The CEO of Games Workshop says they will continue to sell out of new releases as Warhammer products become difficult to find.
Updated on July 1st, 2025, by Rob Baer with updated information on the stock situation from Games Workshop.
GW’s 2023 financial report makes one thing clear: sales are booming, even though people were still scrambling to get their hands on new Warhammer 40k releases back then.
According to their CEO, that’s not a supply hiccup—it’s the whole plan. And it’s not going anywhere.
Profits are up, dividends are flowing, but the math gets weird once you actually step into a store. Shelves are thin, allocations are laughable, and yet the cash keeps rolling in.
Here are all the details on why Games Workshop is constantly out of stock, and why the CEO is okay with it.
GW Will Continue To Sell Out of New Releases
These statements were made by Games Workshop’s CEO, Kevin Roundtree, on July 24, 2023. Months later, they straddled game stores with new allocations. Since then, stock has not been available to stores in significant quantities.
Online sales increased by 6.7% compared to the same period last year. As noted above, our customers have a lot of options when it comes to shopping for Warhammer online and are able to buy our products both through our own web stores (reported in Online) and through those of independent retailers (reported in Trade).
To continue to be fair to our 6,500 trade partners and to ensure our stock allocation is appropriate, we don’t carry high quantities of new release products on our own online store – so it will nearly always sell out.
This raises a few red flags right out of the gate. For starters, what even is a “trade partner”? Does slapping a best-sellers rack in a corner of your store qualify you? They throw that number around like it means something, so fine, we’ll use it to reverse-engineer how much stuff they’re probably cranking out.
Now, GW’s never going to hand over actual production numbers. That’s locked up tighter than a Black Library manuscript. But we can make some educated guesses, and let’s be honest, this whole “sell out instantly” approach feels less like demand management and more like a well-oiled FOMO machine.
Instead of just, y’know, making enough, they seem pretty happy watching people scramble while the webstore cash register dings away. And maybe, just maybe—they are making more than we think, quietly stockpiling it for their own site to keep the scarcity going.
Funny how a “restock” magically appears if a box set tanks, like the Kroot Hunting Pack did. Almost like the warehouse has a secret stash that they only roll out when the hype train derails.
The Production Numbers Don’t Make Sense
GW CEO Kevin Roundtree went on to say:
“In the period, we opened, including relocations, 16 stores. After closing 8 stores, our total number of stores at the end of the period was 526. The performance of each store will be kept under review and any stores that do not meet our financial model will be closed.”
Time to pull out the calculator and squint at some GW sales numbers. Let’s use the Lion release—easily one of the most hyped and most painfully limited—as our yardstick.
You’ve got 526 GW stores and around 6,500 “Trade Partners.” That puts us at roughly 7,000 outlets. If each got a measly two Lion boxes (which tracks with what stores were reporting), you’re staring at a production run of about 14,000 units. That’s not including whatever stash they held back for the GW webstore.
And keep in mind, this wasn’t some mid-tier release. The Lion had years of rumors and anticipation behind it. Fourteen thousand might sound like a decent number until you remember how fast it vaporized. Now let’s cross-reference that with some actual shipping data.
Scrying the Port Manifests
Back in 2020, GW imported about 4,000 English-language Eldar codex books into North America alone. Mostly for United States buyers, sure, but not exclusively.
So, if a codex for a niche Xenos faction got that kind of print run just for one region, what does that say about the Lion’s global numbers? Exactly.
If North America makes up around half their sales, then a print run of 10,000 for a well-liked Xenos codex sounds about right. At $60 a pop, that’s roughly half a million in revenue, just from a rulebook.
Now, swap in Space Marines, who outsell the Eldar by a mile, and you’re probably looking at double that number. So, around 20,000 codex books, which lines up with past import records we’ve seen.
It’s not a stretch to think model kits move at least twice as fast as rulebooks. Which means something like the Lion—arguably one of the most hyped character releases in years—should’ve had a print run closer to 30,000. But based on allocations and what the CEO’s said, we’re probably looking at closer to 14,000.
If that’s the case, GW made fewer Lions worldwide than they did Eldar codex books just for North America. That’s basically saying, “Eh, the Lion’s not that important,” despite the fact that he was playable in every 9th edition Space Marines list.
Now compare that to the rumored numbers floating around: 75,000 Leviathans, 100,000 Horus Heresy core sets. If those figures are legit, they made roughly nine times as many of those kits as they did the Lion.
Which raises the question—was demand underestimated, or was this all part of the plan?
Battleforces Are Made of Gold
Let’s rewind to the biggest drops of 2024—Ork, Custodes, Chaos Battleforces, Kill Team Nightmare. All massive releases, all gone faster than you could say “add to cart.”
Most stores got two boxes, maybe three if they sacrificed a Land Raider under a full moon. That puts the total print run somewhere around 14,000. Not exactly flooding the market.
So, why is Games Workshop constantly out of stock before your cart even loads? Well, just as Rountree said, Games Workshop wants to sell out of each new release.
This isn’t a stock hiccup—it’s marketing theater. Scarcity keeps demand high, wallets open, and forums buzzing.
Could it be bad supply chain forecasting? Sure. Or maybe GW just likes the idea of being the Supreme of miniatures—short runs, high demand, and just enough supply to keep you chasing the next drop like it’s plastic gold.
Final Thoughts From Us
So here’s where we’re at: Games Workshop seems to be playing a high-stakes game of “how little can we ship while still breaking profit records.” It’s not a logistics glitch. It’s the strategy.
They’re feeding just enough product into the wild to keep the hype engine running hot, while steering more traffic to their own webstore. Meanwhile, local stores are left fighting over scraps, and customers are left refreshing pages as if it were a Taylor Swift concert ticket day.
Is it smart? From a financial standpoint, sure. Is it annoying? Absolutely.
But unless GW suddenly decides to prioritize availability over artificial scarcity, don’t expect to casually stroll into your FLGS and pick up the latest hot release anytime soon.
No New Warhammer 40k Releases Anymore?
What do you think about the Games Workshop product sell out and the limited stock we’ve seen all year?
