As everyone was quietly reading leaked Tyranid rules Games Workshop dropped another shock to the system. The leaked death of White Dwarf and the birth of Warhammer: Visions. The 90% confirmed rumor goes as follows: WD is killed off and replaced by weekly advertisements/releases and a monthly hobby magazine. The details are muddy on how this exactly will work, but one thing is clear GW is continuing to run the community in circles.
Since Escalation GW has dominated the discourse, sucking the life out of everything. Good or bad, people are talking about GW non-stop. Rumormongers, bloggers, commentators all have carpal tunnel at this point. The average player is left with every system looking different almost on the daily. The death of White Dwarf has been joked about for years, but now that it's about to actually happened the freak flags are flying.
Depending on how it goes, Warhammer Visions could spell the end to both rumor mongering and tournaments in one fell swoop. If all the fear mongering GW displays is to be believed, this will be what they planned and wanted all along.
Going down the conspiracy hole, you can see the four pronged attack directed at those who would undermine GW's control.
Rumors/Leaks: Between legal letters and tighter internal control, GW has made any rumor a few weeks before release completely irreverent or false. The strategy here is product information control and changing player habits to buying a unit on aesthetics no stats.
Tournaments: Tournaments force players to purchase armies and products in certain ways. Instead of making balanced rules, better to overwhelm any tournament with so many rules, and alternative ways to play. Every event will be in an unattainable position, and by extension competitive players. The strategy here is change the way people play, so they focus on whatever is new, not what is necessarily good.
3rd party entities: The Chapterhouse debacle has GW defending their IP for years now, with cheap 3-D printing right around the corner they have no choice. Instead of changing with the times, GW thinks they must position themselves on firm legal standing, for the next round of lawsuits they will fight. The strategy here is keep people from buying other products and keep everything in-house. It also a warning to other game makers: GW doesn't play around.
Independent Retailers: Independent retailers have always been important to GW, but recently less so. GW only cares about margins, even if one retailer sells 40 boxes of tactical marines a GW hobbycenter/website only needs to sell 10 to generate better returns. This has led to attacks on bits sellers, web sellers, along with random regional restrictions. GW claims this is all to benefit the local Mom and Pop, but in reality it is about GW stores and GW website sales. The strategy is weaken, but not kill Independent Retailers and move consumers to GW only portals.
This is where the demise of White Dwarf fits perfectly. GW will now have new controls on rumors if they go digital only. GW will make Tournaments freak out with weekly rule releases. GW strengthens their IP as leechers and competitors cannot keep up. GW is now the most reliable distributor, making it infinitely harder for Independent retailers to gauge what and how much to order. Most importantly, GW will now control the Wargaming news cycle, as every week they and they only will bring something new.
I will repeat, this is about one thing and one thing only: CONTROL
Give Games Workshop credit they might actually pull it off. The real key is their digital platform. If they can run everything through their digital channels, and with the rumored website redesign, they will be able to force everyone to them and not around. It will also be the ultimate controlled environment, as long as particular employees are happy.
As CEO Kirby says, they're the biggest threat...
Warning
Meat for Meta is rated editorial nonsense. These articles are meant to complain about some group, somewhere, that is playing the game for all the wrong reasons or simply to just make fun of 40k nerd rage.