Games Workshop Tries to Crack Down on Internet Sales

heirodule writes "In this messageboard posting internet retailer The warstore says he was contacted by Games Workshop, maker of miniature wargames such as Warhammer 40,000 and the Lord of the Rings Battle Game. GW will be refusing to distribute their product to retailers who sell over the internet after July 1. That's bad enough, but they cited the problem of IP violations (like people posting pictures of their products?) as part of the rationale. The claim is that for GW, this has nothing to do with internet sales offering discounts (yeah, right) but with the 'experience' that GW wants customers to have (of coming into their own stores and getting a hard sell)." The nearest Game Workshop store to me is a 1 hour, 10 minute drive, according to their store locator. The Usenet thread may be of interest.

Comments

Sounds like Apple...

[Delta-9]

Is 'Games Workshop' an Apple company?

Smart business model

[grub]

1. Sell millions through internet "e-tailers"
2. Realize that too much profit is bad (for whatever reason)
3. Quit selling to "e-tailers"
4. ???
5. Bankruptcy!

Shouldn't be too much of a problem

[Otter]

Hey it's not like their entire customer base is hot-headed, demanding nerds with Napoleon fantasies...

Wait till you see how pissed GW will be....

[AMuse]

When they find out that these dirty "retailers" (AKA IP Pirates) have been -profiting- off their intellectual property!

Translation

[xorbe]

"Please, stop selling our products! And stop advertising them too!!"

(Sell! Sell! Sell!)

In other news...

[Bendebecker]

They also have decided that electritic lights and paper money don't give the GW customer the right 'experience'. So from now on they will be using torches and only excepting gold coins (or in the case of japanese made wargames, only gil.)

3d printer

[s4m7]

boy am i glad that i invested in one of those 3d resin printers... I've been downloading all of Games Workshop's models off of usenet, where some dude with one of those 3d scanners has been posting them! I have all of GW's catalog and the only money i've spent is on the "printing" resin! Eat that RIAA!

Clever tactic to grow the wargaming market

[Infonaut]

Now, now. Let's not overreact people! This is actually a clever ploy by GW to kick-start the miniature games market. As we all know, tabletop gaming hasn't exactly been growing by leaps and bounds lately. Computer/console games have eaten into their market and cut profits.

So now GW is doing the right thing by making it more difficult for gamers to buy their products. This will grow the market by... uh... wait... by... uh... .

Re:Hobby Stores can't compete at lower prices.

[unicron]

You're fucking kidding right? My local hobby store is staffed by a random high school pretty boy at any given time. I've never seen the same one twice. He doesn't know thing 1 about anything in the store. He works there because he'll work for peanuts and he's free every night. He has a look of UTTER contempt and hatred for any person that comes in there. The little kids he outright punks, the older people(like me) just get ignorned or shot icy glares. FUCK my local gaming store.

Oh, and the ones where people know their shit aren't any better.."Dude, seriously, can you put down your pokemon cards long enough to ring this up?" "Sir, I'm trying to explain to this customer how to play.." "Explain shit, motherfucker, that kids been in here 6 hours, he has more pokemon cards than your store as whole does..his fucking face is on that tournament magazine over there..now ring this shit up or I'll punch you in the throat!"

And that's on a good day.