Open letter to GW

Dear Games Workshop,

After taking a look at the ‘What’s New Today’ post for Friday December 3rd I noticed a small but very telling error. Below a picture that featured several converted Dire Avengers on resin bases by Micro Art Studio it mistakenly said that the bases were made using hacked up bits of Basilica Administratum sprues. While I would like nothing more than to believe this is a genuine error, but this sort of thing has happened before. Like when someone entered a picture of a miniature that was finished with Army Painter Quick Shade and it was featured with a comment along the lines of, ‘this effect was achieved with copious amounts of ink.’

What has become public knowledge within the hobby is that you, the Games Workshop, do not like other companies making money off of your intellectual property. And that this dislike extends to companies that either produce resin bits for basing or entire conversion kits. The fact that most of the time these companies fill a niche that you yourself left open does not seem to factor in to the decision to completely ban any mention of third party components. Do you really think that not mentioning companies like Micro Art Studio will boost sales for your Fantasy and 40,000 basing kits? And what is the big deal if someone buys YOUR miniatures and YOUR paint, but chooses to finish it off with Army Painter Quick Shade? You do not even sell a product that is designed to produce similar results.

Unless you are utterly blind to any form of critique you must surely be aware that the Games Workshop has a less than perfect reputation amongst war gamers. Because for all the talk about loving the hobby and being part of it you tend to run the company with nothing but cold hard cash in mind. Whilst this might be a sound business strategy in some markets, this just does not fly when you try to provide people with an entire hobby to explore. I am not saying you should start promoting third party products yourself, but at least pull your head out of your arse and acknowledge that your consumers (because that is what we are to you nowadays, are we not?) sometimes prefer something a bit different.

In short, what I am trying to say is that if third party components really are a threat to your revenue, ignoring them certainly is not going to help. We are living in the age of the internet and people are going to find out about it one way or another. Would you rather like to hear; ‘the Games Workshop put me onto this Quick Shade stuff, so now I can expand my army even quicker,’ or, ‘I am getting sick of the Games Workshop ignoring large chunks of the hobby, so I am going to ignore them’?

Sincerely,

a Disgruntled Hobbyist.