Why the Shock? It is a sign of the times (Past 8 years).

[Erik Setzer]

Profit before taxation was 16.6m pounds, but it's also worth noting that if you consider that last year they had 4.5m coming out of their profit before taxation, their profit actually dipped this year, even with more royalties. I keep forgetting to grab the full report when I have access to it (the filter here is weird, it blocks GW's investor site but not their store or their jobs site), but the after-taxation profit will be worth checking out. Post-tax will likely be closer to 12m. Not bad, but not exactly swimming in profit. It is interesting that you completely miss the 4.5m that was an "exceptional expense" last year, which was a one-time thing, and if that's disregarded, the profit this year would be less than last year. Even worse, the entire point of that expense was to increase revenues and profit.

You are drinking the kool-aid hardcore. Games Workshop isn't paranoid about "leeches." Heck, Forge World proves the fallacy there. Forge World runs on more expensive models than GW's base sales, but Forge World tells people about upcoming models weeks, if not months, in advance. If the claim of someone being able to jump in and steal business was true, why is part of GW still doing that? Why do other companies do it? Why did GW do it for a long time? Because it's not true. And it's sad that people are willing to sound like idiots throwing that claim out there.

I'm not sure you read the report even. You missed parts and are misquoting others. For example:

"Secondly, I will review our product range. We believe this is long overdue: it is time for a resetting of the ranges. Not tweaking here and there but a top down reassessment."

This says nothing about the game systems, which he does his best not to talk about, as if GAMES Workshop doesn't really do games. It's more likely about the number of Finecast models still out there, or models that aren't selling well, and it's very likely that we'll see models start getting discontinued.

You also keep claiming that "making profit in a recession" is a goal as if it's something to really cheer? First off, how long will politicians and businesses continue to claim there's a "recession" going on? It seems there's been an unending recession since 2001 at least. And as he notes his goal is sales growth, that's clearly not the goal:

"I have set a goal of getting the business into sales growth in 2015/16 and have asked staff to accept a salary freeze until December 2015 to allow us to maintain our cost to sales ratio. If we deliver sales growth in the first half of 2015/16 I have agreed to back date any salary reviews to 1 June 2015. We are all working hard to deliver this goal."

And the recession excuse is just so lame. Even just sticking in the same field as Games Workshop, we see other companies experiencing growth. And that's GW's goal, because that's every company's goal.

"Thirdly, we must grow the number of customers we have. We have been underperforming here in recent years..."

Yeah, see, they know they need more customers and have been failing there.

And the suggestion that they'd purposely not care about existing customers and chase new customers with Warhammer being replaced with AoS? Hmm...

"We have taken the decision in the year to rebrand our stores ‘Warhammer’. It is what our customers call us."

Oh, so you think they'd make a decision to jettison existing customers, when they're also changing the names of their stores to suit said customers? And if you have existing customers, you don't set out to throw them away, because there's no guarantee you can replace them, especially when you're already having trouble getting in new people.

You also don't fix the entry cost of a game by introducing one where five infantry models cost $50-$55, an infantry character is $33, dice cups are $40, a "combat gauge" is $33, and that's just the start. It also would have been easy enough to re-introduce Warhammer Skirmish, which they took out of the game, and drop the prices on the books again. Ah, except that Rountree has promised there will be absolutely zero price drops in the range. Right.

More likely, AoS was an attempt to throw away almost all of the development costs associated with making a game (and really, if you're having the customers balance it for you, you don't even need to pay employees for time spent playtesting, so their time can be used on other projects, or you can remove those positions). Then they can focus on miniatures alone. But if the game isn't enough to attract people, they're likely not going to sell as many miniatures as they'd like. Unfortunately (especially for AoS fans), the modern Games Workshop doesn't seem to recognize that the games are what sell their models.

You say a sign of a company realizing it's failing to meet goals is some serious reworking of business practices? Well, they've spent a bunch of money re-doing their web store, they're renaming all of their stores, they're opening a new style of store, they've been doing their best to convert stores to cheaper operations, they're looking to copy FFG's style of selling in book stores and toy stores, they're freezing salaries (at least for the next six months), they're throwing their IP to the highest bidder with all kinds of mobile and PC games, they're starting to sell t-shirts and stuff through a third-party website... they're doing all kinds of things. You don't go through that many changes if everything's as awesome as their CEOs try to make it sound. There's trouble in paradise. They're down to two game systems once the Tolkien deal wears off, and they just replaced one of them and hope the replacement sticks (and they wiped out half of their precious IP in the process!).

I don't want to see them fail, but right now, I wouldn't call what they're doing "succeeding." Aside from my being too bluntly honest about things and also enjoying other games, a core reason I didn't apply to take over the GW store that's literally right in my neighborhood is because I don't know if the job will be there in another year. (Well, that and it seems like a lot more work than I'm doing now for less money, a good bit less than I'll make if I get a minor promotion soon.)

[grimmas]

This comes round to a point that I continuously make. GW must be successful according to their own parameters for success. Otherwise they would change what they are doing.

The CEO in the financial statement said they want a top down assessment of their games systems. This (and AoS) clearly shows where they see a need to change, they will.

Clearly they have not assessed marketing as necessary to achieve their plan. Same for market research.

Your point is not unreasonable. GW is effectively owned by investment companies as part of their Low risk low reward portfolios on behalf of their customers, so it is entirely possible their internal measures of success and objectives are very different from what one might expect. I'd did post an extract of an article (in the half year results thread) from a (low level) investment website that seemed to suggest that in this respect they thought GW was doing rather well

[Denzark]

I'm not sure you read the report even. You missed parts and are misquoting others.

I can't be arsed to deconstruct what you've put, suffice to say, I'm not sure you read what I wrote even. You have missed some parts and misconstrued others.

Your point is not unreasonable. GW is effectively owned by investment companies as part of their Low risk low reward portfolios on behalf of their customers, so it is entirely possible their internal measures of success and objectives are very different from what one might expect. I'd did post an extract of an article (in the half year results thread) from a (low level) investment website that seemed to suggest that in this respect they thought GW was doing rather well

This is what I have been trying to get at. So few posts have that key word 'risk' in it. Low Risk, Low Reward, on behalf of their customers (customers of the investment portfolios, not GW customers obviously).
This for me fits the motive for what they are doing. Don't rock the boat, make small monetary gains.

[Erik Setzer]

[removed - unnecessary sniping]

As for investors, they're "happy" because GW is screwing over their own employees to make sure there was money for a dividend, and they had a "profit bump" just because there wasn't a one-time expense this year (though if you look at the profit before that expense last year, it was higher than this year).

All of that, however, isn't really important to me as a gamer. Here's what I see when I look at Games Workshop right now:

1. All Special Games are gone. They used to have a variety of interesting games. Space Marine (Epic), Battlefleet Gothic, Man'O'War, Warmaster, Mordheim, Necromunda, GorkaMorka, Blood Bowl, several board games... all gone.
2. Warhammer, the game that got them seriously going, is now gone. Replacing it is a game that's entirely different, and feels like watered-down 40K with a slight fantasy wash.
3. Warhammer 40,000 is still going strong, for the most part, though recent trends are giving people ludicrous game bonuses for buying the right combination of models, buying a lot of stuff, or buying directly from Games Workshop, taking a F2P game's P2W strategy and ramping it up to serious levels.
4. There are no more sales or specials from Games Workshop. Not even a loyalty program like the old Skullz program.
5. No more Citadel Journal catering to gamers.
6. The website dropped useful new game content and free uploads of game additions, in favor of being pretty much strictly a store.
7. All interaction with customers has ceased.
8. Notice of upcoming products, even major changes to games, is gone.
9. White Dwarf has gone from once being a nice sized monthly magazine that had card additions each month along with useful and interesting articles, to being an overpriced weekly sales flyer.
10. Bitz/sprue buying direct from Games Workshop is gone.
11. Grand Tournaments are gone.
12. The Rogue Trader Tournament program is gone.
13. Games Day is gone.
14. The Outrider program is gone.

So hey, maybe they hold steady and make a few pennies per share for people, and continue to make just enough money to continue paying the CEO around half a million a year. But for me, as a gamer, the steps to get them there have involved systematically removing all of their product lines until it was down to two lines, one of which was mismanaged to the point it's now gone, so only one of their original three big games is still around, and the replacement for the other feels like a cheap version of 40K.

Maybe I've just been in the hobby too long, and I still remember Games Workshop as it was. Maybe investors don't care about gamers having interesting games to play, having variety, having programs to promote social play or recruit new players and teach them how to play, paint, etc. I feel like the investors would be fine if the company finally shed 40K as a game, and just reduced its line to the models they felt they could sell without a game, and make profit off of licensing the IP to other companies. And people defend that. They think it's all okay. Less games? Okay. No sales? Okay. Less support for the games? Sure. Lower revenues are fine, because there's still a bit of profit, and as long as profit exists, which can be found by stripping out more and more stores and programs to make up for any drop in sales, then everything's fine, right?

Guess I'm just too old for this hobby. The "proper" GW modeler is someone who doesn't remember when the "Games" part of Games Workshop meant something.

[Path Walker]

And people wonder why those "by gamers for gamers" companies tend to fold pretty quickly.

[Wolfshade]

Erik has a point, regarding investors and this isn't just a GW phenomenon, it is a larger issue.

I was listening to radio 4 a few days ago and it said this.

Companies used to pay on average 10p in every 100p profit in dividend, now it is nearer 60p in every 100p.

Share holders used to hold shares for years, now they hold them for 7 months.

So appealing to share holders is a problem of short termism. Shareholders do not care about a company, they will by and sell when the numbers look good. The majority holders don't care. Sure there are people who do carry shares because they believe in the company and what it is, probably others on the forum do too, but I fear we are the minority.

The points below are the ones I disagree with Erik, you can assume that those which aren't listed are where I do actually agree with him (shocking )

4. There are no more sales or specials from Games Workshop. Not even a loyalty program like the old Skullz program.

I suppose a lot depends on what you mean by "specials".
There are the direct only, which are specials.
There were (not sure if they are going still) the monthly specials, spend enough unlock model x

7. All interaction with customers has ceased.

All interactions. Obviously, the chats I have at my local GW store isn't interaction...

11. Grand Tournaments are gone.

They still run plenty of tournaments, doubles, throne of skulls, war council etc.

12. The Rogue Trader Tournament program is gone.

Why didn't anyone tell me that this existed!

[Alaric]

Wow. So someone can't refute arguments, then just throws up "But you're wrong because I say you are!"

Okay. Thanks for showing that you didn't bother to know what you're talking about. Not fair, no one knows everything aboot everything. not even you.

As for investors, they're "happy" because GW is screwing over their own employees to make sure there was money for a dividend, and they had a "profit bump" just because there wasn't a one-time expense this year (though if you look at the profit before that expense last year, it was higher than this year).How they screwing them? Honest question.

All of that, however, isn't really important to me as a gamer. Here's what I see when I look at Games Workshop right now:

1. All Special Games are gone. They used to have a variety of interesting games. Space Marine (Epic), Battlefleet Gothic, Man'O'War, Warmaster, Mordheim, Necromunda, GorkaMorka, Blood Bowl, several board games... all gone.
If it aint selling, it has no place in a company. Less overhead, I can see why they did. Im not saying this is good mind you
2. Warhammer, the game that got them seriously going, is now gone. Replacing it is a game that's entirely different, and feels like watered-down 40K with a slight fantasy wash.
We all know your feelings on this matter
3. Warhammer 40,000 is still going strong, for the most part, though recent trends are giving people ludicrous game bonuses for buying the right combination of models, buying a lot of stuff, or buying directly from Games Workshop, taking a F2P game's P2W strategy and ramping it up to serious levels. Agree, buying bundles for bonuses is dumb
4. There are no more sales or specials from Games Workshop. Not even a loyalty program like the old Skullz program. These cost more money than they generate, I can see why its gone
5. No more Citadel Journal catering to gamers. Don't know what this is, sounds cool tho. Is it just what they do in WD now?
6. The website dropped useful new game content and free uploads of game additions, in favor of being pretty much strictly a store. Well....it IS a store
7. All interaction with customers has ceased. Don't blame them here, most aren't worth the breath
8. Notice of upcoming products, even major changes to games, is gone. This one is odd as FW does it and it helps them. Cant see why ol Gdub won't but at the same time I can as the interwebz affect things more than they should, so that may be their reasoning...lol reasoning at ol gdub..too funny...but I digest
9. White Dwarf has gone from once being a nice sized monthly magazine that had card additions each month along with useful and interesting articles, to being an overpriced weekly sales flyer. Totally agree, Ive only ever bought one WD...for my sisters rules
10. Bitz/sprue buying direct from Games Workshop is gone. Prolly got tired of competing with Spikey Bitz :P
11. Grand Tournaments are gone. Local ones are often cooler/cheaper anyways
12. The Rogue Trader Tournament program is gone. With Wolf on this one
13. Games Day is gone. This might come back, who knows
14. The Outrider program is gone. Whuzzat? Honest question

So hey, maybe they hold steady and make a few pennies per share for people, and continue to make just enough money to continue paying the CEO around half a million a year. But for me, as a gamer, the steps to get them there have involved systematically removing all of their product lines until it was down to two lines, one of which was mismanaged to the point it's now gone, so only one of their original three big games is still around, and the replacement for the other feels like a cheap version of 40K.

Maybe I've just been in the hobby too long, and I still remember Games Workshop as it was. Maybe investors don't care about gamers having interesting games to play, having variety, having programs to promote social play or recruit new players and teach them how to play, paint, etc. I feel like the investors would be fine if the company finally shed 40K as a game, and just reduced its line to the models they felt they could sell without a game, and make profit off of licensing the IP to other companies. And people defend that. They think it's all okay. Less games? Okay. No sales? Okay. Less support for the games? Sure. Lower revenues are fine, because there's still a bit of profit, and as long as profit exists, which can be found by stripping out more and more stores and programs to make up for any drop in sales, then everything's fine, right?

Guess I'm just too old for this hobby. The "proper" GW modeler is someone who doesn't remember when the "Games" part of Games Workshop meant something.

This last part I find a bit funny. You spend a good portion of time saying how crappy they are, and u aint wrong on a lot of it (not all tho) but heres the kicker...yer still buying and talkin aboot their stuff...so don't they win no matter how much rhetoric you throw at how much they suck? I mean they still be getting your money...or have you totally stopped buying anything they sell period?

[Denzark]

Wow. So someone can't refute arguments, then just throws up "But you're wrong because I say you are!"

Wow yourself. You must be being deliberately obtuse, or maybe English isn't your first language. But OK, I'll explain why I think you are being specious.

Marketing is always necessary, unless your "plan" is to make a few dollars - not millions - every year and call that "good enough."

Chronologically you wrote this first. Let's take this in the context that I am trying to impart in the most basic terms.

I postulate that, up until Rountree deciding on a 'top down ressessment', GW were broadly content. This is low risk, low reward share stuff. I alluded to the fact that I don't think GW thought marketing was necessary. Because they weren't doing any and I seem to recall Kirby mentioning there being no need for it in one of his statements. From your first quote above you clearly disagree that these facts don't fit unless the plan is to make a 'few dollars' not 'millions'. Ie in short, marketing is essential to make millions.

Profit before taxation was 16.6m pounds, but it's also worth noting that if you consider that last year they had 4.5m coming out of their profit before taxation, their profit actually dipped this year, even with more royalties. I keep forgetting to grab the full report when I have access to it (the filter here is weird, it blocks GW's investor site but not their store or their jobs site), but the after-taxation profit will be worth checking out. Post-tax will likely be closer to 12m.

Now your second quote chronologically. You mentioned they have actually made millions. Let me deconstruct that for you. Millions means plural of one million, so, as long as GW made at least 2 million, they have indeed, made millions. Now whether or not the adjusted figure is 16, 12 or anywhere between, as long as it is 2 or more, GW have made millions in the covered reporting period.

Now lets consider how much marketing they have done. The answer is nil. Zip. Zilch. Zero. Nada. No marketing.

Now I refer you to your first quote.

Marketing is always necessary, unless your "plan" is to make a few dollars - not millions - every year and call that "good enough."

So Sir, I refute your argument on the basis that GW have indeed made millions with no marketing.

And because of your histrionics and dropping in of 'kool aid' comments, I genuinely think there is little point continuing to try and debate with you in an adult fashion. I've played 40K for 25 years, all the things you later quoted I have seen. You seem to think my aim is to play the GW party line whereas I merely try and explain what I feel is the only logical reason for some of their 'stranger' business decisions. I have repeatedly caveated things I have put with 'I am not commenting favourably on this as a business decision'.

I can only assume your aim is to enjoy attempting to bait someone you feel is a GW zealot. It seems to be a popular sport amongst some, particularly those outside the UK, so I hope I am providing some use for you, no matter how erroneously.

[Erik Setzer]

Erik has a point, regarding investors and this isn't just a GW phenomenon, it is a larger issue.

I was listening to radio 4 a few days ago and it said this.

Companies used to pay on average 10p in every 100p profit in dividend, now it is nearer 60p in every 100p.

Share holders used to hold shares for years, now they hold them for 7 months.

So appealing to share holders is a problem of short termism. Shareholders do not care about a company, they will by and sell when the numbers look good. The majority holders don't care. Sure there are people who do carry shares because they believe in the company and what it is, probably others on the forum do too, but I fear we are the minority.

The points below are the ones I disagree with Erik, you can assume that those which aren't listed are where I do actually agree with him (shocking )

4. There are no more sales or specials from Games Workshop. Not even a loyalty program like the old Skullz program.

I suppose a lot depends on what you mean by "specials".
There are the direct only, which are specials.
There were (not sure if they are going still) the monthly specials, spend enough unlock model x

7. All interaction with customers has ceased.

All interactions. Obviously, the chats I have at my local GW store isn't interaction...

11. Grand Tournaments are gone.

They still run plenty of tournaments, doubles, throne of skulls, war council etc.

12. The Rogue Trader Tournament program is gone.

Why didn't anyone tell me that this existed!

To expand on the points:

4. I mean things like the old deals where you buy a starter box and a codex and you get a free unit box, stuff like that. Or the times they'd do buy 2, get 1 free.

7. "All" was probably too expansive. The CustServ email still works, though that's not really company interaction, just someone answering an email. And I don't really count the store, as my local manager isn't even communicated with that well by GW HQ (maybe it'll get better now that he's being promoted). I'm considering more how they used to use to have forums, Facebook, stuff like that, and would send people out to events, and even let the designers talk with people. It was awesome having Andy on the BFG list, answering questions and getting feedback on future rules for the game.

11. Where are these tournaments? Do they host events at their own central store? Looks like that's stuff at Warhammer World. Well, congrats to the fans in England near there. I recall them running multiple GTs in the US, across the nation. They dropped that when the IndyGT movement took off. I can understand that, to some extent, though the later attempt to paint the tournament scene as evil was pathetic, given that they started it.

12. You didn't know about it? It's how the local tournament scene really got started, and why local tourneys tend to include painting, sportsmanship, and comp scores. There were some awesome missions, and some not-so-awesome (I once did many awful things to a copy of "This is Heavy, Doc", and we got a guy to promise never to use it again out of fear for his safety). While you can still likely find the documents out there that describe how to do the tournaments, the scenarios, stuff like that, there's no longer official support, either trophies or even printed certificates. (I'm more proud of my local trophy for an RTT win than a GW trophy would have made me... an actual warhammer that, if I used it, would likely kill or cripple someone. Looks sweet.)

[Erik Setzer]

This last part I find a bit funny. You spend a good portion of time saying how crappy they are, and u aint wrong on a lot of it (not all tho) but heres the kicker...yer still buying and talkin aboot their stuff...so don't they win no matter how much rhetoric you throw at how much they suck? I mean they still be getting your money...or have you totally stopped buying anything they sell period?

Not sure if this will stick with the people who think I hate all things GW, but I'll try to explain it... I hate the way the corporation is run. I don't hate the products. I don't even hate AoS, I just hate that they ditched Warhammer and replaced it with AoS. If they wanted to really make people ecstatic, they could take their digital copies of the Warhammer rules, put them online, put both types of bases in the boxes, and then tell people to play which game they want. Then just update Warhammer rules, but leave the fluff as a dead world, or even just have the new factions in it and allow people to play Warhammer rules in the AoS universe. Such a move wouldn't have cost much, but would have gotten plenty of goodwill. Ditto for just telling people what's going on.

I want the games to stick around, and that's why I'm so hard on GW management. I remember the variety that existed before, and some of it sold quite well, but then it got down to just two games, and one of those even got killed off. They killed a game with a long history because of their mismanagement of it. Is 40K really that safe? We've already seen decisions made to make more quick money for the company harming the game's balance.

It's a hard spot to be in... If I don't buy stuff, they claim there's no support for the games, and then the games can be killed off. If I do buy stuff, then it's claimed that everything is okay and there's no need to fix anything. So, at best, you can try to voice your concerns with the company while supporting the games. The extremists on either side won't get how that can work - you're either "pro-GW" or "anti-GW" in their mind, and that means you either love it all or hate it all. I'm in the middle.

And it is harder when you remember how things used to be.

As to the questions on what things were...

Rogue Trader Tournaments: Games Workshop had a program for "Rogue Traders" (their name for independent retailers, at least at the time) to run local tournaments, with "official" support. Trophies existed for a while, but understandably that wasn't feasible (especially with so many RTTs going... locally we had one a month, rotating systems), so they replaced those with certificates. Still, not bad. The tournaments had scoring not just for winning games (which included completing objectives in the scenarios, and you could score those even if you lost or got a draw), but also sportsmanship, painting, and army composition. Sure, the scores were kind of subjective, but it did promote a more social environment even while being competitive. The scenarios were a nice mixed bunch, and are still fun to dig out and play games with.

Outrider Program: I don't remember off the top of my head how widespread this was, but I'm certain it was in the UK and US at least. Games Workshop had volunteers called "Outriders" working locally to recruit new players, teach them how to play the game, show them painting tips, stuff like that. Outriders could also be called upon to help with any GW-run events in the area, like Games Day. Privateer Press' Press Gang is modeled after the Outrider program.