It's A Heresy—The End Of Games Workshop RPGs

Well, the much-desired and long-awaited Warhammer 40,000 RPG, Dark Heresy, came—and went. It sold out through pre-orders alone in six minutes, at a rate of about one every two seconds. Great news for its publisher, Black Industries, right?

Wrong.

Just three days after the announcement of Dark Heresy's huge success, Black Industries announced that the third Dark Heresy supplement, Disciples of the Dark Gods in September, will be the company's final product—which means that the age of Games Workshop RPGs is over. Kevin Rountree, general manager of BL Publishing, said the following:

As a result of the continued and impressive success of our core novels business, which we have built around 40K and Warhammer, we have decided to focus all of our efforts on growing this part of our business. Black Industries has seen fantastic success, most recently with Talisman and Dark Heresy. This change does not take away from that achievement rather it allows BL Publishing to focus on producing the best novels we can. This is a purely commercial decision and will enable us to carry on the huge growth that we have recently been experiencing with our novels.

So let me get this straight—the first release of their new RPG sells out in six minutes, blowing any predictions of its success out of the water, and Games Workshop decides to ditch their entire RPG sector as a "purely commercial decision"? As we (never) say here in Canada, what a load of poutine. Nevertheless, any collectors will want to snatch these books up whenever and wherever they see it in stores, because after this, folks, it's over.

Many thanks to our reader Drinnik who alerted us to this event in the forums.