Forgeworld no longer carries LoW's

[conquest]

I saw a Tyranid Harridan on ebay going for a grand and thought the dude was off his rocker, I thought "this guy must think forgeworld no longer carries them or s-" I checked the website on the US page and both LoW's as well as the scythed hierodule and the stone-crusher fex with crusher claws are 'no longer available'. It is a sad day 😥, I really was hoping to get a harridan one day but that prospect might be a thing of the past, or whenever I make enough cash to spend over a grand on plastic...

[zimko]

That is normal. They often put 'no longer available' on the forgeworld website when in fact it's just out of stock.

[arsonfire]

This has been going on pretty much all year. According to them, it's caused by some ongoing repackaging work or product code updates or something that they're doing in the background.
People were panicking a couple of months ago when it happened to Dimachaerons, but now they're back to just being 'Temporarily Out Of Stock'. They actually briefly had some in stock again about a week ago, but they sold out fast.

Note that it also varies by region. Try changing the 'Deliver To' country to and from the UK, and you'll see that some models change.

EDIT: For reference, here's a response they gave a while back when someone questioned them about the Dimachaeron.

[mattblowers]

This thread recirculates every few months somewhere. I think GW is happy to cause perceived shortages so people panic and buy, meanwhile price hikes are missed in the main product line. They are creating their own scarcity to justify inflation. Notice how other manufacturers released a mea culpa about price increases due to resource shortages? GW didn't. They just create false panic, prices jump on the secondary market and then people are happy to pay 'only' 30% increases on the GW store. GW marketers deserve a raise. It's a brilliant plan.

Evidence:

The entire Indomitus box can be bought in the US on ebay for $135 including shipping.

Here is the price of 8 (eight, ocho, as in 7 (seven) models, plus 1 more!!) models from the box on GW site as of today.

[infornography]

Jul 28, 2021 14:52:19 GMT mattblowers said:

This thread recirculates every few months somewhere. I think GW is happy to cause perceived shortages so people panic and buy, meanwhile price hikes are missed in the main product line. They are creating their own scarcity to justify inflation. Notice how other manufacturers released a mea culpa about price increases due to resource shortages? GW didn't. They just create false panic, prices jump on the secondary market and then people are happy to pay 'only' 30% increases on the GW store. GW marketers deserve a raise. It's a brilliant plan.

I don't know, I think this is more of a malice vs incompetence thing. You know the old saying 'Never ascribe to malice that which can be just as easily explained due to incompetence.'? Well, GW has amply proven over the years to have no shortage of incompetence in many regards and I suspect that this has more to do with overlooking things than design.

[mattblowers]

Jul 28, 2021 15:07:24 GMT infornography said:

Jul 28, 2021 14:52:19 GMT mattblowers said:

This thread recirculates every few months somewhere. I think GW is happy to cause perceived shortages so people panic and buy, meanwhile price hikes are missed in the main product line. They are creating their own scarcity to justify inflation. Notice how other manufacturers released a mea culpa about price increases due to resource shortages? GW didn't. They just create false panic, prices jump on the secondary market and then people are happy to pay 'only' 30% increases on the GW store. GW marketers deserve a raise. It's a brilliant plan.

I don't know, I think this is more of a malice vs incompetence thing. You know the old saying 'Never ascribe to malice that which can be just as easily explained due to incompetence.'? Well, GW has amply proven over the years to have no shortage of incompetence in many regards and I suspect that this has more to do with overlooking things than design.

I agree it's not malice. I don't think a for profit publically traded is evil for making a profit. I'm simply pointing out that every other game I play has had to raise prices in 2020 because of rising costs. Each released a mea culpa about it. GW prices have also gone up, but no one has seemed to notice. They created a scarcity mindset which caused panic buying. The Dominion box from AoS is a perfect example. After flubbing the last few releases where supply outstripped demand, GW told FLGs that the same thing was happening with Dominion and preorders sky rocketed. The price went crazy on Amazon and ebay. My FLGS has stacks of unsold boxes. They are going for 20% off on ebay. Meanwhile no one even notices that 8 figures from the 9th edition 40K starter box is selling for 70% of the full box MSRP. The full box set comes with 50+ models and a full sized special edition rule book. Prices have been increasing but no one seems to be minding or even noticing and they never had press release about it. I think that's a great move.

There's a ton of outrage about their IP protection right now, but that won't last. They are releasing a streaming service, so it's there right to protect it. Meanwhile the prices are unnoticed. I don't think that can be an accident. You had to protect your IP and you knew it was going to cause outrage, so do them in tandem and only one gets noticed. 5 years ago GW stock price was trading at $6.40, today it's trading at $155.00, that doesn't happen with incompetence or bumbling.

[dranzyl]

Not going to climb on a soapbox or anything but protecting your ip and ensuring a monopoly by silencing alternate voices by threatening to strong arm them isnt the same thing (voices that would win in court but cannot afford the battle economicaly). Sorry for somewhat derailing the conversation.

Back to main topic, i dont know if the recent trend of GW to artificially create scarcity then immediately move to the next thing is a coping mechanism for perhaps production problema due to the world situation right now. What i think is that though it maximizes profits in the short term it also damages their ip by decentivising long term buyers.

Perhaps they think their ip is strong enough to withstand this. Or perhaps thats one reason they are launching their warhammer+ thing to keep a steady flow of new custommers to replace what they lose. Or perhaps they are only interested in the short term because thats what investors want.

[mattblowers]

Aug 4, 2021 22:27:02 GMT dranzyl said:

Not going to climb on a soapbox or anything but protecting your ip and ensuring a monopoly by silencing alternate voices by threatening to strong arm them isnt the same thing (voices that would win in court but cannot afford the battle economicaly). Sorry for somewhat derailing the conversation.

Back to main topic, i dont know if the recent trend of GW to artificially create scarcity then immediately move to the next thing is a coping mechanism for perhaps production problema due to the world situation right now. What i think is that though it maximizes profits in the short term it also damages their ip by decentivising long term buyers.

Perhaps they think their ip is strong enough to withstand this. Or perhaps thats one reason they are launching their warhammer+ thing to keep a steady flow of new custommers to replace what they lose. Or perhaps they are only interested in the short term because thats what investors want.

I think taking anything from the Forgeworld website is fool's gold. FW is and has always been a side hustle for GW. It's nice to have and it's great if it goes well, but not much time or energy gets pushed into it.

[Overread]

As far as I'm aware there's also a glitch on the GW/FW website where osmetimes things get listed sold out instead of out of stock. This has apparently been there for ages, but its only in the last year or so that we've bought at volume and FW hasn't replaced at volume so we end up with a lot more products falling out of stock.

So the error rears its head more, which at the same time also impacts whenever anything about a product is changed, since that generates a new product code which means the old product goes "sold out" even if the only difference is something really minor