The trick here is that Games Workshop DEPENDS on the physical market
process. Most Warhammer 40K is played in stores that have play areas
set up. People buy the game so that they can play it in the store-
I've never played a game in my house and probably never will, because
I don't have the room. The store, in turn, sets aside a place for me
to play so that I'll buy the stuff from them. If everybody buys their
GW stuff online for less than the store can charge, then nobody needs
to waste money buying at the store, and suddenly the store sees no
reason to have that space available for people to play in (Or, if
they're too focused on GW products, they go belly-up). Result:
Nobody has a place to play, they stop buying GW products online, end
of GW.
Perhaps the stores could make money charging people to play, but I
doubt it. I understand GW's reasoning here- they HAVE to protect the
revenue stream of individual, physical hobby stores, or their own
revenue stream dies.
It's been said several times in this discussion that another company will come along and let their stuff be sold on the Internet and eat GWs market share. Won't happen. If enough people are buying their stuff online to make a big difference to the company's revenue, then enough people are buying stuff online to take a big chunk out of physical stores revenue, and they won't find it worthwhile to organize games for this company, set up places to play it, etc, and so nobody has a place to play it, so nobody needs to buy it, game over.
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The trick here is that Games Workshop DEPENDS on the physical market process. Most Warhammer 40K is played in stores that have play areas set up. People buy the game so that they can play it in the store- I've never played a game in my house and probably never will, because I don't have the room. The store, in turn, sets aside a place for me to play so that I'll buy the stuff from them. If everybody buys their GW stuff online for less than the store can charge, then nobody needs to waste money buying at the store, and suddenly the store sees no reason to have that space available for people to play in (Or, if they're too focused on GW products, they go belly-up). Result: Nobody has a place to play, they stop buying GW products online, end of GW. Perhaps the stores could make money charging people to play, but I doubt it. I understand GW's reasoning here- they HAVE to protect the revenue stream of individual, physical hobby stores, or their own revenue stream dies. It's been said several times in this discussion that another company will come along and let their stuff be sold on the Internet and eat GWs market share. Won't happen. If enough people are buying their stuff online to make a big difference to the company's revenue, then enough people are buying stuff online to take a big chunk out of physical stores revenue, and they won't find it worthwhile to organize games for this company, set up places to play it, etc, and so nobody has a place to play it, so nobody needs to buy it, game over.