GW’s Recent Decisions…
From retreating from Facebook to releasing miniatures before the rules – everyone is talking about what’s going on at GW HQ.
Facebook Shmacebook….
In case you missed it, yesterday GW shuttered their remaining corporate division Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and other social media pages. Now only the individual stores each have their own FB page.
Roughly a year ago in the face our public outcry over the “Spots the Space Marine” IP fiasco that blew up in their faces – GW took their social media ball and went home – shutting down a Facebook page with over 100k followers.
Still in the interim year their divisions soldiered on, rebuilding the frayed brand and extending a hand of communication to their customers and the world. Folks like “Eddie” from Black Library, and Forgeworld build up pages with tens of thousands of followers and became a magnet for goodwill and a community clamoring for any opportunity to interact with their favorite plastic crack provider.
And now it’s all gone.
While some say this may be a short term outage in preparation for the impending corporate website update, there are reports of the decision coming down from on high and without warning – taking many staff by surprise. That doesn’t exactly sound like a short-term well planned outage that is part of an ongoing project.
Forgeworld responded to a customer on the shutdown with this:
“It is with regret that Forge World has decided to stop its Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest sites. As these sites have grown in popularity over recent years it has become increasingly difficult to give them the support and attention required from within the FW team. Therefore we have taken the difficult decision to stop them completely.”
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Miniatures before Rules?
Another situation that has folks scratching their heads is the “miniatures before rules” release pattern that has become the norm, leading up to the incredibly odd “supplemental codex before the main codex” we are seeing with the upcoming IG release window.
One BoLS reader got this quip from a GW staffer:
“We’re releasing the models before the codexes as it is a chance for the painters to pick up the models on release day too. Those who really want to get hold of these models can, before the rules come out. Then, when the rules come out, the gamers who just want them to play with can buy them too.”
I don’t know about you but when I’m looking a company fighting its way back from unfortunate mid-year financials – hiding from your customers still leaves me scratching my head. One can say marketing doesn’t exist till you’re blue in the face but that doesn’t make it true.
What do you think is going on in Nottingham?
