> Something not selling well? Change the game rules to make that it more powerful

It probably didn't sell because it wasn't very good. So you re-balance it later and now it doesn't suck. Like, fundamentally keeping the "best" and "worst" models/armies/strategies from stagnating keeps the game interesting (and drives more sales... so depends how you look at it).

I don't think they've every been super good at balancing though, and that at least is a fair criticism - albeit a hard task given how time consuming playtesting is to get data.

People love to shit on GW, but at the end of the day they keep buying their wares. Most drug addicts despise their dealers in a similar way.

True. I used to play warhammer when I was younger, too. I am not suprised they are still in business, because it's a very enjoyable hobby (And I don't mean just playing, also the painting part of it).

And yep, as far as I rememember, they were always horribly expensive.

Not to mention the ‘new edition of the rules’: buy back half of your units, the other half now behaves completely differently.

They still kind of are that business imo. I'm pretty damn upset that they have pulled the card of invalidating people's armies with Primaris Space Marines. Context for those who are fortunate enough to not have a plastic addiction: about 6 years ago, Games Workshop introduced a whole host of new models for the most popular faction in 40k, complete with lore about how these are newer and better versions of the units. At the time people were concerned about their old models not being usable, and GW assured everyone that they weren't going to remove the old units from the game, and that you could still keep using the models you bought. Fast forward several years... and they have been removing the old units from the game. Just as they promised they wouldn't.

It's not surprising that they are invalidating people's armies. They are, after all, a miniatures company and they have a vested interest in getting people to buy the new models they are making. But it is really scummy imo, because these models are not cheap. If you have a decent size 40k army, you've spent thousands of dollars on miniatures, paint, and so on. For GW to start removing those units from the game leaves a really bad taste in my mouth.

They also aggressively went after fan-made variants and other content posted online, unlike almost any other miniatures/boardgame publisher. Lot of (ex-)fans upset about that.

I think that has in particular bothered older players, as traditionally, pre-GW, miniatures gaming was all very DIY, dominated by amateurs. GW turning it into big business and throwing lawyers around did not make many friends from that hobby old guard. There are still niches of the hobby where GW are not very popular, or just never talked about.

I think Henry Cavill was a big part of why it grew in popularity. As Henry Cavill's career and profile grew, he did not shy away from putting his favorite nerdy interests in front of the media spotlight, which included Warhammer. That obviously caught the imagination of the internet crowd who ran away with it to create all sorts of memes with Cavill as the God Emperor, or "Behold the Omnissiah!" memes. That naturally sparked the interest of a lot of bystanders, and credit where credit's due, Warhammer lore is deeply enthralling.

Total War: Warhammer came out in 2016 and was a massively popular game that kicked off a franchise.

If I recall right that was when GW started seemingly letting pretty much every studio take a crack at making games with their IP. There was a lot of trash but the sheer number of games put out meant they kept having 1-2 a year that were popular.

My guess would be that, like other 80s properties, many of the first generation of fans have now grown into adults with disposable incomes. I know thats the case with me and my circle.

From someone who has been part of the hobby for a long time, I think a couple of reasons:

1) Total Warhammer, Space Marine, and an otherwise highly successful video game licensing program.

2) Being well positioned to ride the overall rise of nerdier hobbies being acceptable

3) A marked shift in the company towards being more open and...friendly? It's hard to overstate how much the "old GW" sort of viewed its customers with a vibe that sometimes came close to hostility. There's much better engagement now, and a business built on something other than "A mom will buy this for their 12 year old, and will lose them when they discover girls."

They have successfully pivoted from a hobbit focused solely on board games, which requires travelling to someone's house with your figurines, going to the shop, etc.

to something broader, selling video games, science fiction novels (of mediocre quality), miniature painting alone, etc.

Many of their adult customers only buy and paint the miniatures to relax, without ever actually playing with them, for example. This has allowed them to significantly increase their prices.

They are also much less hostile towards fans. If my memory serves me correctly, in the 1990s they went after a fan who had tattooed one of their characters on himself...

Now they are hunting down 3D print models, but leaving fans relatively alone.

Space Marine 2 & Rouge Trader

Which was what got me stuck in this expensive hobby

Also Tacticus on mobile. 500k plus active players and some huuge whales. Quite fun even as f2p btw.

Somehow all this was done seemingly deliberately, as some MBA new hire project at a BigCo. Like how Google kills off half their useful services because nobody in the C suite knows what they're for.

Also, they (the Callahan government) had a plan to bring state of the art semiconductor manufacturing to the UK. Basically TSMC but in Wales. Thatcher killed it.

Yes. One advantage GW has, is that it has never outsourced manufacturing. The miniatures are still made locally, so they haven't lost their expertise, nor are they threatened by a former contractor turned competitor.

I've always wondered about the licensing on their video games. There are just so absurdly many of them. Somebody could have a game collection just made up of Warhammer and it'd be more than enough to last many years!

Mm. Part of GW's modern success is that roughly a decade ago they decided to push third parties to create a ton of Warhammer-branded experiences. There's even a Warhammer movie in the works, if I remember right. That would never have been possible before that "please use our IP" shift.

For me, over the last thirty years I've amassed and then sold a big Warhammer collection multiple times. It finally dawned on me a few years ago that I don't actually like playing the game (I'm really bad at it), but I loved the miniatures. No one else really made the same style of minis. About when we hit the "you can just 3D print an entire army" time period is when I stopped liking even that part of the hobby, and exited for good.

Isn't painting one of the most hazardous hobbies? You're working with questionable chemicals all the time. Even the official Citadel stuff (which I think is reasonably OK most of the time) needs to be treated with a healthy dose of respect, but it's so expensive youre constatly tempted to shop around.

Even then, there were cases of a certain hue disappearing from the lineup (much to the frustration of painters), due it it being banned, because it was too toxic.

There a handful of high-profile 40k and GW people who died in their 30s-40s with illnesses probably related to exposure to this stuff.

there was a very interesting blog post on this a few weeks ago

https://matduggan.com/the-year-of-the-3d-printed-miniature-a...

apparently some do, most don't.