In the sense that you’re going to overpay for editions and minis that they’re constantly updating to squeeze more money out of you while having a genuinely good but expensive paint catalogue ruined by paint pots designed to waste paint, yes.
In the sense that it’s pure entertainment and no one and nothing is making you buy them despite all that, no.
Now, if we want to talk about how they’re essentially monetizing fascist rhetoric and the “satire” died decades ago that’s a whole new ballgame.
In 40k, everyone is fascist. The Imperium worships a corpse who is gonna wake up from life support and save humanity any day now guys. Their creed is “suffer not the xenos, mutant, nor heretic to live”.
Their main enemies are Chaos: nightmare demons and cultists worshipping evil gods spawned from the Imperium’s own fascism.
The biggest threats on the horizon are the Tyranids, a ravenous swarm of bugs who want to eat the galaxy, and Necrons, a feudal empire who sold their souls for immortality while destroying the galaxy.
There are also the Drukhari, murder rape pirates who had such a big cocaine orgy they tore a hole in the galaxy, and Orks, fungal football hooligans whose only purpose in life is to get into a good fight.
The only “good guys” are the Eldar of the Craftworlds, who are arrogant communists with a birth rate issue, and the Tau: a Marxist-Leninist Federation of Planets who are secretly all being mind controlled.
The setting is supposed to be a satire of fascist ideology, but at some point Games Workshop started believing the pro-Imperium propaganda they spend all day writing.
Some of that I already knew, but why do you say games workshop is believing their own propaganda? Aren’t they just telling a story and creating a universe? What are they, the company, doing that is fascist?
That’s a lot more effort to explain than I’m willing to do for a Lemmy post but basically they’ve not only confirmed the Big Magic Strong Man does at least try to work in humanity’s favor and was right about most everything, but there’s a lot of “the Imperium might be fucked but it’s the only hope” going on in general.
All of the Imperium’s propaganda is justified, all their little fascist warrior cults are all that stands between life and Chaos, the Inquisitor Puritans are right because the Radicals always go Chaos etc etc etc.
I thought some of that was them trying to wash away the original fascist roots of OG 40K. Haven’t they been trying to slowly retool and rebrand the imperium more as the “good guys” so they can sell more merch?
Original 40k was Rogue Trader, written largely by British anarchists, and the actual motivations of the Heresy Era figures like the Primarchs and Emperor were left vague, so you could figure out for yourself they were genocidal megalomaniacs.
Rebranding the outright fascists as the unironic good guys is exactly why it’s now fascist propaganda.
They used to give out their IP to shitty mobile games for pennies. Then they went after actual creators who made something amazing and gated them behind a subscription service.
It’s the painting and detailing that can be quite expensive and time consuming. You obviously don’t have to paint your minis, but that’s the entire point for a lot of people.
Lots of stuff to bitch about with GW but prices aren’t one of them. Exhibit A is the article you’re responding to, they are responsible with their profits and put them where they should. Exhibit B is they could minimize costs and outsource the entire plastic operation but they still make all models in England. Exhibit C is paying for Art is always morally the correct thing to do, even when mass produced. Finally Exhibit D, fuck GW for promoting incredibly short lifecycles for their games and pushing an almost weekly FOMO event on products that leads a lot more to these profits than just model sales.
The first I came to even know about the game was checking out a brand new game store with a more D&D-centric name and them currently hosting a game night for 40k so there were like 5 big tables with these gnarly modeled maps with hills and buildings while people were rolling dice, then pulling out tape measures and moving their units.
Shit looked like Risk but cooler. Then I noticed how expensive it would be to play and just never got into it lol
There are cheaper miniature games out there. Gaslands is Mad Max/ Death Race inspired and you use standard toy cars to play. There’s also Turnip28 that’s pretty much post apocalyptic Napoleonic Wars. There are cheap Napoleon era miniatures people modify for it, but I’ve also seen some goofier builds, like using toys and actual vegetables. I will say I haven’t really played either, but they are the two miniature games I often consider getting into.
I believe the kits are still entirely made in the UK rather than Asia like so many things.
The quality and designs are arguably the best in the world with techniques far more advanced than most rivals can compete with.
This doesn’t mean they don’t get greedy and stick on a huge profit, I believe they heavily rely on staff who love the hobby to run their stores too and pay very poorly.
It is like risk but cooler! And honestly you don’t need a 2k point meta army to start with. For the price of two or three $60 video games (guess I have to preface that now) you can have enough models for you and a friend to have an absolute blast.
While I think this is a good thing, now there’s only Dota 2, Valorant, Apex Legends, League of Legends, Call of Duty: Black Ops 6, Rainbow Six Siege, Rennsport, StarCraft II, Street Fighter 6, Counter Strike 2, Rocket League, Tekken 8, PUBG Battlegrounds, Call of Duty Warzone, Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege X, Overwatch 2, PUBG Mobile, Rennsport, Honor of Kings, Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves, MLBB, Free Fire, EA Sports FC 25, Teamfight Tactics, Crossfire, and Chess with grandmasters left…
My local game store had Starflight for Sega Genesis for $80 in 1991 when I was just out of high school working minimum wage at an ice cream parlor in Pismo Beach and I found a way to make it happen.
What is 80$ in 1991 worth today? calculateme says 190$ adjusted for inflation (in 2025).
What about the minimum wage? dol.gov says $4.25, or $10.08 adjusted for inflation. Since 2009 it’s $7.25.
7.25/10.08 = 0,72 or 10.08/7.25 = ~1,40
80/60 = 1.33
So we have a decrease in minimum wage by 30%, but an increase of product price by 30%.
Is this correct? Does that make it 60% more expensive than his personal analogy from 1991?
Man, the two-sided percent reference point is confusing.
We’ll just wait for your dumb ass to leave another flash drive in another bathroom you’re getting a BJ from one of your marks in, again.
And hey Randy, if you can get all the media headlines to include the word ‘exonerated’ in the headlines which describe your completely confidential settlement reached outside of a courtroom, I can make shit up too.
ign.com
Najnowsze