Here’s how close Games Workshop came to going out of business and what “saved” it from bankruptcy, according to Painting Phase guest Tom Hibberd and Peachy.
GW isn’t exactly known for pulling back the curtain on what goes on behind the scenes, but luckily, Peachy and Tom shared some pretty interesting insider details about the company.
Between 2014 and 2016, Games Workshop was going through some big changes, and apparently, things were a lot worse than most of us realized. According to the discussion, a certain paint played a big part in keeping GW from going under, which sounds pretty wild when you look at how well they’re doing these days.
Insiders Reveal How Close Games Workshop Was to Bankruptcy
Updated on October 31st, 2026, by Rob Baer, with the latest comparisons to today and more.
Here are the details on how close Games Workshop came to going out of business, and possibly bankruptcy, from the Painting Phase interview.
It’s a pretty interesting interview, especially when you consider how much experience both guys have inside GW.
Tom Hibberd worked at Games Workshop for nearly 20 years and helped create some of its biggest hobby products. Chris Peach, better known as Peachy, was a GW manager who oversaw the painting studio before eventually joining the Warhammer TV team.
And they didn’t waste much time getting into the good stuff. Just a few minutes into the interview, Tom mentioned that Games Workshop was supposedly about four weeks away from closing for good. The company was £15 million (about $19 million) in debt, and there were concerns they might not even be able to pay wages.
That’s a pretty rough spot to be in, especially for a company like GW.
Part of the problem was that their strategy just wasn’t bringing in enough new players. They weren’t really making products aimed at helping people get started, particularly when it came to painting.
Think about it. Someone could walk into a store, play an intro game, get excited about Warhammer, and then find out they’d need to spend around £80 on a starter paint set (that wasn’t much of a starter set), glue, clippers, and just a couple of models.
That’s a lot to ask right out of the gate. And when plenty of those potential new players were younger, convincing their parents to spend that kind of money wasn’t exactly easy.
New Warhammer Players Were The Answer
That’s where Contrast paints and starter sets entered the picture. The idea was pretty straightforward: give new painters a one-coat solution that made getting models painted a whole lot easier.
And remember, 2015 was already a pretty crazy year for GW. Miniature sales were way down, CEO Tom Kirby stepped down after almost 24 years running the company, and Warhammer Fantasy was replaced by Age of Sigmar!
So yeah, there was a lot happening all at once.
Even with everyone working hard, things weren’t looking great. They also talked about how a new product needs to make enough profit to cover its costs, which apparently weren’t cheap.
Tom talked about just how important Contrast paints and the new painting starter sets were in helping turn things around. Of course, Contrast didn’t actually hit shelves until 2019, so this wasn’t something that happened overnight.
This was also around the time the Start Collecting Boxes (now called Combat Patrols) came into play. Even with those changes underway, it would still take a few years before GW really started seeing things turn around.
Here’s another interesting bit: Contrast Paint apparently took five years to develop.
That’s a long time, but it also shows why fixing these problems wasn’t as simple as deciding to release a few new products. GW could see what wasn’t working, but it took years to get those solutions ready.
A lot of that work started coming together with 8th Edition Warhammer 40k.
2017 was a huge year for Games Workshop. Eighth Edition arrived with major rules changes and the Dark Imperium box, alongside Start Collecting boxes, starter hobby sets, and plenty more.
And here’s the thing: all of that was already in development back in 2015, along with Contrast paints.
They say that GW had realized that Warhammer was just too difficult and expensive for new people to get into. The existing player base wasn’t buying enough to keep everything going, so the company shifted much of its attention toward bringing new hobbyists through the door.
You can still see that approach today. With 11th Edition 40k, players can jump into full Combat Patrol games, pick up new starter sets, and use more Contrast paints than ever before.
Sure, Warhammer still has a pretty high barrier to entry compared to other hobbies. And as they mentioned, there are still issues within the game and its community, some of which GW addressed with its no-place-for-hate statement.
Still, looking at how GW has performed since then, it’s hard to argue that bringing more new players into the hobby wasn’t a big part of the turnaround.
And that’s what makes this interview so interesting. We’re talking about a company that was supposedly just weeks away from shutting down, yet managed to turn things around by making Warhammer easier for people to get into.
Final Thoughts: Is Games Workshop Going Out of Business
So, between simpler painting options, more approachable starter sets, and big changes to the games themselves, GW gave new hobbyists more ways to get started without such a massive upfront commitment.
It’s pretty wild to think about how different things might have been if those changes hadn’t worked out. And with GW’s more recent focus on inclusivity and accessibility, the company looks set to keep building on that approach.
Games Workshop’s Big Stock Raises Questions About Their Growth Now
What do you think about Games Workshop supposedly being about four weeks away from going out of business?
They need a lower cost ‘gateway’ tabletop game that introduces new players to the setting while being easy to collect and paint. Back in the 90’s that game was Epic Space Marine 2nd edition and Titan Legions.
In the mid 90’s GW got greedy with Epic 40,000. The repacked models and boxed sets doubled in price, or stayed the same price with half the sprues, while dropping most of the existing Chaos range. And they stole the rules from Dirtside 2. Then of course they wondered why fans stopped playing, then quietly stopped production.
If GW reintroduced Epic Space Marine properly with fairly priced models then we could see an influx of new players. Make it easy to buy an army in a box with models that can be assembled and painted in an afternoon. Got an Epic army? Great, here is Warhammer 40,000 and Kill Team. Etc.