Games Workshop is changing its sales strategy before our very eyes- here’s how they may try to sell us more stuff that we didn’t even know we wanted!
The New Games Workshop Sales Strategy: Subs, Pre-Recorded Vids & FOMO
2021 Guest Post by Ben De St Paer-Gotch: Twitter @nebuk89. updated September 2024 by Rob Baer
Last time we looked at ‘why’ Games Workshop is making changes to their product strategy, it really is $$ but related to changing their whole business model. This is all while staying true to still being a model’s first company and protecting their IP to ‘good choices,’ at least for now. (To be clear, anything expressed here is not done so with any internal knowledge and is my opinion only based on my experience)
Given this, what do I think we can expect to see if GW doesn’t level up their thinking on how to mix these two strategies of manufacturing, and membership-oriented content creation long term? Let’s dig into the three paths I would predict they keep going down.
To be clear, I don’t see these as ‘bad’ choices in what they are, but I will, in my third post, be covering how I think Games Workshop is in an almost insane position as they are totally failing to capitalize with their current approach – which for want of a better description is archaic when it comes to how they think about products.
Games Workshop’s New Sales Strategy Step One:
Can GW License More Things Than We Can Build Ourselves?
Favorable licensing deals are where you get a share of the profit for your IP, which Games Workshop has a pretty strong one. According to them, they have a long-standing mission of “only licensing good things for the brand” (really? I would argue that going for some smaller companies doing weak-skinned video games wasn’t a great play…).
But over the last year, they appear to be embracing more high-tier companies who build collectible and high-quality products like Bandai with their model range. I would expect GW to go further down ‘premium partners’ who do collectible objects to start that have hefty price tags, allowing for good revenue for both sides.
With this said, I am a little more confused by the Nurgling plushies, maybe it’s made by a premium plushie brand, or maybe this is the start of them making some of the right changes (more on this next time).
Starting 2021-22, we also have amazing new JOYTOY Figures of all sorts of factions out there too. But coming back to it, licensing is a big win for GW, but growth has slowed – expect GW to double down on finding things to do here. Guessing what we will see here
- Hobby-related, probably the rumored airbrush. Maybe some hobby table bits like lights etc… but all with premium brands attached or backing. On this note, I said that GW did contrast paints to get people painting faster, an airbrush focus could well help with this as well,so it is a really logical play
- Official large-scale props such as chain swords from a premium company, not soft foam more the sort you would mount on the wall
- Pretty much look at Star Wars/Marvel/Disney that you would see in a glass cabinet in a Comic store from the same premium brands
- “At least one more” really big name cross over software project
Games Workshop Sales Strategy Step Two:
What can GW create with that new IP that creates a more durable revenue stream?
GW has seen fantastic growth, which is great! And with great power comes great responsibility – how will GW keep this pace of growth up for their investors? Everyone will eventually cap out a pile of grey plastic, and with your new IP powers, more people are potentially discovering your world, and you need to give them something they can consume.
Herein comes more books and the new TV series in Warhammer+ (along with partner products)! You want to create things that people outside of painting can consume to be ‘part of the fantasy world’, this diversification helps protect you from dips in the model painting market and lets you increase the value per customer as you have more variety to sell them directly.
The New Games Workshop Sales Strategy
In the last article, I talked about how this allows you to create recurring revenue compared to the one-off revenue of a purchase. From this point of view, Warhammer+ is a boon for the new Games Workshop strategy, but they are just doing so little of what they could do with it. It hurts me… More on this next time (I promise).
But along with Warhammer plus, I would expect to see more magazines (where you subscribe), and potentially new book series based on new worlds. And, of course – a whole new Warhammer 30k game, along with the revealed Old World game.
GW has decades of IP in the Old World (Warhammer Fantasy) and the Horus Heresy, so there is no doubt they will double down on what they know with both of these producing more plastic and more stories that they can sell in the same route.
So expect:
- More media (books, videos, magazines, etc.) that can be subscribed to
- Horus Heresy did indeed move GW and maybe Old World will soon as well
- I wouldn’t be shocked if GW brought in or tried to create a new IP universe as well on top of the ~5 they have today (Old world, Sigmar, 30k, 40k, and LOTR).
- They will probably create some new chapters of marines or something within the digital IP and then do some new kits for this (maybe? This one feels more of a stretch and maybe a little too creative at this point of the GW evolution)
Games Workshop Sales Strategy Step Three:
How can GW Make any Part of This a Digital Service so That it can be Repeatedly Consumed & Scale Without us Really Having to Pay a Great Deal More
Now, this is the big one, digital means that you can re-sell the same things hundreds of times at an insanely low cost. It will cost tiny fractions of money to pay for users streaming videos or downloading old magazines, so why not put things on digital so people can consume them at near no cost to you?
And while they are putting all this other IP in one place, they may also produce some new enticing content. Along with this, we will probably see a selection of ‘thin’ apps for different games as GW tries to “peanut butter themselves” (spread themselves thin) on the basis that just raw “more” is valuable.
All of this does a big thing, as we have covered before, when users subscribe for a service- it creates annual recurring revenue.
These are users who, unless they take proactive action to cancel, will pay you again next year without you having to “do anything” (ok, you need to keep producing new content, but you need this to get more people to sign up!)
But given GW’s depth of history with magazines of all kinds, old army books, black library, and a myriad of articles I am sure never got published from different magazines, they will have plenty they can keep dropping in.
The initial new digital offerings from GW have been slow to roll out, but I wouldn’t expect any step change here. They are clearly learning how to do this and are spreading out the content they have to ‘keep people engaged’ so people don’t binge out and forget the service exists after a week.
This is both a good thing for customers (ish, something to look forward to) and a better thing for GW as they will have more weekly users for longer. In reality, this means nothing and means that they actually have a risk of a shock when people stop paying after a year because they are bored of the amount of content being so “thin.” Now we know the content has been very thin. Perhaps the only thing keeping people subbing is the opportunity of exclusive figures and small product vouchers for under $20 that really can’t even buy a single model kit from GW.
Product management is just making your metrics rather than making your customers happy – a recipe for disappointment on the business side in the future of the Games Workshop product strategy
Step Four:
How can GW Protect What They are Offering & Make it Look Better (this has been mixed up by GW with ‘protecting their IP’)
One of the follies when you are launching, to be blunt, with a weak product is to panic and try and find ways to make it “look stronger.” You know you are doing this, and you start to do inorganic things, such as pulling away previously free things to put them in a product or trying to shut down other similar products.
This is where we see GW going with YouTube and in the future, I would guess more so with 3d printing locking down creators. I would expect to see more of this with GW cracking down on other merchandise as they cast around to create new revenue streams and shut down external content, which may be better than what they could offer up at first.
I doubt they will go after books, but as they decide on more series for the Warhammer+, expect to see them shutting down more streamers that “don’t match their brand” (I would watch out Majorkill for this “not matching their tone”).
There will also come a point where GW sees “some model” doing pretty much better in a 3rd party form than a first-party release they do. Or a model they happened to be planning to do a Primaris form of or a re-design for will turn out to have a very successful 3rd party proxy. Or someone will put love into a set of 3d files for a chapter that GW was about to make “GW official,” and BOOM, mega shutdown.
In 2024, Games Workshop is slowing its release schedule, going to pre-recorded previews that don’t even show new models, just simply mentions of upcoming releases by studio staff.
We see that this will be paired up with the current system for model releases, which is a very intentional set of planning and release cycles for products, which is working pretty well, looking at their growth numbers.
This, with the FOMO style releases of boxed games, early access easy-to-build (ETB) models linked to this fear of mission out, really does create an interesting, very packaged option for the Games Workshop product strategy… Which I think is their biggest challenge. If we look at 40k, one of the ‘big draws’ was creating your own army, which it’s own theme. Games Workshop is struggling with this notion as they try to scale their IP; what they can create will be limited to “what they can sponsor and their ability to create it.”
This risks closing this wide-open and creative part of the hobby down at a time when it’s ready to explode- possibly in more ways than one. So next time, we will look at how Games Workshop should be going about this all, but just a bit smarter…
Check out Ben’s entire series on what Games Workshop is and how they could be so much more below!
A guest post by Ben | Principal Product Manager @docker| Life goals: – Get Big – Turn Green – SMASH! \Views are my own\ Twitter @nebuk89
What do you think about what could be the newest Games Workshop Sales Strategy?
