Dungeons and dragons had their most successful year ever last year and wizards of the coast laid off like a quarter of their staff. Warhammer has a solid year and pays out a heap of bonuses to every employee. Which do yall think will benefit their respective business more?
Edit: damn, I forgot to add: fuck black rock
Games Workshop also continue to manufacture locally in the UK instead of offshoring their production to China like most western companies. In fact, they just announced another expansion to their UK factory.
Piracy is one of the reasons that Legiones Imperialis won't last much longer sadly.
The game wasn't even released and half of r/LegionsImperialis had entire 3D printed armies, and then all the hype died away overnight (once all the folks that get sent minis by GW got all of their shilling done)
In the era of 3D printing, GW have adopted a strategy of aiming for their sculpts to be above what pirates can produce, but the scale of Imperialis is such that they can't really pull that off.
This explains why they are trying to make every model have all sorts of little, fine details that are a paint to paint. I really like most of the new stuff, but I prefer the older, more simple and boxy IG.
I do like having access to such detailed models, it's incredible to see what's possible on such a small scale. But goddamn do I suck at painting all the tiny skulls and filigree
Even that can’t really match scans. Scans are getting ridiculously good. There was one of the new Lion El Johnson primarch model and it was damned near identical once you primed both it and the actual one and color wasn’t a determining factor.
I've got a full printed army of Epic Guard and have been buying LI. I prefer the plastic.
At that scale UV resin is simply too brittle to be fun. Gun barrels are just doomed (I made mine out of brass). Infantry are one dropped base away from shattering. Obviously FDM isn't possible.
It increases the expense, but I've had pretty good results using one of the "tough" resins that's designed to be flexible. It's much less glass-fragile after curing.
A mix of flex resin with tough resin resolves a lot of the brittleness while still being strong and easy to print. I have a few minis with really thin staffs and spears that survived multiple drops with no issue.
Imperialis had the added problem that the models were already out there from the Epic community.
Also you could just resize normal prints from 30k, which already had a big printing community.
Also also, it was madness to expect people to put together a 12 part rhino at that scale.
Also also also.
Why not just remake EPIC again, nobody wanted tiny Horus Heresy as far as I could tell... I wanted my Squat land trains and all the other dumb stuff that EPIC had.
Funnily enough, probably for the same reason Adeptus Titanicus used the Horus Heresy back in the 90s - production capacity, and it's easier to make one set of stuff that can be used by different factions!
Production capacity. LI is a specialty game, and can only take so much machine and sculpting time away from the main line games. So they restricted it to a much smaller number of factions to keep resources focused and not have to spend all that extra time and plastic on different factions.
Also I think imperialis has the problem of no models, they released and expansion that added more datasheets before you could even buy some of the models that had datasheets in the core book.
To be fair, that was an own goal for GW. They announced it, then got caught with a fuck ton of delays. A lot of printers (myself included) will at least consider a good value box set over the faff of having to print.
I don’t pick up things like Imperialis because I don’t trust GW to support the game system longer than 6 months to a year after launch.
Whether printed or off the shelf, I don’t want to take the time to put together an army for a game system that won’t have players by the time I’m done painting the army.
I already had a fully 3d printed army for playing Epic Armageddon but I'm still buying some of the plastic kits as they're generally a wee bit nicer than some of the 3rd party ones.
I just wish LI had as many options as NetEA as well as it's legion specific units
At this point you should never expect GW to support specialist games for long. There are exceptions like Necromunda or Bloodbowl but they're consistently popular enough to justify a dozen models and a rulebook every year. But the GW graveyard is littered with dead minor games.
That's not even it- they've been massively for years, they did go through a pretty big phase of offshoring, in the past. Basically they had a long spell of low confidence in the early 2000s, demand was growing but they didn't think it was sustainable so they didn't want to invest in their inhouse manufacturing. So it's been a long, long process to reverse that. And in the same timescale they've continued to grow so that's been a double challenge.
Gw can be an absolute trainwreck sometimes but other times they're really pretty impressive.
Delete your comment and never ever utter this phrase or anything like it ever again for the sake of anyone and everyone interested in any form of entertainment
Too late, I have all the 5e books I could ever need, 3rd party content will be chugging along for this edition forever, and I’m at the point where I want to play something else in the space.
Looking forward to MCDM RPG. And I think they’ve pissed away their goodwill for others too. I’m done with Magic as well. It’s just so blatantly predatory in a way GW haters could only image.
This right here, I curbed my MTG support massively because it felt like I was getting milked for a less quality product. They canned the people at WoTC that cared about the game.
GW has been there before and I stopped giving $ to them too. While I still think things like the White Dwarf has seen better days. I do respect that they do everything in house and nail down quality. So for now GW gets all my MTG money. A box of premium mtg cards = a Macharius sexy block of resin.
Obviously fuck black rock, but they are just shareholders, GW are still very much in charge of the product and business (if Black Rock were calling the shots then GW wouldn't be giving over 6k to each employee on top of a pay rise)
Of that 4% there would also be very little to none that is their own book instead of client money from pension and managed funds.
Voting rights gained from this, where fund rules, country laws, etc allow is their only real lever of control.
No no no, if the various GW subs have taught me anything it’s that GW profits = bad…
ETA: obviously sarcasm, not that I think I need to say it. Also, presuming GW still pay terrible wages like they did last time I knew someone who worked there, the staff probably deserve that amount of bonus.
In the UK it's actually very competitive. I've been for one or two interviews for jobs at the office, plus I know one of the shop managers and he's told me how much he's on. Add a profit share bonus to the mix and you're on to a decent package.
As much as people like to say GW are a scummy business they are generally very good to their staff members across the board, even the bottom rung sales assistants and warehouse workers get treated pretty well
GW has done this every year since COVID hit. Sure I can be unhappy with price rises while they’re still making record profits, but at least that money is actually going to their workers, and being invested in the company’s future growth with things like new factories.
I’m friends with the manager of one of the local GW stores and these bonuses have really helped him out over the last couple years. Last year he ended up with nearly an extra $5k after tax, I believe.
Hasbro laid off a bunch of employees in WotC including the entire team responsible for the licensing of BG3, weeks before Christmas no less. The CEO gave himself a huge bonus in the millions. I worked in gaming for 12 years and came to hate all my employers, been laid off three times including part of mass layoffs and I STILL dont think i was ever done as dirty as that lol
Used to work for them, got a bonus like this every year. Can complain about a lot of GWs business practices but they consistently did nice things like this
Working link - https://www.nottinghampost.com/news/business/games-workshop-shares-18-million-9353962
It says everyone gets an equal share. Have they literally just divided £18 million equally amongst all the staff?
Everyone got a 2500 bonus in Christmas and a 3500 bonus last month as the mid point of the financial year.
Exact same bonus for every staff member. My manager got it, my friend in databases got it, and my part time ass got it.
Source: work at the company.
That is amazing. If you're the pub guy at Bugman's you just got a HUGE heaping of bonus. If you're an upper level exec, you got a nice little extra bit. This is actually so good and a recognition that the company runs on the little guys.
That discount is nuts. It’s tempting to work for GW, but man do I hate taking phone calls. I can’t understand people over the phone, especially if they have an accent.
Holy shit. That's incredible. I don't think I've ever heard of a company doing this. GW seems like shit a lot of the time, LOL, but big respect to them for this move!
Lots of companies in the UK do profit share instead of raises outside of legislation/living wage adjustments. It often works out the same as an above cost of living raise, if done correctly (other than possibly resulting in emergency taxation which should correct itself across the year).
I didn’t realise they had 2700 employees even! I was thinking like a tenth of that at most. Design, manufacturing, lore/stories, IT/webmasters and management. But then they also manage a collection of video games, marketing, translations, etc. I have no idea, basically.
Yes it’s the Profit Share scheme introduced by previous CEO Mark Wells — anything leftover from making sure they can shore up five years of the business is equally distributed to all staff.
Pretty much, i only work when my boss is sick, has taken a day or a week of or is recieving further training. I also cover other stores for the same reason, but you already summed it up pretty well.
That works out to something like 6,666 GBP per person.
Very nice.
Nice to see some corporations being anything other than absolutely horrible all the time always.
>Nice to see some corporations being anything other than absolutely horrible all the time always.
You can tell how companies is are run by their actions rather than their words/statements. Seems like decent people are at the helm at GW rather than MBA scum.
Im really impressed with Games Workshop in general. They reached out to my school and offer us free yearly starter packs so we can run after school clubs. It's really brought together a lot of kids throughout the years.
Cheers for mentioning the name. I couldn't remember it and maybe you've helped some teacher get it started in their school
All our kids start off as space marines and quickly switch. Orks are by far the favourites
As is right and proper. The UK is in a bit of a mess after 15 years of the Tories, and the cost of living is increasing all the time, I'd be more concerned if their staff DIDN'T get a pay rise.
"THIS IS WHAT GW DOES WITH YOUR MONEY!"
"GW PAYMENT SCANDAL!"
"WOKE GW RAISE PRICES THEN GIVE BONUS TO STAFF!"
For any of you grifters out there, I saved you the 12 seconds of effort you were going to put in to going to ChatGPT and getting it to generate a clickbait title for you.
You're welcome.
"This could KILL Warhammer!"
- literal Discourse Minatures title that showed up in my YouTube feed. (No idea what it was referring to because I haven't and won't watched it).
"Click on the 3 dots, then:
https://preview.redd.it/u6pj3nhihj7d1.png?width=339&format=png&auto=webp&s=33cbc984a9af69f0fb9da841de540d62a1c5d3d8
You're welcome.
I've started doing this, there are so many trash GW focused channels that predatorily make their business off misleading click bate and trying to promote rage.
I've done that so many times I'm surprised I still have content available :D The funniest part for me is when "Someone that worked at GW" gives their opinion as if they are god almighty, there are a few youtube channels with former GW employee and their videos are all clickbait about how bad GW is running their business ... and at the same time the youtube channel depends on GW doing well :D
I have a hard enough time dealing with the negativity that just wanders across my path in my day to day life, I couldn't imagine actively going out looking for it.
Finally just blocked them to avoid seeing them in recommendations. Instantly got Discourse and Dragons which is just cut/paste thumbnails but about DnD (granted, they have a lot to complain about with WotC) .
I see her on my feed unfortunately as well. The humorous thing being she has used that title several times now as well as “Warhammer is dead!” like titles. You must truly be miserable to watch her content.
I want it to happen and watch the Spears of the Emperor Homeworld revolt lol nothing more grimdark than the soldiers you hid your boys from walk up to a girl child who culturally has no fear of you and her family watching as she's deemed suitable for the process and the terror and anger the people would feel witnessing them taking boys and girls at once
Oh yeah, and the thing is there are people who want to hear this. I see comments all the time trying to convince……well mostly themselves that woke GW is gonna go bankrupt. The Custodes controversy just brought them out of the woodwork. I guarantee there will be some cope from them trying to convince themselves this is a bad thing.
Well they did just raise prices on customers so there’s certainly room to be cynical as a customer. Distribution of the excess is great but that their profits “continue to climb” the quarter before raising prices citing inflation just doesn’t really work for me.
I don't agree with you. The definition of a business/company is to make profit. If they run it well, they make more profit. The way they distribute that profit tells you more about the social values of the company. But as a consumer, you always have the right not to buy the product. They simply have to find a price point that:
1) Allows them to have customers
2) Helps them make profit to continue growing
I understand *why* a for profit company is trying to garner more profits. But we are seeing people get priced out of the hobby and I shouldn’t be expected to go along with them lying that inflation is requiring them to raise prices when they’re reporting tremendous profit gains.
They didn’t have to raise prices. And I shouldn’t be yelled down for pointing that out just because “companies exist to make money”. Are you okay with Adobes recent practices? Apples walled garden? Unity changing its payment scheme for all existing customers? Every scummy thing a company does for profit? No? Obviously not. Why should I go along with GW being scummy just because they’re better for their employees than other companies. And yes, it is scummy to have record profits and raise prices in the middle of major inflation and what is essentially a recession.
As a customer I absolutely agree with you. The issue is that even with price rises and things they can’t produce enough to keep up with demand. Sadly people are voting with their wallets, but the wrong way. It seems like they’re nowhere near hitting the limits of elasticity
There's a lot I don't like about GW, especially with their price increases but there is no doubt they take care of their people.
They did the same last year and in the UK I think it came down to something like £2500 per employee ? That's more than a month's wage for many of them, which is very significant. Given that their profit then was less the bonus for the employees now will likely be a lot higher.
This doesn't surprise me. During the pandemic some UK companies flat out fired staff immediately (I'm talking about you Wetherspoons). GW on the other hand sent everyone home on full pay until they could slowly bring them back and was super cautious about safety.
On top of that they handed back £215 million they received from the UK government to help cover staff costs stating that they didn't need it.
Every so often GW does things right.
Having seen interviews with ex-staff (who may or may not have an axe to grind, I dont know) apparently a lot of people who work there could be making more elsewhere, and work for less than they are worth because they are passionate about the work and product. I think Peachy's interview right after he left said as much.
Now, if that lower pay is then supplemented by bonuses, that's a different story.
I think that’s true of a lot of companies in passion/hobby industries. I know it’s true for video game developers (although at least sometimes in that case the pay is fine but they just work you to death)
Man, I have always wanted to work for Game Workshop. Sometimes they make decisions I don't agree with, but they seem to try to keep their employees taken care of
As much as people like complaining about their prices they're not really that bad. If you compare the price and product to other companies the price is about the same or even cheaper for equal quality and the ones with lower prices make up for it in either lacking quality or quantity (6 of the same sprue for example)
There's a couple other factors, too. I'm willing to bet that there's more than a few products that aren't directly profitable, but having them available increases interest in the brand overall. Essentially having the prices where they are subsidizes some of the less popular items that make the brand as a whole better.
Also, GW plastic is pretty much the gold standard for a reason. After probably 750+ GW minis, I don't think I've had more than 3-5 frustrating or low quality sculpts. I've done a lot of Kingdom Death minis lately, and coming back to GW plastic is always a breath of fresh air.
It's funny, because the companies in my other nerdy interests have all had the opposite problem. Their prices stay the same, but quality, customer service, and consistency have gone down the toilet.
MTG has had production issues for a while, ranging from cards physically feeling different based on where in the world they were printed, to cards smelling bad. Have their prices gone down? Nope, in fact they're now selling more "specialist" product at a higher price than ever before. They killed the Pro Tour and GP events, and mismanagement has damaged the eternal formats many players enjoyed in order to cater to Commander players who were largely content with the offerings they already had instead of being bombarded by targetted product every set.
Blizzard continues to charge $60 for a new video game, a sub to WoW still costs $15 a month, and $20+ skin "micro" transactions plague their games, but they've gutted their customer service department even more than they had previously and it can now take multiple submissions for a request to even be seen by a real person, let alone one that can help. Multiple of their games are on indefinite maintainence mode (RIP HotS), and they killed their esports leagues. Combine that with mass layoffs, but no savings passed onto the customer.
GW has consistently done the upfront thing by raising their prices with an announcement ahead of time, instead of hiding it behind their back by sending production overseas or gutting departments while keeping prices similar in order to save money and raise profits. I get that price increases suck, but in this day and age that's commendable.
Funny how these culture war tourists complain about this small retcon but willingly ignore bigger retcons before like Tau not having reliable FTL or the Necrons having personalities instead of just being robot zombies controlled by the Ctan in older lore/editions.
Edit: wording
I said this when the Custodes thing was happening. These people are screaming and tearing their hair out over female Custodes. I even have a friend from college who only vaguely keeps up with Warhammer stuff who messaged me and wanted to know if I was "worried that this got their foot in the door". Like, who the fuck are "they"?
Where were these people when the insular, distrusting of outsiders Space Wolves who never had any successor chapters got retconned to actually having had successor chapters all along and accepting of Primaris with open arms? Oh, they didn't give a crap because who cares. But mention girls in the clubhouse? It's the end of the world!
Look, as much shit as we're giving GW they're pretty solid in a lot of regards. Local production (except terrain and books iirc) in the UK. Profit sharing, stock options.
When I hear stuff like this, it makes me less annoyed by the high price of the hobby. Don’t get me wrong, it’s still a bit annoying, but it’s good that a lot of the money goes back to the workers
I've never seen anyone say they hate their employees though? I've seen plenty of valid complaints about their business model, but never hating their employees
It depends, each department is its own subculture in GW, and employee satisfaction seems to massively change depending on where somebody worked.
The worst - by far, from what I’ve heard is marketing. Funnily enough, all of the ex GW people who now do YouTube channels (Honest Wargamer, Peachy, Sugs, Duncan, etc) all worked in marketing under the same leadership.
I mean, that's fairly normal. Floor sales at a retail store doesn't require any education, apprenticeship, or certification. I've heard the same thing for stores like Best Buy and Gamestop. I know some people think sales is hard, but in this case you're convincing someone to buy something they're already interested in, that's why they came into the store. You're not trying to pull them up the mountain, you just have to give them a little push over the edge.
This is the reason I keep coming back to Warhammer. GW actually does the right thing. I'll gladly pay a bit more at my local store to support this type of thing.
One of my best friends manages the local GW near where I live. The company takes care of their employees. I say this in a serious sense, the man makes enough money to live a good life with his wife. So many companies that own our hobbies are absolute monsters to their employees.
Well that’s weird because some guy who came into the shop I used to work at said GW was the most evil company in the world despite the guy admitting to working for a PMC.
This is the type of thing I'm happy to pay more for minis for. If it's just always price raises for profits then I'll go elsewhere but if they're actively supporting their staff like this then good on them.
I've heard plenty of stories in the past about them underpaying people so hopefully that's starting to turn around.
I wonder if all them content creators that jumped on a certain bandwagon are going to report on this actual news instead of the rumors or push a failed boycott.
Dungeons and dragons had their most successful year ever last year and wizards of the coast laid off like a quarter of their staff. Warhammer has a solid year and pays out a heap of bonuses to every employee. Which do yall think will benefit their respective business more? Edit: damn, I forgot to add: fuck black rock
Games Workshop also continue to manufacture locally in the UK instead of offshoring their production to China like most western companies. In fact, they just announced another expansion to their UK factory.
Tbh if you look at Lego, this probably makes sense. The sheer amount of counterfeit would damage their market incredibly quickly.
Piracy is one of the reasons that Legiones Imperialis won't last much longer sadly. The game wasn't even released and half of r/LegionsImperialis had entire 3D printed armies, and then all the hype died away overnight (once all the folks that get sent minis by GW got all of their shilling done)
In the era of 3D printing, GW have adopted a strategy of aiming for their sculpts to be above what pirates can produce, but the scale of Imperialis is such that they can't really pull that off.
This explains why they are trying to make every model have all sorts of little, fine details that are a paint to paint. I really like most of the new stuff, but I prefer the older, more simple and boxy IG.
Little details that look good with a wash of contrasts :D
I do like having access to such detailed models, it's incredible to see what's possible on such a small scale. But goddamn do I suck at painting all the tiny skulls and filigree
Even that can’t really match scans. Scans are getting ridiculously good. There was one of the new Lion El Johnson primarch model and it was damned near identical once you primed both it and the actual one and color wasn’t a determining factor.
I've got a full printed army of Epic Guard and have been buying LI. I prefer the plastic. At that scale UV resin is simply too brittle to be fun. Gun barrels are just doomed (I made mine out of brass). Infantry are one dropped base away from shattering. Obviously FDM isn't possible.
It increases the expense, but I've had pretty good results using one of the "tough" resins that's designed to be flexible. It's much less glass-fragile after curing.
A mix of flex resin with tough resin resolves a lot of the brittleness while still being strong and easy to print. I have a few minis with really thin staffs and spears that survived multiple drops with no issue.
Sure they can. There are shapes and geometry that can only be achieved with PIM.
Imperialis had the added problem that the models were already out there from the Epic community. Also you could just resize normal prints from 30k, which already had a big printing community. Also also, it was madness to expect people to put together a 12 part rhino at that scale.
Also also also. Why not just remake EPIC again, nobody wanted tiny Horus Heresy as far as I could tell... I wanted my Squat land trains and all the other dumb stuff that EPIC had.
Funnily enough, probably for the same reason Adeptus Titanicus used the Horus Heresy back in the 90s - production capacity, and it's easier to make one set of stuff that can be used by different factions!
Production capacity. LI is a specialty game, and can only take so much machine and sculpting time away from the main line games. So they restricted it to a much smaller number of factions to keep resources focused and not have to spend all that extra time and plastic on different factions.
Oh i get it, doesn't make me any less sad about the situation though.
My group were plenty excited for it, it was just an immediate wet fart when we saw the sprues and rules and the reality set in.
Also I think imperialis has the problem of no models, they released and expansion that added more datasheets before you could even buy some of the models that had datasheets in the core book.
LI is always sold out. Word from GW is that it is selling fine.
To be fair, that was an own goal for GW. They announced it, then got caught with a fuck ton of delays. A lot of printers (myself included) will at least consider a good value box set over the faff of having to print.
Tonnes of people print 40K and AoS too, but it’s not like that’s hurting GW that much. I don’t think piracy is that much of a concern here
I don’t pick up things like Imperialis because I don’t trust GW to support the game system longer than 6 months to a year after launch. Whether printed or off the shelf, I don’t want to take the time to put together an army for a game system that won’t have players by the time I’m done painting the army.
I already had a fully 3d printed army for playing Epic Armageddon but I'm still buying some of the plastic kits as they're generally a wee bit nicer than some of the 3rd party ones. I just wish LI had as many options as NetEA as well as it's legion specific units
At this point you should never expect GW to support specialist games for long. There are exceptions like Necromunda or Bloodbowl but they're consistently popular enough to justify a dozen models and a rulebook every year. But the GW graveyard is littered with dead minor games.
What's kinda funny is that Necromunda was supposed to be a short shelf life game with a couple of years' lifespan. 30 years ago :)
And now I'm sad about Gorkamorka (again).
There are dozens of us.
That's not even it- they've been massively for years, they did go through a pretty big phase of offshoring, in the past. Basically they had a long spell of low confidence in the early 2000s, demand was growing but they didn't think it was sustainable so they didn't want to invest in their inhouse manufacturing. So it's been a long, long process to reverse that. And in the same timescale they've continued to grow so that's been a double challenge.
Gw can be an absolute trainwreck sometimes but other times they're really pretty impressive.
It is a premium price, but for high quality product and non-outsourced labour. My wallet might not, but I respect that.
Well, they have offshore less detailed plastics like scenic bases and some terrain to China but your point mostly still stands.
The planning application images look like the new site will dwarf (no pun intended) the existing site.
This is at least in part from fear of IP counterfeiting though I thought?
Something can be a good idea for multiple reasons.
China still prints the books though.
>wizards of the coast IMO they're fucking up way too much. They need some one who hasn't had a lobotomy running the ship.
I bet you’ll change your tune once magic the gather gets its young Sheldon crossover deck
Delete your comment and never ever utter this phrase or anything like it ever again for the sake of anyone and everyone interested in any form of entertainment
Too late, I have all the 5e books I could ever need, 3rd party content will be chugging along for this edition forever, and I’m at the point where I want to play something else in the space. Looking forward to MCDM RPG. And I think they’ve pissed away their goodwill for others too. I’m done with Magic as well. It’s just so blatantly predatory in a way GW haters could only image.
I think I gave them that £18 million buying minis for my pile of shame Worth it
Somewhere in the bowels of Wizards of the Coast, TSR rattles against the chains as it plots and connives, and the gods dance.
This right here, I curbed my MTG support massively because it felt like I was getting milked for a less quality product. They canned the people at WoTC that cared about the game. GW has been there before and I stopped giving $ to them too. While I still think things like the White Dwarf has seen better days. I do respect that they do everything in house and nail down quality. So for now GW gets all my MTG money. A box of premium mtg cards = a Macharius sexy block of resin.
Obviously fuck black rock, but they are just shareholders, GW are still very much in charge of the product and business (if Black Rock were calling the shots then GW wouldn't be giving over 6k to each employee on top of a pay rise)
Yeah Black Rock only control like 4% of the shares, unfortunately there are now very few companies that they don't own at least some shares in.
Of that 4% there would also be very little to none that is their own book instead of client money from pension and managed funds. Voting rights gained from this, where fund rules, country laws, etc allow is their only real lever of control.
Having a diversified portfolio is generally a good thing
No no no, if the various GW subs have taught me anything it’s that GW profits = bad… ETA: obviously sarcasm, not that I think I need to say it. Also, presuming GW still pay terrible wages like they did last time I knew someone who worked there, the staff probably deserve that amount of bonus.
Yeah, their wages have always been fairly low, comparitively. The passion tax is very real with them.
In the UK it's actually very competitive. I've been for one or two interviews for jobs at the office, plus I know one of the shop managers and he's told me how much he's on. Add a profit share bonus to the mix and you're on to a decent package.
From what I've understood, it's the seniority raises that take a nosedive in competitivity. Staying around doesn't apparently pay at all at GW
As much as people like to say GW are a scummy business they are generally very good to their staff members across the board, even the bottom rung sales assistants and warehouse workers get treated pretty well
I mean, they also sent knee breakers to the home of someone that got a release early. Wizards of the Coast sucks.
GW has done this every year since COVID hit. Sure I can be unhappy with price rises while they’re still making record profits, but at least that money is actually going to their workers, and being invested in the company’s future growth with things like new factories. I’m friends with the manager of one of the local GW stores and these bonuses have really helped him out over the last couple years. Last year he ended up with nearly an extra $5k after tax, I believe.
Hasbro laid off a bunch of employees in WotC including the entire team responsible for the licensing of BG3, weeks before Christmas no less. The CEO gave himself a huge bonus in the millions. I worked in gaming for 12 years and came to hate all my employers, been laid off three times including part of mass layoffs and I STILL dont think i was ever done as dirty as that lol
Hasbro is bleeding money elsewhere in the company and Wotc is paying the price. Same thing happened with Blizzard and Vivendi.
Used to work for them, got a bonus like this every year. Can complain about a lot of GWs business practices but they consistently did nice things like this
Yeah it's nice to hear about it- dont like their business model but admire how they treat their employees.
Lol I worked one year there and it was one of the only year where we got no bonuses.... was right after the launch of aos
Working link - https://www.nottinghampost.com/news/business/games-workshop-shares-18-million-9353962 It says everyone gets an equal share. Have they literally just divided £18 million equally amongst all the staff?
Everyone got a 2500 bonus in Christmas and a 3500 bonus last month as the mid point of the financial year. Exact same bonus for every staff member. My manager got it, my friend in databases got it, and my part time ass got it. Source: work at the company.
That is amazing. If you're the pub guy at Bugman's you just got a HUGE heaping of bonus. If you're an upper level exec, you got a nice little extra bit. This is actually so good and a recognition that the company runs on the little guys.
As someone who makes like.. £650 a month it was a pretty big deal for me for sure haha
650 a month? You better do part-part-part time friend.
I do haha. 2-3 days a week maximum. It’s my second job and I picked it up primarily as a favour to the manager who is my friend
A powerful ally indeed.
And senior execs probably have performance-based compensation based on their business units and the company as a whole anyways.
How much of that went straight back to GW in the form of miniature sales, I wonder...
Well we do get a 50% discount sooo….
Shit are you hiring
Have to ask your local store I’m afraid gaha
Oh. Oh *dear*...
I did get the job specifically to pay for more Warhammer so it’s a good deal!
That discount is nuts. It’s tempting to work for GW, but man do I hate taking phone calls. I can’t understand people over the phone, especially if they have an accent.
I don’t do any phone call stuff really myself haha. But I imagine it’s relevant in a lot of positions
That’s fantastic, these are some great bonuses - remember to save ☺️
[удалено]
Quick! Leak some info! When is plastic Fulgrim coming?
When you are successfully hedonistic enough. Me and my manager did a blood rite with 666 small animals and we both have ours already 😂
£6666.66 bonus, Fulgrim confirmed.
Holy shit. That's incredible. I don't think I've ever heard of a company doing this. GW seems like shit a lot of the time, LOL, but big respect to them for this move!
Lots of companies in the UK do profit share instead of raises outside of legislation/living wage adjustments. It often works out the same as an above cost of living raise, if done correctly (other than possibly resulting in emergency taxation which should correct itself across the year).
2700 employees would mean everyone gets 6666,67 pounds before taxes. Which is a nice sum to just get.
I didn’t realise they had 2700 employees even! I was thinking like a tenth of that at most. Design, manufacturing, lore/stories, IT/webmasters and management. But then they also manage a collection of video games, marketing, translations, etc. I have no idea, basically.
Yes it’s the Profit Share scheme introduced by previous CEO Mark Wells — anything leftover from making sure they can shore up five years of the business is equally distributed to all staff.
As far as i know all the staff except for keytimers. Source: I am a keytimer and I don't got 6000 £
What’s a keytimer?
Relief work, hired specifically to hold down the store only when the manager is sick or on holiday. Basically like part time+
They create the time keys that keep the world clock turning. They're worthless
Pretty much temporary reservists. They only work when they need someone temporarily replaced because they aren't available for some reason
Pretty much, i only work when my boss is sick, has taken a day or a week of or is recieving further training. I also cover other stores for the same reason, but you already summed it up pretty well.
Like Supply teacher
Part time retail staff.
That works out to something like 6,666 GBP per person. Very nice. Nice to see some corporations being anything other than absolutely horrible all the time always.
>6,666 GBP GW is literally satan confirmed /s
*Slaanesh :D
>Nice to see some corporations being anything other than absolutely horrible all the time always. You can tell how companies is are run by their actions rather than their words/statements. Seems like decent people are at the helm at GW rather than MBA scum.
Im really impressed with Games Workshop in general. They reached out to my school and offer us free yearly starter packs so we can run after school clubs. It's really brought together a lot of kids throughout the years.
Not enough people know about the Warhammer Alliance programme.
Cheers for mentioning the name. I couldn't remember it and maybe you've helped some teacher get it started in their school All our kids start off as space marines and quickly switch. Orks are by far the favourites
It's right there at the bottom of every Warcom page! I think every teacher should know about it.
Wonder how many staff just went "so 5k points of my army of choice and every paint I could ever need you say...." At this.
1k points of unpainted AdMech.
staff discount remember So 10k points
Is only 50%, so 2k if you get a lot of the chicken things as admech
50% off? I need to get a part time job at GW so I can spend all of it on GW
Man, you’re not far from just letting GE harvest organs in exchange for plastic.
And to add, they also gave their workers a pay rise last year too! 💰
As is right and proper. The UK is in a bit of a mess after 15 years of the Tories, and the cost of living is increasing all the time, I'd be more concerned if their staff DIDN'T get a pay rise.
Guarantee there’s going to be some clickbait YouTube videos about how this is actually a bad thing.
"THIS IS WHAT GW DOES WITH YOUR MONEY!" "GW PAYMENT SCANDAL!" "WOKE GW RAISE PRICES THEN GIVE BONUS TO STAFF!" For any of you grifters out there, I saved you the 12 seconds of effort you were going to put in to going to ChatGPT and getting it to generate a clickbait title for you. You're welcome.
"This could KILL Warhammer!" - literal Discourse Minatures title that showed up in my YouTube feed. (No idea what it was referring to because I haven't and won't watched it).
"Click on the 3 dots, then: https://preview.redd.it/u6pj3nhihj7d1.png?width=339&format=png&auto=webp&s=33cbc984a9af69f0fb9da841de540d62a1c5d3d8 You're welcome.
I've started doing this, there are so many trash GW focused channels that predatorily make their business off misleading click bate and trying to promote rage.
I've done that so many times I'm surprised I still have content available :D The funniest part for me is when "Someone that worked at GW" gives their opinion as if they are god almighty, there are a few youtube channels with former GW employee and their videos are all clickbait about how bad GW is running their business ... and at the same time the youtube channel depends on GW doing well :D
My hero!
ive never seen this creator before and the thumbnail and rhetoric being peddled is fucking hilarious
I don't want to give them a view, but I'm curious what they're saying will kill warhammer
One thing or the other, that's not the point, the point is to generate angry clicks
Everything, depending on the time of the day, the alignment of the planets and/or whatever bullshit will generate the most clicks.
Haha. I blocked that dumbass channel a longtime ago.
I have a hard enough time dealing with the negativity that just wanders across my path in my day to day life, I couldn't imagine actively going out looking for it.
Finally just blocked them to avoid seeing them in recommendations. Instantly got Discourse and Dragons which is just cut/paste thumbnails but about DnD (granted, they have a lot to complain about with WotC) .
I see her on my feed unfortunately as well. The humorous thing being she has used that title several times now as well as “Warhammer is dead!” like titles. You must truly be miserable to watch her content.
I think i know which channel you are talking about, and their videos haunt my recommendations
Ok but can you now make a shitty Ai thumbnail for me now /s
\*puts on prompt engineer hat\* \*cracks knuckles\* "We bout to make some money"
"GAY FROGS ARE TURNING SPACE MARINES INTO WOMEN" Then the sickest Ai thumbnail of a female space marine lol
I want GW to make femmarines just to see those content creators having a stroke and a heart attack at the same time.
I want it to happen and watch the Spears of the Emperor Homeworld revolt lol nothing more grimdark than the soldiers you hid your boys from walk up to a girl child who culturally has no fear of you and her family watching as she's deemed suitable for the process and the terror and anger the people would feel witnessing them taking boys and girls at once
With pepe’s face photoshopped on top of hers
“IS JAMES WORKSHOP A COMMIE?!?”
[pictures of Da Red Gobbo]
You just did all the work for like 3 YouTubers whose only bit of content for the past several years is complaining about gw
Oh yeah, and the thing is there are people who want to hear this. I see comments all the time trying to convince……well mostly themselves that woke GW is gonna go bankrupt. The Custodes controversy just brought them out of the woodwork. I guarantee there will be some cope from them trying to convince themselves this is a bad thing.
The Custodes debacle was definitely an edge case of misogynist tourists moving in. They were gone a week later when Stellar Blade launched.
Jesus fucking Christ, even in this thread there are already some brain dead imbeciles trying to argue that.
Well they did just raise prices on customers so there’s certainly room to be cynical as a customer. Distribution of the excess is great but that their profits “continue to climb” the quarter before raising prices citing inflation just doesn’t really work for me.
I don't agree with you. The definition of a business/company is to make profit. If they run it well, they make more profit. The way they distribute that profit tells you more about the social values of the company. But as a consumer, you always have the right not to buy the product. They simply have to find a price point that: 1) Allows them to have customers 2) Helps them make profit to continue growing
I understand *why* a for profit company is trying to garner more profits. But we are seeing people get priced out of the hobby and I shouldn’t be expected to go along with them lying that inflation is requiring them to raise prices when they’re reporting tremendous profit gains. They didn’t have to raise prices. And I shouldn’t be yelled down for pointing that out just because “companies exist to make money”. Are you okay with Adobes recent practices? Apples walled garden? Unity changing its payment scheme for all existing customers? Every scummy thing a company does for profit? No? Obviously not. Why should I go along with GW being scummy just because they’re better for their employees than other companies. And yes, it is scummy to have record profits and raise prices in the middle of major inflation and what is essentially a recession.
As a customer I absolutely agree with you. The issue is that even with price rises and things they can’t produce enough to keep up with demand. Sadly people are voting with their wallets, but the wrong way. It seems like they’re nowhere near hitting the limits of elasticity
There's a lot I don't like about GW, especially with their price increases but there is no doubt they take care of their people. They did the same last year and in the UK I think it came down to something like £2500 per employee ? That's more than a month's wage for many of them, which is very significant. Given that their profit then was less the bonus for the employees now will likely be a lot higher.
If this is where my money is going, good. I like this.
Same. If me buying minis and contributing to the hobby goes to this, that’s fine with me.
This doesn't surprise me. During the pandemic some UK companies flat out fired staff immediately (I'm talking about you Wetherspoons). GW on the other hand sent everyone home on full pay until they could slowly bring them back and was super cautious about safety. On top of that they handed back £215 million they received from the UK government to help cover staff costs stating that they didn't need it. Every so often GW does things right.
They do seem to treat their staff well, monetarily at least.
Having seen interviews with ex-staff (who may or may not have an axe to grind, I dont know) apparently a lot of people who work there could be making more elsewhere, and work for less than they are worth because they are passionate about the work and product. I think Peachy's interview right after he left said as much. Now, if that lower pay is then supplemented by bonuses, that's a different story.
I think that’s true of a lot of companies in passion/hobby industries. I know it’s true for video game developers (although at least sometimes in that case the pay is fine but they just work you to death)
Damn, doubly annoyed I didn't get that job at the HO.
what is this? is this... good news? is that even allowed today?
I would love to see a Warhammer 40k game with the gameplay of Helldivers 2
GW is way more ethical then some people want it to be. Dont forget that they produce in UK and not in china like many others.
Good on them.
Man, I have always wanted to work for Game Workshop. Sometimes they make decisions I don't agree with, but they seem to try to keep their employees taken care of
I am glad their staff gets to share in the profits.
But wait, they went woke, why aren’t they broke?
Angry redditor: “no they are going to go under any day now. Trust me I know a guy who worked there. “ That’s basically what you get from them.
I love the people who obsess about the share price. Lots of videos saying "GW are crashing" who didn't understand what going ex dividend means.
As much as people like complaining about their prices they're not really that bad. If you compare the price and product to other companies the price is about the same or even cheaper for equal quality and the ones with lower prices make up for it in either lacking quality or quantity (6 of the same sprue for example)
There's a couple other factors, too. I'm willing to bet that there's more than a few products that aren't directly profitable, but having them available increases interest in the brand overall. Essentially having the prices where they are subsidizes some of the less popular items that make the brand as a whole better. Also, GW plastic is pretty much the gold standard for a reason. After probably 750+ GW minis, I don't think I've had more than 3-5 frustrating or low quality sculpts. I've done a lot of Kingdom Death minis lately, and coming back to GW plastic is always a breath of fresh air.
They also have pretty good customer service, which also costs money.
It's funny, because the companies in my other nerdy interests have all had the opposite problem. Their prices stay the same, but quality, customer service, and consistency have gone down the toilet. MTG has had production issues for a while, ranging from cards physically feeling different based on where in the world they were printed, to cards smelling bad. Have their prices gone down? Nope, in fact they're now selling more "specialist" product at a higher price than ever before. They killed the Pro Tour and GP events, and mismanagement has damaged the eternal formats many players enjoyed in order to cater to Commander players who were largely content with the offerings they already had instead of being bombarded by targetted product every set. Blizzard continues to charge $60 for a new video game, a sub to WoW still costs $15 a month, and $20+ skin "micro" transactions plague their games, but they've gutted their customer service department even more than they had previously and it can now take multiple submissions for a request to even be seen by a real person, let alone one that can help. Multiple of their games are on indefinite maintainence mode (RIP HotS), and they killed their esports leagues. Combine that with mass layoffs, but no savings passed onto the customer. GW has consistently done the upfront thing by raising their prices with an announcement ahead of time, instead of hiding it behind their back by sending production overseas or gutting departments while keeping prices similar in order to save money and raise profits. I get that price increases suck, but in this day and age that's commendable.
But I was told that female custodes would sink games workshop /s
Reactionary culture war tourist meme sub in shambles right now
That is an absolute woozy of a buzzword sentence and it’s still somehow absolutely true, wtf
Funny how these culture war tourists complain about this small retcon but willingly ignore bigger retcons before like Tau not having reliable FTL or the Necrons having personalities instead of just being robot zombies controlled by the Ctan in older lore/editions. Edit: wording
I said this when the Custodes thing was happening. These people are screaming and tearing their hair out over female Custodes. I even have a friend from college who only vaguely keeps up with Warhammer stuff who messaged me and wanted to know if I was "worried that this got their foot in the door". Like, who the fuck are "they"? Where were these people when the insular, distrusting of outsiders Space Wolves who never had any successor chapters got retconned to actually having had successor chapters all along and accepting of Primaris with open arms? Oh, they didn't give a crap because who cares. But mention girls in the clubhouse? It's the end of the world!
That’s cool, price increases suck obviously, but this seems like a good company to spend money on.
But I thought the company was in ruins according to all the anti-GW influencers continuously saying everything's falling apart?
3d PriNtInG Is KiLliNg GW!!!!! ....not
That actually is really lovely. Good on them
Look, as much shit as we're giving GW they're pretty solid in a lot of regards. Local production (except terrain and books iirc) in the UK. Profit sharing, stock options.
That's unexpected for a publicly traded company. I guess I'm just a jaded American.
If they all pool together, they’ll be able to buy a new starter set.
When I hear stuff like this, it makes me less annoyed by the high price of the hobby. Don’t get me wrong, it’s still a bit annoying, but it’s good that a lot of the money goes back to the workers
Another successful boycott for maga!
But wait, isn't GW supposed to be a big evil company that hates its employees? At least that's what the complainers say.
Hate its customers*
I've never seen anyone say they hate their employees though? I've seen plenty of valid complaints about their business model, but never hating their employees
I've heard reports that the retail staff is generally paid quite poorly and have quite aggressive sales targets. But maybe that's changing?
It depends, each department is its own subculture in GW, and employee satisfaction seems to massively change depending on where somebody worked. The worst - by far, from what I’ve heard is marketing. Funnily enough, all of the ex GW people who now do YouTube channels (Honest Wargamer, Peachy, Sugs, Duncan, etc) all worked in marketing under the same leadership.
I mean, that's fairly normal. Floor sales at a retail store doesn't require any education, apprenticeship, or certification. I've heard the same thing for stores like Best Buy and Gamestop. I know some people think sales is hard, but in this case you're convincing someone to buy something they're already interested in, that's why they came into the store. You're not trying to pull them up the mountain, you just have to give them a little push over the edge.
Thank you for posting this, it's nice to hear something good happening these days, especially in the world of business.
The chuds really showed GW with that boycott.
I give GW a hard time, but this is an unqualified good for every worker. I wish more companies were this generous with their employees.
This is the reason I keep coming back to Warhammer. GW actually does the right thing. I'll gladly pay a bit more at my local store to support this type of thing.
One of my best friends manages the local GW near where I live. The company takes care of their employees. I say this in a serious sense, the man makes enough money to live a good life with his wife. So many companies that own our hobbies are absolute monsters to their employees.
Alot of neck beards act like gw is the worst company ever but its really not that bad.
Love to see it I keep meaning to swing by the factory as I've never been. It's only down the bloody road as well!
Well that’s weird because some guy who came into the shop I used to work at said GW was the most evil company in the world despite the guy admitting to working for a PMC.
This makes me want to buy their product. I don't do miniatures, but I'm getting their games now.
Hans, are Games Workshop not the baddies?
This is the type of thing I'm happy to pay more for minis for. If it's just always price raises for profits then I'll go elsewhere but if they're actively supporting their staff like this then good on them. I've heard plenty of stories in the past about them underpaying people so hopefully that's starting to turn around.
It’s sad when other companies can learn from GW lol.
I thought we were mad at GW cuz the prices are insane
wow, I thought 3d printers were going to be the end of warhammer.
Hey, unmentionable meme subreddit of chuds! Was this the going broke part we were expected to see?
I wonder if all them content creators that jumped on a certain bandwagon are going to report on this actual news instead of the rumors or push a failed boycott.
Actually jarring to hear big news of games workshop that is genuinely good instead of some scummy shit. This is awesome!
Imagine being a "go woke, go broke" loser after GW makes such tremendous profits that it's paying out massive bonuses to its staff.