Games Workshop and Fantasy Flight Part Ways

[Hotfoot]

No, I'm not joking.

Short version, GW is no longer allowing FFG to make things with their IPs. So every RPG, Board Game, Card Game, Dice Game, etc. is ending production and will no longer be offered or supported by FFG as of February 2017.

DriveThruRPG has already pulled the PDFs of all existing content so we're fucked there on the legal end. If you want legal copies, Amazon and FLGS are your primary hope right now, and that's likely to go fast.

The full list of product lines leaving the Fantasy Flight Games catalog is:

• Black Crusade
• Blood Bowl: Team Manager
• Chaos in the Old World
• Chaos Marauders
• Dark Heresy
• Dark Heresy Second Edition
• Deathwatch
• Forbidden Stars
• Fury of Dracula
• Only War
• Relic
• Rogue Trader
• Space Hulk: Death Angel
• Talisman
• Warhammer: Diskwars
• Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay
• Warhammer: Invasion The Card Game
• Warhammer Quest: The Adventure Card Game
• Warhammer 40,000: Conquest
• All Fantasy Flight Supply products showing imagery licensed to Games Workshop

That's everything we're losing. I wasn't even aware Fury of Dracula was a GW IP, but I'm glad I ordered my copy yesterday. Fortunately for me, my 40K RPG collection is largely complete, barring Dark Heresy 2nd Edition which I am filling up on now. I'm going to go through my sets to make sure I've got what I want, but I'm more than a little cheesed off that the PDF option is now gone, since I would have done that for some of the harder to find titles.

In short, fuck this is annoying. There's no explicitly stated reason for why this is happening, if this is just the end of the contract and GW wants to farm all this shit out just like their video game licenses (which are pretty hit or miss at times), or if this is in retaliation to FFG coming out with a fantasy miniatures wargame that perhaps looks a little familiar to something GW did once but doesn't do anymore.

That said, this has implications for Warhammer Fantasy Roleplaying, in that legal digital copies of the books are no longer available, though physical copies can probably still be found in stores and such.

[Lys]

Does Games Workshop hate money? Because it sure sounds like they hate money. It's one thing to decide that FFG will not make any further products using their properties, but it's quite another to take them all off the market. They get residuals from these all these games without having to lift a finger and yet suddenly they're all like, "Nah we'd rather not have that income stream."

[Cynical Cat]

I'm not surprised. The stream of GW related products has slowed over the last year or so. Yes, GW does hate money but its also easier to sell the license to make Talisman when someone else can't legally make Talisman.

[Lys]

If the contract expired, they could literally just sell the license to FFG again. Or maybe they were asking for more than FFG was willing to pay, but in that case they were asking for more than anyone who knows what they're doing is willing to pay.

[Cynical Cat]

It's hard to tell. They might feel threatened by FFG's emergence into the miniatures market with X-Wing, Armada, and an upcoming fantasy miniatures game. They might want also to push their new Age of Sigmar bullshit for Warhammer Fantasy, which is going to be an issue because despite GW's wishes and desires, is not well received. They could also wish to hold on to certain properties in house and to license others to the highest bidder.

[frigidmagi]

This is bullshit! This is a mockery! This is...

Wait, did someone say Fantasy Flight was making a fantasy miniatures game? That's awesome, what do we know about it?

[Cynical Cat]

https://www.fantasyflightgames.com/en/n ... ures-game/

[Karrick]

I think this:

blocks of infantry will maneuver for position, cavalry wings will wheel and slam into a weakened flank, and monstrous rune golems or carrion lancers will smash through formations of lesser warriors.

is the best part. GW got rid of the traditional fantasy formations with Age of Sigmar and now FFG is bringing it back. That had to sting.

I think FFG was already becoming too much of a competitor for GW to actually license things to them and this just sealed the deal.

[Rogue 9]

Actually I think this has more to do with firing Alan Merrett than anything else. They got rid of their former head of IP who made a habit of farming out their property to anyone who could wave a check, and with restarting their Specialist Games division probably plan to bring a lot of it back in-house. I doubt they're going to do the RPG lines, though.

[Hotfoot]

Actually I think this has more to do with firing Alan Merrett than anything else. They got rid of their former head of IP who made a habit of farming out their property to anyone who could wave a check, and with restarting their Specialist Games division probably plan to bring a lot of it back in-house. I doubt they're going to do the RPG lines, though.

But that's exactly what they're doing right now, so what changed? No joke, literally five days before this announcement, GW was farming out properties to anyone waving a check at a trade show in preparation for this announcement.

[Cynical Cat]

X-Wing is apparently outselling 40K in North America and the number three slot for miniatures sales is apparently Armada. With another miniature based fantasy wargame coming down the pipe from Fantasy Flight, GW might be seeing them more as competition than fitting partner.

[frigidmagi]

Well maybe if it didn't cost me nearly a paycheck and a half to get a 40k army up and running they would be beating x wing. As it stands I can have a squad up and running for under 50$ in that game.

[Rogue 9]

There is that. That said, I play both and have a very large Imperial Guard army myself, and I've never had cause to regret it. They scratch different itches; X-Wing is by nature more of a mass-market game because you don't have to assemble and paint. If I didn't like that part of it, I probably wouldn't play 40k.

My army, for reference to what I mean when I say "very large:"



That shot was taken before a major painting project, and I enjoyed the heck out of it. Will I ever field it all at once? Probably not, but then again a friend and I are considering challenging the whole rest of the meta to an Apocalypse game next year, so who knows? But I can build about any conceivable viable army list for Imperial Guard in the game, and everything there has seen play at least a few times. But the reason I'm carrying on about this is to highlight that, to someone who isn't into the hobby painting side of the game, 40k is a lot of drudge work, and X-Wing isn't. I'm not at all surprised that X-Wing is outselling 40k, even disregarding the price difference.