40K Warhammer World Open Day October 17th - MASTER THREAD

[theresponsibleone]

(How does that even work? You have the main company being tight-lipped, and here's another part of the company saying "Look at the pretty stuff we have, you know you want it, right?" And the people are, of course, saying they want it.)

Well, that's simple enough to understand. Forge World's resin production turnaround is really quick - look at the lead time between the first week of Knight sales and their upgrade kits and variants. Even with Horus Heresy, the specifics of book releases and specific models aren't as detailed up front as GW.

Compare that to GW, where there's about a 2 year lead time, if not more. Their design processes have been pared to efficiency, but at the cost of the ability to react quickly to change.

Look at how quickly the relatively grav gun release leak from the 6th edition Marine Codex resulted in competitors getting early to market with alternatives. That will have directly cost GW money in Tactical Squad sales.

It would appear that early leaks actively cost GW money in terms of lost sales. I also can't see that it would add to the number of kits people actually purchase. The internet rumour community is pretty small all told, and doesn't account for a large portion of GW's sales. Sure, it's exciting to know what's going on and nice to be able to plan our spending - but what serious change in spending habits would knowing things in advance actually cause? Likely a reduction in spending as people saved up for a forthcoming release.

With the law in the US arguably claiming that artwork doesn't protect a sculpted miniature's design, GW can't do anything but have a tiny, tiny lead time. There is a definite risk for them that an early leak of a design could mean someone else gets to market first and claims the copyright over that design, causing them to need to scrap a section of IP and throw out a lot of work.

Maybe the court case wouldn't go that way.

But it's better to just not have another court case.

There's no money in letting leaks happen or previewing things far in advance. There's a ton of legal risk in it.

Once you look at it from GW's point of view, there's no other course of action to take.

[Erik Setzer]

Once you look at it from GW's point of view, there's no other course of action to take.

Well, yeah, because their point of view is twisted.

They didn't have that problem in the past. And they don't have that problem if they believe their models are THE BEST EVER and deserve to be "premium priced." Of course, that's all a facade to overcharge for their stuff.

If people making copies was actually an issue, then Forge World wouldn't be showing things off, either, because it's just as easy to make copies of FW products and sell them cheaper. But it's not an issue. It's an excuse.

They're cultivating a culture of paranoia in the central ranks of GW, and it's ridiculous. Every other miniatures company does previews of upcoming products. Computer games do it. Movies do it. Comics and books do it. The "problem" that people use as an excuse doesn't really exist, and it's tiring hearing people defend a completely ridiculous and frankly amazingly stupid "strategy" (or, really, lack thereof) from GW with that excuse. It's similar to how Games Workshop is apparently the only entertainment company that can't deal with negative posts, because companies like EA, Blizzard, Activision, Wizards of the Coast, etc. don't go shutting down their social media and forums just because some people are unhappy with the company's actions.