Should Games Workshop sell PDFs of OOP materials?

Zhu Bajie

Member
Hasbro have recently re-released all their old, previous editions of Dungeons & Dragons books as PDFs, because people love the old games. Should GW do the same thing? As far as I can see they're a toy-soldier company, not a game design company, so releasing old rules wouldn't cannibalise sales of current rules-sets for use with current model ranges. Seems like a no-brainer to me...
 

DaImp

Member
I agree, they should make them available for sale, better yet have free downloads of their old books. Maybe anything that is over 20 years old gets added as a free download. That should ensure there is no overlap with their current rules. It might even get them some more sales.
 

Chico

Member
I would love if they did, but i'm going to say no they won't. GW will only do something if they can see money in the time and effort spent making it happen.

Plus the Old GW stuff isn't fluff and model compatible any more,GW games have grow up while leaving all the fun and quirky and somewhat dodgy (Read: Rape Lizards aka Famir) stuff behind to either redo or just leave out.
 

ardyer

Member
Zhu Bajie":1r3hsdjh said:
As far as I can see they're a toy-soldier company, not a game design company, so releasing old rules wouldn't cannibalise sales of current rules-sets for use with current model ranges.

Remember that some of the older stuff (I know my friend's copy of 2nd edition did) flat out says that you can use any models you want. Being that they are a toy soldier company, they don't want to remind new players that they have competitors. Even though we all know they do, corporations don't generally like to remind their customers of that.

That said, I was discussing with my wife last night how much I think they should re-open their archive service for anything they'd still have the molds for. Because that is model sales. I'd much prefer to buy modern castings (even in finecast) of the classic models that some gunked up slightly deformed lead copy from 25 years ago.
 

Zhu Bajie

Member
The biggest problem I can see is that they don't have much of a paper-trail for commissioned artwork, people like Gary Chalk and Russ Nicholson would both need to be asked (read: paid) to have their artwork reproduced as GW were only sold first publication rights to that material. Also, they don't seem to have archived original artwork or returned much of it to the artists, so getting good original materials for modern reproduction would be impossible, and the quality loss of scanning from printed materials would be a turn off for me.

I don't think any edition says "use Dixon miniatures" or whatever, it's implicit in 2nd Edition, and it's true for some of the earlier White Dwarf articles (Thistlewood and Pellenor Fields) but 1st Ed certainly tells you which Citadel Miniatures order codes are to use :lol: advertising the competition wouldn't really be a concern.

Archival miniatures, again, I'm pretty certain they don't have the molds. I seem to recall they did a call-out for good clean metal copies of the Battlefield Gothic range a good few years ago as they'd scrapped the moulds wen the game was ditched, but I might have hallucinated that. Having said that Foundry still have the Star Wars stormtrooper mould, so perhaps they also have some earlier stuff lurking in a cupboard fro mwhen they used to cast for GW.

GW still make the 2st Edition Elementals for some completely unknown reason http://www.games-workshop.com/gws/catal ... rod1140125 and some of the dragons are very old sculpts too. I don't know if they kep them around for sentimental reasons or what. Are there even rules for Elementals and baby dragons in 8th?
 

ardyer

Member
Zhu Bajie":f8awvlgs said:
The biggest problem I can see is that they don't have much of a paper-trail for commissioned artwork, people like Gary Chalk and Russ Nicholson would both need to be asked (read: paid) to have their artwork reproduced as GW were only sold first publication rights to that material. Also, they don't seem to have archived original artwork or returned much of it to the artists, so getting good original materials for modern reproduction would be impossible, and the quality loss of scanning from printed materials would be a turn off for me.

That's kind of the other thing I was thinking about last night on this subject. It's not like GW has an electronic copy of many of the old books, and even if they did, it isn't in any kind of modern format. And unlike WoC, who is owned by Hasbro, who is owned by Disney, they don't have access to hordes of "office workers" who could properly prepare the documents. I chatted with someone at Black Library about this with the old novels a while back and they said that this was the hardest part. The wanted to release the old stuff in electronic format but getting it ready was time-consuming and costly--especially compared to the small amount of sales they think they would actually generate. Sad really :(
 

bug16

Member
The thing is that GW do offer free downloads to older games as PDF's. E.g. Dark Future, Mighty Empires, Gorkamorka as well as the old Specialist Games range. I can see why the SG range were given away free because it keeps sales of those ranges going but I'm still surprised that they bothered with Dark Future plus White Line Fever.
 
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