Warhammer Workers Get Hefty Christmas Bonus
Warhammer 40K developer, Games Workshop is awarding all members of staff with a special Christmas bonus. The studio is distributing over $9.4 million among its workers as part of a profit share scheme run by the company. Each staff member will receive $3,500 representing a 300% increase on last year’s bonus.
This is despite the company’s management stating that trading fell “in line with expectations” in its half-year trading update in September 2023. Games Workshop’s share price has dropped 15% since the news broke in December.
It’s a pretty meaningful $1260 cash commission since Games Workshop is splitting a $9.4m bonus pool, an increase from the $5.6 million it paid last year. It will reach employees at a time when the prices of essential commodities like food and energy are rising faster than people’s incomes in the UK. The commission will be paid to staff before Christmas.
Notably, even though the company is navigating increased income and profit margins, investors seem dissatisfied. Reports from Games Workshop’s trading update demonstrate an increased revenue year-on-year, and profits are also up from $108m to $118m. Yet investors were unsatisfied, and the stock price has dropped 15% since the update was released.
According to Shares Magazine, this is because the company has experienced slower growth compared to the first quarter of 2023, when profits increased by 43%. Although the core business has grown, licensing profits have fallen 14% since the release of Realms of Ruin. This is unlikely to help due to the mixed reaction to the release.
As Frontier Development reported in its trading report on November 27, Realms of Ruin performed worse than expected. The studio noted that it would focus less on the gaming licenses and direct its efforts to economy software.
However, there is a lot of expectation for the upcoming Rogue Trader license, a game that might just do it for the franchise.
