The business of being a wargamming geek is getting heated and all fingers point towards Games Workshop and their new Retailer Policies.
As you can see, the MiniWarGaming store is closing- mainly because of the new policies. Matt breaks it down to an exquisite level, going deep into the cockles of what makes up business with GW. Don’t worry, it looks as if MiniWarGaming makes enough money elsewhere to stay in business and isn’t going anywhere, but still. Games Workshop is making it awfully hard to love them.
If you happen to have an account with MiniWarGaming, you probably got this email this morning.
Hey,
If you haven’t already heard, we have decided to shutdown the MiniWarGaming store (local and online). As a consequence of this we are having one last big sale. You can find more about that here:
Rob Baer from SpikeyBits comes up with a very interesting conspiracy theory about the new policy and the Tau release.
One day after dumping it’s bombshell of questionable legal mumbo-jumbo on it’s “partner stores” and it’s distributors in North America, the Tau are conveniently leaked.
Which leads some to believe that this was all planned to divert attention away from this new “policy change” that has so many people from retailers to customers up in arms.
Distraction Tau-a-fex? I don’t know, while I would like to believe not even GW would stoop to that level, who knows. I think Games Workshop is taking some serious missteps here; it comes down to philosophy and a famous line from Wallstreet.
It’s a zero sum game, somebody wins, somebody loses. Money itself isn’t lost or made, it’s simply transferred from one perception to another.
In my first ever economics class in high school (way back) my teacher played this clip from the overhead. He looked at us, deadpan, and told us ‘that is an absolute lie.’ Games Workshop sees the miniature hobby market as a zero sum game. Any money that other companies and retailers are making- is money that they aren’t.
