Boy, there have been some spicy takes on this one.
For those who haven’t heard, GW has damnatio memoriae‘d Necromunda: Roleplay from their website (original link). It’s even been removed from the main Autumn Preview page like the announcement never happened. I did go back to the video and the announcement hasn’t been excised from there but all other references to it are gone.
It’s interesting because, like many an emperor the Romans sought to forget, it’s harder than you’d think to fully erase something from history and remnants remain. Like, for instance, on the table between the two hosts in the Autumn Preview Q&A video. Guess it’s harder to scrub video after the fact than a website…
This is, honestly, an unfortunate thing that GW does from time to time. Instead of just doing a follow up post that says, “you know what? We shouldn’t have announced it yet but, aren’t you lucky! Now you know what’s coming!” they try to pretend it just never happened. It’s very, very stupid because they of all people should know how rabid their fans and customers are. It was noted. It was discussed. They can’t honestly think everyone will just throw up their hands and say, “Well, I guess I was wrong! There apparently was no product announcement…”
And yet…
So I wanted to go over the two takes I’ve seen the most and discuss why one of them is more likely than the other.
1. Cubicle 7 Is Going To Sue
This is the take I’ve seen the most. Cubicle 7 is the maker of several Warhammer roleplaying games including Warhammer: the Old World Roleplaying Game, Warhammer 40,000: Imperium Maledictum, and Warhammer 40,000: Wrath & Glory. And this theory comes in two subtle versions: (a) Cubicle 7 holds the exclusive rights to make roleplaying games for anything branded as Warhammer or (b) Cubicle 7 is losing its license to make roleplaying games for anything branded Warhammer but has not yet done so.
A quick perusal of their site shows that, while Cubicle 7 makes at least one other licensed roleplaying game, losing the Warhammer license would be a pretty big blow to them. Enough so that rumors to the effect that they were losing their license would probably have leaked out in gaming circles by now. And, as far as I’ve heard, nothing of the sort has been in the rumor mill. So I think it’s pretty easy to rule out 1b.
The other side, though, is worth considering because some people are thinking this might be a self-inflicted wound on Games Workshop’s part. That had they just released Necromunda: The Roleplaying Game, all would have been fine. But they announced Warhammer Necromunda: The Roleplaying Game and Cubicle 7 has the exclusive license on all things “Warhammer.” This has the ring of plausibility to it but is short the knowledge of how licensing works.
GW is aware of what their properties are worth.
Back in the 1980’s and maybe even into the 1990’s, when Games Workshop was much smaller and the licensing opportunities were more limited, it’s possible that they would have exclusively licensed Warhammer: 40,000 to a games publisher for a period of time. But today is not then. GW is aware of what their properties are worth. I can guarantee that GW did not grant Focus Entertainment or Saber Interactive exclusive licenses to Warhammer: 40,000 in the video game medium. More likely, either the publisher or the developer approached GW with their idea for a video game based on the 40k property and GW then agreed to a license for that game.
Likewise, it’s really hard to imagine GW gave Cubicle 7 an exclusive license to make roleplaying games for anything branded Warhammer. As discussed in the Necromunda is Already the Fun Part of Roleplaying article, the difference between what GW makes and what Cubicle 7 makes is a matter of degrees in terms of game design. The idea that GW’s legal team would allow themselves to be boxed in by a partner in this way strains belief. More likely, Cubicle 7 worked with Games Workshop on which roleplaying games to make within the Warhammer license.
The last part of this theory goes that GW yanked all references to the roleplaying game on the website because it was announced before it was cleared with Cubicle 7, Cubicle 7 threatened to sue, and GW’s lawyers said to trash all of it.
This seems the least likely of all. Given that Cubicle 7 seems to depend heavily on the Warhammer license, I can’t see a world where they threaten to sue GW over a game that is barely tangential to the games they’re publishing. Lawsuits and the threats of lawsuits do not endear licensees to licensors. It’s a really good way to ensure the next license negotiation goes badly.
2. Printing Problems
All of this has happened before and all of this will happen again, if I may steal a phrase from Battlestar Galactica. This is Warhammer Quest: Cursed City all over again only this time they’re changing the story early.
When Cursed City was originally announced, it was announced as a product that would be on the shelves for a while, supported with expansion packs to come. When it was released and after GW apparently realized they wouldn’t be getting fresh boxes for a little while, references to it being a shelf-game were removed and the story quickly became that it was a limited release, with a lot of looking around stupidly like nothing different had ever been said. This wasn’t helped by them apparently shitting their pants, afraid the miniatures they’d designed wouldn’t end up being released as expansions, so were released separately for Age of Sigmar only to have the printing problem fixed and then half-assing the rest of the Cursed City release from there.
one might infer that if they’re having similar issues or worried they might be having similar issues
It was a real fuck up. And though GW has never said anything about it, one might infer that if they’re having similar issues or worried they might be having similar issues, they’re trying to get ahead of it by preemptively erasing the product before disappointing a large number of customers and winding up with another Cursed City. This, to me, is the most likely.
Firstly, looking at the product photos, this is a paper heavy release. If it had been mostly plastic, I might get suspicious since plastic is one of GWs core competencies. But all this paper means it has to get printed which is well known not to be an in-house task for GW. Which means they need a supplier and who knows what could go wrong with production and shipping and all the steps in between. It could be something as small as getting a proof back that looked like garbage and they’re making changes that will delay the print run longer than they’d hoped. Or it could be as large as a major mistake that requires junking the entire run and starting over.
Either way, and most importantly, the delay looks like it’s going to push the release well past the holiday season or they wouldn’t be scrubbing references off the website. Most likely they don’t want to distract from other purchase planning by holding out Necromunda: Roleplay as something for people to wait for when the Christmas buying season comes around.
Games Workshop Can Fuck Up
When one spends as much money as we do on something as large as the Warhammer product line has become, it becomes easy to think of the parent company as some kind of all knowing behemoth that has product releases planned down to a tee, designed to drag even more money out of our wallets whether we want to give it or not (and we usually want to). It’s even easier to mistake a company like GW with one like Apple who has pre-planned events that never announce anything they don’t want announced.
But both these things are false impressions.
Firstly, even Apple fucks up. And Apple had a yearly revenue of around $400 billion last year.
Firstly, even Apple fucks up. Apple Intelligence and a new Siri were things that were announced almost three years ago and then again two years ago and then again… And they’re only now rolling out. iPadOS is one constant string of announcements and disappointments for people looking to turn their iPad into a productivity machine. And Apple had a yearly revenue of around $400 billion last year. Games Workshop, by comparison had dollar-converted revenue of about $870 million. They’re big for a game company. But aside from the degree of interest each company’s customers share, that’s about where the similarities end.
Also, and don’t forget, we’ve seen Games Workshop fuck up before, the primary example being Cursed City. But lest you don’t know your history, look up Gorkamorka. There’s a reason that game hasn’t come back like Necromunda or the occasional Space Hulk releases. When things go according to GW’s plan, they’re amazingly successful. But there have been plenty of times when it hasn’t and then GW is left struggling.
What makes all of this worse is that GW can’t just be transparent about things. They don’t need to go in depth into business decisions, logistical problems, or partnership negotiations. No one is expecting that though the interest is clearly there. They could just say that things are delayed because of circumstances beyond their control and then the rumor mills would have to move on to something else. Instead, they delete the posts off their website and whistle as if they hope no one will notice. And, as a fan, it’s frankly just frustrating.
I really wish they’d stop.
