Is this Britain's most successful firm? The High Street shop which has given every worker thousands of pounds - after being set up by three supergeeks in a bedroom in 1975

Daily Mail​

29-05-2025

A major high street firm that could be Britain's most quietly successful brand has enjoyed such a prosperous year that it has given all its staff members bonuses totalling thousands of pounds, 50 years after it was founded.
Games Workshop was set up by three supergeeks in a bedroom in 1975, but is now one of the UK's top companies, having entered the FTSE 100 with a total value of more than £5billion.
Best known for creating Warhammer figures - a table-top model game played by millions of people worldwide, which has spawned a series of video games - the firm is now worth more than easyJet, B&M, Burberry and Ocado.
And after a bumper year it's now handing out some £20million to its 2,950 staff worldwide - the equivalent of £6,779 each.
Games Workshop's shares have soared in recent years and it joined the FTSE 100 for the first time in December.
The £20million payout is an increase on the £18 million awarded last year and £11 million the year before that.
It comes as Games Workshop forecast its sales to soar to at least £560 million for the year ending June 1, up from £494.7 million in the previous 12 months.
The brand is beloved by millions across the world - most notably actor and The Witcher star Henry Cavill, who has previously posted photographs of himself painting his own figures on social media.
Former Conservative leadership candidate James Cleverly is also a fan of the game.
But the origins of the firm are far, far away from the bright lights and star-studded hills of Hollywood or crowded chambers of Parliament.
The gaming dynasty was founded by a trio, Steve Jackson, John Peake - who came up with the name - and Ian Livingstone.
Livingstone has since been honoured with a knighthood for services to the 'online gaming industry'.
Originally, the pals had been a manufacturer of wooden board games such as backgammon, with Peake crafting sets to supplement his meagre income as a trainee civil engineer.
But everything changed when the schoolmates managed to wrangle the distribution rights to Dungeons & Dragons - which has since seen a recent resurgence in popularity after being featured Netflix's 1980s-based sci-fi fantasy, Stranger Things, and a film starring Star Trek actor Chris Pine released in 2023.
The 'pivot' from traditional board games to fantasy table-top figurine battlers proved divisive and led to Peake cutting ties with Games Workshop in 1976.
'John left because he wasn't really interested in fantasy games, he did wooden games,' Jackson said in an interview.
Little is known of what happened to Peake after he left the company. However, he seemingly wrote a critical one-star review of his former business partners' book 'Dice Men', earlier this year.
The book chronicled the rise of Games Workshop but was dubbed 'very much a disappointment' by a reviewer claiming to be Peake on Amazon.
'I'm John Peake, the co-founder of Games Workshop with Steve Jackson. Having read the first thirty or so pages of Dice Men I realise I need to tell things the way I remember them,' the reviewer says.
'It's now over 49 years since Games Workshop came into being, and I've kept quiet all this time. But much of the account of the founding and early days of Games Workshop given in Dice Men does not align with my memories of that time, which remain clear.
'I feel strongly that Dice Men almost completely ignores my pivotal role in those early times, not only with conceiving the name, but also the crucial financial contribution I made in the first twelve months, producing wooden games for sale and thereby funding our fledgling business.
'I know I'm banging my own drum, but without my initiative, Games Workshop would not exist, and I regret that this fact is ignored in the book.'
Initially working from their top-floor flat in Shepherd's Bush, west London, the Games Workshop founders started selling Dungeons & Dragons by mail order, having netted themselves an exclusive three-year deal to supply all of Europe.
'We started selling D&D by mail order, but people would be milling about outside looking for a shop,' Ian told the Londonist. 'Of course it wasn't a shop. We'd have to open the window and yell down: 'are you looking for Games Workshop? Up here mate".
'The phone would always ring, it would be telephone sales for D&D and we'd run down the stairs, and it'd be too late because he'd just hang up on people, because he got fed up of all the calls.
'Ultimately we agreed we had to leave because people and parcels were arriving.'
The pair opened their first office in the 'cubby hole round the back of an estate agents' that was so small 'that if a customer arrived, one of us would have to leave as it wouldn't have space for all three of us', Ian added.
Despite their increasing popularity in the late 70s, retailers failed to spot the appeal.
In 1978, Jackson and Livingstone opened their very first Games Workshop store in Dalling Road, Hammersmith. Fast-forward 46 years, and there are now 548 stores worldwide - with branches in most cities and big towns in the UK.
Livingstone and Jackson sold their shares in the company in December 1991 for about £10million. Livingstone has since gone on to be knighted, while Jackson is a professor of game design at Brunel University.
It was after this period that Games Workshop's new bosses sought to focus on is miniature games, Warhammer Fantasy Battle and Warhammer 40,000 - which have gone on to become their most lucrative sellers.
Small packs of its resin models typically sell for £26 a pop while some of the most expensive individual figures can sell for an eye-watering £2,169.99.
Some fans have become so addicted by the hobby, that they have vast collections of 'armies' worth tens of thousands of pounds.
The firm's revenues benefited considerably from the Covid-19 pandemic, when consumers sought new indoor hobbies to occupy their time.
Although lockdown curbs eventually ended, the firm's trade has continued expanding, and its market value now stands just above £5billion.
Russ Mould, investment director at AJ Bell, said: 'Games Workshop has a rock-solid core business, underpinned by an army of fans emerged in its fantasy worlds who collect miniature figures and play its board games.
'This success has enabled the company to build a rich library of intellectual property that is now the platform for additional revenue generation.
'Licencing the rights to certain brands and characters is easy money, but Games Workshop is fiercely protective of its assets and won't let anyone come along and milk them.'
Superman star Cavill, a self-declared lifelong fan of the figures, will star in and produce a Warhammer 40,000 series with Amazon Prime and Games Workshop.
Last December, hw posted on Instagram: 'To celebrate some Warhammer news, I decided to make a pilgrimage to the very first place I bought Warhammer models over 30 years ago....the Little Shop, on my home island of Jersey!
'My incredible team and I, alongside the brilliant minds at Games Workshop, have been working away in concept rooms, breaking down approaches to the enormity and magnificence of the Warhammer world.
'Together, we've been sifting through the plethora of incredible characters and poring over old tomes and texts.
'Our combined efforts have led us to a fantastic place to start our Universe, which has been agreed upon by those up on high at both Amazon and Games Workshop. That starting place shall, for now, remain a secret.'