Is Wahapedia dead?

With Games Workshop’s masterful release of the tenth edition of it’s popular tabletop game, Warhammer 40,000 they have elegantly ended the Wahapedia era. Wahapedia, for those unaware was a popular website that provided easy, free access to the complex labyrinth of rules required to play the game. Even seasoned players who’s personal libraries containing a plethora of codexes, GT books, addendums and other tomes find themselves using Wahapedia as a reference source. Games Workshop standard practice for dealing with third parties publishing their intellectual property without permission, like many license holders, is to throw their legal team at it. I can imagine this is partically difficult at the moment with the tension with Russia.

With 10th, Games Workshop has taken the unpresented step to publish all the rules on their website, for free, on day one. You can download it here.

Although I doubt they’ve done this to directly stop Wahapedia, I do feel they have been inspired by Vyacheslav Maltsev work. By removing the codex tax it allows players to focus on purchasing plastic that appeals. The barrier is removed. Ultimately, plastic is far more profitable for Games Workshop then paper. The profit margins for plastic boxes is much, much higher. The Warhammer 40,000: Leviathan boxset retailed at £150, being sold to stockist for around £80, who then sell them to the customers at a discounted rate of £120. The boxset costing an estimated less than £30 to create would mean a healthy profit for all. With many stockists announcing selling out of their 99 limit, that’s a nice pay day for lot of independant retailers and we should see a nice bump on the GW share price. It’s certainly a far cry from the small margins of book retailers.