According to their website, the current tournament season, which ends in May will be the last. They will still hold the Throne of Skulls for anyone that wants to buy a ticket and go to Memphis or wherever the hell they do it next year, but that's it. Rumors have it they may even be ending support for Independant Retailer's tournamments. Now this is a bad bad thing for GW and possibly the single dumbest thing they've done lately. Considering some of the completly idiotic choices they've made lately to destroy their own business, that means a lot. Confused? Well, I'll explain...
Gw is a model company. We know they aren't, but they keep insisting on it so let's say they are. Their models are great usually, but also stupid overpriced. They have countered this in the past by having a rule saying that if you want to play in their events, you have to use their toys. And there it is. The model company has in one dumb move, eliminated the reason their fanbase was forced to ignore the affordable 3rd party market for their gold plated shards of the gods (or the garbage they pass off as "high quality" known as finecast). So now we're free to buy an army for less then $500 and play the game.
What does this mean? Well, in a nutshell, GW may have just signed their own death warrent. Now we can buy 3rd party models and GW has nothing they can do. Yes, there will be people that stick to GW because their stuff is nice and Yes, I'll buy GW models still too...but not nearly as many if there's an alternative that is reasonably priced and of decent quality. This also means GW's competition should be celebrating the latest stupidity leak from Nottingham.
What can GW do to stay alive? Well basically things they will never do. Reduce prices to what they should be instead of the insanely overinflated levels they're at. We know that won't happen since the annual gouging is right around the corner and it looks like the Empire models are already overpriced to keep in line with the 12 month butt-hurt we've learned to expect. They can reverse this latest bad call and stay in the event business, thus restoring the need to buy their models. Again, they'll be back to the current situation where their prices keep people away but true fans will buy their stuff because we have to. Again, they won't do this because when GW makes a shitty decision, they stick to it (ask Australia). Finally, get rid of the upper idiots. The execs that aparently know jack about games and gamers. You know I often disagree strongly with Jervis Johnson, but if GW announces Kirby got dumped (yay) and Jervis is the new big man, I think it's still early enough for him to turn things around. At least he has his finger on the pulse of the gaming community as opposed to up his ass which is where the current leadership seems to have theirs firmly planted.
So where does this leave us? Pretty much where I said we'd be a while back. GW is circling the drain. Every decision they make is a bad one and it just further gurantees their demise. I said before GW will be bankrupt before 2015 and I still stand to that.