Someone flew a drone over the Games Workshop factory in Nottingham and found hundreds of thousands of dollars of product rotting in the back!
DJ Audits went to Games Workshop’s headquarters in Nottingham, England, to stir things up from the looks of it. After being unable to film inside, he decided to fly a drone over the Warhammer World and their new factory warehouses. He found some alarming images of tons of Warhammer products rotting away on pallets exposed to the weather.
Drone Footage Shows Warhammer Product Rotting at Games Workshop HQ & Factory
As you can see in these images, Warhammer products are just rotting away at GW’s factory, exposed directly to the elements. In an age of allocations and “caps,” game stores literally can not get enough products to sell to their customers. Meanwhile, tons of Warhammer items are left rotting away at the GW factory. With so many companies, from Wizards of the Coast to Funko, being accused of destroying products to maintain value and demand, the big question may be, why did this happen?
Why Were Warhammer Products Left Rotting At Games Workshop’s Factory?
Let’s start with the most likely option: there was a sewer break in November 2021, several months before this video was supposedly recorded.
Image Credit: NottinghamshireLive
While GW didn’t say publically how much this affected their warehouses, factory, and Warhammer World, we know they did have to close for some time while it was cleaned up. According to the BBC, this was a very big underground pipe that took a while to fix. So, these could easily be products damaged from the leak, and maybe they had to let them sit outside for a while before the dump would take them (as they were “contaminated”). As you will see from the damaged goods later in this article, most were released before November 2021, so the timelines seem to line up with a “damaged goods scenario.”
Perceived Scarcity
The next option is not as exciting, but it could be Games Workshop was just going to write this product off. No matter how it got outside, it’s exposed to the elements and unsellable at this point. This video came around April 2022, which just happens to be right before GW’s end-of-year financials on May 31st, 2022, so they might be writing off all these products right before they have to report inventory numbers, etc.
Like with the Magic Cards that got bulldozed at a dump, and all the other speculations around products getting lost and destroyed, these items could be sitting and waiting for GW to write them off to get credit on their books for this “dead” inventory.
Many years ago, there were even rumors of a “dumpster fire party” that happened when all the boxes of Dreadfleet were recalled back to Games Workshop North America and supposedly set on fire in a dumpster and written off as well. We have never been able to confirm these rumors; however, numerous folks who used to work there have told us about it on separate occasions.
No Outlet For Overstocks
Having spoken to a few Omnichannel sellers here in the states recently (companies who buy pallets of “closeouts” or “overstocks” from manufacturers and then sell them for discounted rates on eBay, Amazon, etc), the practice of selling pallets of product to them seems to have started around late winter/ early spring of 2022.
So it is entirely possible that when products started backing up due to poor sales, overproduction, etc., whatever the reason, Games Workshop may not have had a policy in place to move large quantities of overstocked items down the retail chain to discounters like we started seeing around the time this video was released.
Here are some of the biggest discounters of Games Workshop products on eBay over the last year that have been listing new-in-box items up to 50% off since the spring of 2022.
Perhaps these sellers acquiring pallets of merchandise from Games Workshop was a direct result of the merchandise sitting outside in Nottingham with seemingly nowhere to go.
How Much Value Was Lost By Games Workshop?
We’ll look at some of the more apparent boxes of Warhammer products that were ruined, as there’s a chance that there were hundreds of thousands of dollars in value that rotted away when you add it all up.
Look at the bottom right.
This is one of the most visible boxes, so let’s start with this, then jump more into the other products. So, the first picture is a little zoomed-out of the bottom box. These are all Ephrael Stern & Kyganil, which currently retail for $60 (and, funnily enough, they are sold out online now too). So, here’s our best guess at how much is there:
- 29 sets in each box (other than the one that’s opened)
- 7 full boxes in each level
- 5 levels of the boxes (looks to be a half pallet of product)
Total estimated boxes: 1,015 boxes
Total estimated retail value: $60,900
When looking at the value, this is just an insane amount of product. Plus, keep in mind that this is just one of the dozens of palettes!
Next up, there are some Warcry Starter boxes, but it’s hard to tell if everything underneath is the same. Assuming it is, you’re looking at $600+ in retail value per cardboard case box. That would put that pallet’s value around $20,000 alone.
This is maybe the most revealing frame, with tons of Direchasm boxes ($90 retail), an Asian Space Marines codex, and some sort of Necron booklet. There also may have been a large quantity of Kill Team Octarius starters as well. Whatever the reason this is all out there, it’s just interesting to see!
The full video is quite interesting to watch. Still, we really have to give a shoutout to the security guard and Warhammer World greeter, as they all handled themselves very well and were nicer than they really needed to be. From the sounds of it, the guy who shot the video went in looking for a fight, so those employees are definitely an asset to Games Workshop and did a great job interacting with him.
As we said can only think of three real reasons why GW might have left all this product out to rot, but either way, it hurts a little to see so much value sitting outside in the elements when stores are struggling to stock their shelves these days.
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About the Author: Rob Baer
Rob Baer
Job Title: Managing Editor
Founded Spikey Bits in 2009
Socials: Rob Baer on Facebook and @catdaddymbg on X
About Rob Baer: Founder, Publisher, & Managing Editor of Spikey Bits, the leading tabletop gaming news website focused on the hobby side of wargaming and miniatures. Rob has won many Warhammer 40k Tournaments over the years, including the Adepticon Team Tournament and American Team Tournaments, and is on a first-name basis with almost every major company in the space.
He’s all gaming all the time. With over 30 years of experience in retail and distribution, Rob knows all the products and exactly which ones are the best. He advocates for gaming stores and manufacturers in these difficult times, always looking for the next big thing to feature for the miniatures hobby, helping everyone to provide the value consumers want.
While he’s played every edition of Warhammer 40k and Warhammer Fantasy (since 5th Edition) and has been hobbying on miniatures since the 1908s, Titans of all sizes will always be his favorite! It’s even rumored that his hobby vault rivals the Solemnance Galleries, containing rulebooks filled with lore from editions long past, ancient packs of black-bordered Magic Cards, and models made of both pewter and resin.
