There's already a Reddit post where an (ex?) FFG employee has said GW wanted FFG to drop all their minis lines, including X-wing and Imperial Assault.

IF (a big "if" I know...) thats true it would make me laugh very very very hard... because of the stupidity of that request (but knowing GW like I said in my previous post wouldnt surprise me).

There's already a Reddit post where an (ex?) FFG employee has said GW wanted FFG to drop all their minis lines, including X-wing and Imperial Assault.

IF (a big "if" I know...) thats true it would make me laugh very very very hard... because of the stupidity of that request (but knowing GW like I said in my previous post wouldnt surprise me).

That's so hilarious I hope it's true.

Link?

https://www.reddit.com/r/boardgames/comments/51xjti/ffg_and_gw_officially_part_ways/d7fo2k0

There's already a Reddit post where an (ex?) FFG employee has said GW wanted FFG to drop all their minis lines, including X-wing and Imperial Assault.

IF (a big "if" I know...) thats true it would make me laugh very very very hard... because of the stupidity of that request (but knowing GW like I said in my previous post wouldnt surprise me).

That's so hilarious I hope it's true.

Probably not, it was posted by a member of the development team who was hedging his statement heavily and has previously admitted that the game development team gets very limited info on the higher-up 'corporate' goings-on.

I wouldn't be surprised if it was a blown out of proportion office rumour. If it ever happened, it most probably was one of the arguments during the negotiations and went more along the lines of "we feel that we can't renew this license with you as long as you continue to stand in direct competition to us in our primary target market with your Star Wars licensed products".

You know, like a reasonable argument made by a reasonable representative of a multi-million dollar company with a global reach in negotiations with another global reach company that's part of a multi-million dollar conglomerate.

Or, like people on the internet are suggesting, they stamped their foot and said "drop your spaceship toys or we'll take our army men dolls to a different playground", to which the other side replied "LOL U mad bro?" and stormed out of the building.

I'll let you decide which scenario is more plausible.

I imagine they were negotiating with GW but were unable to come to an agreement. GW is notorious for their greed and iron fisted management of their license. I am sure they will find some other poor bastards to make board games for their franchise down the line

Or, you know, instead of one of the parties being Satan, it might have just been two companies mutually agreeing that their partnership was no longer beneficial.

Or, you know, if it makes you feel better thinking that its ok I guess but knowing the GW business practices which I know first hand when I worked at a national distributor of hobby games 13 years ago I would bet Sirfuzzy is 100% correct. I dont see FFG not interested in keeping the agreement after developing so many good games but... you know... its just my POV.

And of course FFG will never say the truth about this because theyre being ethical in their position. Maybe one day we will know...

I too have worked a position in the retail chain of the gaming industry and I've had professional dealings with GW representatives until I quit about two years ago, though even now I have dealings with them indirectly, since I'm currently translating their novels. I admit some of their business policies were fairly silly when applied as a blanket solution to every case and I could recognize that they were prone to overreacting when making business decisions, but I could always see where they were coming from and I never felt any malice from them towards either myself or the business I was working for. The regional sales rep even massaged the system for us on several occassions so that we could get things done with minimal hassle. I'm sorry you had a negative experience with the company professionally. While I don't care much for their product personally, I find the continuous and unending vilification of the company and all of its employees on the Internet to be downright distasteful and quite frankly, absurd. They're not a moustache-twirling cartoon villain, they're a publicly ran business that's aware of the responsibility it has towards its owners and its hundreds, if not thousands of employees, making hard decisions to compete in an extremely tough, unforgiving and increasingly overcrowded market.

I imagine they were negotiating with GW but were unable to come to an agreement. GW is notorious for their greed and iron fisted management of their license. I am sure they will find some other poor bastards to make board games for their franchise down the line

Or, you know, instead of one of the parties being Satan, it might have just been two companies mutually agreeing that their partnership was no longer beneficial.

Or, you know, if it makes you feel better thinking that its ok I guess but knowing the GW business practices which I know first hand when I worked at a national distributor of hobby games 13 years ago I would bet Sirfuzzy is 100% correct. I dont see FFG not interested in keeping the agreement after developing so many good games but... you know... its just my POV.

And of course FFG will never say the truth about this because theyre being ethical in their position. Maybe one day we will know...

I too have worked a position in the retail chain of the gaming industry and I've had professional dealings with GW representatives until I quit about two years ago, though even now I have dealings with them indirectly, since I'm currently translating their novels. I admit some of their business policies were fairly silly when applied as a blanket solution to every case and I could recognize that they were prone to overreacting when making business decisions, but I could always see where they were coming from and I never felt any malice from them towards either myself or the business I was working for. The regional sales rep even massaged the system for us on several occassions so that we could get things done with minimal hassle. I'm sorry you had a negative experience with the company professionally. While I don't care much for their product personally, I find the continuous and unending vilification of the company and all of its employees on the Internet to be downright distasteful and quite frankly, absurd. They're not a moustache-twirling cartoon villain, they're a publicly ran business that's aware of the responsibility it has towards its owners and its hundreds, if not thousands of employees, making hard decisions to compete in an extremely tough, unforgiving and increasingly overcrowded market.

So you manage in same the paragraph to point how silly some of their business decisions are and also point out you never felt any malice toward the business you worked...

Either youre the lucky one or your business followed all the requeriments they imposed (although currently translating their novels now could also explain it).

The continuous and unending vilification of the company is justified because of years doing stupid decisions just to please the shareholders and ignoring those who are willing to sell/distribute their games (and also to those who buy their games).

Some examples are:

- Every couple of years throwing in the market a new edition of a game and telling players sorry but you have to buy half of your army again if you want to play in official tournaments (and sometimes making it worse than the previous edition).

- Changing the magazine (White Dwarf) to a weekly format while charging almost the same for a monthly one (seems they reverted back to monthly this September)

- Requiring that the minimum buy order for distribution in a small market being the same as a large market even after we pointed out that those quantities would never be sold in a timely manner that would be worth our investment.

Well... cant please everyone I guess...

With AGoT, they still had the license and were continuing with the game, just in a 2.0 version, so they could follow up the announcement of 1.0 ending immediately with the 2.0 announcement. With CoC it was a long time after they announced CoC would be ending before they announced the Arkham Horror LCG, but H.P. Lovecraft's Cthulu mythos world is public domain, so they didn't have to worry about paying for the license and not having a game to go with it.

With the Star Wars LCG, chances are it's most likely done after this current cycle is over. However, they still have and are paying for the license and need to make it worth the money, so they come out with SW: Destiny, something new and different to try to most likely replace the LCG. As far as Conquest goes, we don't know for certain yet that FFG will no longer have the license, but whereas the SW LCG was in mid-cycle and already got an announcement for what will most likely replace that LCG, Conquest received no such announcement of new cycles, deluxes, a 2.0 version, etc.

And I agree with Tekwych, why would they make an announcement that the game is ending before all product is released. It makes no sense. They want to make as much money from the products they've already made so everyone doesn't prematurely abandon ship and they are sitting on even more potential unsellable product. By the time Worlds comes around, we should definitely have the 6th War Pack, and then they can make a formal announcement about everything. Until then and even after then, just enjoy this great game!

Uh the SW LCG isn't ending after this cycle....

yeah this guy is talking full nonsense

I imagine they were negotiating with GW but were unable to come to an agreement. GW is notorious for their greed and iron fisted management of their license. I am sure they will find some other poor bastards to make board games for their franchise down the line

Or, you know, instead of one of the parties being Satan, it might have just been two companies mutually agreeing that their partnership was no longer beneficial.

Or, you know, if it makes you feel better thinking that its ok I guess but knowing the GW business practices which I know first hand when I worked at a national distributor of hobby games 13 years ago I would bet Sirfuzzy is 100% correct. I dont see FFG not interested in keeping the agreement after developing so many good games but... you know... its just my POV.

And of course FFG will never say the truth about this because theyre being ethical in their position. Maybe one day we will know...

I too have worked a position in the retail chain of the gaming industry and I've had professional dealings with GW representatives until I quit about two years ago, though even now I have dealings with them indirectly, since I'm currently translating their novels. I admit some of their business policies were fairly silly when applied as a blanket solution to every case and I could recognize that they were prone to overreacting when making business decisions, but I could always see where they were coming from and I never felt any malice from them towards either myself or the business I was working for. The regional sales rep even massaged the system for us on several occassions so that we could get things done with minimal hassle. I'm sorry you had a negative experience with the company professionally. While I don't care much for their product personally, I find the continuous and unending vilification of the company and all of its employees on the Internet to be downright distasteful and quite frankly, absurd. They're not a moustache-twirling cartoon villain, they're a publicly ran business that's aware of the responsibility it has towards its owners and its hundreds, if not thousands of employees, making hard decisions to compete in an extremely tough, unforgiving and increasingly overcrowded market.

So you manage in same the paragraph to point how silly some of their business decisions are and also point out you never felt any malice toward the business you worked...

Either youre the lucky one or your business followed all the requeriments they imposed (although currently translating their novels now could also explain it).

What I meant was that many of their decisions and particularly their distribution caveats felt like a blanket solution applied to all regional markets and all their partners without considering the specific nature of each partnership and regional market. I never considered that deliberately malicious towards myself or the business I worked with, since I recognized that to be an excercise in simplifying logistics that got out of hand - hence, it was silly, but I could see where they were coming from.

Yes, we followed the requirements imposed by GW, though like I said we managed to negotiate some of the finer points with their sales rep. I don't see what's so outstanding about that. We followed the requirements of any distributor or company we worked with. Some were bigger than others, some were more flexible than others, but that's the nature of business.

I'm not sure what the jab at my current work was meant to achieve, but if you're interested, I'm doing that for a publishing house that has nothing to do with my previous job.

@ Don_Silvarro ,

The "continuous and unending vilification of the company and all of its employees" is not some kind of global conspiracy against GW. It's based on numerous examples of the inadequacy of the said company in its treatment of partners and customers. I'm an off-fan of their Warhammer IP - I do very much love this epic universe, but I have zero interest in the actual GW products. My boardgaming experience with them pretty much starts and ends with the FFG products based on Warhammer. I've tried playing the "core" products of GW and I find them lacking in every aspect except for the rich lore and as much as I like the intricacies of the Warhammer universe, I still play games mostly because I want to experience fun and intelligent gameplay and not because I want to read the flavour texts in the rulebooks, cards, etc. It's super nice bonus, but it's still just a bonus.

My country is in a no way big market for boardgames in general, but entering into a store you can see many of the players in the miniature market - I can buy Star Wars, Infinity, Warmachine/Hordes, Malifaux and so on and so forth. I can buy Warhammer 40k/Age of Sigmar in exactly one (1) store. I've asked what's the reason for this and the owners told me it's just too much of a hussle to arrange something with GW. Even the only place that sells the mini toy soldiers of the grim future are actually getting their stuff from not exactly official channels.

From many years the Workshop is trying to pull some Apple bulls**t on the boardgaming market, with no consideration that they are not actually Apple and the boardgaming market is a strange animal in itself. They should follow it, not the other way around. They are still huge (as far as huge goes in the world of plastic armies) and will be no doubt a factor in the foreseeable future, but their direction is, from my point of view, very, very wrong. As it has been for many years. If not for the decades of worldbuilding and the dwindling legions of hardcore fans, they would have been eaten alive by now.

No matter what was the reason for the split-up between FFG and GW (like you previously stated, it's just rumors and there are always two sides of a story), I'm surely done with anything GW-related. I'm finishing my Conquest collection - it's an amazing game - and that's it. Farewell, my love!

...

No matter what was the reason for the split-up between FFG and GW (like you previously stated, it's just rumors and there are always two sides of a story), I'm surely done with anything GW-related. I'm finishing my Conquest collection - it's an amazing game - and that's it. Farewell, my love!

I feel exactly the same here. I'm finishing up my Conquest set and that will be right it.

Great universe, but I only pay by proxy (FFG being the proxy). No more money to GW from me after this.

@ Don_Silvarro ,

The "continuous and unending vilification of the company and all of its employees" is not some kind of global conspiracy against GW. It's based on numerous examples of the inadequacy of the said company in its treatment of partners and customers. I'm an off-fan of their Warhammer IP - I do very much love this epic universe, but I have zero interest in the actual GW products. My boardgaming experience with them pretty much starts and ends with the FFG products based on Warhammer. I've tried playing the "core" products of GW and I find them lacking in every aspect except for the rich lore and as much as I like the intricacies of the Warhammer universe, I still play games mostly because I want to experience fun and intelligent gameplay and not because I want to read the flavour texts in the rulebooks, cards, etc. It's super nice bonus, but it's still just a bonus.

My country is in a no way big market for boardgames in general, but entering into a store you can see many of the players in the miniature market - I can buy Star Wars, Infinity, Warmachine/Hordes, Malifaux and so on and so forth. I can buy Warhammer 40k/Age of Sigmar in exactly one (1) store. I've asked what's the reason for this and the owners told me it's just too much of a hussle to arrange something with GW. Even the only place that sells the mini toy soldiers of the grim future are actually getting their stuff from not exactly official channels.

From many years the Workshop is trying to pull some Apple bulls**t on the boardgaming market, with no consideration that they are not actually Apple and the boardgaming market is a strange animal in itself. They should follow it, not the other way around. They are still huge (as far as huge goes in the world of plastic armies) and will be no doubt a factor in the foreseeable future, but their direction is, from my point of view, very, very wrong. As it has been for many years. If not for the decades of worldbuilding and the dwindling legions of hardcore fans, they would have been eaten alive by now.

No matter what was the reason for the split-up between FFG and GW (like you previously stated, it's just rumors and there are always two sides of a story), I'm surely done with anything GW-related. I'm finishing my Conquest collection - it's an amazing game - and that's it. Farewell, my love!

There's a lot of truth in here, except that the new guy in charge actually seems to want to make better decisions than the old muppet who gave his wife millions to update their website. The new activity in boardgames, which presumably was a big part of the end of FFG licencing, seems part of the improvement. The new white dwarf is also much better than the terrible weekly version, although that's a very low bar.

What I meant was that many of their decisions and particularly their distribution caveats felt like a blanket solution applied to all regional markets and all their partners without considering the specific nature of each partnership and regional market. I never considered that deliberately malicious towards myself or the business I worked with, since I recognized that to be an excercise in simplifying logistics that got out of hand - hence, it was silly, but I could see where they were coming from.

Yes, we followed the requirements imposed by GW, though like I said we managed to negotiate some of the finer points with their sales rep. I don't see what's so outstanding about that. We followed the requirements of any distributor or company we worked with. Some were bigger than others, some were more flexible than others, but that's the nature of business.

I'm not sure what the jab at my current work was meant to achieve, but if you're interested, I'm doing that for a publishing house that has nothing to do with my previous job.

You never considered that malicious towards the business you worked!? I do. Maybe I take those things at heart.

One of the main tools of a successful major (or multinational) company is adapting to a regional/local market. You dont see Macdonalds selling pork burgers in muslim countries or Microsoft saying to non-english speakers that Windows is never going to be translated in other languages for example. Isnt a problem of logistics or anything. Its all left to good will (and costs/profits relation but which wasnt important in this case) which they didnt had at the time while improving the chances of success in small markets and being perceived as a business that also cares about the players and not only on their bank account (which in my opinion FFG does very well trying to strike a balance between both).

GW was the least flexible of all for us and needless to say but the small quantity of products we had was aquired through a retailer as a favor to our costumers which didnt had the chance to buy online.

Sorry for the jab at your current work but I thought it was directly related with GW.

I'm sorry, but I won't be continuing this conversation since we're going round in circles and only thing that will come out of it will be escalating emotions. We'll have to agree that you had a bad experience with the company 13 years ago and I had a fairly neutral one 2 years ago and leave it at that. Either we have different thresholds and definitions for what is "bad", or the company and it's reps have changed significantly in that 11 year gap, or, most probably, both.

So be it Don. Maybe now theyve seen the light (now that theyre loosing market share and shrinking profits).

Edit = Almost forgot... now that UK is out of EU lets see how things will be for GW in the future...

Given that GW rehired Matt Ward, and has a history of bad relations with its partners, fan base, and assorted business practices (pricing schemes being the most obvious sin), I think it's safe to assume most of the blame lies squarely at the feet of GW.

I mean, they rehired MATT WARD !

That's not a sign of sane, reasonable leadership.

Anyone remember this little gem ? That was not the work of a sane man. And while I know Kirby stepped down (but last I heard still looms in the background at GW), I think the madness is endemic. Let us not forget another Kirby quote:

"Games Workshop is in the business of selling toy soldiers to children."

I've had trouble sourcing that one to it's origin, but I'm not inclined to disbelieve its veracity given Kirby's other words of lunacy.

I've been following GW since the original Rogue Trader miniatures game (i.e. their infancy). Over the past decade or two I've watched them fall into a "shoot self in foot, load gun, repeat" cycle that seems to have gotten a foothold (pun intended) with the departure of legends such as Rick Priestly and Andy Chambers et al. over the years.

I do not equate them with smart business choices.

This article has a couple hidden gems in it:

Games Workshop's executives say they don't do media interviews , preferring to focus on their hobbyists. But chief executive officer Mark Wells emails me about the claim of price exploitation . "That would go against everything we stand for. It's just not in our nature," he writes.

You can hear my laughter echo forth from the Eye of Terror.

I mean, they rehired MATT WARD !

Save yourselves! The end is near!

"Games Workshop is in the business of selling toy soldiers to children."

So, isn't it a true? I mean, are there some official data about their coustomers structure?

"Games Workshop is in the business of selling toy soldiers to children."

So, isn't it a true? I mean, are there some official data about their coustomers structure?

Are you serious about that Kempy?

GW sells collectable miniatures and if their customers want to play some kind of game with them they can. That is changing with the resurgence of Specialist games but by pushing these thing over to Forge World they show that there is still no interest in the board room for 'the other stuff'

Companies like Corvis Velli, Steamforged Games, Warlord Games, Spartan Games, and even Mantic Games are all companies that sell collectable miniatures by offering a game system that they hope is interesting enough to get you to buy their miniatures. Most offer some part of their game system as free internet downloads for you to try as a way to get you interested in their product (the miniatures). Steam forged Games offers everything, the full game rules, the fluff, the tokens, card, and counters to play Guildball as free downloads. If you are will to play with paper tokens then the entire game system is free. They are betting that it is so good that you will go buy their miniatures to continue playing, and MANY people are.

"Games Workshop is in the business of selling toy soldiers to children."

So, isn't it a true? I mean, are there some official data about their coustomers structure?

Are you serious about that Kempy?

I'm out of 40K for 10-11 years? I remember plenty of adverts where x-teen boys are just pictured while painting miniatures so maybe for some period of time that was their main target? I'm just curious and asking. Isn't it like with MtG, a fact i see lot of 30+ years old guys in top tables of grand prix tourneys is one thing, but most money WotC earns comes from casual kids pockets is second. Same with 40K, forums and internet is full of mature posters but how it's connected with true age structure of their customers? Or maybe today majority of GW market is built on loyal people who started their hobby years ago as kids?

I thought I saw some vague stabs at GW in the image captions for the miniatures. They made a point of you showing creativity when painting them. GW have been absurdly strict about how you paint their miniatures for competitions (only their paints, only approved colour schemes), not allowing anything really original. Or at least that was the case some number of years ago.

I'm curios were did you get that from?

I started 40K on 2004 with the Battle for Maccragge Set and around that time i also bought the White Dwarf which featured pictures of their Golden Demon painting contest whenever one was held and it had many colour schemes invented by the painters (like this one, i'v never seen this in any of the things GW released) either just for that contest or their armie (like for the own Space Marine chapter), conversion and scratch bulids were of course allowed and you could find entries with much creativity in all categories but the diorama and duel ones were always good candidates for such things, i remember one double sided diorama on which you could see a nobvleman possible from the empire leaving gloriusly and with cheers to fight choas or something and on the back you saw him brought back broken/dead by his retainers and all the same people chering were now sad, but yes you were not allowed to use parts from other companies but if you could build your own parts everthying was ok, for LotR however conversion got forbidden at same time because New Line Cinema or the heirs of Tolkien wanted it that way.

And yes there were times you were only allowed to play in a GW store if your minaitures were painted with at least 3 colours but that is something of the past and yes you were only allowed to use GW minis in games in their own stores, not perfect but makes sense.

About using their paints i can't say anything about that but how would they find out? Take a test? The eye alone won't help that much, you can mix paint, water them down and other things to chage color or strongness.

I thought I saw some vague stabs at GW in the image captions for the miniatures. They made a point of you showing creativity when painting them. GW have been absurdly strict about how you paint their miniatures for competitions (only their paints, only approved colour schemes), not allowing anything really original. Or at least that was the case some number of years ago.

I'm curios were did you get that from?

Nowhere, that was never the case. Unless maybe if you ran into a particularly psychotic store manager, but I'd have trouble believing that anyway. The closest thing they ever did as far as company policy goes was insisting that you only enter THEIR models (or various degrees of scratchbuilds) in THEIR competitions and THEIR store events. Which is fairly reasonable if you think about it.

They never limited painter or modeller creativity by "approving" colour palettes or paint shades. In fact, that sort of creativity has been recognized as integral to the hobby and was always enthusiastically encouraged throughout the long history of the company. Heck, they had a "create your own colour scheme and background to be featured in our magazine" contest on many occasions. I remember my friend taking part in one.

Are you serious about that Kempy?

I'm out of 40K for 10-11 years? I remember plenty of adverts where x-teen boys are just pictured while painting miniatures so maybe for some period of time that was their main target? I'm just curious and asking. Isn't it like with MtG, a fact i see lot of 30+ years old guys in top tables of grand prix tourneys is one thing, but most money WotC earns comes from casual kids pockets is second. Same with 40K, forums and internet is full of mature posters but how it's connected with true age structure of their customers? Or maybe today majority of GW market is built on loyal people who started their hobby years ago as kids?

Ok. Im also out of 40K (or any other GW game) for around 10 years but in my experience as either a (national distributor of hobby games like I mentioned in a previous post)/tournament organizer/player the yougest player I knew in my country was a 15 year old who had the clear support of his father. Everyone else was older guys (never saw a female player) who had either a job or a good monthly income from parents/part-time/whatever. GW games are expensive even if they say the game is for children. There could be a couple of reasons (economic being the most obvious I guess) but I never saw the children they talk about as the main target playing. All my customers at the time were adult males between 20s to 30s (Im 44 now - adult age here is 18).

MTG is a particular case (like any other TCG at the time) because any age (and plenty of females - had one girlfriend that played MTG) can gather some pocket change and buy a pack or a card for the winning deck (I know... its simplified). One of our stores was near a school and sometimes the clerk at the store had problems with some parents because their children spent the lunch money in the store buying MTG (or Yugioh or Pokémon) packs.

I guess (and this is just based in a friend of mine) GW survives on the fanboys of their products who started in their 20s and still buy and play their games with the ocasional new blood (usually a son of a player).

I thought I saw some vague stabs at GW in the image captions for the miniatures. They made a point of you showing creativity when painting them. GW have been absurdly strict about how you paint their miniatures for competitions (only their paints, only approved colour schemes), not allowing anything really original. Or at least that was the case some number of years ago.

I'm curios were did you get that from?

Nowhere, that was never the case. Unless maybe if you ran into a particularly psychotic store manager, but I'd have trouble believing that anyway. The closest thing they ever did as far as company policy goes was insisting that you only enter THEIR models (or various degrees of scratchbuilds) in THEIR competitions and THEIR store events. Which is fairly reasonable if you think about it.

They never limited painter or modeller creativity by "approving" colour palettes or paint shades. In fact, that sort of creativity has been recognized as integral to the hobby and was always enthusiastically encouraged throughout the long history of the company. Heck, they had a "create your own colour scheme and background to be featured in our magazine" contest on many occasions. I remember my friend taking part in one.

Don is correct. Never a tournament organizer would forbid anyone from playing with GW minis no matter how modified it is (green stuff is a big friend for that).

I remember entering an instore bb competition to decide who would represent the store at games day and being told I would not be allowed to use my dark elf figures as they were the previous versions models. To give the store credit they did say that if I won (I didn't) then store staff would paint me up the required team free of charge.

On the subject of teens they did target teens but eventually realised they could increase prices on keen adults and thus improve margins. Regardless they still happily want kids to pkay but the main money I in adults. Whether that is part of the reason for shrinking markets I don't know.

Finally I seem to gave stupidly purchased the vase set of this yesterday. I take I switching to netrunner is a better choice than competing for rapidly diminishing sets of stock...