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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.
So if you sell GW stuff on the internet but don't have pictures, just descriptions you should be ok. People can always go to the GW site to see what the stuff looks like, or read White Dwarf.
graspee
I hate this "you have to buy from a local retailer" BS. It's like this with a lot of AV equipment. I can't mailorder the speakers I want...they want me to get ripped off at a local dealer. So, I end up ordering from a grey market dealer for 1/2 MSRP.
The problem isn't with the Internet. If you want to charge more locally do it, but I better get some good service for the extra money. Plus, you better stock the exact model I want and not take 3 weeks to get it.
That's why my friends and I would buy the set, sell the minatures on, and then make cardstock chits for our battles. We just played a 3,000 point Warmaster battle for the total investment of the rules and the 2002 annual (about $50).
Suppose that's a DMCA violation because I made an apparatus to bypass their propriatary miniatures?
If brevity is the soul of wit, then how does one explain Twitter?
LOL people who play buy more than a FEW miniatures, but I agree....If I were a game store that had a web presence and GW told me I could not market there merchandise on the web I'd stop carrying their stuff totally. This is almost as bad as the local wizards of the coast store no longer stocking ANYTHING that isn't D20 system or a Hasbro product. Screw em both...
When I was in highschool and playing WH and the like there was a big split in Games Workshop that resulted in the creation of Warzone which is basically a WH clone but the cost of the figures was MUCH cheaper and the quality much higher. Games Workshop drove their modelers from their company by making the game too expensive to be played by your average High School student and making the working environment intollerable. Games Workshop seems to think they can do whatever they want and the customers will still buy their overpriced product and up till now they have been correct, maybe this will be the straw that broke the camels back. Question: How does this look on a legal front? How can a distributer say that the location of a store is grounds for not distributing to that store? I don't know anything about the relevent laws and thought someone might.
I'm thinking that if they come after us for playing their games without using their miniatures, the best thing to do would be to invent different rules and keep them under an open content license. After that, companies can compete to sell minis for the new open ruleset.
Finding God in a Dog
I can see their point as far as companies using their pictures for marketing, but an over the top action like this will only hurt them in the long run. Should they really care if pictures are being ripped off to promote the legitimate sale of their products? Doesn't make much sense to me!
From the Usenet post -
Games Workshop is disturbed by the infringement of copyrights on their intellectual property so rampant on the internet. Therefore to protect their IP GW will be closing the internet to all uses of their intellectual property except for a handful of permitted images.
However, GW's (current?) IP policy is very encouraging in tone, quote: "the higher profile the hobby gets the better it is for all of us". The full policy is here - http://www.gamesworkshop.com/Legal/ippolicy.htm
Is this a case of left hand - right hand, or will that policy change dramatically in the near future?
Paul
Dunno if this has changed one bit, but when they were starting to get big, you couldn't buy a complete game from them.
Additional rules, errata, new rules from the magazine they published, etc etc etc. You couldn't play a complete game because no game was ever complete. Nevermind playing a tournament.
I saw them back then for what they are: Money grubbing bastards. Seems little has changed.
So rise up, all ye lost ones, as one, we'll claw the clouds.
I have to wonder if this isn't also part of a larger issue?
Namely, the creators of these fantasy/role-playing games and miniatures attained their initial glory and status in the "pre-Internet" era. (By that, I mean, John Q, Gamer wasn't actively using an Internet browser at home or playing many games online.)
Companies like TSR made oodles of cash selling D&D books at $30 a pop through the local hobby shops, and items like the minitatures were soon to follow.
Nowdays, the prevalence of computers,the net, and online gaming seems like it is eating into their market. I guess some companies adapted better than others. (Look at how TSR went into the computer simulation game business in a *big* way.) In general though, I suspect the changes are somewhat lost on them.
I can easily see how they'd view the web and computer gaming as "the enemy" - since it would seem to be drawing folks away from a world of using one's own imagination to game, while establishing a "concreteness" to the whole thing by the purchase of small figurines. (In the virtual world, you simply look at photos of your favorite characters - perhaps as wallpaper or screen savers? The games provide a multimedia experience so you don't need to imagine what some "dungeon master" is trying to describe to you with just words.)
I think we all agree that Games Workshop wants to eliminate competition from its own crappy online store rather than actually improve their own online store experience.
What I'm curious to know is if this "no other online outlets" policy will apply to TRU/Amazon.com?
I started participating in auctions online and collecting an army for roughly half the price of what I was paying at the store. My army grew to more than 120 pieces before GW decided "welp, it's time to change the Chaos rule book and all the minis so we can make more money selling people new versions of what they already have." Fortunately, I only played with friends and not in tournaments since they banned all older minis from the tournaments. I couldn't see any reason to go out and by another Blood Thirster of Khorne when the one I already had was adequate enough.
Even back in those days, GW was trying to strong arm online retailers and auctioners into not giving discount prices. If anything, those prices made it easier for GW to clear out their old stock to bring in the new line. I certainly never would have as many minis as I do now if I had to pay full retail on all of them. Seems like they only want to shoot themselves in the foot. I wonder what they would think about how I created molds and copied some of the minis I had bought for my own use ($6 a pop for infantry level guys gets rather rough).
Don't leave your mind so open that your brain falls out. Don't close it so much that you cut off the blood.
I started gaming over 30 years ago. Avalon Hill board games were the big thing then and Strategy & Tactics magazine (with a board game in every issue.) D&D in high school (the original three booklets: #4 when released was a BIG event, the first addition to the rules in a long time.) I spent most of my time with minatures and I played just about everything and anything: Napoleonic era, American Civil War, English Civil War, ancient, medieval, WWI, WWII and modern armor, naval minatures (had the darndest WWI Austro-Hungarian fleet you ever saw -- a Tatra class DD squadron was enormous fun! Trouble was, you only had the one squadron: that's all they built...)
Anyway, I spent most of my post-pubescent years up through the first few years of my marriage with this stuff. A number of years ago my son got interested in one of the fantasy games (I forget which one.) After some research I advised him to not get too heavily into it. There were two reasons: cost, and the heavily commercialization surrounding it. He ended up buying a starter set of minatures, building them and painting them, then didn't play much. He noticed one of the killer errors of previous generations of poorly designed games: they take too long to play and too much of that time is spent nosing through the rules.
Tractics was the original "encyclopedic" game I recall playing. I call it encyclopedic because you couldn't play the thing without continuous reference to a thick book of complex rules. Tractics (rules for modern armor -- read that as tanks and infantry -- minatures) games could go on for eight hours and you'd discovered that you'd only played six turns, with no outcome in sight. Deeply frustrating.
One of my buddies, a very bright guy, condensed and abstracted Tractics into a playable set of rules that yielded 95%+ identical results in about six pages of rules, most of which were easily memorized tables. Basically, he refactored Tractics into something playable (and much more enjoyable) that you could get a full game, 20+ turns out of, in six to eight hours. A group of about 20 or so of us played these rules for about 10 years, (and for all I know are still playing them: I dropped out about the time my first kid was born.)
The point? Gaming goes through cycles, just like everything else. The first D&D was very playable but it got popular, more rules were written (mostly to have something to sell,) and it stopped being fun. The days when you could spend an enjoyable afternoon running through a dungeon as a somewhat unstable Orc with a spear are long gone. Lots of companies were formed, sold a bunch of stuff and disappeared. Other companies looked at the field, saw the litter of commercial corpses, and decided to make other games instead. This left things open for gamers to sell the stuff they loved and games got good again. Once someone started to make money again the commercialization process started all over, which is where things are today.
Personally I've moved on to computer games. Talonsoft has (or had, I dunno,) a great line of PC games for old minatures freaks, and there are a lot of choices. It isn't the same as moving a squadron of Hussars across a tabletop river, or trying to figure out where your opponent has hidden his weapons platoon with those damned mortars, but it's a lot easier than finding another minatures player who actually knows some history to game with. So this company has done something stupid and will, in all probability, flame out. So what: that's part of the life cycle. Gaming won't lose much, from what I've seen of their products.
Simple. The miniatures are bloody expensive, and they market the hell out of the most expensive ones. I quit (well, I'd really quit much earlier, but I totally gave up on ever restarting) when I found they were trying to flog a £20 miniature, and that was 5 years back.
Bearing in mind that GW is exclusively marketed at young teens (15 would be the top-end age) then these prices are phenomenal. I presume only kids with rich daddies can do it now - I don't think I'd bother starting now, given the cost. There are other systems out there which would probably be better, it's just that GW are one of the bigger outlets (at least in Britain) so they get a bit of a lock-in.
Grab.
Seriously, pardon my ignorance, but why exactly do you need to consult with a salesperson about buying miniatures? What value do they add? Consulting a salesperson on a computer if you don't know much about them? I can buy that. But purchasing miniatures for a game? I don't get it.
I have actually been in a GameWorks, I went to lunch with a couple of friends who were into it and they went in to buy some stuff. To tell you the truth, the place kind of creeped me out. And I didn't see anyone working too hard in there either.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
I have a close friend who owns a Hobby Store which is the local Games Workshop re-seller. It is hard for them to make a living with the availability of cheep online stuff. Most sell at a 10-20 percent discont, which is the REAL problem.
You can always buy online from GamesWorkshop web site it self. There is no dicount however.
I hope the Hobby Store can stay in business, they offer tables to play and gather. I lecture the kids at the store all the time when they brag about buying this and that online for 50-75% off. You should support the hobby store or not play there.
Eventually the trend will be one source for these things, and no local places selling. This is bad for the economy.
Think globally, shop locally.
-Richard
Come the revolution, the Bourgeois, Capitalistic, "A PARKING STICKER HOLDERS", will be first against the wall!
okay, so i used to work for GW (I actually did the casting of the miniatures at their baltimore site - mind that i said casting and not sculpting). a friend of mine headed up the north american mail order dept. he showed me some numbers one day and explained the how-and-why of gw.
basically, they give crap-all about retail stores (their own or the indy's the push into being chapter approved). it's all just exposure. as he explained it to me, 80% of their revenue came in through mail-order (this was '95). 80% in north american, 80% asia/australia, and 80% in europe. at the time (and most likely now) they were the largest mail-order gaming company in the world. period.
so what's changed? nothing. you can buy online and i'm quite sure that gw isn't interested in anyone else profitting off their very lucractive mail/online-order business without shelling out some serious cash to become "chapter approved". it's just their business strategy - plain and simple.
that said, i used to be able to buy the miniatures by weight. that means an eight dollar item normally cost me about six cents. models were 50% off. but i left the company after being told that i needed to paint the "games workshop" way or not field an army. which pissed me off because i paint very well, just not their way. gw is the most ridiculously overpriced gaming company ever. this part of my rant is going nowhere fast...
to summarize: gw + mail/online-order = profit.
that's really all there is to it. honest.
The problem is that brick & moarter stores cost a lot more to run than your average Internet shop. A low traffic location will cost you upwards of $200/month. Then you have to worry about keeping the store manned. (Remember, minimum wage means minimum quality) Also, all that equipment being demonstrated sucks up electricity. Even when it's "off." (It's really in standby) Then add shoplifting to your list of costs. There's probably a few things I'm missing here.
You can get managed hosting at Rackspace and a self-storage unit(for use as a warehouse) in your local area for much less than that, and you can do all of the work on your own time, at your own hours, at your own wage.
What's this Submit thingy do?
The other important thing to recognize here is the fact that most wargaming is done at a central location. Most people, when they do miniature wargaming, are doing so at a "gaming store", a place where there are:
/teaching/ the game to the people who will eventually be playing (read: buying) the game.
1) other people to play with
2) terrain usable for setting up a battlefield
3) someone with at least a mild interest enough in the game to act as a valid referee/rules clarifier
Internet sites don't really have to provide that and don't have to pay the rent (webspace is nothing compared to that) and so can undercut the people who are generally
It shouldn't really be a suprise that GW did this. They've been putting rules on buying from them for a while and as has been mentioned in previous posts, if they screw up either the order or the merchandise, refunds are next to impossible. Thankfully, I never played the GW games specifically, but I've played enough miniatures games to hear the horror stories from retailers and gamers.
"If the good lord had intended us to walk, he wouldn't have invented roller skates." -Willy Wonka
If there's a copyright violation, my guess is that it's either due to all the stores all using the same images that the manufacturer actually made, or they're using the manufacturer's trademark logos, as opposed to simply using the name as part of an item's description. The stuff about copyright violation is probably either bullshit, or it's something easy to avoid infringing. A seller can just get a $200 digital camera and take pictures of the merchandise themselves, and that's that. Use the manufacturer's name to describe who made the product, rather than using their logo or possibly confusing customers about whether you represent that manufacturer or not.
Setting heinous terms of sale, though, is probably do-able. If you want to buy a bunch of stuff from the manufacturer at below list price (so that you can resell it at a profit), then they can get you to agree to whatever terms they want to try to get from you, in exchange for that lower price. If you don't like the terms (which might say that selling over the net is prohibited) then you don't have to buy the items. I suspect they'll get away with that. But as everyone else is pointing out, the thing that they'll "get away with" will probably not really be to their advantage. (Just as if I were to put an ad in the paper saying I'm selling a Honda Civic, Honda can't do a damned thing about it.)
I don't see why this is a big deal or how "EVERY INTERNET BUSINESS" is threatened. And I can't imagine there are any serious barriers to someone else opening a manufacturing business that does the same thing and competes and blows these guys to hell It's not like there are patents on pouring molten pewter (or whatever these things use) into a mold, are there? (If there were, they would have expired centuries ago, no?) I bet this is a craft where the playing field is very level. (Now someone will shoot me down for my ignorance. Fine, show me.)
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
So they wont sell to retailers that sell online.
No problem.
You set up two companies, one online, one off.
The offline company runs a retail location (address is street address of far away mailboxes etc). It sells to any and all -- shockingly its biggest account is.. duh duh DUUUh - the online company.
It aint brain science.. No retailer has to reveal who they sell to nor how much they sell at.
GPL'd web-based tradewars themed space game
Sure, it calls for you to get one to make the initial mold, but in the end you get a lightweight model that is FAR cheaper (less than a dime in materials), more resilient than plastic and lighter than metal, and it's easy to mod with a Dremel tool. My friend and I cast Obliterators every time we're over at his house. No way am I dropping $20 _each_ for a model that's a little bigger than a Terminator. J
First off, when Slashdot links to Dakkadakka I see my worlds colliding...big time.
I don't see the problem with GW wanting to stop internet resellers from undercutting their retail operations. Slashdotters should be all for this since the people who are hurt most by this reselling are the small local games shops. I've never seen an unsuccessful GW retail store but I've seen a lot of struggling independants. Part of that is because GW is mean to small retailers but most of it is because you can buy all your figs for 30% less on the internet. As for the foolishness of cutting off sales over the internet...in case you were unaware, GW has a pretty high capacity mail-order section. It's not like anybody with access to the internet is suddenly going to lose the ability to buy GW models. The GW web-site is certainly as easy to find as the NewWave site or the Wandering Mage or any of the other discount sites.
A lot of people have this strange belief that GW is somehow evil. They aren't. They sell a superior product at a premium price and what the heck is wrong with that? I really don't see how this tactic hurts GW in the long term.
-Pinkoir
... that led us to write Shellshock.
:)
I can't believe any retailer would do this, but after watching the guys from GW at a convention, I can see how it would be them.
Now, granted, my buddy and I wrote and sell our own miniatures game, (which is also free, as in beer, on our website) so you can take this comment with whatever amount of suspicion you like...
We attended a con where someone from GW was there. The people who ran the con had paid to fly him in from England and put him in a hotel and everything. He was one of their special guests... There was a tourney contest where the winner got the chance to go up against the rep from GW. The entire con the GW rep talked about how no GW rep had ever lost to a player. Finally, this kid (maybe 13 or 14 years old) wins the tourney. The GW rep says he gets to not only pick the terrain they are going to fight in, but also gets to pick BOTH armies. This kid was so excited he didn't care, but the rest of were a little suspicious. Turned out we were justified as the GW rep picked this thick dense jungle terrain, gave himself an army full of close combat and melee troops, and then gave the kid a bunch of sniper and long range weapon types. Until now, it was the single most vile thing I had ever seen a game company do. (Funny sidenote, the kid almost won too, that's how bad this guy sucked.) The guys who ran the con were furious and said they'd never invite anyone from GW back, and never have.
So, I can totally expect this from these guys. Can't complain too much though, since it can only help my meager sales...
WWJD?
JWRTFM!
I mean, let's use a little bit of common sense here: You've got a product to sell. Maybe some people out there want to buy it. In that case, you must make this product as visible as possible so that people who might buy it will buy it!
That's how things work! Some person or company feels like producing some kind of product. Some people or companies might feel like buying that product. It doesn't matter what rationale goes into the decision to make or buy the product. What matters is the fact that everybody does what they want. As such, I don't blame this Games Workshop or whatever for their decision. It's just their decision... The FACT that this will COST them in sales is simply the result of the formula that is the marketplace.
So, yeah... they're dumbasses.
I doubt Games Workshop would do this if a significant portion of their income came from online realtors. As a result, they probably think their bottom line won't change very much as a result of this policy. What they don't realize is that many people, especially including geeks, research products online before purchasing them anywhere. They want to see pictures, read comments, and look at prices, even if they don't purchase online.
Thus, this policy will cost Games Workshop more than they think it will.
Thought I'd take the opportunity to put my (british) 2p in. I used to play Warhammer 40k, dabbled with Adeptus Titanicus (think Mechwarrior but bigger and darker), and a number of the other GW games. Collected White Dwarf until about issue 130, with back issues down to about #20.
I gave up wargaming altogether at about age 13 when a blister of overscale lead minatures went from GBP 3 to GBP 4 overnight. I still think Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay has one of the richest and most interesting backgrounds of any RPG (renaissance fantasy with Lovecraftian undertones would be the best description I can think of).
I do know a fair bit of the history of GW, both gleaned from the trade press and from conversations I've had with people who've met Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone (not the Steve Jackson of Illuminati:NWO, Car Wars, GURPS, etc fame). I've also met people who've applied for jobs with GW, both retail and creative. (I live in Birmingham, about an hour or so from GW's headquarters and design studios in Nottingham, UK.)
It would probably be fair to say that GW started the Apple of the gaming world, before morphing into the Microsoft-equivalent. It was started by a pair of hippies in a flat in London, making wooden chess and backgammon boards. I'm not too sure about the early years, but by the mid 1980's White Dwarf magazine was probably the best general roleplaying magazine available in the world, it covered AD&D, Call of Cthulhu, Runequest and many others large and small. The GW chain of shops stocked roleplaying games from a range of publishers, and minatures from Citadel (GW's subsidiary), and others. At some point Warhammer Battle appeared, as did a few other gems like UK editions of Call of Cthulhu, and Runequest; the Judge Dredd roleplaying game; and wonderful boardgames like Fury of Dracula, Curse of the Mummy's Tomb, and Blockmania. At this point in time they were seriously good roleplaying/wargaming shops, with a bloody good design studio turning out a range of quality product.
The aforementioned pair of hippies, Steve Jackson and Iain Livingstone got themselves a new hobby: writing Fighting Fantasy choose your own adventure books. This proved to be a fair bit more lucrative than running Games Workshop, so at some point in the mid to late 80's they sold up and over three or four years GW became the company you see today.
The basic marketing idea GW use these days is to catch'em young, preferably before the age of 10, and try to convince these kids that GW comprise the the known gaming universe. Hence the attempt to restrict distribution to sites that they control, to prevent impressionable young minds from realising that companies and people other than Games Workshop make cool and interesting games and minatures.
Even after switching all of their production over to lead-free metal a few years ago, which was a major re-tooling effort, the mark-up on minatures is pretty huge, especially when you have that much market share (kids pocket money is big business these days) and control over what minatures are fielded in competition/leagues, which are admittedly a good way to chill and meet people when you're a young geek. The move to more plastic minatures was mainly a cost-saving issue, as well as a way to break into a slightly younger market.
Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay was licensed to Hogshead publishing, which was the best thing that ever happened to it (I was one of the people who waited 15 years for a supplement described in the first edition of the rulebook as 'in progress').
Anyway, I hope that gives you a little more insight into GW, personally I got back into minatures when I saw Flintloque, dammn good fun and easy to get started (between 6-12 minatures a side is a good skirmish, the rules work well with more players, each person controls their own squad of minatures. Plus, the minatures are way cool, Orc redcoats and Elven Voltigeurs, wargaming was meant to be this way.
I dunno. We like to think that it's short-sighted, 'cuz, y'know, we want our net stuff. But according to a friend of mine, who is a major name in the gaming industry, having written or edited for many of the major gaming companies (and even written some tie-in novels for at least one of them), GW depends pretty much primarily on the retail outlets to survive--and the Internet sales are undercutting those to a substantial degree. And for a gaming company that's so heavily into miniatures, being able to show the customer a beautiful spread of figures and merchandise is an important sales feature.
We geeks can complain and rant and rave about it all we want, 'cuz they're casting aspersion on our beautiful Internet and limiting the bargains we can get, but it seems premature to claim that it's going to be bad for GW's business without a deeper understanding of how that business works. Time will tell how this affects GW's bottom line.
Editor Emeritus and Senior Writer, TeleRead.org
One thing many of you don't seem to consider, is that most gamers (cards, tabletop, etc) spread information by word of mouth. When it comes to gaming stores, word of mouth can keep you alive or kill you off, pure and simple. Also from my experience, most gamers like to experience a game 'hands on' (by either borrowing an army and playing, or just watching) before getting involved and seriously investing their money.
All GW qualms aside, look at it like this: online stores undercut local stores -> local stores start going out of business -> less people get exposure to the games (and experienced players) -> your target market doesn't get "new blood".
I frequent a local store and have seen it time and time again: younger people (Yu-gi-oh players, as the trend is now) playing card games, see the 40K gamers and think "Hey, that's pretty cool. Maybe I should try that sometime..."
There is something to be said for 'the in-store experience' when it comes to future players of games like these. Seeing products online doesn't get you interested in a game quite like watching a few people hash out a 2000 point game of Chaos versus Necrons... ;)
There's no wrong way, to eat a Rhesus...