A Conflicting Warhammer Year Ends on High Notes
2023 started on a bad footing for the Warhammer 40K franchise. Games development studio, Games Workshop, faced over-stressed servers and IT systems. In January the company reported delays in infrastructure expansions hindered by a$6 million OS integration.
By mid-February, the situation seemed to worsen when retailers voiced concerns over delays in deliveries of new model factions, especially for the World eaters. Pushing to worse and embarrassing issues, Games Workshop’s website crashed because Dark Angels Primarch Lion El’Jonson sold through so fast during pre-orders.
With no near solution in sight, the company prepared for one of its major events, WarhammerFest 2023 in April. The event was flooded with both the press and fans. but once again, everything went wrong. Fans were left in long queues for trial packs and those who bought standard tickets were severely disappointed.
The online gaming news website, WarGamer wrote: “But for general ticket holders, the limited events – including great cosplay, a massive Warhammer Titan battle, demos of Warhammer 40k video games, a scavenger hunt, and a kitbash hobby challenge – barely filled one out of three days.
“Games Workshop will need to do better next year to meet the demands of a burgeoning fandom.”
However, Games Workshop was able to move on and turn the erosion around. After a rebound in mid-year sales hit new highs, the studio was able to hand out hefty bonus cheques of $2,500 to every staff member.
In addition, Amazon signed off with the studio for movies and series rights to the Warhammer Universe. This news brought heavy deckers such as Henry Cavil on board the francise expansion plans. Yet the news did a lot more than that.
Investors repented and started pouring funds into the Games Workshop shares. The stocks jumped to all time highAfter a fough start, the year ended on high notes for Games Workshop.
