Cursed City Gone ... forever?

For the discussion of anything related to Games Workshops games. e.g. Necromunda, Mordheim, Battlefleet Gothic, Blood Bowl, etc.
Post Reply
Balloonacorn
Veteran
Posts: 464
Joined: Tue Oct 08, 2019 1:34 am

Cursed City Gone ... forever?

Post by Balloonacorn » Sat Apr 17, 2021 1:55 am

What is GW doing?

Cursed city erased from web store and will not be restocked?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=asg9BjkRpWw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6kkb2z-DzwM
"true love is the greatest thing in the world - except for a nice MLT - mutton, lettuce, and tomato sandwich, where the mutton is nice and lean and the tomatoes are ripe."

User avatar
Primarch
Evil Overlord
Posts: 11392
Joined: Fri May 14, 2010 9:33 am
Location: Nagoya
Contact:

Re: Cursed City Gone ... forever?

Post by Primarch » Sat Apr 17, 2021 2:17 am

That sounds like a bit of a downer for anybody who missed it on release day. The scalpers on ebay are going to be super happy with this news though.
Painted Minis in 2014: 510, in 2015: 300, in 2016 :369, in 2019: 417, in 2020: 450

User avatar
me_in_japan
Moderator of Swoosh!
Posts: 7382
Joined: Fri May 14, 2010 2:46 pm
Location: Tsu, Mie, Japan

Re: Cursed City Gone ... forever?

Post by me_in_japan » Sat Apr 17, 2021 2:35 am

If it’s true (and I haven’t watched the vids - sorry. Text is so much easier to process when I’m in a rush doing various other things) then GW really need to get their shit together. They must have known it would sell like hot cakes, and if they didn’t, why didn’t they? We certainly all knew and we’re hardly market analysts. Assuming they did know, why not make twice as many copies? I can’t imagine it’d change the logistics too much, and it’d be money in the bank. Why give the money to the scalpers?
current (2019) hobby interests
eh, y'know. Stuff, and things

Wow. And then Corona happened. Just....crickets, all the way through to 2023...

Jye Nicolson
Legend
Posts: 1852
Joined: Thu Aug 08, 2019 11:04 pm

Re: Cursed City Gone ... forever?

Post by Jye Nicolson » Sat Apr 17, 2021 3:15 am

I find this very hard to believe.

I mean I find it easy to believe buying a copy of Cursed City in the short term (or maybe even medium term) from Games Workshop is not going to be a thing. It's definitely a product vulnerable to supply disruption (above and beyond the minis it has paper, cards, cardboard, special dice, and as much or more of all of it than Underworlds). We know GW is basically at their limit and this product has already suffered disruption (the Warscrolls booklet dates itself to Nov 2020).

But after sustained support for Blackstone Fortress and Cursed City being in high demand I find it hard to imagine they're just going to walk away from this cycle of Warhammer Quest.

User avatar
Karantu
Champion
Posts: 571
Joined: Mon Apr 29, 2019 6:24 am

Re: Cursed City Gone ... forever?

Post by Karantu » Sat Apr 17, 2021 3:45 am

Balloonacorn wrote:
Sat Apr 17, 2021 1:55 am
What is GW doing?

Cursed city erased from web store and will not be restocked?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=asg9BjkRpWw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6kkb2z-DzwM
The second video brings up some points which to me sound like the most likely reason why they seem to be dropping it. I think think we need to wait and see if there's going to be a proper announcement from GW though.

Anyway, to sum up the point brought up in the video apparently there's a new tariff applied on goods that are less than 70% produced locally. In Cursed City's case, everything other than the miniatures are made in China so it obviously doesn't make the 70% mark. I couldn't find an exact source for how the tariff works so that's just going off of information from that video. Given that, it's likely that taking that tariff into account their pricing on Cursed City doesn't meet their desired profit margin and they decided against repricing it and thus decided to drop it in favor of producing more profitable products with their limited production capabilities.

The concerning thing is how this could affect their other products going forwards. Luckily for them/(us?) they probably already have ridiculous profit margins on their standalone paper products such as books and cards so they're probably not too likely to be affected. However, products like the new Kill Team Pariah Nexus boxset and terrain sets might have trouble since all their terrain is produced in China as well. Its also possible that product lines such as Underworlds and other component heavy boxed games see some disruptions too.

Anyway, that's all just speculation/my opinion and I'm not an expert on any of this.

Jye Nicolson
Legend
Posts: 1852
Joined: Thu Aug 08, 2019 11:04 pm

Re: Cursed City Gone ... forever?

Post by Jye Nicolson » Sat Apr 17, 2021 4:10 am

Karantu wrote:
Sat Apr 17, 2021 3:45 am
Anyway, to sum up the point brought up in the video apparently there's a new tariff applied on goods that are less than 70% produced locally. In Cursed City's case, everything other than the miniatures are made in China so it obviously doesn't make the 70% mark.
Brexiiiiiiiiiit *shakes fist*

If so that'd definitely make it all more plausible but in that case you'd have more legitimate gripes about the messaging (above and beyond the poor WarCom team probably being mushrooms). This is a game that definitely expects expansions, I don't think it's even possible to get to level 5 during the main quest.

User avatar
The Other Dave
Destroyer of Worlds
Posts: 5096
Joined: Tue May 18, 2010 3:46 am
Location: Nagoya
Contact:

Re: Cursed City Gone ... forever?

Post by The Other Dave » Sat Apr 17, 2021 4:13 am

I agree with Karantu - and while they're very badly flubbing communication over the whole thing, and completely memory-holing the game on their site is not a good look, I wouldn't be surprised if corporate realities are tying their hands at least a little bit in that regard. A Kickstarter or small company can get away with saying, "look, XYZ has happened, we don't know when or if we'll be able to produce and sell the game again, we'll let you know," for a big publicly-traded company like GW there might be liabilities involved in saying "it's our Chinese partners' fault" or "it's because of changes in British trade law".

Possibly related to Karantu's points (and this may be classic GW Kremlinology) I picked up a couple of the new Underworlds products yesterday - the new starter set and card pack - and while the components are the same as ever, the packaging is notably lower-quality: the starter set box is much flimsier than previous sets, and the card pack is in a simple sleeve rather than a cigarette box like previous card packs have been in. I wouldn't be surprised if there's a lot of rejiggering going on with this sort of thing across the board.

(Admittedly, I'm unbothered by the Cursed City hullabaloo because I'd decided not to get it - it they dropped Underworlds in the same way at the end of the current season I'd probably be a lot less copacetic.)
Feel free to call me Dave!
-----
Miniatures painted in 2023: 252
Miniatures painted in 2024:
Epic scale: 9 vehicles, 56 stands of infantry, a whole buncha terrain
32mm-ish: 3 infantry

User avatar
Karantu
Champion
Posts: 571
Joined: Mon Apr 29, 2019 6:24 am

Re: Cursed City Gone ... forever?

Post by Karantu » Sat Apr 17, 2021 4:45 am

The Other Dave wrote:
Sat Apr 17, 2021 4:13 am
I agree with Karantu - and while they're very badly flubbing communication over the whole thing, and completely memory-holing the game on their site is not a good look, I wouldn't be surprised if corporate realities are tying their hands at least a little bit in that regard. A Kickstarter or small company can get away with saying, "look, XYZ has happened, we don't know when or if we'll be able to produce and sell the game again, we'll let you know," for a big publicly-traded company like GW there might be liabilities involved in saying "it's our Chinese partners' fault" or "it's because of changes in British trade law".

Possibly related to Karantu's points (and this may be classic GW Kremlinology) I picked up a couple of the new Underworlds products yesterday - the new starter set and card pack - and while the components are the same as ever, the packaging is notably lower-quality: the starter set box is much flimsier than previous sets, and the card pack is in a simple sleeve rather than a cigarette box like previous card packs have been in. I wouldn't be surprised if there's a lot of rejiggering going on with this sort of thing across the board.

(Admittedly, I'm unbothered by the Cursed City hullabaloo because I'd decided not to get it - it they dropped Underworlds in the same way at the end of the current season I'd probably be a lot less copacetic.)
I agree that their reluctance to communicate is probably related to keeping their investors happy, especially given their impressive growth over the last few years. This probably also affects their decision making in cases like this where they can't afford to run a loss leader to maintain consumer faith and build a product line since it would look bad to investors. (Although I wouldn't be surprised if Cursed City still make them a profit even with the tariff.)

I've noticed quality drops in their printed materials as well. The first Adeptus Titanicus components were a lot better than the newer ones, with the newer ones having low quality cuts on the cards for example. Other than that their books also seem to be getting slightly worse especially the binding quality. Speculation leads me to believe that this is the result on them trying to cut manufacturing costs in China to try and keep up with changes in global trade and the increases in manufacturing cost in China over the last few years.

I doubt they will drop something as established as Underworlds but they're going to have to rework their manufacturing chain to keep those profits up to their standards in order to keep their investors happy. They really do need to rethink their obviously unsustainable product release cycle though since on multiple occasions they've failed to meet demand on launch and struggle to maintain their existing product lines as well. This is especially obvious in localized versions of products where they stop production on the Japanese version of most products such as codexes and boxed sets after the initial release.

Although, as usual I am a little salty that we're the ones paying "premium prices" for their inefficiencies, for example with books that they ship from China to the UK and then to Japan, wasting tons of fuel and money. This is why I keep saying that GW lives a decade or two in the past. Also, what kind of community site doesn't have a forum or a similar way for actual community interaction.

User avatar
The Other Dave
Destroyer of Worlds
Posts: 5096
Joined: Tue May 18, 2010 3:46 am
Location: Nagoya
Contact:

Re: Cursed City Gone ... forever?

Post by The Other Dave » Sat Apr 17, 2021 5:52 am

To be fair on that point, GW did once have forums, way back at the dawn of the Internet, and they were toxic and terrible and more trouble than they were worth so they axed 'em. (Which led to the creation of even more toxic and terrible offsite forums, but what're ya gonna do? :lol:) Somehow I can't imagine they'd be any better today.
Feel free to call me Dave!
-----
Miniatures painted in 2023: 252
Miniatures painted in 2024:
Epic scale: 9 vehicles, 56 stands of infantry, a whole buncha terrain
32mm-ish: 3 infantry

User avatar
Primarch
Evil Overlord
Posts: 11392
Joined: Fri May 14, 2010 9:33 am
Location: Nagoya
Contact:

Re: Cursed City Gone ... forever?

Post by Primarch » Sat Apr 17, 2021 7:37 am

Jye Nicolson wrote:
Sat Apr 17, 2021 4:10 am
Karantu wrote:
Sat Apr 17, 2021 3:45 am
Anyway, to sum up the point brought up in the video apparently there's a new tariff applied on goods that are less than 70% produced locally. In Cursed City's case, everything other than the miniatures are made in China so it obviously doesn't make the 70% mark.
Brexiiiiiiiiiit *shakes fist*
Which would make sense for them pulling it from sale in the EU, but not the US, Japan, or the UK itself (No export tariffs if you aren't exporting).
Painted Minis in 2014: 510, in 2015: 300, in 2016 :369, in 2019: 417, in 2020: 450

Post Reply

Return to “Other GW Games - 他のゲームズワークショップのゲーム”