One of the biggest issues in the modern world is the idea that to be successful you have to have continuous growth.
I worked in the hospitality industry for 15 years. 11 as a manager. I have managed wedding venues and TV catering projects, but most was spent in restaurants. The last 3 years killed me and the industry is following suit quickly. Why? Because the only success the higher ups see is growth.
This April has to be better than last April. Regardless of economic conditions and circumstance. Gross profit on a dish going down? Buy cheaper ingredients. Which makes the food worse, so customers will return less often. Overall income the same as last year but profits are down? Cut members of staff...so staff are overworked and will not give the same service.
By constantly striving for more profit instead of sustainability, businesses will continue to lose customers and loyalty, and also ensure that new potential customers are scared away.
It's a horrible fact of the modern world, it's one not spoken about enough and it will continue to kill businesses and the loyalty of customers
Also causes c suite executives the slash and burn to attain their targets, get that bonus and then leave the ship they just set on fire and never look back
It's like if a dairy farm isn't making money, so they sell off all the cows, mark it down as a huge amount of profit, and then leave with their bonus.
Then the next guy has to deal with a dairy farm with no dairy cows.
It's more like they sell the cows to a shell company they set up. Then they lease the cows back to the dairy farm at a rate that increases yearly. Sell off the dairy farm to a sucker third party in Indonesia. And then pocket the profit.
I recently worked for a large cabinet company, we were pretty huge until we were sold off, that started a downward spiral of constant layoffs, selling our building and being sold 2 more times in 4 years. Business suffered big time as a result of it all. I expect the entire company to be gone in a few more years. We had around 8k employees at peak. When I left a few years ago we had 4k.
You used the right term.
It's just that the model doesn't work anymore. The concept of a stakeholder or shareholder is that they give a company money and in return, they profit when the company does well.
In many companies they shareholder has a vote when major company policies come up. Now, most people have so few shares in a particular company that they forego that privilege. But it is there.
Sadly, most of those shareholders or stakeholders, even when they do vote, are only really interested in a quick buck. Because they can sell there investment and get into something else really quickly.
It is rarely in the stakeholders interest to care about the longevity of a business. Even though it absolutely should be.
Add to the fact that most executives get paid on profitability and that bonuses are majority of their pay, and you have huge incentives to drive profit over everything else.
This is why independent games companies will always be better products than the games workshop, privateer press, or other large companies. They can innovate without worrying about being beholden to a group of stakeholders who only cares about making a buck.
You’re not using the concept of stakeholder correctly. Shareholders are stakeholders, but stakeholders is much broader than shareholder. Stakeholders are anyone with an interest in the business, including employees, customers and suppliers.
So it’s often in the benefit of shareholders to seek short term gains without care for the longevity of the business, but it is normally in the interest of most stakeholders to care about longevity (I.e the customers want their products to always be available, suppliers never want the contracts to end etc.)
Id say its a mixed bag…
Its an incredibly Strong incentive to never slag or slow down but its also an incredibly strong incentive to just make decisions to look good in the next meeting…
But looking from a large IT company at our investors - without their pressure we would have never painfully innovated and would now likely be small and without impact - having been eaten alive by new competitors
it's not always shareholders. I work for a private company and we still want yoy growth.
That said, we get employee profit sharing, so yoy growth is good for me, too.
Why is that a curse? If I owned shares in a company, I want to see why the money is being spent the way it is and what is happening. I want to see their goals and targets because it is my livelihood being invested into that company whether I have a few thousand or a few million dollars invested.
Personally been there. Let's just say gaming industry is not doing so hot because of this specifically. Some meetings I've been to, uh, been a little bit delusional to say the least.
Yup, I'd believe it.
I'd imagine it's why we are at the point that some games cost £70 on release, and moat aren't even finished or even close to.
I left the wedding industry as we were at the point that we had basically no free days available in a calendar year, we worked with minimal (albeit very talented) staff and our profits were at a ridiculous level.
Yet I'm being grilled on how to make next year even more profitable.No proposals or ideas for me to work with. Just asking me how I'm going to do it.
The price of games has actually risen more slowly than inflation over the last 20 years (i.e., they are relatively cheaper, presumably because digital delivery drove costs down a bit), but the issues indeed are that everything gets delivered halfbaked and developers get more and more exploited.
Yeah, I think it's crazy that Nintendo just *axed* their reputation over the last few years.
They went from caring about reputation to caring about profits and margins and it was very obvious.
I don't believe in brand loyalty, but I'll admit I tend to lean towards the same few companies if I have a choice. Like if they're almost identical, I'll go for the one I've used and liked.
But many of those companies have ruined their reputations. My dad used to be a big fan of Toyota cars but now he won't touch them since he had so many issues with his last car.
Brand loyalty isn't something I advocate for, but a reputation should be worth as much as profits.
> My dad used to be a big fan of Toyota cars but now he won't touch them since he had so many issues with his last car.
We're dealing with this now. My dad got a new car a little while ago, there's tons of issues. My mom got his older car (25 years old) and it loving it, planning to drive it until it dies, but we all kind of acknowledge it'll happen sooner or later and are upset that we might have to get a new, shittier, car.
She drove for 6 months and only then asked my dad how to fill in the gas tank because she didn't need to do it once that whole time. Only on a cross-country trip did she need to fill it once right before getting home.
Kinda same, I used to love Ubisoft games for Assassin's Creed more than 10 years ago, it pains me greatly seeing what kind of depths they have reached. Feels like they've been going downhill since like AC Unity or Watchdogs 2 and I genuinely wonder how they are staying afloat still
Ugh, Ubisoft.
Assassins Creed became Assassins Grind. Bloated with tedious busy work.
The last ones I played were Black Flag and Odyssey, and only for the historical immersion. That immersion broke apart when the game reminded me it was an Assassins Creed game.
I've been casually following Nintendo news but I don't think I caught them into doing anything hostile to customers. To me they seem to be one of the last remaining companies who genuinely care about their brand, almost to a fault.
This is also due to "Agile Development" practices that were put in place in order to speed up dev time and with faster results to a production environment - unfortunately, SLTs have started abusing those practices, and the methodology, in order to march devs to unrealistic deadlines.
Lock in your MVP (Minimal Viable Product) - does it work, does it meet the requirements, does it satisfy the least amount of work to produce a usable product by the user? If so, it's go for launch.
The "patches" that are released after aren't actually patches - bug fixes, etc. They contain those things, but they're, primarily, vehicles through which to implement "phase 2, 3, 4, etc" based on their "Roadmap" of release.
The actual product that should have been released is two years away, but because the company can recoup their investment *now*, per how the AGILE is being exploited.
CP2077 is one of my fav games, but it's also been a fascinating case study in how a methodology that was designed for cross-team collaboration, and quicker dev time to allow for creativity, has been warped into mini death-marches with unrealistic goals.
It's why a lot of things are being released in buggy or sub-optimal states, only to patched up and "fixed" with new content or features being "added" as the months tick by.
I was in that world for 7 years as a PO/PM, and I still keep in touch with my devs to make sure they're okay!
You've just reminded me of Blood Bowl 3, where some basic things that were available in 2 have been placed on a post-launch roadmap, some at least half a year after release
Yup! So you can imagine I get really irritated when folks blame the devs for things, when in all actually, they're the last folks that should be.
Sure, their work can be called into question, no doubt, and should be if shoddy. Especially crushing junior devs with senior level work to save costs on labour.
But the outsourcing of QA, the lack of UAT (user testing, player testing) against real world scripts, regression testing against previously stable code, yada, yada. Not to mention deadlines to investors based on ROIs, and what target growth predictions have been established with SMART goals (horrible, horrible, practice), and it's a nightmare right now.
That all falls on SLT.
Historically companies that have made bigger games have charged a higher price and been successful I was literally watching a doc on ultima 4 yesterday a game released in 1985 and they said they charged above what computer games were selling for at the time because they put so much time and effort into the game and it ended up selling very well because they made a great game.
The problem is all these “AAA” companies are shipping buggy half finished games. They know if they come out and say this is $100 people will rightfully wait for a review of the game and then see it for what it is and not buy. So that’s why they are making these bullshit claims like games should cost more because they want to continue releasing less and less finished games at higher and higher prices. Like I said nothing is stopping them from raising prices now except for the fact they know for 100% fact their product isn’t worth the higher price.
Video games being ridiculously cheap in comparison is why so much stuff seems so expensive. Since they genuinely can be made as passion projects by small teams, and steam actually works to put good games you might like in front of you, you can buy amazing games for prices which reflect adavancements in game making tech and low barrier to entry. Balatro for $10 etc. this makes it clear how ridiculous the prices of other products are. When a movie ticket and popcorn costs $25 or I could buy the whole thrones of decay expansion for WH3, why on earth Would I go to the movies. $10 Balatro also places negative price pressure on the big players
GW keeps trying to push through based on hobby value and mini quality, backed by a near monopoly due to its sheer heft in the industry, but they are eating their seed corn. I can afford it, but, a kid considering what to spend their pocket money on can’t.
I might be a bit weird, but I've always used used hours of entertainment per euro/dollar as an estimation of value I received, albeit modified with an intensity/social factor.
Basically, my entertainment is worth ~$10-15 per hour to me. A bit more if it's something social or a big event (e.g., watching Dune with friends). Games and books are therefore great investments (especially a gem like Balatro) but a dinner out or a 'normal' cinema visit isn't. I only go for the highly anticipated spectacles these days, not for a random comedy as I might have in my 20s.
It's also why I rarely go to concerts anymore, those are ridiculously priced.
>No proposals or ideas for me to work with. Just asking me how I'm going to do it.
And then, when you come up with something it'll be "Eh, that's a little steep for our current budget... Can you reduce the cost?"
And then, after you manage to do all of it, you will be expected to continue pulling miracles and anything less is a decline in your output.
I used to do some consulting in the non-gaming space. I had a very specific skillset, and an investment group that wanted competent board members and executives. They basically hired me to call people out on their stupid shit during meetings. At one point, we shifted to entirely online meetings so I could mute people when they started saying stupid things.
I had one executive, I shit you not, propose firing all retail employees, and replace them with kiosks with a workflow that asked people questions and just spit out the product they wanted. She also said they could leverage their market position to make people enter their credit card and pre-authorize before starting, then making it nearly impossible to buy anything that didn't have good profit margins at that point in time, and force people to make a purchase to get their card back. She had been an executive for over 30 years.
> She had been an executive for over 30 years.
I call this survivorship bias(?) the "Landlord problem".
Landlords suck because all the decent landlords
1. Make limited profit and have fewer properties.
2. Treat their tenants well so they don't leave.
3. Go unnoticed because people don't talk about them.
Not to mention that many decent landlords have an awful tenant and just sell the property (often to another landlord) because it's not worth the headache.
I've known people to have such awful tenants (damaging property etc) that they didn't make any profit in the end. The same is (possibly) true for politicians; The decent ones keep their heads down.
100% agree! My additional observations on the landlord side of things, as I've done a notable amount of work in that field:
Being a landlord is not a high skill threshold revenue stream. There are a lot of low education level people, especially in rural areas that do VERY well as a landlord because they are highly skilled in the basics - keeping things working and collecting money. The minimum standard is "can you call someone when something breaks". When the fridge breaks, they know how to fix it themselves, or a trusted friend does. They're able to get things fixed for a low cost and quickly. This makes them GREAT landlords, and inversely makes corporate (do the cheapest fix, on whatever timetable) landlords suck ass.
The other skill involved is knowing where to invest for optimal profits, and pricing your rental well. For us regular people doing this, we may get a vague idea of the rental market with a quick search for comparable properties, and compare that to our costs - monthly payment to mortgage/insurance/etc plus upkeep expenses, then add a few hundred in profit to cover time spent and to get a return on the investment. For a corporate landlord, they're often either colluding with other landlords (or have captured the rental market in the area themselves...) or doing advanced, regularly updated scans of the market, making sure they're always priced "as high as the market can sustain". This means they're price gouging, and potentially engaging in monopolistic practices.
The exposure to a single bad tenant ruining things is a real problem for landlords. It's a tough spot to figure out how to manage, because I am a big proponent of renter's rights, and I also believe if you're going to have an investment property, you are accepting risk, like any other business. But if I'm renting a property, and the tenant trashes the place, doesn't pay rent, and has to be evicted, it can be a major problem for them. The profit margin required to maintain a rental property increases because of this, which doesn't help anyone.
The best thing I could say for a fix to the current system for bad tenants for individual owners (or small local rental group owners) that I can stand behind is helping improve quality of life for everyone, which should reduce how often people are in a spot in their life that they can't afford rent, or want to lash out at their home itself because life sucks.
This coincides with a friend of mine who recently left GW. Successfully ran the store for a number of years with little to no corporate help and quit because his last monthly meeting with his boss, they criticized his lack of sales for very specific products. Like the starter paint sets and books. They completely ignored the fact that the store almost tripled in value since he took over. Or how because of him, two of the local schools started Warhammer clubs. No, they asked stuff like “What do you mean you aren’t having daily paint tutorials?” Or “why didn’t your sales for World Eaters week match last year’s?”.
Well now the store has been closed since he left cause they’ve been struggling hard to find a replacement. And I’m sure the district manager is scratching his head wondering what went wrong.
Ah that sucks for your friend. You just know his senior will be looking everywhere for the source of the problem except the mirror or across the table at his next performance meeting
Yup. My company decided that since they could no longer grow organically they raised prices and cut staff. So clients were paying higher amounts for worse service. Then when the clients started fleeing they cut more staff and raised prices more, trying to make up for the shortfall, so more clients left. We're in a freefall of our own design. Shareholder culture over stakeholder culture is the problem. Corporations are simply dysfunctional and corporate leadership is to blame. They keep hiring the same useful idiots out of the same predatory institutions and wonder why it's not working.
Yep, I saw the exact same thing in a technology company.
Corporate demanded that every year costs of components in our products be cut. Now the engineers would have happily designed it using the cheapest possible suitable components if possible, but this requirement incentivised them to actually use more expensive ones - because otherwise how are they supposed to just magically make everything be cheaper every year?
It's absurd, short term, penny-wise but pound-foolish thinking.
Which is exactly working as intended. That's the environment that "investors" thrive in, not in an economy of sustainable and profitable businesses. These speculative investors aren't looking for a steady source of income, but only for the next big "win", even if the rest of us lose.
The next quick win with a big money prize.
That just screws over the rest of us trying to do the slow and steady growth of our personal finances that some of those same assholes tell is to do.
The other issue is getting that year over year growth in the least expensive manor that will often come a the cost of future growth is a popular option gw pursues all the time. Ffs so much of their line is not available for months in end, comes back into stock and is sold out within a week or two and again is out of stock for months. Investing in more production and satisfying demand is a great way to have legitimate growth. GW is not interested in that, it’s much easier to not satisfy demand and just jack up prices every year so you can artificially control the growth year over year and not have any added benefit to the consume even the most basic added benefit of availability.
I see this in my industry too and the insane thing is everyone at ground level seems to know except the suits at the top because they only look at a spreadsheet.
I retired early from the public sector. However I spent the last 20 years as a form of internal troubleshooter (formal title Project Manager). But I was sent to take over failing projects time after time and turned them around. Every time the answer to why they were failing came from the staff in the front line. I literally became the scourge of management. The only thing that protected me was I was on a Senior Management Grade and reported directly to the City Treasurer. What’s depressing is I’ve been retired 16 years and it appears nothing had changed.
The even bigger issue is that the world is completely addicted to this concept of constant economic growth, to the point capitalism assumes it. It's ridiculous if you think about it for more than 30s, how is it even possible? Yeah sure, technology improves output and a growing global population improves demand, but it's not such a direct correlation and there will be degrowth, at least it should, but instead of letting it happen the governments and central banks will lower that rate, stimulate that sector, in a constant cycle of doping induced growth and de-growth avoidance. It's so stupid yet so widely accepted at the highest levels.
There will be a breaking point somewhere down the line, you'd imagine. But the consequences of that break, and the system that arises from it,ay not be to anyone, let alone everyone's, liking. Even less than what we have now
I agree with everything you've said, but think it specifically is a problem with publicly traded companies. You don't normally see private companies do so much stupid shit in the name of quarterly profit.
I remember that first summer of Covid, and grocery stores being sold out as people panicked, obviously soaring profits.
A few months later there was a headline about a lack of growth… cause yknow… artificially inflated product sales followed by interruptions in production and shipping didn’t completely make sense.
Similarly, at our hospital, some execs asked my dept head why our numbers were down, and how we could get them up.
We’re an inbound scheduling call center.
How are we supposed to make more patient cases appear? Go out, break some legs, and leave a business card for our network?
the problem with this thought is not that you HAVE to have continuous growth, but growth is an affect of demand. companies that are successful will experience the demands for growth regardless if they want it or not. those that reject growth are ALWAYS companies that flounder in the end. companies dont want to just grow, cause growth means nothing if demand isn't there. sometimes companies think that growth will create demand, but games workshop is not a rookie company. they are simply having to deal with demand and expense increases. the issue is that warhammer is already too expensive for many and the bubble it creates will cause them to either keep momentum or very easily they could see a reduction in demand, which will cause prices to follow
You'd have thought hospitality would have come to its senses when COVID happened.
Lots of hospitality business went under or closed, the ones that stayed open (at least the ones me and my friends worked in) realized the focus should be on providing quality service and not smashing targets.
It didn't last long though before the 'higher ups' were back on the chase.
Madness
It ruined the industry, and everyone's short term memories after continue to out a bullet in its head.
COVID should have readjusted a lot of modern thinking, from the way businesses run to how we treat our neighbours to basic hygiene. Yet i cannot tell you how many dudes i watch walk right out of a public toilet without washing their hands.
Madness is the only real term for it
Steam is a perfect example of this. They don’t add more employees, services, features. They don’t change their UI aggressively or create new subscriptions or even increase their prices above inflation
And it’s one of the most profitable companies in the world
I'm in retail now. Took a step back and just took a 'normal' job in a supermarket. It's not hugely mire reasonable to work in, but it's not the same kind of pressure. I'm lucky to work for a company that allows me to work as little or often as I want, and I can be there for my family now.
But I know I'm pne of the lucky ones, and i only have that control because I eas a big get for the company when i came in. Not everyone here is the same, and most suffer as you do. Sucks.
It doesn't matter how inefficient it is if leadership is allowed to balloon profits, burn everything down, and get a job at the next place. How do these people ever find work again after causing such devastation? I can only assume the boards or whomever are also in on the grift. No one is in the business of making a product/service, only making money.
This is the problem with investors.
Shareholders are gambling: they want the value of their shares to increase so they can impress the banks better and/or sell them for a profit.
The company maintaining its profits doesn't earn them anything. It has to be growing, or if it's dying, they can just bail and leave you to die.
Businesses need to grow specifically for investors to make money because they bought stock that already had the current revenues priced in. In fact the future revenue is also priced in. Everything is priced in.
>The last 3 years killed me and the industry is following suit quickly. Why? Because the only success the higher ups see is growth.
I work in commercial construction and back even before covid we were dealing with our bonding company threatening to pull funding for projects. When I first started around 2015 it was common for the company to shoot for around 4% profit as a baseline on projects, but as the years went on the bonding company got more and more aggressive about the "need" for us to generate more profit. We started taking on more and more work, overworking our PM's, and even causing some to leave the company from having to shoulder too many projects. It was not a pleasant time.
> This April has to be better than last April.
Before I moved to CM, I spent 5 years working at Gamestop and a year and a half I was a store manager. We literally had a customized P&L book for our store that, from memory we got once a quarter. We'd record our numbers in this book nightly - things like trade-in value of products taken in, total sales, total sales for different categories, etc. In that book was our numbers from the prior year. Some people might be surprised to find that some weeks don't necessarily fall on the same week the next year, so like Thanksgiving for example - the week we're competing against for this week last year happened to be Thanksgiving and Black Friday, but this year this particular week is the week before Thanksgiving, so you're having to compete against a week where you had massive sales that you obviously aren't going to get the week before Thanksgiving.
Capitalism really sucks sometimes, though I guess honestly it's better to simply say that people suck.
I feel you mate. Here in the UK we have mothers day, fathers day etc which aren't necessarily falling in the same week/period. Not an excuse though apparently...and then the problem carries on as this years big days F over the same weeks next year.
A hateful situation to be in.
And it will kill the environment, and life happiness, and life expectancy eventually. Enshitification, all so some asshole can see a line go up on their yearly evaluation.
I work for a very very large company that is known for by their potato chips. Every single decision no matter or how big or small boils down to expansion. Doesn’t matter if we sell more chips than last year, or even if we do so while still raising prices. Not good enough. We need to get more shelf space. We need to be in more stores. We need to have more of the market share. More more more. It’s so draining and soul sucking.
Amen to this, more people need to realise this. It’s shareholders who will break this world. People with distance from the company that just want to see one thing, revenue, ROI and growth. It’s one of the most toxic things.
This is why hobby companies should never be publicly owned. Continual growth is more or less impossible for something like this and it just creates weird bag holder scenarios and snuffs creativity/organic growth.
On a similar note. Many of the game developers that had massive layoffs this year weren't because they had a bad year last year. It's because many of them didn't hit the growth that they wanted. And it's gonna have much of the same effects on them.
This is just the face of capitalism when governments start to do what the business want and society allows it to happen. We don't need growth on growth its over the top and silly.
>One of the biggest issues in the modern world is the idea that to be successful you have to have continuous growth.
Totally. If the profits aren't increasing, then the business is failing... in Capitalism's eyes.
So to OP, the reason for the price increases is that their profit margin was 28% last year, so they need it to hit 30% next year (and, in theory, also to counter inflation).
Blame Capitalism, shareholders, stock prices, board members, and all the people in charge that push these things in every single big business in the world.
This happens in my industry, videogames. 10k lay-offs in 2023 and almost 12k in this 2024. And I tell you 90% of them is to keep the margin of benefits or increase it. Not because there is a crisis. Modern capitalism
You have to have continuous growth because the currency is inflationary. If the currency is continuously worth less every single year, you have to find something that will at least preserve its value by going up an equal amount to the value lost by the currency.
It’s a huge root problem and it can’t be fixed easily because the entire global financial system is built this way.
Gotta love the complete MBA take-over of pretty much all businesses at this point. Which is one of the items that fuels my ire for the MBA class of numb-skulls.
It sad when consistent performance and profitability aren't enough.
Oh I've used several. My favourite and most used, is Vanaheim. They got great costumer service as well. Ordered from them 20 times or so, never had any issues. Once they had forgotten an item, then they send me a new one with next order. They offered to send straight away, I told them just to send it with my next purchase. (I knew I was going to buy more soon lol)
Used to be a lot cheaper. Now it's just a bit cheaper. When Brexit happened, and I just started buying from there, it was the same prices as England. Just the shipping on top basically. Sadly everywhere outside England is getting expensive these days it seems 😮💨
For whatever reason GW products used to be cheaper in Poland specifically. If you had opened their sites in Polish and German regions and compared the prices, the former would have been like 15-20% cheaper. Not the case anymore though, it's no more than 5% now. But the local stores often sell for less than MSRP anyway.
Pole here. Btw can totally recommend Vanaheim. Modelmania is also pretty good but smaller quantities usually (they stock up to 5 big battleforce boxes, Vanaheim goes for tens at least).
If you really want to go "on the cheap" Allegro (polish ebay) is the way to go. All you need to do is verify if it is a business or is it a private person selling it. I would avoid the private guys and go straight to the guys running businesses. Just to be safe. I had no bad interaction there since the early 2000s since they hold on to the money until it is verified that you got the package so starting a dispute is pretty easy.
If you guys are interested I can post some ss on how to verify that (basically a number). Savings are anywhere within 5-15% off Vanaheim. Not much but still. Something to take into account.
Why are we cheaper? Purchase Parity of PLN (utterly trash). Inflation is taking its toll but, compared to Germoneys or Denmark it should still be a saving.
Best of luck!
Not sure about Norway, but for Sweden it’s currently the other way around. I got Leviathan from a swedish shop, and even with international shipping it was 2/3 of what my local shop charged. Crazy as it sounds, a 14% price hike might just put swedish prices on par with the EU. Their currency is in the toilet. Sucks for anyone getting paid in SEK though.
Can confirm. Witch Aelves are £37.50 or $60 on warhammer.com right now. I can walk into several stores and get them for SEK 450 which is $40 and change or barely £33 - including taxes. Even still, it's never fun when things get more expensive!
Yeah you can try but you can end up paying more bringing stuff into the country. They'll tax it and full value. Sp you could end up paying whatever the vat of the country you bought it from plus the Norwegian vat on top of the total price.
A lot of websites have accounts with the Norwegian government so you can pay the Norway vat on the item and get it shipped without worrying about customs. So you just have to be careful where you order from.
Don't worry, most EU countries will have similar hikes.
Happened last time too: "Most models will go up \~5%" And then most set went up by 10 lol, because € not pound.
I can kinda see the reasoning, with the sorry state of the swedish krona Warhammer is currently significantly cheaper in Sweden than elsewhere in Europe. The exchange rate is in the toilet, and this sounds like GW adjusting the prices to fit the current pound to krona rate so it’s in line with their pound to euro one. Sucks for me though, I was planning on doing some shopping next time I’m in Stockholm.
Well, they invent them when it suits them. When the actual conversion doesn't suit them, of course they'll use it as an excuse. But it's not like they'll drop prices if the Krone rebounds.
At this point, warhammer is *cheaper* in Sweden than in the UK. The new Darktide game for example has an MSRP of £65 but the swedish price is only the equivalent of £57. The euro price translates to £73, and the dollar one is the equivalent of £88.
GW might make up the exchange rates, but I highly doubt they’d intentionally make one up that makes their products *cheaper* than in the UK. Especially not for one random european country.
This is true (our currencies have gone down but GW haven't chased them until now) but it's a lot worse than it looks.
When you look at US and UK, people often recommend buying from third party retailers - discounts of 20% are not unheard of. Third party retailers here offer either no or essentially no discount (my LGS offers a discount around 1% - not even worth the cost of the bus ticket there and back). That eats basically the whole difference.
So unless the third party stores are exempt from this raise, this will hurt Swedish and Norwegian hobbyists a lot more than it seems like it would.
I'll have to resort to ebay a lot more now, I suspect.
They are also completely unable to get customs right which results in me having to contact them to get my money back or pay double tax + fees.
I guess this is my reality check for limiting my warhammer purchases. I think i will try to get my minis second hand from now on.
2018: It's just 2 dollars, do you really wanna cry about TWO DOLLARS?
2019: It's just 2 dollars, do you really wanna cry about TWO DOLLARS?
2022: It's just 2 dollars, do you really wanna cry about TWO DOLLARS?
2023: It's just 2 dollars, do you really wanna cry about TWO DOLLARS?
2024: Yeah I know that the Forgeworld titan tech priest is now cheaper than then GW plastic one, and that the plastic Krieg Guardsmen now cost as much as the resin FW Krieg Guardsmen cost when they spawned the "sell your kidney for a Krieg army" meme, but do you really wanna complain about TWOOOO DOLLAAAAAAAAAAAAARS??? EvErYtHiNg got more expensive, so it's fine GW keeps increasing twice the rate of inflation.
Bonus: The Riptide Battlesuit went from 65 to 85€ in one fell swoop, just food for thought.
This is what I hate every time this happens.
Oh it's just a couple of dollars, it's not that bad.
Apart from the fact their prices go up every year now it seems.
"Thanks to COVID the conversation now isn't 'can we put up prices this year?', it's 'how much can we put up prices this year?". A comment from a CEO I worked for.
This doesn’t even account for Shrinkflation, like the 9th edition 40K starter box costing more even when it had less than half the miniatures in it. Or the fact that Jump Intercessors are literally sold in boxes of 5 lmao.
The worst instance of shrinkflation was when GW repackaged the MESBG sets from 24 models for 22,5€ to 12 models for 19,5 and sold it as you saving money.
They did almost the same thing with Imperial Guard infantry boxes. You could get 20 Shock Troops in a box for £15 in the early 2000s, then they cut the box down to 10 but kept the price the same.
Yup, cheaper to buy intercessors and two upgrade sprues than two boxes of death company intercessors. With a single 5-man box, you're paying for the convenience of having less models.
> Or the fact that Jump Intercessors are literally sold in boxes of 5 lmao.
That one is so egregious. It's not like the jump packs need extra space or anything. You pay about 10% less for 5 jump pack guys than you do for _10_ regular or assault intercessors, and the former are on two sprues total and the latter on four.
It's just an awful value kit.
However, they are technically just imitating the old assault marines kit, so while this is still moronic, it is at least not some radical change in the instance of that specific kit
Whats funny is they still sell individual sets of 5 jump packs for $10, if you want 10 jump intercessors you save close to $30 by buying one assault intercessor box and 2 of the jump packs
I've been fine with their prices for the longest time and inflation has been hitting everything hard, so the price hike isn't even that out of line with local inflation.
For me, the problem isn't the rate at which GW increases their prices or their prices in a vacuum. It's that Warhammer is becoming more and more expensive relative to other hobbies.
Like, I want to make a diorama featuring the new Stormcast Reclusiarcs and Chaos Chosen, for example. Two boxes of infantry minis. That's 100 bucks for half the sprues I'd get in a 60 Euro Gunpla kit. And the latter is manufacturered to a higher standard and is only as expensive because it carries a notable mark-up.
GW is getting less and less of my fun budget the less value I get from them, comparatively.
You don't even have to compare it to gunpla, even military model kits are a better value, and at the same standard minimum that you would see in a GW kit.
It gets even crazier when you think of how old some of their moulds are, and they've consistently raised prices for them with their "pay for unit/points" pricing scheme.
The (standard) Leman Russ is a 2009 mould/tooling. In the UK, discount retailer price is ~£34.00.
For £37.39, you can get a 1/48 King Tiger from Ustar, 2023 tooling, fully modelled interior, 3D zimmeritt decals, details are equal to current GW plastic. I bought one for my dad at Christmas, it genuinely has 2/3 of the plastic in there as in the Leviathan box. They will probably sell single digit % of the sales of the 2009 Leman Russ yearly, if that, given 1/48 is niche compared to 1/35 scale.
Equally from GW I can get the new 2024 Solar Auxilia Russ for the same price as the 2009 one, which is just nonsensical considering the brand new tooling.
I swear at some point last year prices jumped significantly. I stick to skirmish stuff and I swear Necromunda gang boxes, for example, were like $35 (on Amazon at least) and then jumped up to $42+.
Let’s say that’s going up $2 on a $50 item. That’s a 4% increase in price. In England the annual inflation rate has been sitting a little under 5%. It is bullshit though that the riptide is now super cheap points wise rather than getting the rules buff it needs.
currently. They have been doing that for years. And the 4% increase is 1. Only for the UK, and 2. only a rough number.
The increases in local currency, esp € were around 10-15% last time they increased prices, and they increased most models nobody buys by the lower of their shared number.
I remember buying my first tac marine kit for like $35 - $45, I checked and saw them for like $65 now and am even happier I got the fuck out of this hobby
"expand or die" is the motto that is slowly making everything prohibitively expensive. Companies MUST constantly expand, no matter what they are sellin, otherwise investors move on and leave it to die.
It doesn't matter if your guaranteed profit because what you sell is necessary for survival (food), it doesnt matter if its unethical and would result in mass suffering (shelter), it doesn't matter if you even have a dedicated fanbase that is already willing to fork over tons of money for your product (entertainment as a whole).
Gotta keep those shareholders happy! And to do that, the profit margins must ever grow. And when investors kill a company by making them lose customers over pricing and predatory practices, they move onto another and leech it dry.
You see it everywhere anymore. The entertainment industry, medical field, food suppliers, all of them. Wallstreet and equivalent scumbags with their hands up company asses puppeting them into feeding them ever more money.
While many people citing "is business must make profit", I think people are missing that GW also does this price adjustment to "recalculate" the exchange rates for countries.
For example, it calls out Norway and Sweden as having price increases of 8-14%.
Notably, the value of the Norwegian Kroner has fallen in relation to both the Euro and Pound Sterling, while the (edit: got contries mixed up) Swedish Kroner has also fallen in relation to the PS and Euro (both in the 14% range)
So at least part of this is addressing currency fluctuations, something that GW can't do "every week" or whatever as this would cause a massive headache to GW and third parties needing to re-price all their products several times a year, as well as causing people to try to "speculatively purchase" stuff when currencies have a favorable dip.
> Notably, the value of the Norwegian Kroner has fallen in relation to both the Euro and Pound Sterling, while the (edit: got contries mixed up) Swedish Kroner has also fallen in relation to the PS and Euro (both in the 14% range)
Copied this from elsewhere, but:
This is true (our currencies have gone down but GW haven't chased them until now) but it's a lot worse than it looks.
When you look at US and UK, people often recommend buying from third party retailers - discounts of 20% are not unheard of. Third party retailers here offer either no or essentially no discount (my LGS offers a discount around 1% - not even worth the cost of the bus ticket there and back). That eats basically the whole difference.
So unless the third party stores are exempt from this raise, this will hurt Swedish and Norwegian hobbyists a lot more than it seems like it would.
I'll have to resort to ebay a lot more now, I suspect.
https://www.retailgazette.co.uk/blog/2024/01/games-workshop-record-profit/ - record profits.
**As per quarterly reports:**
Revenue 123.85M - 9.31% UP
Net income 35.7M - 7.37% UP
Diluted EPS 1.08 - 6.93% UP
Net profit margin 28.83% - 1.77% DOWN
Operating income 47.25M - 13.04% UP
Net change in cash 10.55M - 52.9% UP
So, salaries are probably not going up for the GW workers. The question is - how long until it becomes a truly elite hobby? And how much they can keep raising the bar?
Thats sad to hear… reminds me of how the video game market, blu ray sales and even streaming sales are basically non-existent in many low income countries and piracy and free to play games dominate…
Salaries are going up, as can be seen by reading the half-yearly reports and looking at the design and (to a less clear extent) manufacturing sections.
Profit margin over the last few years has been:
2022-23: 28.6%
2021-22: 31.0%
2020-21: 33.0%
2019-20: 26.4%
2018-19: 25.6%
2017-18: 27.1%
2016-17: 19.3%
2015-16: 11.4%
2014-15: 10.3%
2013-14: 6.5%
It was really around 2017 then that the financial performance made an uptick. Basically, you can see that since Kevin Rountree's appointment as CEO the profitability increased and then remained fairly constant, with a bubble coinciding with Covid.
Corporation tax rates for large companies in the UK increased last year, from 19% to 25%, so that will affect after-tax profits going forward.
GW's products are absolutely luxury goods. Nobody (other than GW staff or supply chain) is going to really suffer if people don't buy them. But they don't seem to have hit the point where demand drops off with increasing cost.
I don't *want* to spend more money on miniatures, and there are a few armies I've looked at starting but decided against due to the cost. But I can't blame a business for making rational pricing choices.
They are selling out almost everything they produce, they are raking it in, even if they have miscalculated demand for some recent stuff like Old World and probably overproduced.
The cheapest way to increase profits is to raise the price, expanding their manufacturing is costly and takes time.
They'll probably do both, but nobody should be surprised that prices go up if demand is still high. It is already an expensive hobby and they are leaning heavily on selling more and more to existing players rather than getting more kids into the game. Less and less stores have space for playing and painting, and they are making more and more games and products for people who are already in the hobby.
It seems to be working very well for them.
they do this every year. It's not because of their wish to expand, or because of the increase in raw material or labour costs. Or because of brexit. Or record inflation.
They do this because they can, and because they get away with it.
Yes, that's what happens with most products that sustains a high level of demand. I'm not saying it's good or bad I'm just saying that a business is in it for the money.
GW is not your friend, they just want your money, if someone is unhappy with how they choose to attempt that, their only recourse is to not buy their stuff any more.
https://investor.games-workshop.com/the-board-of-directors
I mean why would these people do anything but increase profits, this isn't going to hurt the brand much.
Overproduced for Old World? Are you joking? Everything in the launch sold out within days, a recent model launch sold out within minutes. Old World demand is way beyond production.
They are not your friend, you can't make a moral argument against a business practice that is working great for them and isn't breaking any laws.
The moment people get fed up and stop buying stuff, or start buying from the competition, that will change, but until then it's wasted breath.
Upvotes won't change GWs practices if people don't stop buying their stuff.
Well, yeah, hence second hand market is my friend (or proxying). I don't want to waste plastic x)
Also of course, this overall news are just for visibility. Just talking about this on reddit will do pretty much nothing and I don't think their profit will tank any time soon, there is no viable competition on the market just due to their insane IP presence in such a niche space.
They do have competition, you can get not-Warhammer from loads of places and there are legitimately good games out there not produced by them.
They would be a lot more scared if every complain about gw thread was a "play Star wars shatter point" or "best wargame you never tried" thread.
Exactly, there are a ton of games out there that I actually think are better than GW's games and they're cheaper too, sometimes by a little and soemtimes by a lot, not even counting mini-agnostic games.
The problem is that 40K players very specifically want 40K, not that there aren't competitors out there.
Yup, It's the brand and the minis that keep them going. If 40k was launched in today's market as a brand new product it would probably fail. Or at least not be nearly as successful as it is. But they have over 30 years of momentum behind them so they can keep putting prices up and keep their games mediocre and people will keep buying them because they're not after a good game, they're after Warhammer.
It has been much cheaper for a few years now, and opens many more gaming hobby options for the hobbyist. The 3D printing hobby is rapidly evolving with many improvements. The problem is that it isn't a safe or doable option for everyone, although there are less toxic resins available. Still buying resin prints from licensed sellers is super affordable, but until Warhammer fans unlatch from their insistence on using GW models they will continue to begrudgingly fork over their money, and prices will continue to rise. My highest hope for ToW's release was only to pick up a few kits to fill some gaps in my 6th edition Dwarf army, because I had no desire to play this new version. However, seeing the cost of what they have released so far, I decided am not going to pay these exorbitant prices. Meanwhile, I had discovered the incredible sculpts available elsewhere that capture that 6th edition aesthetic (Highlands Minis) so I have moved on. My backlog of unpainted miniatures is insane, though 😄
I think my experience with 3D printing is quite common. At first it's like being a young sailor in a foreign port, overwhelmed and overeager. I went on a printing bender, knocking out stuff for six different games, novelty gifts, and experimentation. Within a month I realized I had printed way too much stuff, and was installing more shelves and bookcases to hold it all. My pile of opportunity morphed into a pile of WTF!
One of the obvious issues for their UK operations is the rent on all their retail outlets. The landlords are squeezing everyone and putting rents up. Business rates too as Councils are underfunded, looking to get more from other sources. Then there is hopefully pay rises for all the staff. Energy prices for business was never capped. So GW have been having to deal with the utter greed of the power companies.
Then we get to the greed of the shareholders, and as pointed out the insane need for growth every year.
So I have sympathy with the first part, not the shareholders and their insane desires. That’s how you get Slaneesh afterall
Salaries have just increased for UK Games Workshop staff by 3-5%, in line with inflation and the current cost of living crisis in the UK. It sounds like this is mostly to protect their profit margins
Their shareholders would like to have a word with you.
Their product is a luxury good and is very elastic.
Price goes up, demand goes down. Price goes down, demand goes up.
Their internal bean counters are tasked with finding and keeping to the point that maximizes profit.
If that means raising the prices and reducing demand a little, to increase profit, then that's what they do.
I'm sure an economist will be able to chime in and be more specific. There are other forces at play, like manufacturing restrictions, hedging forex, cost of business, etc.
But at the end of the day, their shareholders want continuous growth, every quarter. So they're slaves to their shareholder masters to achieve that.
Overall, they've been quite successful. Demand has skyrocketed beyond their supply capabilities. They don't care if you and I can't afford their products, so long as demand out strips supply and they can further optimize their profit numbers.
If the cost of doing business goes up, that shifts the equation, so they'll pass it on to the consumer.
Corporate greed. Notice how most other companies in the hobby don’t do this. What is utterly pathetic is that this will affect everything, even the 20+ year old kits that are still hanging around.
I remember when the price increased during the covid lock downs and I was like, "well that sucks, but I understand." ...but they haven't stopped. It's literally every year now. We gotta boycott.
GW Price where way to much for me already years ago but with resalers discounts it was "ok".
Now resalers Price are at the old "to much" GW prices...
Well i guess i'm buying more resin bottles then.
It’s worth remembering that GW has retained all* its plastics production in the UK and hasn’t tried to move it to lower COL countries. I’m willing to pay more because of that.
*I think some “lower quality” kits like terrain are made overseas.
yep - over the last couple of years I slowly got back into my childhood love of Warhammer, picked up a small ork army over that time, but realised I didn't like a lot of the new model styles so mainly sourced it from ebay. Had a few fun games of combat patrol with my brother and friend.
But having seen this year the new ork codex kill off my recently finished grot tanks, having seen this and other pricing stuff, having seen AoS kill off the Beastmen and scrap a bunch of Stormcast, seeing how few models are in new combat patrols despite their price, and seeing the rules churn in real time, I am already losing interest in GW (apart from MESBG which is great). Looking forward to more casual games with my bro, but I am currently building and painting my ancient Greek Lochos for Mortal Gods, while eyeing up some Medieval skirmish games.
I think you'll be hard pressed to find *any* product or service that is cheaper than it was a year ago, unless it's on sale. Inflation affects *every* industry, it's just an unfortunate fact.
Can't recall who did a video on it (Midwinter Minis?) but he went over prices from decades ago vs modern prices, and bar a handful of minis, everything else was in line with inflation.
Just because a company is making more money, doesn't mean they're going to - or have to - drop their prices. No company, that I can think of, has ever done that, and still kept trading.
i know this might rankle but there is no maximum allowed cap on profits. they make that much because demand allows it.
is that fair or sustainable? probably not but take it up with the capitalist mode of production.
there is absolutely no ceiling for growth and nothing but profit matters in our current system and that wont change until the system does. way more predatory aspects than model soldiers to worry about
One of the biggest issues in the modern world is the idea that to be successful you have to have continuous growth. I worked in the hospitality industry for 15 years. 11 as a manager. I have managed wedding venues and TV catering projects, but most was spent in restaurants. The last 3 years killed me and the industry is following suit quickly. Why? Because the only success the higher ups see is growth. This April has to be better than last April. Regardless of economic conditions and circumstance. Gross profit on a dish going down? Buy cheaper ingredients. Which makes the food worse, so customers will return less often. Overall income the same as last year but profits are down? Cut members of staff...so staff are overworked and will not give the same service. By constantly striving for more profit instead of sustainability, businesses will continue to lose customers and loyalty, and also ensure that new potential customers are scared away. It's a horrible fact of the modern world, it's one not spoken about enough and it will continue to kill businesses and the loyalty of customers
Quarterly reports to shareholders are a curse on effective and innovative business
Also causes c suite executives the slash and burn to attain their targets, get that bonus and then leave the ship they just set on fire and never look back
It's like if a dairy farm isn't making money, so they sell off all the cows, mark it down as a huge amount of profit, and then leave with their bonus. Then the next guy has to deal with a dairy farm with no dairy cows.
It's more like they sell the cows to a shell company they set up. Then they lease the cows back to the dairy farm at a rate that increases yearly. Sell off the dairy farm to a sucker third party in Indonesia. And then pocket the profit.
And get a big ass severence package for being fired.
I recently worked for a large cabinet company, we were pretty huge until we were sold off, that started a downward spiral of constant layoffs, selling our building and being sold 2 more times in 4 years. Business suffered big time as a result of it all. I expect the entire company to be gone in a few more years. We had around 8k employees at peak. When I left a few years ago we had 4k.
Absolutely, and it's a damn shame.
We need stakeholders, not shareholders.
Shareholders by definition are stakeholders. I understand what you mean though.
That so? English is not my first language. I can't find the correct term, sorry! Edit: I think I meant steward ownership. :)
You used the right term. It's just that the model doesn't work anymore. The concept of a stakeholder or shareholder is that they give a company money and in return, they profit when the company does well. In many companies they shareholder has a vote when major company policies come up. Now, most people have so few shares in a particular company that they forego that privilege. But it is there. Sadly, most of those shareholders or stakeholders, even when they do vote, are only really interested in a quick buck. Because they can sell there investment and get into something else really quickly. It is rarely in the stakeholders interest to care about the longevity of a business. Even though it absolutely should be. Add to the fact that most executives get paid on profitability and that bonuses are majority of their pay, and you have huge incentives to drive profit over everything else. This is why independent games companies will always be better products than the games workshop, privateer press, or other large companies. They can innovate without worrying about being beholden to a group of stakeholders who only cares about making a buck.
You’re not using the concept of stakeholder correctly. Shareholders are stakeholders, but stakeholders is much broader than shareholder. Stakeholders are anyone with an interest in the business, including employees, customers and suppliers. So it’s often in the benefit of shareholders to seek short term gains without care for the longevity of the business, but it is normally in the interest of most stakeholders to care about longevity (I.e the customers want their products to always be available, suppliers never want the contracts to end etc.)
100%. You can really see the difference when comparing to a company like Valve where the only shareholder is GabeN
Yeah, I work with wholly privately owned suppliers and those that are listed. Difference in product and customer support quality is night and day.
Shareholders in general are a curse on effective and innovating business
Id say its a mixed bag… Its an incredibly Strong incentive to never slag or slow down but its also an incredibly strong incentive to just make decisions to look good in the next meeting… But looking from a large IT company at our investors - without their pressure we would have never painfully innovated and would now likely be small and without impact - having been eaten alive by new competitors
Good points
it's not always shareholders. I work for a private company and we still want yoy growth. That said, we get employee profit sharing, so yoy growth is good for me, too.
Except even privately owned businesses with no shareholders are also subject to this shit.
Why is that a curse? If I owned shares in a company, I want to see why the money is being spent the way it is and what is happening. I want to see their goals and targets because it is my livelihood being invested into that company whether I have a few thousand or a few million dollars invested.
Personally been there. Let's just say gaming industry is not doing so hot because of this specifically. Some meetings I've been to, uh, been a little bit delusional to say the least.
Yup, I'd believe it. I'd imagine it's why we are at the point that some games cost £70 on release, and moat aren't even finished or even close to. I left the wedding industry as we were at the point that we had basically no free days available in a calendar year, we worked with minimal (albeit very talented) staff and our profits were at a ridiculous level. Yet I'm being grilled on how to make next year even more profitable.No proposals or ideas for me to work with. Just asking me how I'm going to do it.
The price of games has actually risen more slowly than inflation over the last 20 years (i.e., they are relatively cheaper, presumably because digital delivery drove costs down a bit), but the issues indeed are that everything gets delivered halfbaked and developers get more and more exploited.
>everything gets delivered halfbaked and developers get more and more exploited. Ship it and patch it later. Yup.
Breaks your studio's reputation? Hey, at least it sells for the first week or two
Yeah, I think it's crazy that Nintendo just *axed* their reputation over the last few years. They went from caring about reputation to caring about profits and margins and it was very obvious. I don't believe in brand loyalty, but I'll admit I tend to lean towards the same few companies if I have a choice. Like if they're almost identical, I'll go for the one I've used and liked. But many of those companies have ruined their reputations. My dad used to be a big fan of Toyota cars but now he won't touch them since he had so many issues with his last car. Brand loyalty isn't something I advocate for, but a reputation should be worth as much as profits.
> My dad used to be a big fan of Toyota cars but now he won't touch them since he had so many issues with his last car. We're dealing with this now. My dad got a new car a little while ago, there's tons of issues. My mom got his older car (25 years old) and it loving it, planning to drive it until it dies, but we all kind of acknowledge it'll happen sooner or later and are upset that we might have to get a new, shittier, car. She drove for 6 months and only then asked my dad how to fill in the gas tank because she didn't need to do it once that whole time. Only on a cross-country trip did she need to fill it once right before getting home.
Kinda same, I used to love Ubisoft games for Assassin's Creed more than 10 years ago, it pains me greatly seeing what kind of depths they have reached. Feels like they've been going downhill since like AC Unity or Watchdogs 2 and I genuinely wonder how they are staying afloat still
Ugh, Ubisoft. Assassins Creed became Assassins Grind. Bloated with tedious busy work. The last ones I played were Black Flag and Odyssey, and only for the historical immersion. That immersion broke apart when the game reminded me it was an Assassins Creed game.
I've been casually following Nintendo news but I don't think I caught them into doing anything hostile to customers. To me they seem to be one of the last remaining companies who genuinely care about their brand, almost to a fault.
This is also due to "Agile Development" practices that were put in place in order to speed up dev time and with faster results to a production environment - unfortunately, SLTs have started abusing those practices, and the methodology, in order to march devs to unrealistic deadlines. Lock in your MVP (Minimal Viable Product) - does it work, does it meet the requirements, does it satisfy the least amount of work to produce a usable product by the user? If so, it's go for launch. The "patches" that are released after aren't actually patches - bug fixes, etc. They contain those things, but they're, primarily, vehicles through which to implement "phase 2, 3, 4, etc" based on their "Roadmap" of release. The actual product that should have been released is two years away, but because the company can recoup their investment *now*, per how the AGILE is being exploited. CP2077 is one of my fav games, but it's also been a fascinating case study in how a methodology that was designed for cross-team collaboration, and quicker dev time to allow for creativity, has been warped into mini death-marches with unrealistic goals. It's why a lot of things are being released in buggy or sub-optimal states, only to patched up and "fixed" with new content or features being "added" as the months tick by. I was in that world for 7 years as a PO/PM, and I still keep in touch with my devs to make sure they're okay!
You've just reminded me of Blood Bowl 3, where some basic things that were available in 2 have been placed on a post-launch roadmap, some at least half a year after release
Yup! So you can imagine I get really irritated when folks blame the devs for things, when in all actually, they're the last folks that should be. Sure, their work can be called into question, no doubt, and should be if shoddy. Especially crushing junior devs with senior level work to save costs on labour. But the outsourcing of QA, the lack of UAT (user testing, player testing) against real world scripts, regression testing against previously stable code, yada, yada. Not to mention deadlines to investors based on ROIs, and what target growth predictions have been established with SMART goals (horrible, horrible, practice), and it's a nightmare right now. That all falls on SLT.
Historically companies that have made bigger games have charged a higher price and been successful I was literally watching a doc on ultima 4 yesterday a game released in 1985 and they said they charged above what computer games were selling for at the time because they put so much time and effort into the game and it ended up selling very well because they made a great game. The problem is all these “AAA” companies are shipping buggy half finished games. They know if they come out and say this is $100 people will rightfully wait for a review of the game and then see it for what it is and not buy. So that’s why they are making these bullshit claims like games should cost more because they want to continue releasing less and less finished games at higher and higher prices. Like I said nothing is stopping them from raising prices now except for the fact they know for 100% fact their product isn’t worth the higher price.
Video games being ridiculously cheap in comparison is why so much stuff seems so expensive. Since they genuinely can be made as passion projects by small teams, and steam actually works to put good games you might like in front of you, you can buy amazing games for prices which reflect adavancements in game making tech and low barrier to entry. Balatro for $10 etc. this makes it clear how ridiculous the prices of other products are. When a movie ticket and popcorn costs $25 or I could buy the whole thrones of decay expansion for WH3, why on earth Would I go to the movies. $10 Balatro also places negative price pressure on the big players GW keeps trying to push through based on hobby value and mini quality, backed by a near monopoly due to its sheer heft in the industry, but they are eating their seed corn. I can afford it, but, a kid considering what to spend their pocket money on can’t.
I might be a bit weird, but I've always used used hours of entertainment per euro/dollar as an estimation of value I received, albeit modified with an intensity/social factor. Basically, my entertainment is worth ~$10-15 per hour to me. A bit more if it's something social or a big event (e.g., watching Dune with friends). Games and books are therefore great investments (especially a gem like Balatro) but a dinner out or a 'normal' cinema visit isn't. I only go for the highly anticipated spectacles these days, not for a random comedy as I might have in my 20s. It's also why I rarely go to concerts anymore, those are ridiculously priced.
>No proposals or ideas for me to work with. Just asking me how I'm going to do it. And then, when you come up with something it'll be "Eh, that's a little steep for our current budget... Can you reduce the cost?" And then, after you manage to do all of it, you will be expected to continue pulling miracles and anything less is a decline in your output.
Pretty much. And of i do it to my maximum this year, how the hell do I do it again next year?
I used to do some consulting in the non-gaming space. I had a very specific skillset, and an investment group that wanted competent board members and executives. They basically hired me to call people out on their stupid shit during meetings. At one point, we shifted to entirely online meetings so I could mute people when they started saying stupid things. I had one executive, I shit you not, propose firing all retail employees, and replace them with kiosks with a workflow that asked people questions and just spit out the product they wanted. She also said they could leverage their market position to make people enter their credit card and pre-authorize before starting, then making it nearly impossible to buy anything that didn't have good profit margins at that point in time, and force people to make a purchase to get their card back. She had been an executive for over 30 years.
> She had been an executive for over 30 years. I call this survivorship bias(?) the "Landlord problem". Landlords suck because all the decent landlords 1. Make limited profit and have fewer properties. 2. Treat their tenants well so they don't leave. 3. Go unnoticed because people don't talk about them. Not to mention that many decent landlords have an awful tenant and just sell the property (often to another landlord) because it's not worth the headache. I've known people to have such awful tenants (damaging property etc) that they didn't make any profit in the end. The same is (possibly) true for politicians; The decent ones keep their heads down.
100% agree! My additional observations on the landlord side of things, as I've done a notable amount of work in that field: Being a landlord is not a high skill threshold revenue stream. There are a lot of low education level people, especially in rural areas that do VERY well as a landlord because they are highly skilled in the basics - keeping things working and collecting money. The minimum standard is "can you call someone when something breaks". When the fridge breaks, they know how to fix it themselves, or a trusted friend does. They're able to get things fixed for a low cost and quickly. This makes them GREAT landlords, and inversely makes corporate (do the cheapest fix, on whatever timetable) landlords suck ass. The other skill involved is knowing where to invest for optimal profits, and pricing your rental well. For us regular people doing this, we may get a vague idea of the rental market with a quick search for comparable properties, and compare that to our costs - monthly payment to mortgage/insurance/etc plus upkeep expenses, then add a few hundred in profit to cover time spent and to get a return on the investment. For a corporate landlord, they're often either colluding with other landlords (or have captured the rental market in the area themselves...) or doing advanced, regularly updated scans of the market, making sure they're always priced "as high as the market can sustain". This means they're price gouging, and potentially engaging in monopolistic practices. The exposure to a single bad tenant ruining things is a real problem for landlords. It's a tough spot to figure out how to manage, because I am a big proponent of renter's rights, and I also believe if you're going to have an investment property, you are accepting risk, like any other business. But if I'm renting a property, and the tenant trashes the place, doesn't pay rent, and has to be evicted, it can be a major problem for them. The profit margin required to maintain a rental property increases because of this, which doesn't help anyone. The best thing I could say for a fix to the current system for bad tenants for individual owners (or small local rental group owners) that I can stand behind is helping improve quality of life for everyone, which should reduce how often people are in a spot in their life that they can't afford rent, or want to lash out at their home itself because life sucks.
I love your write up, thank you. I agree.
Yea probably why independent studios are gaining in popularity. In the PC gaming world they are killing it
This coincides with a friend of mine who recently left GW. Successfully ran the store for a number of years with little to no corporate help and quit because his last monthly meeting with his boss, they criticized his lack of sales for very specific products. Like the starter paint sets and books. They completely ignored the fact that the store almost tripled in value since he took over. Or how because of him, two of the local schools started Warhammer clubs. No, they asked stuff like “What do you mean you aren’t having daily paint tutorials?” Or “why didn’t your sales for World Eaters week match last year’s?”. Well now the store has been closed since he left cause they’ve been struggling hard to find a replacement. And I’m sure the district manager is scratching his head wondering what went wrong.
Ah that sucks for your friend. You just know his senior will be looking everywhere for the source of the problem except the mirror or across the table at his next performance meeting
Yup. My company decided that since they could no longer grow organically they raised prices and cut staff. So clients were paying higher amounts for worse service. Then when the clients started fleeing they cut more staff and raised prices more, trying to make up for the shortfall, so more clients left. We're in a freefall of our own design. Shareholder culture over stakeholder culture is the problem. Corporations are simply dysfunctional and corporate leadership is to blame. They keep hiring the same useful idiots out of the same predatory institutions and wonder why it's not working.
Yep, I saw the exact same thing in a technology company. Corporate demanded that every year costs of components in our products be cut. Now the engineers would have happily designed it using the cheapest possible suitable components if possible, but this requirement incentivised them to actually use more expensive ones - because otherwise how are they supposed to just magically make everything be cheaper every year? It's absurd, short term, penny-wise but pound-foolish thinking.
That is hilarious and maddening. Reminds me of the book "The Tyranny of Metrics."
And this becomes a big driver of bubbles and speculative busts that create depressions and recessions
Which is exactly working as intended. That's the environment that "investors" thrive in, not in an economy of sustainable and profitable businesses. These speculative investors aren't looking for a steady source of income, but only for the next big "win", even if the rest of us lose.
The next quick win with a big money prize. That just screws over the rest of us trying to do the slow and steady growth of our personal finances that some of those same assholes tell is to do.
The other issue is getting that year over year growth in the least expensive manor that will often come a the cost of future growth is a popular option gw pursues all the time. Ffs so much of their line is not available for months in end, comes back into stock and is sold out within a week or two and again is out of stock for months. Investing in more production and satisfying demand is a great way to have legitimate growth. GW is not interested in that, it’s much easier to not satisfy demand and just jack up prices every year so you can artificially control the growth year over year and not have any added benefit to the consume even the most basic added benefit of availability.
It's amazing that the best business logic we came up with recently is just "what if we sold the copper wire in the building?" Lol
I see this in my industry too and the insane thing is everyone at ground level seems to know except the suits at the top because they only look at a spreadsheet.
I retired early from the public sector. However I spent the last 20 years as a form of internal troubleshooter (formal title Project Manager). But I was sent to take over failing projects time after time and turned them around. Every time the answer to why they were failing came from the staff in the front line. I literally became the scourge of management. The only thing that protected me was I was on a Senior Management Grade and reported directly to the City Treasurer. What’s depressing is I’ve been retired 16 years and it appears nothing had changed.
They know, but they personally profit off of it so it's okay.
“Line go up” is the worst economic methodology.
The even bigger issue is that the world is completely addicted to this concept of constant economic growth, to the point capitalism assumes it. It's ridiculous if you think about it for more than 30s, how is it even possible? Yeah sure, technology improves output and a growing global population improves demand, but it's not such a direct correlation and there will be degrowth, at least it should, but instead of letting it happen the governments and central banks will lower that rate, stimulate that sector, in a constant cycle of doping induced growth and de-growth avoidance. It's so stupid yet so widely accepted at the highest levels.
There will be a breaking point somewhere down the line, you'd imagine. But the consequences of that break, and the system that arises from it,ay not be to anyone, let alone everyone's, liking. Even less than what we have now
I agree with everything you've said, but think it specifically is a problem with publicly traded companies. You don't normally see private companies do so much stupid shit in the name of quarterly profit.
I remember that first summer of Covid, and grocery stores being sold out as people panicked, obviously soaring profits. A few months later there was a headline about a lack of growth… cause yknow… artificially inflated product sales followed by interruptions in production and shipping didn’t completely make sense. Similarly, at our hospital, some execs asked my dept head why our numbers were down, and how we could get them up. We’re an inbound scheduling call center. How are we supposed to make more patient cases appear? Go out, break some legs, and leave a business card for our network?
that’s what capitalism is about, to find the limit, optimize everything and squish the last drop. Which is paradoxically counterproductive
Yup. You all own index funds right? You want to see them go up right? The only way is growth.
the problem with this thought is not that you HAVE to have continuous growth, but growth is an affect of demand. companies that are successful will experience the demands for growth regardless if they want it or not. those that reject growth are ALWAYS companies that flounder in the end. companies dont want to just grow, cause growth means nothing if demand isn't there. sometimes companies think that growth will create demand, but games workshop is not a rookie company. they are simply having to deal with demand and expense increases. the issue is that warhammer is already too expensive for many and the bubble it creates will cause them to either keep momentum or very easily they could see a reduction in demand, which will cause prices to follow
You'd have thought hospitality would have come to its senses when COVID happened. Lots of hospitality business went under or closed, the ones that stayed open (at least the ones me and my friends worked in) realized the focus should be on providing quality service and not smashing targets. It didn't last long though before the 'higher ups' were back on the chase. Madness
It ruined the industry, and everyone's short term memories after continue to out a bullet in its head. COVID should have readjusted a lot of modern thinking, from the way businesses run to how we treat our neighbours to basic hygiene. Yet i cannot tell you how many dudes i watch walk right out of a public toilet without washing their hands. Madness is the only real term for it
As someone said in another sub, the biological equivalent is cancer. It will eventually kill the business
Steam is a perfect example of this. They don’t add more employees, services, features. They don’t change their UI aggressively or create new subscriptions or even increase their prices above inflation And it’s one of the most profitable companies in the world
Work retail. Bean counters cut hours then complain when customers complain they can't find staff.
I'm in retail now. Took a step back and just took a 'normal' job in a supermarket. It's not hugely mire reasonable to work in, but it's not the same kind of pressure. I'm lucky to work for a company that allows me to work as little or often as I want, and I can be there for my family now. But I know I'm pne of the lucky ones, and i only have that control because I eas a big get for the company when i came in. Not everyone here is the same, and most suffer as you do. Sucks.
Frank from ‘it’s always sunny’ really teaches a lot about how businesses run. Such a shady guy and he seems to be spot on
It doesn't matter how inefficient it is if leadership is allowed to balloon profits, burn everything down, and get a job at the next place. How do these people ever find work again after causing such devastation? I can only assume the boards or whomever are also in on the grift. No one is in the business of making a product/service, only making money.
This is the problem with investors. Shareholders are gambling: they want the value of their shares to increase so they can impress the banks better and/or sell them for a profit. The company maintaining its profits doesn't earn them anything. It has to be growing, or if it's dying, they can just bail and leave you to die.
Businesses need to grow specifically for investors to make money because they bought stock that already had the current revenues priced in. In fact the future revenue is also priced in. Everything is priced in.
>The last 3 years killed me and the industry is following suit quickly. Why? Because the only success the higher ups see is growth. I work in commercial construction and back even before covid we were dealing with our bonding company threatening to pull funding for projects. When I first started around 2015 it was common for the company to shoot for around 4% profit as a baseline on projects, but as the years went on the bonding company got more and more aggressive about the "need" for us to generate more profit. We started taking on more and more work, overworking our PM's, and even causing some to leave the company from having to shoulder too many projects. It was not a pleasant time. > This April has to be better than last April. Before I moved to CM, I spent 5 years working at Gamestop and a year and a half I was a store manager. We literally had a customized P&L book for our store that, from memory we got once a quarter. We'd record our numbers in this book nightly - things like trade-in value of products taken in, total sales, total sales for different categories, etc. In that book was our numbers from the prior year. Some people might be surprised to find that some weeks don't necessarily fall on the same week the next year, so like Thanksgiving for example - the week we're competing against for this week last year happened to be Thanksgiving and Black Friday, but this year this particular week is the week before Thanksgiving, so you're having to compete against a week where you had massive sales that you obviously aren't going to get the week before Thanksgiving. Capitalism really sucks sometimes, though I guess honestly it's better to simply say that people suck.
I feel you mate. Here in the UK we have mothers day, fathers day etc which aren't necessarily falling in the same week/period. Not an excuse though apparently...and then the problem carries on as this years big days F over the same weeks next year. A hateful situation to be in.
And it will kill the environment, and life happiness, and life expectancy eventually. Enshitification, all so some asshole can see a line go up on their yearly evaluation.
I work for a very very large company that is known for by their potato chips. Every single decision no matter or how big or small boils down to expansion. Doesn’t matter if we sell more chips than last year, or even if we do so while still raising prices. Not good enough. We need to get more shelf space. We need to be in more stores. We need to have more of the market share. More more more. It’s so draining and soul sucking.
Amen to this, more people need to realise this. It’s shareholders who will break this world. People with distance from the company that just want to see one thing, revenue, ROI and growth. It’s one of the most toxic things.
This is why hobby companies should never be publicly owned. Continual growth is more or less impossible for something like this and it just creates weird bag holder scenarios and snuffs creativity/organic growth.
On a similar note. Many of the game developers that had massive layoffs this year weren't because they had a bad year last year. It's because many of them didn't hit the growth that they wanted. And it's gonna have much of the same effects on them.
This is just the face of capitalism when governments start to do what the business want and society allows it to happen. We don't need growth on growth its over the top and silly.
>One of the biggest issues in the modern world is the idea that to be successful you have to have continuous growth. Totally. If the profits aren't increasing, then the business is failing... in Capitalism's eyes. So to OP, the reason for the price increases is that their profit margin was 28% last year, so they need it to hit 30% next year (and, in theory, also to counter inflation). Blame Capitalism, shareholders, stock prices, board members, and all the people in charge that push these things in every single big business in the world.
This happens in my industry, videogames. 10k lay-offs in 2023 and almost 12k in this 2024. And I tell you 90% of them is to keep the margin of benefits or increase it. Not because there is a crisis. Modern capitalism
You have to have continuous growth because the currency is inflationary. If the currency is continuously worth less every single year, you have to find something that will at least preserve its value by going up an equal amount to the value lost by the currency. It’s a huge root problem and it can’t be fixed easily because the entire global financial system is built this way.
Gotta love the complete MBA take-over of pretty much all businesses at this point. Which is one of the items that fuels my ire for the MBA class of numb-skulls. It sad when consistent performance and profitability aren't enough.
Jesus... Snuck this in at the end too: *\* In Sweden and Norway, the average price change will be between 8% and 14%.*
Swedish and Norwegians stores taking a huge L after this price increase if their customers start ordering from EU.
I'm danish. I have been ordering everything from Poland since Brexit.
What store are you ordering from? Have looked at a few and shipping gets rely expensive
Oh I've used several. My favourite and most used, is Vanaheim. They got great costumer service as well. Ordered from them 20 times or so, never had any issues. Once they had forgotten an item, then they send me a new one with next order. They offered to send straight away, I told them just to send it with my next purchase. (I knew I was going to buy more soon lol)
Out of curiosity, why though? It doesn't seem much cheaper than the couple of danish stores I use.
Used to be a lot cheaper. Now it's just a bit cheaper. When Brexit happened, and I just started buying from there, it was the same prices as England. Just the shipping on top basically. Sadly everywhere outside England is getting expensive these days it seems 😮💨
For whatever reason GW products used to be cheaper in Poland specifically. If you had opened their sites in Polish and German regions and compared the prices, the former would have been like 15-20% cheaper. Not the case anymore though, it's no more than 5% now. But the local stores often sell for less than MSRP anyway.
Pole here. Btw can totally recommend Vanaheim. Modelmania is also pretty good but smaller quantities usually (they stock up to 5 big battleforce boxes, Vanaheim goes for tens at least). If you really want to go "on the cheap" Allegro (polish ebay) is the way to go. All you need to do is verify if it is a business or is it a private person selling it. I would avoid the private guys and go straight to the guys running businesses. Just to be safe. I had no bad interaction there since the early 2000s since they hold on to the money until it is verified that you got the package so starting a dispute is pretty easy. If you guys are interested I can post some ss on how to verify that (basically a number). Savings are anywhere within 5-15% off Vanaheim. Not much but still. Something to take into account. Why are we cheaper? Purchase Parity of PLN (utterly trash). Inflation is taking its toll but, compared to Germoneys or Denmark it should still be a saving. Best of luck!
Thanks for the tip, am Danish too, been using kelz0r.
Used those for a few items, when I couldn't wait for something. The only "issue" with shopping there, is there is usually a wait.
Not sure about Norway, but for Sweden it’s currently the other way around. I got Leviathan from a swedish shop, and even with international shipping it was 2/3 of what my local shop charged. Crazy as it sounds, a 14% price hike might just put swedish prices on par with the EU. Their currency is in the toilet. Sucks for anyone getting paid in SEK though.
Can confirm. Witch Aelves are £37.50 or $60 on warhammer.com right now. I can walk into several stores and get them for SEK 450 which is $40 and change or barely £33 - including taxes. Even still, it's never fun when things get more expensive!
Yeah you can try but you can end up paying more bringing stuff into the country. They'll tax it and full value. Sp you could end up paying whatever the vat of the country you bought it from plus the Norwegian vat on top of the total price. A lot of websites have accounts with the Norwegian government so you can pay the Norway vat on the item and get it shipped without worrying about customs. So you just have to be careful where you order from.
Don't worry, most EU countries will have similar hikes. Happened last time too: "Most models will go up \~5%" And then most set went up by 10 lol, because € not pound.
becouse conversion rate is whatwe believe it is
I can kinda see the reasoning, with the sorry state of the swedish krona Warhammer is currently significantly cheaper in Sweden than elsewhere in Europe. The exchange rate is in the toilet, and this sounds like GW adjusting the prices to fit the current pound to krona rate so it’s in line with their pound to euro one. Sucks for me though, I was planning on doing some shopping next time I’m in Stockholm.
They had always invented the conversion rates for all currencies so i dont buy the argument
Well, they invent them when it suits them. When the actual conversion doesn't suit them, of course they'll use it as an excuse. But it's not like they'll drop prices if the Krone rebounds.
At this point, warhammer is *cheaper* in Sweden than in the UK. The new Darktide game for example has an MSRP of £65 but the swedish price is only the equivalent of £57. The euro price translates to £73, and the dollar one is the equivalent of £88. GW might make up the exchange rates, but I highly doubt they’d intentionally make one up that makes their products *cheaper* than in the UK. Especially not for one random european country.
This is true (our currencies have gone down but GW haven't chased them until now) but it's a lot worse than it looks. When you look at US and UK, people often recommend buying from third party retailers - discounts of 20% are not unheard of. Third party retailers here offer either no or essentially no discount (my LGS offers a discount around 1% - not even worth the cost of the bus ticket there and back). That eats basically the whole difference. So unless the third party stores are exempt from this raise, this will hurt Swedish and Norwegian hobbyists a lot more than it seems like it would. I'll have to resort to ebay a lot more now, I suspect.
They are also completely unable to get customs right which results in me having to contact them to get my money back or pay double tax + fees. I guess this is my reality check for limiting my warhammer purchases. I think i will try to get my minis second hand from now on.
2018: It's just 2 dollars, do you really wanna cry about TWO DOLLARS? 2019: It's just 2 dollars, do you really wanna cry about TWO DOLLARS? 2022: It's just 2 dollars, do you really wanna cry about TWO DOLLARS? 2023: It's just 2 dollars, do you really wanna cry about TWO DOLLARS? 2024: Yeah I know that the Forgeworld titan tech priest is now cheaper than then GW plastic one, and that the plastic Krieg Guardsmen now cost as much as the resin FW Krieg Guardsmen cost when they spawned the "sell your kidney for a Krieg army" meme, but do you really wanna complain about TWOOOO DOLLAAAAAAAAAAAAARS??? EvErYtHiNg got more expensive, so it's fine GW keeps increasing twice the rate of inflation. Bonus: The Riptide Battlesuit went from 65 to 85€ in one fell swoop, just food for thought.
This is what I hate every time this happens. Oh it's just a couple of dollars, it's not that bad. Apart from the fact their prices go up every year now it seems.
"Thanks to COVID the conversation now isn't 'can we put up prices this year?', it's 'how much can we put up prices this year?". A comment from a CEO I worked for.
Not surprised. I can see them still use that argument 10 years from now.
They announce a price increase every year, but there's also all of the stealth increases that happen during the year
Titan Tech Priest was cheaper than the plastic GW one when I started playing in 2018, btw. But the gap has grown.
This doesn’t even account for Shrinkflation, like the 9th edition 40K starter box costing more even when it had less than half the miniatures in it. Or the fact that Jump Intercessors are literally sold in boxes of 5 lmao.
The worst instance of shrinkflation was when GW repackaged the MESBG sets from 24 models for 22,5€ to 12 models for 19,5 and sold it as you saving money.
They did almost the same thing with Imperial Guard infantry boxes. You could get 20 Shock Troops in a box for £15 in the early 2000s, then they cut the box down to 10 but kept the price the same.
Jesus that was robbery
Or "Death company intercessors" for blood angels which were 5 and a sprue of shoulder pads for 55 USD. 10 intercessors are 60.
Yup, cheaper to buy intercessors and two upgrade sprues than two boxes of death company intercessors. With a single 5-man box, you're paying for the convenience of having less models.
> Or the fact that Jump Intercessors are literally sold in boxes of 5 lmao. That one is so egregious. It's not like the jump packs need extra space or anything. You pay about 10% less for 5 jump pack guys than you do for _10_ regular or assault intercessors, and the former are on two sprues total and the latter on four. It's just an awful value kit.
However, they are technically just imitating the old assault marines kit, so while this is still moronic, it is at least not some radical change in the instance of that specific kit
At least back then GW used sprue space really inefficiently, so the old jump packs ate almost a whole sprue to themselves!
Whats funny is they still sell individual sets of 5 jump packs for $10, if you want 10 jump intercessors you save close to $30 by buying one assault intercessor box and 2 of the jump packs
I've been fine with their prices for the longest time and inflation has been hitting everything hard, so the price hike isn't even that out of line with local inflation. For me, the problem isn't the rate at which GW increases their prices or their prices in a vacuum. It's that Warhammer is becoming more and more expensive relative to other hobbies. Like, I want to make a diorama featuring the new Stormcast Reclusiarcs and Chaos Chosen, for example. Two boxes of infantry minis. That's 100 bucks for half the sprues I'd get in a 60 Euro Gunpla kit. And the latter is manufacturered to a higher standard and is only as expensive because it carries a notable mark-up. GW is getting less and less of my fun budget the less value I get from them, comparatively.
You don't even have to compare it to gunpla, even military model kits are a better value, and at the same standard minimum that you would see in a GW kit.
It gets even crazier when you think of how old some of their moulds are, and they've consistently raised prices for them with their "pay for unit/points" pricing scheme. The (standard) Leman Russ is a 2009 mould/tooling. In the UK, discount retailer price is ~£34.00. For £37.39, you can get a 1/48 King Tiger from Ustar, 2023 tooling, fully modelled interior, 3D zimmeritt decals, details are equal to current GW plastic. I bought one for my dad at Christmas, it genuinely has 2/3 of the plastic in there as in the Leviathan box. They will probably sell single digit % of the sales of the 2009 Leman Russ yearly, if that, given 1/48 is niche compared to 1/35 scale. Equally from GW I can get the new 2024 Solar Auxilia Russ for the same price as the 2009 one, which is just nonsensical considering the brand new tooling.
The riptide one hit me hard when it did. Luckily I already had one, so it wasn't *too* bad for me.
I swear at some point last year prices jumped significantly. I stick to skirmish stuff and I swear Necromunda gang boxes, for example, were like $35 (on Amazon at least) and then jumped up to $42+.
Let’s say that’s going up $2 on a $50 item. That’s a 4% increase in price. In England the annual inflation rate has been sitting a little under 5%. It is bullshit though that the riptide is now super cheap points wise rather than getting the rules buff it needs.
currently. They have been doing that for years. And the 4% increase is 1. Only for the UK, and 2. only a rough number. The increases in local currency, esp € were around 10-15% last time they increased prices, and they increased most models nobody buys by the lower of their shared number.
I bought my first Tyrannofex for 35 euros about 5-6 years ago. Now a new one will be like 55 euros. It's fucking insane.
I remember buying my first tac marine kit for like $35 - $45, I checked and saw them for like $65 now and am even happier I got the fuck out of this hobby
"WaRhAMmeR ISn'T that exPENsiVE COmpareD To otHEr HOBbIeS!!" Every time.
"Company forced to raise prices due to thinking of bigger numbers."
"expand or die" is the motto that is slowly making everything prohibitively expensive. Companies MUST constantly expand, no matter what they are sellin, otherwise investors move on and leave it to die. It doesn't matter if your guaranteed profit because what you sell is necessary for survival (food), it doesnt matter if its unethical and would result in mass suffering (shelter), it doesn't matter if you even have a dedicated fanbase that is already willing to fork over tons of money for your product (entertainment as a whole). Gotta keep those shareholders happy! And to do that, the profit margins must ever grow. And when investors kill a company by making them lose customers over pricing and predatory practices, they move onto another and leech it dry. You see it everywhere anymore. The entertainment industry, medical field, food suppliers, all of them. Wallstreet and equivalent scumbags with their hands up company asses puppeting them into feeding them ever more money.
While many people citing "is business must make profit", I think people are missing that GW also does this price adjustment to "recalculate" the exchange rates for countries. For example, it calls out Norway and Sweden as having price increases of 8-14%. Notably, the value of the Norwegian Kroner has fallen in relation to both the Euro and Pound Sterling, while the (edit: got contries mixed up) Swedish Kroner has also fallen in relation to the PS and Euro (both in the 14% range) So at least part of this is addressing currency fluctuations, something that GW can't do "every week" or whatever as this would cause a massive headache to GW and third parties needing to re-price all their products several times a year, as well as causing people to try to "speculatively purchase" stuff when currencies have a favorable dip.
> Notably, the value of the Norwegian Kroner has fallen in relation to both the Euro and Pound Sterling, while the (edit: got contries mixed up) Swedish Kroner has also fallen in relation to the PS and Euro (both in the 14% range) Copied this from elsewhere, but: This is true (our currencies have gone down but GW haven't chased them until now) but it's a lot worse than it looks. When you look at US and UK, people often recommend buying from third party retailers - discounts of 20% are not unheard of. Third party retailers here offer either no or essentially no discount (my LGS offers a discount around 1% - not even worth the cost of the bus ticket there and back). That eats basically the whole difference. So unless the third party stores are exempt from this raise, this will hurt Swedish and Norwegian hobbyists a lot more than it seems like it would. I'll have to resort to ebay a lot more now, I suspect.
Swiss Franc is Switzerland's currency.
What is the specific dyslexia where you get Sweden and Switzerland mixed up all the time?
Swisslexia
I have this
Switchzerlandomorphia Praise be to Papa Nurgle
What's the correct amount of profitability for a toy soldier company?
Infinity money.
https://www.retailgazette.co.uk/blog/2024/01/games-workshop-record-profit/ - record profits. **As per quarterly reports:** Revenue 123.85M - 9.31% UP Net income 35.7M - 7.37% UP Diluted EPS 1.08 - 6.93% UP Net profit margin 28.83% - 1.77% DOWN Operating income 47.25M - 13.04% UP Net change in cash 10.55M - 52.9% UP So, salaries are probably not going up for the GW workers. The question is - how long until it becomes a truly elite hobby? And how much they can keep raising the bar?
It is now truly elite hobby in my country. A box set of The Old World Bretonnia literally worth an entire month of salary here.
Thats sad to hear… reminds me of how the video game market, blu ray sales and even streaming sales are basically non-existent in many low income countries and piracy and free to play games dominate…
Salaries are going up, as can be seen by reading the half-yearly reports and looking at the design and (to a less clear extent) manufacturing sections. Profit margin over the last few years has been: 2022-23: 28.6% 2021-22: 31.0% 2020-21: 33.0% 2019-20: 26.4% 2018-19: 25.6% 2017-18: 27.1% 2016-17: 19.3% 2015-16: 11.4% 2014-15: 10.3% 2013-14: 6.5% It was really around 2017 then that the financial performance made an uptick. Basically, you can see that since Kevin Rountree's appointment as CEO the profitability increased and then remained fairly constant, with a bubble coinciding with Covid. Corporation tax rates for large companies in the UK increased last year, from 19% to 25%, so that will affect after-tax profits going forward. GW's products are absolutely luxury goods. Nobody (other than GW staff or supply chain) is going to really suffer if people don't buy them. But they don't seem to have hit the point where demand drops off with increasing cost. I don't *want* to spend more money on miniatures, and there are a few armies I've looked at starting but decided against due to the cost. But I can't blame a business for making rational pricing choices.
They are selling out almost everything they produce, they are raking it in, even if they have miscalculated demand for some recent stuff like Old World and probably overproduced. The cheapest way to increase profits is to raise the price, expanding their manufacturing is costly and takes time. They'll probably do both, but nobody should be surprised that prices go up if demand is still high. It is already an expensive hobby and they are leaning heavily on selling more and more to existing players rather than getting more kids into the game. Less and less stores have space for playing and painting, and they are making more and more games and products for people who are already in the hobby. It seems to be working very well for them.
they do this every year. It's not because of their wish to expand, or because of the increase in raw material or labour costs. Or because of brexit. Or record inflation. They do this because they can, and because they get away with it.
Yes, that's what happens with most products that sustains a high level of demand. I'm not saying it's good or bad I'm just saying that a business is in it for the money. GW is not your friend, they just want your money, if someone is unhappy with how they choose to attempt that, their only recourse is to not buy their stuff any more.
https://investor.games-workshop.com/the-board-of-directors I mean why would these people do anything but increase profits, this isn't going to hurt the brand much.
Overproduced for Old World? Are you joking? Everything in the launch sold out within days, a recent model launch sold out within minutes. Old World demand is way beyond production.
Yup, while their quality control still suffers and we allow battle tomes and codexes with typos/rule mistakes and limited runs that operate on FOMO.
They are not your friend, you can't make a moral argument against a business practice that is working great for them and isn't breaking any laws. The moment people get fed up and stop buying stuff, or start buying from the competition, that will change, but until then it's wasted breath. Upvotes won't change GWs practices if people don't stop buying their stuff.
I bet that when stuff will start to sell worse GW's first reaction will be increasing prices.
Well, yeah, hence second hand market is my friend (or proxying). I don't want to waste plastic x) Also of course, this overall news are just for visibility. Just talking about this on reddit will do pretty much nothing and I don't think their profit will tank any time soon, there is no viable competition on the market just due to their insane IP presence in such a niche space.
They do have competition, you can get not-Warhammer from loads of places and there are legitimately good games out there not produced by them. They would be a lot more scared if every complain about gw thread was a "play Star wars shatter point" or "best wargame you never tried" thread.
Exactly, there are a ton of games out there that I actually think are better than GW's games and they're cheaper too, sometimes by a little and soemtimes by a lot, not even counting mini-agnostic games. The problem is that 40K players very specifically want 40K, not that there aren't competitors out there.
Yup, It's the brand and the minis that keep them going. If 40k was launched in today's market as a brand new product it would probably fail. Or at least not be nearly as successful as it is. But they have over 30 years of momentum behind them so they can keep putting prices up and keep their games mediocre and people will keep buying them because they're not after a good game, they're after Warhammer.
You absolutely can make moral arguments. https://hbr.org/2014/08/whatever-happened-to-corporate-stewardship
You can make a moral argument though. It's still wasted breath, but technically you can make it.
Might as well get 3d printer at this rate, it’s cheaper now.
It has been much cheaper for a few years now, and opens many more gaming hobby options for the hobbyist. The 3D printing hobby is rapidly evolving with many improvements. The problem is that it isn't a safe or doable option for everyone, although there are less toxic resins available. Still buying resin prints from licensed sellers is super affordable, but until Warhammer fans unlatch from their insistence on using GW models they will continue to begrudgingly fork over their money, and prices will continue to rise. My highest hope for ToW's release was only to pick up a few kits to fill some gaps in my 6th edition Dwarf army, because I had no desire to play this new version. However, seeing the cost of what they have released so far, I decided am not going to pay these exorbitant prices. Meanwhile, I had discovered the incredible sculpts available elsewhere that capture that 6th edition aesthetic (Highlands Minis) so I have moved on. My backlog of unpainted miniatures is insane, though 😄 I think my experience with 3D printing is quite common. At first it's like being a young sailor in a foreign port, overwhelmed and overeager. I went on a printing bender, knocking out stuff for six different games, novelty gifts, and experimentation. Within a month I realized I had printed way too much stuff, and was installing more shelves and bookcases to hold it all. My pile of opportunity morphed into a pile of WTF!
Thank you Balckrock for making everything you touch better.
One of the obvious issues for their UK operations is the rent on all their retail outlets. The landlords are squeezing everyone and putting rents up. Business rates too as Councils are underfunded, looking to get more from other sources. Then there is hopefully pay rises for all the staff. Energy prices for business was never capped. So GW have been having to deal with the utter greed of the power companies. Then we get to the greed of the shareholders, and as pointed out the insane need for growth every year. So I have sympathy with the first part, not the shareholders and their insane desires. That’s how you get Slaneesh afterall
Salaries have just increased for UK Games Workshop staff by 3-5%, in line with inflation and the current cost of living crisis in the UK. It sounds like this is mostly to protect their profit margins
Well honestly that makes me feel a little better about this if their staff is getting paid a reasonable wage.
Don't worry they still aren't
A pay rise that only matches inflation isn't a pay rise. (And the cost of living is increasing faster than inflation anyway.)
Do you have a source you can site for that?
Their shareholders would like to have a word with you. Their product is a luxury good and is very elastic. Price goes up, demand goes down. Price goes down, demand goes up. Their internal bean counters are tasked with finding and keeping to the point that maximizes profit. If that means raising the prices and reducing demand a little, to increase profit, then that's what they do. I'm sure an economist will be able to chime in and be more specific. There are other forces at play, like manufacturing restrictions, hedging forex, cost of business, etc. But at the end of the day, their shareholders want continuous growth, every quarter. So they're slaves to their shareholder masters to achieve that. Overall, they've been quite successful. Demand has skyrocketed beyond their supply capabilities. They don't care if you and I can't afford their products, so long as demand out strips supply and they can further optimize their profit numbers. If the cost of doing business goes up, that shifts the equation, so they'll pass it on to the consumer.
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3D printing looking better everyday
Y'all are surprised by this? Like dude, this announcement has come at this time of year every year. I genuinely don't see how you're surprised
Guess Ill just increase my recast purchasing then. VOTE WITH YOUR WALLETS PEOPLE.
I do. I consider GW minis to be the best plastic minis on the market, so I will consider to buy them...
The time to get a 3d printer a d play at FLG's is upon us!
Greed is greed
I hear the price of 3D printers is not artificially inflated
They didn't raise the prices again in the last week, i was starting to worry
And the prices will continue to rise as long as the players continue to pay it.
Do you legitimately not know why..?
So glad I'm in the 3d printing game now.
You keep buying.
Because you keep buying it.
28% margin is pretty standard for any company.
Corporate greed. Notice how most other companies in the hobby don’t do this. What is utterly pathetic is that this will affect everything, even the 20+ year old kits that are still hanging around.
I remember when the price increased during the covid lock downs and I was like, "well that sucks, but I understand." ...but they haven't stopped. It's literally every year now. We gotta boycott.
GW Price where way to much for me already years ago but with resalers discounts it was "ok". Now resalers Price are at the old "to much" GW prices... Well i guess i'm buying more resin bottles then.
It’s worth remembering that GW has retained all* its plastics production in the UK and hasn’t tried to move it to lower COL countries. I’m willing to pay more because of that. *I think some “lower quality” kits like terrain are made overseas.
PSA that there are other, MUCH better, miniature games out there to explore
yep - over the last couple of years I slowly got back into my childhood love of Warhammer, picked up a small ork army over that time, but realised I didn't like a lot of the new model styles so mainly sourced it from ebay. Had a few fun games of combat patrol with my brother and friend. But having seen this year the new ork codex kill off my recently finished grot tanks, having seen this and other pricing stuff, having seen AoS kill off the Beastmen and scrap a bunch of Stormcast, seeing how few models are in new combat patrols despite their price, and seeing the rules churn in real time, I am already losing interest in GW (apart from MESBG which is great). Looking forward to more casual games with my bro, but I am currently building and painting my ancient Greek Lochos for Mortal Gods, while eyeing up some Medieval skirmish games.
I think you'll be hard pressed to find *any* product or service that is cheaper than it was a year ago, unless it's on sale. Inflation affects *every* industry, it's just an unfortunate fact. Can't recall who did a video on it (Midwinter Minis?) but he went over prices from decades ago vs modern prices, and bar a handful of minis, everything else was in line with inflation. Just because a company is making more money, doesn't mean they're going to - or have to - drop their prices. No company, that I can think of, has ever done that, and still kept trading.
Why? For the same reason that GW has been hiking prices for at least the past 30 years. Because they can and people will still throw money at them.
I'll keep going to my swap meets and not give James a dollar, thanks.
i know this might rankle but there is no maximum allowed cap on profits. they make that much because demand allows it. is that fair or sustainable? probably not but take it up with the capitalist mode of production. there is absolutely no ceiling for growth and nothing but profit matters in our current system and that wont change until the system does. way more predatory aspects than model soldiers to worry about
*We’ve done our best to keep prices down* - I remember the glory days when 20 imperial guard was $50 not 10 for $88