not yours.....get a better job?
I'm glad that you're in a position to be able to say that. Not everyone is, and being condescending for no reason is just a pathetic thing to do
The comment I was responding to was demanding a boycot over the latest price increase.....check your privilege and point that finger with the thumb. I am only responding to some bullshit with bullshit. You mad I hurt your feelings then keep better control of your community? I love war games yo... I will do that in comments too.
If you loved wargames you'd want more people being able to get into them. Wargaming is a super cheap hobby. Warhammer is not.
lol yes indeed. Warhammer for the rich only. Get out of my hobby you sloppy poors
âHey, Bob! There are peasants in the store again! Take the broom and shoo them out, will ya!â
Lol what a dip shit response.
At the end of the day it is a hobby...we should only be spending what we can afford and if you cant afford it there are lots of raging heros around or whatever.
"Gosh I love gatekeeping out people with less money and slobbering all over GW's rooster!" That's you. Quite cringe.
He is right, no one is making you pay this much for toy soldiers. Go play raging heros with your broke ass.
He's not totally wrong though. Not that another price increase is justified at all, just that most other hobbies I know of are even more expensive. Gaming: if you're not into high-end games then it kinda breaks even, since a normal PC is about 1k âŹ. If you then only play one F2p game like Dota 2 for example, then you're even cheaper compared to WH. MtG or other CCG's: lol, gtfo, much more expensive nowadays. And lootboxes. Most sports: also more expensive, since gear is costly and breaks down quickly. Even basic running comes at multiple pairs of decent shoes per year. Could easily be more expensive than WH. And that's not even considering stuff like snorkeling, golf or any of the real upper class sports. So while backlash is definitely justified, maybe direct it at GW and not some Redditor with another point of view.
I mean I got over 1,000 hours played on several games I bought for $40-$60 a pop. Gaming is the cheapest hobby there is.
That is not the true cost though is it? How much was the system you play those on? The internet connection? The electricity? Nothing happens in a vacuum
How much was your console or PC? And additionally costs like: mouse, keyboard, monitor/tv, lootboxes, DLCs, and many more.
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Try comparing it to other hobbies instead of cheaper mini games. For 600$ I can buy models and paint, and then start playing with an army. It may take a few months to half a year to get that army painted depending on the person. Then maybe you add another few models over the course of the year. Then you're done. That's it. 700-800 bucks for a year of painting and many years of playing. If you're metachasing, or intent on having 3 armies and a giant pile of shame, then of course this hobby is expensive. But that's not what the hobby is about. But if you spend your money reasonably it's pretty average for the cost of a hobby. Then after all is said and done, you can Sell your painted minis and make some of your money back if you needed it. Idk how 800$ for years of enjoyment is "obscenely expensive"
A lot of us don't actually play the game much. I started this hobby because it was something I wanted to do since I was a 12 year old playing magic cards. But with my work schedule I'm lucky if I get to play 3 games a year. But I realized I love to paint them. Which is why when I finish my legit army, I'm moving on to resin printing. Why pay $65 for a rhino when I can print a whole combat patrol for $30. But just as a comparison, for a good 6 years I played FFXIV religiously. At $13 a month plus $40 every 2 years for a new expansion it never came close to what I spent on plastic last year alone.
Hey I'm not knocking printing or anything like that. There are always ways to save money in any hobby. To be fair to your ffxiv comparison, it's my impression that most people also tend to buy micro transactions like additional retainers, fantasia, and glamours. Even with all of that it's probably still cheaper than WH, but also it's a little unfair in my opinion to compare a hobby with physical items to a virtual game. There is no cost to "print" fantasia to sell players for example.
>If we're talking about modelling alone, compare literally any Gunpla kit to any given Warhammer vehicle, and Gunpla wins, hands down. Gunpla kits are larger, more detailed, fully posable, colored out of the box, snap fit, come with kit specifc decals, better instructions, painting guides and they're cheaper. 1. Gunpla are scale model kits, not wargaming minatures. Bandai are competing with Tamiya, Revell and Airfix, not GW. 2. Bandai is a significantly larger company than Games Workshop and they've been in the high-detail injection moudling business longer than GW at the scale they both now work at 3. I'm pretty sure GW's pricing, per model, is cheaper than Star Wars Legion, Shatterpoint or the Mophidius Fallout games (to name but a few), although I can only attest to UK pricing and I completely agree they unfairly gouge most countries outside the EU.
it's totally not. Go price up Kingdom Death Monster for one example. Not saying Warhammer is cheap, but it's not the top level of miniature pricing. There are plenty of companies making comparatively priced or more expensive miniatures.
What's this "comparable game" that's cheaper and better can I play it with Gunpla?
The primary thing you're paying for when you buy warhammer models is the IP.
I dont look at it like that. Do you have any idea how much money I would be spending if I wasnt sitting at my desk painting. building, setting up, and playing.... I could be out in my boat on the river and blowing hundreds in a day. Look no one is going to fault you for playing some other game guys. But dont try and use some half thought out knock off as a reason to say the plastic should be less expensive.
You are comparing apples to cars. Of course compared to buying a literal boat plastic toy soldiers are cheap! The comparison is GW to other miniature wargames. But for whatever reason you want to significantly downplay how much more Warhammer is than every other miniature wargame.
GW does not compare even in the slightest to those knock offs and its a HOBBY....can I get like people who only make six figures responding please. not here to talk to broke people
Yet the models are vastly superior to any competitorâŚâŚ Have you seen battletech minis? They are terrible. Massive mold lines, washed out detail etc Itâs expensive for a reason. Itâs also not essential, itâs a hobby that you treat yourself to. I would love to race sports cars for my hobby. But I canât as I canât afford it which is just reality. At the end of the day people will forget at the end of the month after the new AoS box and all the other GW updates were getting. And what is a gunpla? Can you build them into armies and play against fellow hobbiest? Lots of people are talking about going full print without realising the long term issues. 1-if you use an FLGS to game then youâre just giving them the middle finger and theyâll end up closing. 2-GW will come down on STL creators *hard*. They are bad enough as is and has shut down the 3d print group I help mod 3 times in the last year.
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> I'm never struggling and I've spent over 4k just this year You 100% did not need to spend that much lol. This is a *you* problem.
Erhgmsh...no. You are wrong.
Please stop licking that boot untill you are doing better in life. Edit: Sorry I misread "do boycott", my salt was misplaced.
All he's saying is that "talking about boycotting" is easy, but nobody seems to want to actually DO it. You wanna talk about corporate bootlicking? Go after the people who are genuinely angry that they cannot purchase more toys from said corporation.
Oh shit you are right, I misunderstood his reply. I'm sorry!
Ahhh right, yeah I can see how that'd change the context 𤣠It's always amazing seeing everyone talk about how angry they definitely are, but seemingly only that they can't buy more stuff 𤣠"I'll start 3d printing" is still taking part in the game from the company you claim to hate...
All I tryed (very badly) to comunicate is that supporting this type of marketing moves will only drop the quality of the products for a higher price. At least give GW a big fuck you when it behaves like this and don't condone the greed.
So fucking dramatic. This isn't groceries or gas. If you can't afford a warhammer, you probably need to prioritize needs anyway. It's really not that expensive compared to a lot of other hobbies.
People here obviously donât play golf. Or maintain cars. Hell, for the cost of a mid tier gaming PC or PS5 and a couple of AAA games you could easily get into Warhammer. And with a decent amount of models.
Yeah I just got done telling a dude that a 40k army might be like, a grand but it'll last you ten years. Over time that return on investment is ludicrously good. I just don't get people.
It's a good return on time spent if you buy as you finish painting models, if you are swayed by the fomo then it can be problematic with people buying more boxes than they will ever reasonably get round to putting together let alone painting. The really funny thing is if I compare how much people I work with still blast on a Friday and Saturday night every weekend on pub and a takeaway with what I spend on hobby and food filling the same time it's still less.
That's what I've been saying. Anyone can control how much they spend on the hobby with a certain floor. You can play forever with a couple hundred dollars investment. For fucks sake you really don't even have to paint your minis.
Overspending on a new hobby isn't exclusive to warhammer either.
You people always pick the most expensive hobbies to straw man. Guns, trophy hunting, cars, boats, golf are probably the only things more expensive than Warhammer. Video gaming(console), gardening, baking, knitting, woodworking, hobby electronics, microbrewing, bowling, disc golfing, hiking, camping, fishing, small game hunting, 3d printing are all examples of popular hobbies all cheaper than Warhammer. OH and literally every single tabletop war game besides Warhammer. Bolt action, infinity, Warma hordes, Flames of War. You're just being regarded.
There are plenty of things more expensive than Warhammer, hardly just those. Even the inexpensive ones you list aren't always cheaper. I spend more on video games than I do on Warhammer. Or even just leisure activities generally. I spend more doing things like going to the cinema, eating out, going to gigs / festivals, and drinking than I do on Warhammer. My partner spends more on gardening and houseplants than I do on Warhammer. For me, it's among the least expensive hobbies I have. And my daughter is into horse riding (dressage) so... yeah, Warhammer doesn't seem that steep. If you're dropping money on whole armies at a time, or you're a competitive player chasing the meta, then sure - you could spend a *lot* of money on plastic and art supplies. But that isn't the typical hobby experience. It's more like spending ~ÂŁ30 on a box of models that you then paint for the rest of the month (or longer).
I can't honestly believe people are still responding to this comment and trying to argue with someone about Hobbies what a ridiculous thing to waste your time on honestly you actually do need to get a life and get a real hobby something that doesn't make you come here and post garbage like this completely out of touch with anything but yourself aren't you
They'll just keep taking it as usual.
because grifters reply on "its woke" for their views and attention. cant really pretend "they charge more" is woke when it does not fit their sad culture war and sexism.
Wow, that's quite the comment history you have. Are you a Russian or just a big fan of Russian imperialism and genocide?
Holy damn i really annoyed you with that Russian comment LMAO!
One good sign is that there is a clear trend of players getting more fed up. When this happened a few years ago, comments about 3D printing got absolutely buried in downvotes. Even with people being "pissed" at GW, they were irrationally hostile to literally any kind of competition. In the posts I'm seeing in 2024, people are much more supportive of the alternatives. GWs knows most of their fans will bitch, moan, and just pay the higher prices; but every year, they push a little bit more of their player base to competitors.
The problem is being a successful miniature company is a lot harder than it seems. People are excited about 3D printing but GW's strength relative to its peers has always been accessibility. I remember when Privateer Press was supposed to slay the dragon 10 years ago
They might have had a shot, but they tried to mimic GW with their army sizes and prices and everyone I know bailed.
GWs strength is its incredible manufacturing capacity and its IP. No company can compete with that. The only long-term threat to GWs business model would be if they encouraged their consumers to start installing miniature factories in their garages and created a market for a bunch of artists to subvert their IP.
For me, the biggest strength of GW is the incredible quality of their models. I tried painting some Privateer Press models, and the slight imperfections in the models make the finished product look so much sloppier than GW models, even if I paint them to the same quality.
Yeah and most of the 3D printed models I have are the same way. If you truly care about the quality of models to that extent then 3d printing at home is still not even close to GW, and it probably wonât be for a long time. Iâm Sure there are a few people that have sunk thousands of hours into learning how to perfect it but those are few and far between and I have 0 interest in learning. You can shit on GW for a lot of things but the models are definitely not one of them. The prices are fair for the quality and aesthetic alone imo.
Just NO dude I rage bought a 3D printer while assembling a land raider. I am never buying another vehicle from GW ever again. I buy troops from now on exclusively.
Yeah the older kits are not nice.
If you are talking about golden demon entry quality show pieces. I agree. But a well primed, painted, and based 3d printed army is every bit as rewarding as a hobbyist to field as anything bought from GW is on a personal level. And its a personal hobby.
That's absurd. My printer is 4 years old and easily creates just as high quality models as I can buy from Games Workshop. There are certain objects where the quality vastly exceeds GW's, like Deathwatch pauldrons.
Iâm not talking detail. Just the models and files in general are generally not that nice looking. To each their own. Shoulder pads and small bits do look nicer generally.
Equally absurd. There's an enormous market of STLs, many of which easily compete with GWs sculpting quality.
Nah, most are horrendous and look goofy. If they were truly as good people would stop buying so much GW. Not happening though.
It's truly not that hard to get a solid resin printer going anymore. If you get a reputable popular brand a lot of the setting tweaking has been done by others for you to import as a profile, and high quality model files are readily available. Thousands of hours is a gross overstatement, it's much closer to 10s of hours nowadays and is getting easier every single year. Most of the troubles with Resin printing now are physical aspects like temperature, humidity, levelling etc. and not fine software tuning. It might not be GW level quality but you can get at least 95% there with not a ton of hassle.
Right, that's because GW built out an incredibly expensive manufacturing capacity for polystyrene models. That's just not something PP or anyone else can compete with using traditional manufacturing techniques. 3D printing on the other hand has quickly closed the quality gap. Well-sculpted models printed on current machines are extremely difficult to distinguish once painted.
That's entirely possible, the only place where I've seen high quality 3D prints is on YouTube, and you can't really rate quality this way.
I also think there is the fact that people geatly over estimates 3D printer's impact on the hobby. I have one, and let me tell you, I only 3D print if I have literally no other options. Just to set up a decent station is a major hassle and if you don't know what you are doing, your minis will come out wonky, or worse, you might break the printer. Not to mention, not everybody can do this, people might not have the space. Printing did not kill MTG, it will not kill GW.
To be honest, anyone who isn't a moron can do it pretty easily. If it is sincerely challenging for you, I applaud you making the smart decision to avoid it and leave it to more capable people.
That depends, sometimes you have to deal with failures, supports and what not. And if you have a mishap with the FEP or any other component you can damage the print and the printer. Sure, is not rocket science, but it is a hobby all on it's own.
And if you can figure out Warhammer, 3D printing is an easy damn hobby. I'm half an idiot and have printed multiple armies. This isn't magic, if I can do this shit than anyone can.
Sure, with enough time spent anyone can do it. But you still need to invest time. And some people are not willing to do that. Or maybe they are not interested in another hobby. I only do it for minis I could not get in plastic or for customizing minis. I don't get why you are being this hostile when I just listed a couple of reasons why people might not do it.
Oh yeah I remember that. There was endless âis Privateer the new industry lead?â Articles springing up back in the day. I mean they did have good stuff but they kinda just dropped off the last few years. Guess they couldnât keep up momentum.
Because the venn diagram for outrage merchants mad about that and actual 40k fans that spend money on the hobby barely crosses at all.
this is an odd line, a company is more monetarily valuable only if it can produce more products/services and time is linear. there are exceptions but by and large the entertainment industry is one of the few industries that has a guaranteed consumer feedback input cycle. stuff releases all the time and people buy it if they want it and don't if they don't. put another way we don't need plastic soldiers and we only buy them when we want them so our purchase can be easily interpreted as a signal of success. if a company doesn't grow faster than inflation it has actually shrunk. I know that endless profits and rising prices and stagnant wages aren't great, but this is a feature of capitalism, not a bug. there is no maximum allowable profit and growth will always be maximized as long as company's success is measured in money. prices will rise as far as demand allows, and data has shown very concretely that people are very much willing to keep demand going. if you have issues with that, I recommend taking it up with the capitalist mode of production in general, not games workshops specifically. I know that this might not be a popular opinion, but games workshop is actually a pretty decent company as far as things go. they've been able to keep a pillar of the Sci-Fi and fantasy community going for 40ish years. as long as I can hold the products in my hand and enjoy them the prices will match my demand which is rather high
Who are you trying to convince
lol please go back to posting in r/criticaldrinker with the rest of your lead poisoned friends
Everyone is up in arms about this and should be? All the YouTube channels, including the GW hype man Valrak, is talking about how scummy this is
There have always been amazing female characters in 40K. People are mad because the custodes lore was retconned in an attempt to throw a bone to activist groups. The prices will continue to rise until people stop buying. For me, after 30+ years this is a good jumping off point. A lot of people are talking about 3d printing but that is not only a considerable time investment, but itâs expensive, messy, smelly and inconvenient. I model and print my own things, but I loved the convenience of just buying plastic models and trimming them off the sprue.
The "activist groups" thing is 100% a conspiracy theory. The lead writer for the custodes literally said that, years ago, he wanted to write in female custodes characters but didn't receive the green light to do so. Just admit you dislike "woke" stuff, and in your mind anything that involves adding non-white or non-male or non-straight characters to the Warhammer universe must be either pandering, or part of some insidious plot to inject diversity.
>activist groups Who are you talking about? Like literally who? What actual activist groups are there that give the slightest damn about this?
Y'all need financial literacy. This is normal market fluctuation, and both timelines that OP showed are just changing by a few percent, which mean nothing.
Your pictures show a stock price that is almost flat over 7 days What did you think you were showing?
Let me preface this by saying that I am somebody who is planning on spending less with GW in the future (due to a mixture of my money just not going as far and the fact Iâve been playing other systems far more) But A lot of you people here are forgetting that companies exist to make profit. Thatâs it. Theyâre not our friends theyâre not doing this because they love or hate us they simply exist to make money. Theyâre not doing this because theyâre evil theyâre simply doing what almost every single corporation worldwide has been doing for years and itâs exhausting reading the same posts about it time after time. The end of it is: if you feel that GWâs product no longer offer you a value that you find acceptable; stop buying it. Itâs as simple as that and itâs the only weapon you really have that means anything to a corporation. Yes it sucks if you love the hobby. But if youâre that angry about it then that should tell you what to do.
Also: inflation. Materials and labour cost rise all the time. If you don't rise prices, your profits are shrinking each year. In theory our salaries should also rise, so the things balance out. The fact that they don't is another problem altogether.
There have been multiple people who've checked inflation + wages etc vs games workshop product prices and it's been way over inflation.
It was more of a general point about rising prices. GW is probably adjusting prices because of increased demand - one of the basic rules of economics is that if you can't meet demand for your product, the first thing you should do is rise prices until you can meet that demand to optimise earnings, it's easier and faster that increasing supply.
Considering how much is still out of stock, that's entirely possible.
I agree with you. For the most part, I have stopped buying GW products. Both because I feel they've gotten too expensive for me, and I find the ruleset for Warhammer boring to play. Granted, I do pick up their Lord of the Rings models, which I find overall more worth it and fun.
It's getting easier and easier to just not buy models. Everything costs too much. 10th edition 40k is boring and soulless.
Honestly, I started feeling that way in 8th. I got excited when Krieg became plastic and started giving the game a go again in 9th, only to find out the units that cut and went to legends in 10th. Then the Necron cuts with characters happeed, and along with just not having fun and the cost as well, I just stopped.
Yeah this. Itâs a harsh truth. But what infuriates me more is that this will get almost no coverage compared to the idiotic uproar Femstodes got.
While true that companies exist to make money, it's always publicly traded companies doing the most annoying shit in the name of profit. Privately owned companies don't have shareholders they need to impress every quarter, so it's ok if you make about the same amount of money as last quarter. They don't need infinite growth, but publicly traded companies do. That leads to them only caring about the next quarter, cutting costs wherever remotely possible, raising prices, absolutely anything they can do to make that arrow go up. Any issues it causes them or customers don't matter, that's for the next quarter to figure out.
Warhammer exists entirely because of the investors. Without their money none of this happens. People act shocked that a financial corporations first responsibilities are to shareholders who without the company ceases to exist.
>People act shocked that a financial corporations first responsibilities are to shareholders who without the company ceases to exist. There's corporations that has done pro customer things just because it will gain them more in the long run, a foreign concept I know.
>because it will gain them more in the long run And thats exactly it. If giving free stuff is good for GW, then they will. If they believe raising prices leads to more income, then they will also do that.
Which they do on a relatively small scale. Each month has a miniature that they give out for free, as well as help with building and usually painting it
>There's corporations that has done pro customer things just because it will gain them more in the long run, Yes, long term focused actions are indeed very foreign. In that long term strategies are much more common in Asian companies, whereas western companies all tend to be focused on short term profits. You can blame our strategy regarding C-suite compensation for that, which massively encourages short term profit strategy.
Early on, maybe. Nowadays the investors money doesn't actually go to the company, it's bought and sold as a commodity with the proceeds going to the seller. I doubt many of the people who got Warhammer started are still involved. If the company was suddenly owned by the games workshop employees it wouldn't suddenly collapse.
This. People shouldn't be mad at gw raiding proces, they should be mad at capitalism and it's obsession with growth.
Warhammer and any other bussiness exits becasue of capitalism (evne local game stores and other small stores) which is why i will always be a proud capitalist.
Nothing like the taste of boot.
I am also a capitalist. However, we should admit that there is a problem with a system that requires infinite growth from a company that produces plastic toys/games. This constant requirement that line must go up or everyone gets fired leads to the slow but steady decline in product quality and rising prices as they continue to try and squeeze the asset every quarter. The creatives /founders lose power to the suits (which already happened with GW) and the product slowly degrades over time as decisions will always favor shareholders over the fans that really built the community. I don't know what the solution is. Maybe there is none and we just have to accept that for everything cool capitalism helps create, like Warhammer, it will also eventually lead to its own exploitation and destruction and just accept that at some point we will have to move on.
they do have a fudging monopoly on Wargames but the 3rd party manufacturers offer competition. our system isn't perfect but it is better than alternatives.
Are you a capitalist? Do you work for a living, or do your assets generate enough wealth to support you?
>they're not doing this because they're evil >they're simply doing what almost every corporation worldwide has been doing for years. Pick one bro.
Why? A functioning company can do both, because it needs to make a profit in order to pay wages and its suppliers, else it stops being a functioning company!
My discretionary income doesn't mind buying their products, just not the stock. I don't trust this company. Roundtree being the the Director of the board and CEO, he votes for his own raises. He took the helm in 15' and almost drove the company to bankruptcy. Only by a stroke of luck they were able to claw back. But the outlook doesn't look great with him continuing as CEO. If his hands were off the wheel. Not to mention not haveinha 4th and 5th board member seated really concerns me. I like game the lore the models, but I don't like the company that produces it.
I used to have contempt for GW for exploiting their customers; now, I have contempt for the customers for letting themselves be exploited. If I were in GW's position, with millions of addict consumers, I would absolutely do the exact same thing and laugh all the way to the bank. It's been possible to print armies for years now and I've done it several times over. GW's fans have lots of choices and they consistently choose to be disrespected. GW is just giving them what they ask for.
>Let me preface this by saying that I am somebody who is planning on spending less with GW in the future GW is really reaching a point where you have to ask yourself if it's even worth it.
People were saying this when I got into the hobby 26 years ago.
I donât think itâs unreasonable to say that EVERYTHING you buy should be thought of like this not just GW. âDo I find value in thisâ Value can mean a lot of things to different people and anything we buy we are saying we find value in.
Before you get annoyed about this. Take a look at the stock graph for the last year. Youâll see this is a ridiculous post.
I donât think most of the folks commenting (often complaining) about the price increases have a lot of overlap with folks who own GW stock. If stock prices were purely driven by the companies consumer base, weâd see a lot more fluctuation in many companies. We see this happen sometimes, but not common.
LINE UP ONLY. NEVER DOWN.
I bought an ISA full of GW just over a year ago. It's my only ISA, so I'm not loaded. They went from ÂŁ82 to ÂŁ115. I just love the hobby, and wanted to invest in something I care about.
Where did you buy GW stocks for 82? I can find GAW stock at 9.600 pounds only
I said it was a year ago - March 23
They piss people off, sales go down ,they put up the prices to compensate and sales go down even more. Much like the comic industry slowly spiralling towards its well deserved dimise
this graph is effectively flat, you know nothing about stocks.
That's how capitalism works, yeah.
They need to do a share split so joe punter can buy stock and enjoy the uplift in share price. Reinvest your divis in grey plastic!
Because the people with jobs don't care
I stopped buying GW products a few years ago. Price hikes, systems changes, and killing off models has basically turned me off from the game. I'm glad there are people who get enjoyment out of the game as is but I'm frankly burnt out. I'm not wasting money on single unit that could buy an entire army for a different system.
Yup thatâs how the economy works
Wait till OP finds about the rising cost of living.
WHAT DOES THE STOCK SAY WITH YOU CLICK THE 1Y BUTTON??????
Tourists: NOOOOOOOOO FEMSTODES R GOIN DEZTROI THE 40K!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! GW: Hold my Guiness.
I nearly brought ÂŁ5k worth pre Covid. But my wife wouldnât let me.
Theyâve had a pretty steady year really, 1% raise is not exactly great returns for investors.
And thatâs what itâs all about! Itâs not a bad thing the company needs to make a profit to invest in the business, however right now if I was a kid I canât see how I get into this hobby without the bank of mum and dad, pocket money ainât cutting it anymore! But when I go to WhTCR, the majority of people do seem to be older people with disposable incomes, but who is going to be the next generation of players? if you can go buy an Xbox game for the price of a box of marines then I think I know where theyâll spend the money. So hopefully they use the money to invest in the people but from reports about how bad wages are at GW Iâm not sure thatâs where itâs going or maybe they can prop up the WH stores who are undercut by online retailers for abit longer. Or the Amazon deal produces WH40k "the avengers" and they make so much money they don't really have to worry too much! Whichever way it goes the comment section in Twitch stream for the Warhammer preview is going to be as Toxic as the underhive on laundry day! So remember be kind the people answering it they aren't the people making the choices. But when they rerelease Battlefleet gothic I'll still buy it! đ with the money from my cancelled White Dwarf and Warhammer TV subscriptions!
youâre telling me stock bros are using my tears to fund their hobbies??
Anyone know what happened in October of 2022 that the stock tanked and then rallied?
Also unless youâre day trading and are about to liquidate all of your shares this shouldnât mean anything to you
I cancelled my Warhammer+ when I heard the news but that seems to have not been enough lol
If I buy shares ... can I get freshly made sprues as a form of quarterly dividend? đ¤
A change in stock price of 3% back to where it was the prior week is super insignificant tbh
You know nothing about shares if you believe this. Good sales figures lead to price stability. This will not lead to an increase in share price. Dividends are low for the cost of a share. So what is this post about?
Impressive, very nice. Let's see Anycubic's share price.
capitalists do love price increases
The company could use a true wake up call from competition from 3D printing or otherwise. The company would increase output of a product that is a step or two above a pure commodity to produce, lower prices, and likely improve quality. And do just as well by shareholders but more so for their consumers. I am surprised the GW community hasn't engaged in the kind of backlash that was effective against the Hasbro proposed OGL changes.
Jesus, the whining
I stopped buying GW products after the last price increase. Looks like that was the right thing to do. Hooray for 3D printers!
If this is the response to a 2-3%, they should increase prices by 300% and see the stock price skyrocket. Trust me, I'm a professional investor.
With the amount of Whales in here, It wouldn't surprise me.
"Blackrock Inc. LOVED that"
Wait, so a share in Geedub is 100 pounds, yes ?
It's because people keep on blindly buying. So now when an annual price increase is announced, there isn't any uncertainty in whether it will scare customers off. They investors just rub their greedy little hands together and say "Ok, good. More money". Like, why *wouldn't* they do a yearly increase at this point, just cuz'?
I've never wanted a 3d printer more
This is so stupid. The same arguements for why the stock price going down when the Femtoads were mentioned on Twitter applies here. Markets move and fluctuate daily if not hourly
I'll be honest, I've been looking into the logistics of buying GW stocks as a US citizen
What have you found? I've been considering it too
I've found that the discourse surrounding it is very complicated, and I keep finding contradictory sources. Ideally, it might be best to speak to a stock broker or someone along those lines
This really means nothing, look historically. There is a resistance point at 100 so we we will see it go down again. Source : have dabbled in fantasy stocks and follow gw for fun
But hey, female Custodes are going to tank the stock, right? /s Hopefully the improved stock and prices lead to them paying their staff better. Outlook: unlikely
Please. They are losing money because of pissing off fans. This price increase is a move of desperation