Yes, they are.
THey fucked the poster boys up (SM) so much that they actually lost sales on it. They had the two base armies that introduce the game to newcomers being the weakest of the current game (with the exception of Baledrakes; which essentially turns into here's £200 to buy yourself a basic competing force, but oh wait, you can't actually compete, you need either Meta-countering Daemons, or Tau/Dar, El/Tau, Tau, or Eldar, or some variant thereof to even compete against Riptides with rerolls etc, so here's more money.
Newcomers see they're getting pounded, so are selling their stuff on eBay, so not only is it depriving the hobby of its newcomers (which are its primary income, whether for new armies or for complete newcomers), which costs the company money, but those who bought the kits are now selling them on the cheap for other gamers.
The cost of codexes is probably an easier way around this.
Codexes are too expensive. So people upload them onto the internet. People download them.
Codexes increase in price to account for pirating. Less people are willing to pay for something that's of poor quality (and with terrible rules to boot). They download them.
Codexes increase in price... etc. etc. ad infinitum, ad nauseum.
The strongest armies should be those in the core game box. 4th edition, outside of Eldar, Nid Monster Mashes and Lasplas Marine hordes were the game winners.
Games Workshops *we are a model company first* is fucking over their profits. They need to get down into the nitty gritty, and stop caring about creating internally balanced rules (because they fucking suck), and moving onto externally balanced, with beta testing and running it by top tournament players and the internet.
If the internet can come up with broken combinations like Pun-Pun from D+D (think a character with near infinite stats, and every special rule in the game, and if you can think of a way to kill him he automatically knows about it, and teleports back into the past to know about that method, fix it, and then kill you so that hopefully no-one knows about it), and Leafblower, and Lashprince, and Jetseer Lists, and Rhno Parking lots, then withn a few months of playtesting, you have yourself a release that's effective.
Give away the rules, people should be able to play the game without needing to buy additional rulebooks on top of the core game. Charge suitable prices for the models. By going effectively 4x above inflation, they are pricing themselves out of sales, especially with millions of cheap competitors setting themselves up, the lack of competitive support (in both tourny organisation, recognition, and basic competitive PvP rulesets), and GW stores now being turned into creches (and forcing people who purchase the cheaper competitors to play elsewhere) in favour of LGS with gaming rooms...
Eh, syntax, "GamesWorkshop_HasClue_flag = false"
