GW Wasted Millions Canceling Necromunda RPG

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Games Workshop canceled the Necromunda RPG just 35 days after revealing it, and it could cost them millions now; here’s why.

Necromunda Roleplay had only 35 days between its Big Autumn Preview reveal on September 18 and GW officially axing the Necromunda RPG on October 23. 

And we’re not talking about some concept art thrown onto a slide here either. GW showed off a boxed Core Set with 18 plastic miniatures, a 224-page rulebook, two adventures, and more supplements planned. 

Here’s where none of this really adds up. Other products from that same preview went up for pre-order within 15 to 36 days, and the new Tone Pro paints were already in stores for people to try eight days later. So if the Necromunda RPG was on anything close to that schedule, there is a good chance those boxes were already made, shipped, and/or sitting in a GW warehouse when the cancellation came down.

And that right here may end up costing them millions of dollars at a time when Games Workshop stock is already dropping.

The Rest of GW’s Autumn Preview Were Already In Warehouses(?)

Just look at how quickly the other reveals from that September 18 preview started moving. Here’s where the pre-order dates stood as of October 26:

• Codex Adeptus Custodes: October 3, just 15 days after the reveal
• Horus Heresy: Battle for the Signus Cluster: October 3, also 15 days
• Warhammer Tone Pro paints: October 10 (22 days), with retail on October 24
• Age of Sigmar: Khazalite Holds Army Set: October 17, 29 days out
• The Old World: Tomb Kings reinforcements: October 24, 36 days out

Now, not everything has a date yet. We’re still waiting on Kill Team: Legion of the Damned, the Seraphon battletome, the Warhammer Quest: Darkwater expansion, and the Blood Bowl Night Goblins, which GW said were coming back soon on October 12.

But look at that first batch. We’re not talking about products that GW might get around to making someday. Most of this stuff was almost certainly already manufactured and either in stores or on its way there.

The Necromunda RPG was part of that same exact preview.

Tone Pro Paints Hit Stores Eight Days After the Reveal

The paint release is a pretty good example of how far ahead GW plans this stuff. The company revealed the 150-paint Tone Pro range on September 18. By September 26, hobbyists could already walk into thousands of Warhammer stores and independent retailers and try the paints on their own models. Pre-orders opened October 10, with the full retail release following on October 24.

Think about that for a second. There’s no way you’re mixing, bottling, packing, and shipping 150 different paints around the world in eight days. All that production and freight work had to happen well before the preview.

So why would we automatically assume the Necromunda RPG shown alongside those paints was still months away from being manufactured?

That Necromunda RPG Box Sure Looked Finished

Remember what GW actually showed us back in September? This wasn’t just a name and a logo, we got a look at:

• A complete-looking Necromunda Roleplay Core Set box
• A finished-looking rulebook with a specific 224-page count
• Plastic miniatures sculpted for the game
• Two RPG adventures
• Additional supplements planned for the line

And GW pretty much only shows off fully finished and manufactured products during these big previews now too. The June Summer Preview also featured physical miniatures, boxes that looked finished, and detailed components. It’s pretty obvious GW is well past the early manufacturing stages when it shows something during a preview. Plus, the timing we research for the autumn pre-order dates gives us a pretty good idea of just how quickly those reveals can turn into actual releases.

Getting a boxed game into stores around the world takes more than tossing a few sprues and a book into some cardboard. You’ve got manufacturing, packaging, freight, warehousing, and getting stock allocated to retailers. A lot of that happens weeks or even months before pre-orders start.

Now, nobody outside GW can say exactly how far along the development cycle the RPG got. But looking at the rest of that preview lineup, it’s pretty hard to picture that this product wasn’t also already finished and in warehouses ready to be released.

So How Much Could the Necromunda RPG Cancellation Cost GW?

Okay, so what kind of money are we potentially talking about here? Think about everything GW would have to pay for before a boxed RPG ever made it onto a store shelf:

• Writing, editing, playtesting, and layout for a 224-page rulebook
• Developing and printing the adventures and supplements
• Sculpting, tooling, and manufacturing the miniatures
• Printed boxes, inserts, and instructions
• International freight, warehousing, and distribution
• Marketing, product photography, promo videos, and preview production

Once that money’s spent, most of it isn’t coming back just because the game gets canceled.

And that’s before we even get into what finished inventory could be worth. To be clear, these aren’t actual GW production numbers or confirmed manufacturing costs. We’re just running some hypothetical numbers to show how quickly the totals could pile up if the boxes were already made:

And remember, the numbers above don’t include development costs.

Sure, GW could potentially reuse the miniatures, packaging, or other components and reduce the actual loss. But if tens of thousands of Core Sets were already sitting around, you’re potentially looking at millions in inventory alone.

The big unknown? GW hasn’t published any numbers showing how many boxes, if any, were actually produced.

GW Has Wasted Potentially Millions On Just Shipping Before

We’ve talked about GW spending some serious money on shipping before, too. Back in 2024, we looked into reports that the company may have wasted a million bucks air-freighting Solar Auxilia Battle Group inventory around the world well before the boxes hit retail.

Those figures were estimates based on shipping evidence and freight rates, not actual GW invoices. Still, they gave us a look at just how much product the company might move ahead of a release, even when getting it there costs extra.

Does that mean GW definitely has a warehouse full of Necromunda RPG boxes? Nope. But it does make you wonder what happens when GW makes a mistake with production and goes way out of their way cost-wise to fix it.

Saving the Miniatures Doesn’t Save the Rest of the RPG

When GW announced the cancellation, it also made sure everyone knew the miniatures would still be released for regular Necromunda. Which is welcome news, because at least GW has something from the project it can still put out.

But those models were only part of the Core Set. What about everything else? There are still some pretty big questions GW hasn’t answered:

• What happens to the rulebooks if they’re already printed?
• Were the adventures and supplements already manufactured?
• If finished Core Sets exist, does GW crack them open to pull the sprues?
• Does repackaging those models add a second round of manufacturing and shipping costs?
• Is GW sitting on thousands of empty boxes and books it can’t use?
• If stock already went out internationally, what does it cost to pull it back, sort it, or scrap it?

Getting the minis into regular Necromunda releases seems doable. Figuring out what to do with a 224-page RPG rulebook and all that other potentially finished material? That’s a different problem, and it’s not like you can just try to dispose of Warhammer product successfully (as we have shown) unless you handle it in-house. 

Was Cubicle 7 Behind the Necromunda RPG Cancellation?

Of course, that still leaves the question of why GW canceled the RPG in the first place. One theory making the rounds involves Cubicle 7, which already makes licensed Warhammer RPGs like Wrath & Glory and Imperium Maledictum.

The idea is that GW making its own RPG might have run into an existing licensing agreement late in development. If that happened, you could see how things might get messy.

There’s a problem with that theory, though. Cubicle 7 reportedly said it never held the Necromunda license, and there’s no public evidence that it objected to the game or had anything to do with the cancellation. Could there be other contract terms we don’t know about? Sure. But right now, there’s nothing solid showing this was a licensing dispute.

And if a contract oversight somehow did turn out to be the reason, that would be pretty rough for a company as aggressive about protecting its IP as GW. For now, though, it’s just a possibility.

GW Shareholders Might Want an Answer

There’s also the shareholder side of all this. GW is publicly traded, and canceling a product that may have already been manufactured and shipped isn’t just something hobbyists are going to wonder about.

If there’s a serious amount of money involved, GW shareholders might have a few questions of their own. How much money was committed to the project? Is there finished inventory that can’t be sold now? Did GW have to write anything off, or did those costs get absorbed somewhere else? And how did a project with potentially unresolved issues get all the way to a major preview?

Now, GW is a big company, and not every canceled release is going to make much of a dent in its finances. But if the final cost is substantial, it’s fair to ask how the whole thing was handled, especially if it was a contract oversight with a licensee like Cucible 7.

Also, there have been several reports that supposedly a “rogue” studio team designer(s) made this and didn’t get approval through the normal chain of command. Which we personally don’t believe, just because of the fact that there’s so much oversight on so many levels at Games Workshop, but if that is the case, that may even be more of a problem for shareholders and management if so much money could potentially get wasted due to, we’ll say, overly zealous employees that may or may not have been supervised correctly

Final Thoughts on the Necromunda RPG Cancellation

What keeps bringing us back to the warehouse theory is GW’s own release schedule. The Tone Pro paints were available to try eight days after their reveal, and the Custodes codex was up for pre-order shortly after. So it’s pretty tough to look at that finished-looking Necromunda RPG box from the same show and assume it was still just an early project.

The miniatures might give us another clue. If those gangers show up quickly in regular Necromunda packaging, that could be a pretty good sign the sprues were already made and ready to go, too. And if GW’s next financial results show an unexplained write-off, we’d certainly be wondering whether some of it came from this cancellation.

For now, we still don’t know why GW sent the Necromunda RPG off into the warp. What we’d really like to know is whether GW had already spent the money getting it ready for store shelves before deciding nobody was going to be able to buy it.

🔗 Related Reads:

• GW Officially Axes The Necromunda RPG
• GW May Have Wasted a Million Bucks On This
• Warhammer Tone Pro Paints Look Like Fanatic Mixed With Pro Acryl
• New Necromunda Core Set and Gangs Pre-Order Revealed
• New Solar Auxilia Battle Group Army Box Value Is Wild
• GW Made Too Much Money, Already Pays Shareholders $20 Million
• Warhammer The Old World Gets Its Own RPG

What do you think of the Necromunda RPG getting canceled, and do you think GW already had boxes in the warehouse?

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