[MentatOnMelange]

I used to play warhammer when I was younger and am honestly astounded gamesworkshop is still in business let alone one of Britain's biggest companies. At least in the 00s and 2010s, they were the epitome of a greedy corporation squeezing blood from a stone.

Sales were down? Increase the prices of everything. Something not selling well? Change the game rules to make that it more powerful (or conversely, hype it up constantly so people only realize it sucks after they buy it). And of course constant changes so it was likely any models you bought would eventually become uncompetitive due to new, flashier, more overpowered things released.

Basically every bad business practice we see now was Games Workshop's wheelhouse. And while this may come across as bashing on them, I'm psyched to hear the company is thriving because their games are immensely fun and its impressive they've avoided stagnating or run out of ideas. It gives me hope for the software industry because if an in-person, expensive niche hobby could survive through social media and the pandemic, tech can bounce back from the current enshitification and short-term profit seeking.

If you have the money and enjoy lots of lore/worldbuilding and complex strategy games, Warhammer is a fantastic hobby I'd recommend checking out

[Ntrails]

> Something not selling well? Change the game rules to make that it more powerful

It probably didn't sell because it wasn't very good. So you re-balance it later and now it doesn't suck. Like, fundamentally keeping the "best" and "worst" models/armies/strategies from stagnating keeps the game interesting (and drives more sales... so depends how you look at it).

I don't think they've every been super good at balancing though, and that at least is a fair criticism - albeit a hard task given how time consuming playtesting is to get data.

[MentatOnMelange]

I agree completely, the game would get boring if things didn't constantly change. It was more-so the way they'd go about it, not the general sales strategy. Perhaps I should have said overpowered, typically they'd intentionally overcorrect so a unit would go from too weak to way too strong.

It didn't help they had 2 very different philosophies in the creative/design department. For example if an army was getting a revamp, competitive players would pray Gav Thorpe wasn't in charge of it. Whereas other people loved how he made the game more fun and goofy.

[YokoZar]

It was definitely not just balancing rules patches for gameplay purposes - there was a clear deliberate intent to force people to buy new models. Complete with arbitrary changes to the game lore itself that accompany those updates: when I first started playing Warhammer Fantasy only the smaller lizardmen could ride the dinosaurs, and in the next edition only the larger ones (with entirely different new models) could.

By way of comparison, Games Workshop updates their Warhammer rules about twice as often as Wizards of the Coast updates Dungeons and Dragons.

[1313ed01]

They also aggressively went after fan-made variants and other content posted online, unlike almost any other miniatures/boardgame publisher. Lot of (ex-)fans upset about that.

I think that has in particular bothered older players, as traditionally, pre-GW, miniatures gaming was all very DIY, dominated by amateurs. GW turning it into big business and throwing lawyers around did not make many friends from that hobby old guard. There are still niches of the hobby where GW are not very popular, or just never talked about.

[imp0cat]

True. I used to play warhammer when I was younger, too. I am not suprised they are still in business, because it's a very enjoyable hobby (And I don't mean just playing, also the painting part of it).

And yep, as far as I rememember, they were always horribly expensive.

[bigstrat2003]

They still kind of are that business imo. I'm pretty damn upset that they have pulled the card of invalidating people's armies with Primaris Space Marines. Context for those who are fortunate enough to not have a plastic addiction: about 6 years ago, Games Workshop introduced a whole host of new models for the most popular faction in 40k, complete with lore about how these are newer and better versions of the units. At the time people were concerned about their old models not being usable, and GW assured everyone that they weren't going to remove the old units from the game, and that you could still keep using the models you bought. Fast forward several years... and they have been removing the old units from the game. Just as they promised they wouldn't.

It's not surprising that they are invalidating people's armies. They are, after all, a miniatures company and they have a vested interest in getting people to buy the new models they are making. But it is really scummy imo, because these models are not cheap. If you have a decent size 40k army, you've spent thousands of dollars on miniatures, paint, and so on. For GW to start removing those units from the game leaves a really bad taste in my mouth.

[Beretta_Vexee]

Not to mention the ‘new edition of the rules’: buy back half of your units, the other half now behaves completely differently.

[toyg]

People love to shit on GW, but at the end of the day they keep buying their wares. Most drug addicts despise their dealers in a similar way.

[dchftcs]

There's a somewhat niche game publisher that had very gamer-friendly practices. At some point they released older games for free, and for new popular ones they were relatively friendly to mods. Now they only operate a lootbox game. The sad reality of commerce.

[1313ed01]

There are still many smaller publishers, and individual self-publishers, keeping small niches of miniatures gaming alive and well completely outside of the reach of GW or other big companies. I follow many old blogs and some forums where people discuss miniatures games and the mentions of GW or Warhammer are so rare I can forget they exist. Depends on what internet bubble you happen to live in of course.