Right, say you have a friend at your FLGS or local club and you know that he uses recasts. These are not the cheap 'I'm sure it looks like a Land Raider if you look at it from this angle and use your imagination' ones either, this stuff looks like the real deal. The kind that you would only know it is fake if he told you himself.

Would you play against this guy knowing that he is undercutting the hobby or would you not?

If it was GW recast, I'd ask him where he got those, how much they were and possibly order some myself. Anything else: no.

Only GW recasts are acceptable in my area. Anything else is seen as wrong.

So yes.

To be honest, I'd have no issue with it. I appreciate how expensive this hobby can be, and if someone has found a cheaper way to have fun with it then all power to them. I probably wouldn't buy them myself, but I'd not stop anyone from using them.

When it comes down to it, my policy with models/rules/counts-as/anything game related is 'if you're a decent guy, then anything goes. If you're a git, feth off'.

Most likely. The type of person and player they are is more important to me than where they got their plastic crack.

Depends if the model is oop.

GW has gotten rid of so many models in the past few years.

Even then, I'm not really bothered.

Yes. Yes, most certainly.

I wouldn't care. I can't confirm it, but I'm pretty sure that I've got almost 800pts of recasted models bought off ebay, so it'd be pretty hypocritical even if I was morally against it.

Oh my. "If you are not playing with GW I can't play with you?" Oh give me a break.

What is the difference from not using GW glue, paint, brushes, buying from GW directly.

Well it would be forge world and that kind of nonsense where there is a lot of money saved,


I wouldn't mind either, just curious about the rest of Dakka.

I would ask him where he got it and buy stuff myself.

If my friends get more and cheaper models, that means I will have more variety in the lists I have to play against.
It means I can also play bigger matches and those things means I will enjoy this game more.

Because honestly, after almost a year it's getting extremely boring to play against the same "cheap nobz and 30 boyz I once got for a really low price"-army

Wouldn't care in the least.

I wouldn't care. I'm not GW legal and it is none of my business where he got his models. Unless he stole them from another player, of course.

I would play him/her, but I would make snide comments about things related to copyright infringement the entire game. None targeted at my opponent mind you, I'd just cover everything from Napster to Industrial espionage.
By the end of the game, my opponent would be well aware of my feelings on the issue and probably never want to play me again. Recasting without permission is illegal in many places and unethical everywhere.

Without a second's hesitation, I'd much rather play an army of beautifully painted recasts than a sea of official grey plastic.

Besides, it's a personal decision, and none of my business. If he has made his peace with it, then that's all that matters.

 greyknight12 wrote:
I would play him/her, but I would make snide comments about things related to copyright infringement the entire game. None targeted at my opponent mind you, I'd just cover everything from Napster to Industrial espionage.
By the end of the game, my opponent would be well aware of my feelings on the issue and probably never want to play me again. Recasting without permission is illegal in many places and unethical everywhere.

Why is it unethical? You bought the item from the person who made it. By buying an item using a stolen design do you too steal the idea? Is all thievery equally wrong?

 welshhoppo wrote:
Right, say you have a friend at your FLGS or local club and you know that he uses recasts. These are not the cheap 'I'm sure it looks like a Land Raider if you look at it from this angle and use your imagination' ones either, this stuff looks like the real deal. The kind that you would only know it is fake if he told you himself.

Would you play against this guy knowing that he is undercutting the hobby or would you not?

Also, just to add, GW is not "the hobby"

I would certainly play against them, and find out where they got them as well.

My friend has recast a few Tyranids models himself. I'm not 100% fine with that, but since it's mostly because of the amount of money normally required to buy such models and nothing moral, I play against them without saying anything.

You shouldn't support recasts not because of the issues of copyright protection but because Chinese recasts and knock offs specifically are made in horrid work conditions. Of course this may actually be the case currently with GW miniatures although I do not believe they are cast in China.

I would just be wary of any knock off product because of work conditions.

Is it illegal for you to do? Maybe? Would you ever possibly serve jail time is it even a illegal law to recast miniatures for your own use? Is it an actual immoral act to use recast items? No.

Hollismason wrote:
You shouldn't support recasts not because of the issues of copyright protection but because Chinese recasts and knock offs specifically are made in horrid work conditions. Of course this may actually be the case currently with GW miniatures although I do not believe they are cast in China.

I would just be wary of any knock off product because of work conditions.

Is it illegal for you to do? Maybe? Would you ever possibly serve jail time is it even a illegal law to recast miniatures for your own use? Is it an actual immoral act to use recast items? No.

Thats not true at all. Its not made on a production line. Its made by a small team of people who want to make a profit. There are very few makers of re-casters but many sellers. They are not done by child labor or hand crafted by orphans etc. Major legal american companies do that (like Nike etc).

They are made by many western English teachers etc in their spare time while teaching over there and most of them do it part time. There are no giant recast factories or anything. Thats just uninformed lies.

Im not supporting it (although I have recasts) but its certainly not made in inhumane conditions.

Exactly, my understanding is the likes of *redacted* in Russia, or *purged* or *deleted* in China are not really any different from your average Etsy type seller, only their product is a tad less legal in most countries.

 TheCustomLime wrote:

 greyknight12 wrote:
I would play him/her, but I would make snide comments about things related to copyright infringement the entire game. None targeted at my opponent mind you, I'd just cover everything from Napster to Industrial espionage.
By the end of the game, my opponent would be well aware of my feelings on the issue and probably never want to play me again. Recasting without permission is illegal in many places and unethical everywhere.

Why is it unethical? You bought the item from the person who made it. By buying an item using a stolen design do you too steal the idea? Is all thievery equally wrong?

It's unethical because it's supporting intellectual property theft. It's no different than buying a Metallica CD from someone who bought one then re-burned it en-masse.

Well here's the thing: if you refuse to play him because he was honest with you and told you it is recast, guess what'll happen? He will stop telling folks it is recast and be about his day.

What's next? "ooh you got a steeper discount for all your original GW stuff than I did because I ordered all my things from the local GW store and support them that way? Well I aint playing against ya because you support third party retailers, undercutting all the hard working redshirts keeping GW's brick and mortar stores alive."

If you can't see the difference between buying an illegally recast model and buying a legal one from your LGS then you have some serious misunderstandings.

Im not about to bust out a model id kit to check your stuff so 'game on'.

Not only would I play him, I'd ask if he like me to teach him how to recast himself to save even more. It is dirt easy.

Again to the OP. What is wrong? What are you going to say when someone is using Privateer Press, or Vallejo paints instead of GW paints?

Heaven forbid if someone is not using GW paint brushes.

How about people who don't use GW glue?

When does it stop? Where does it start?

I'd be okay with someone recasting their own models, but I think buying recasts from a third party is wrong. It's bad for the industry and bad for people conducting business in general.

Like if I needed a few hundred clan rats it would be smart to buy a single box and then make resin copies of the sprues and use those to bulk out my force. That's respecting their intellectual property.

Selling those copies would be illegal. Infringing on intellectual property isn't as bad as theft. Its not as bad as selling stolen property or buying stolen property.

The recasts I own are better than what GW/FW is producing for three times the price. I can't fault anyone for choosing a superior product over an inferior one, and I also challenge anyone to prove any of my models are recasts.

I'd play them. I'd congratulate them on finding a way to cut their costs.

Play: Yes.

And ask where they got them.

I do NOT play in stores, so that entire argument is irrelevant to me. None of the clubs I've been associated with have played in stores. We preferred it that way.

I wouldn't care in the slightest that they weren't "legitimate" models.

I don't have questionable morals. They just aren't the same as other people's arbitrarily book defined ones.

 Col. Tartleton wrote:
I'd be okay with someone recasting their own models, but I think buying recasts from a third party is wrong. It's bad for the industry and bad for people conducting business in general.

Like if I needed a few hundred clan rats it would be smart to buy a single box and then make resin copies of the sprues and use those to bulk out my force. That's respecting their intellectual property.

Selling those copies would be illegal. Infringing on intellectual property isn't as bad as theft. Its not as bad as selling stolen property or buying stolen property.

In the US, making those copies is illegal.

 Col. Tartleton wrote:
I'd be okay with someone recasting their own models, but I think buying recasts from a third party is wrong. It's bad for the industry and bad for people conducting business in general.

Games Workshop is not "the industry."
But, perhaps that would be an interesting question to ask: is it only OK to recast GW product, or are Privateer Press and Infinity fair game, too?
I have no problems with GW recasts (I suspect some of my Ebay too-good-to-really-be-Finecast purchases may be recasts), but I am less OK with recasts of other companies' product.

 Tannhauser42 wrote:

 Col. Tartleton wrote:
I'd be okay with someone recasting their own models, but I think buying recasts from a third party is wrong. It's bad for the industry and bad for people conducting business in general.

Games Workshop is not "the industry."
But, perhaps that would be an interesting question to ask: is it only OK to recast GW product, or are Privateer Press and Infinity fair game, too?
I have no problems with GW recasts (I suspect some of my Ebay too-good-to-really-be-Finecast purchases may be recasts), but I am less OK with recasts of other companies' product.

I dont think he specified GW so that first part is just annoying to read

But I personally would not play against someone who uses recasts of a "better" company. GW is free game but thats it in my opinion. Especially FW.

If it wasn't for my local store I would never buy from GW, I pirate the rules and buy the models third party so it would be hypocritical to have something against others doing the same things. I actually intend to start recasting my models soon, just to save some money.

 Col. Tartleton wrote:
I'd be okay with someone recasting their own models, but I think buying recasts from a third party is wrong. It's bad for the industry and bad for people conducting business in general.

Like if I needed a few hundred clan rats it would be smart to buy a single box and then make resin copies of the sprues and use those to bulk out my force. That's respecting their intellectual property.

Selling those copies would be illegal. Infringing on intellectual property isn't as bad as theft. Its not as bad as selling stolen property or buying stolen property.

So, buying a box of models and then using them to make more copies of the same model is better than buying a bunch of copies of the model, which will, at some point, have required the purchase of some originals in exactly the same way?

By all means make that argument on a personal economic basis, but don't try and argue it's either morally any better, or makes the slightest difference to the finances of the company affected.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Tannhauser42 wrote:

 Col. Tartleton wrote:
I'd be okay with someone recasting their own models, but I think buying recasts from a third party is wrong. It's bad for the industry and bad for people conducting business in general.

Games Workshop is not "the industry."
But, perhaps that would be an interesting question to ask: is it only OK to recast GW product, or are Privateer Press and Infinity fair game, too?
I have no problems with GW recasts (I suspect some of my Ebay too-good-to-really-be-Finecast purchases may be recasts), but I am less OK with recasts of other companies' product.

It's an issue that's come up in a similar discussion, and the companies with a greater degree of goodwill than GW seem to illicit a stronger negative reaction with regard to purchasing recasts.

It certainly doesn't seem too much of a leap to see recasts as a viable way of denying GW your hobby dollar in protest at things which a person may disagree with, while not disrupting your own gaming (I advocate third party models, as not only does that withold cash from GW, but actually supports their competition with it too, but YMMV)

I just want to point out that some people like my "friend" buy recasts for the quality. The recast are much better quality then finecast with no bubbles or warping. Some just want a superior product.

Edit : I don't want to break technicalities.

 Rautakanki wrote:
I have something like ~1200€ worth of Orks, not counting books, terrain etc, and now I'd really like two gorkanauts, some tankbustas, some meganobz and flash gitz, one more psyker and some mek gunz and we're talking 700€ more aren't we. So where can I get these fabled good quality recasts? Lol.

Sorry dude, we aren't allowed to tell you, in fact, you've technically broken forum rules by asking....

I don't have a problem with redistribution of intellectual property. I do, however, have a problem with people who sell redistributed intellectual property for their own profit. See, if you make a copy for your own personal use, and in the absence of being able to make your own copy you just would have done without, there is no harm done. But when you give money to someone who has no connection to the creators of the work that you could have otherwise given to the creators, I feel like that person you're buying from has pretty much stolen that money from the creators.

I've bought a few models on ebay I'm sure we're recasts. Recently I bought a FW great unclean one for my son. It was $100. My son really wanted to field a GUO so I jumped on it. When it arrived it was obvious that it was not the greyish FW resin. More of a white, soapy looking resin. It happens. I wouldn't buy directly from a Chinese knock off store due to being scared of my credit card getting messed with. But seriously. If these companies can recast for this cheap, maybe GW should start making their product a little cheaper and selling it for a little cheaper. If the stuff was cheaper I would buy way more of it straight from GW.

But since I buy mostly hand me downs from ebay. I'm quite content.

Also, what's the difference between a recast and a GW model on Ebay? GW makes no money from the resold model and ultimately hurts them also.

Personally I like the digital interactive codexes but if I wanna study an opponents codex. I'll download the PDF on my cheapo computer.

I think people are missing the whole "intellectual property" idea. These sellers aren't stealing plastic, they're stealing hundreds of man hours and pure dedication put into sculpting awesome miniatures, and making a profit.

That being said I couldn't care less. If someone is buying cheap models for financial reasons then I am very happy they found a way to continue doing what they love. Who am I to judge?

UnadoptedPuppy wrote:
I think people are missing the whole "intellectual property" idea. These sellers aren't stealing plastic, they're stealing hundreds of man hours and pure dedication put into sculpting awesome miniatures, and making a profit.

That being said I couldn't care less. If someone is buying cheap models for financial reasons then I am very happy they found a way to continue doing what they love. Who am I to judge?

This is, arguably, where GW differs from other companies, and may go somewhat towards explaining the differing attitude with regards to recasts. While I wouldn't even start to try and argue that GW sculptors love what they do, and pour there heart and soul into it, they're salaried, so they get paid if the model they design sells 10 or 10 000 copies.

Whereas the likes of Roberto Chaudon or Tre Manor who are out there doing their thing for themselves and other companies would be hurt directly by people recasting in a much more immediate way than the creatives at GW, who are insulated to a much greater degree.

Would you know? If it was a GW recast, probably not, but maybe. If it was a FW one, the only way you could tell is that all the pieces wouldn't be warped and there would be smaller mould lines than normal because the Chinese/Russian guy who did the job bothered to clean it up and do QC before hurling it into a cardboard box.

This is a recast (not mine, unfortunately). These things can be amazingly high quality. I have zero issue with it, and have actually been looking into it for a little while now. GW have plenty to dislike, but I invite everyone having doubts to have a look at the Chapterhouse proceedings, wherein they claim ownership of such vague concepts as "tentacly, monstrous sort of head" and insult their customers as "nerdy, geeky" people who "goober" over their stuff, and whose favourite activity is to "buy some product from Games Workshop".

The Dakka rules don't actually cover this, but I guess I have be careful with what I say, anyway. All I'll say is that Reddit, while I despise the place, is a good source of knowledge on the subject.

It was really nice opening my Reaver Titan box knowing I didnt have to spend the next week or so finishing FW's job of cleaning and straightening out the bits. Having nothing broken and more importantly getting it in a nice secure package (not some back with all the bits thrown in).

 greyknight12 wrote:
It's unethical because it's supporting intellectual property theft. It's no different than buying a Metallica CD from someone who bought one then re-burned it en-masse.

A good way to have your posts ignored is to intentionally use incorrect terms such as theft for emotive effect rather than the correct copyright infringement.

---

Buying recasts is very common in Australia due to GW regional pricing and our nearby communist friends. I, like many of us, know a good range of recasters and not only are some of them as good as originals, some are actually better - for example, Tyranid Bio Titans were recast with wire in the legs to strengthen them, making the recast product superior to the original. Resin copies of failcast are also superior in my experience though staves are a common problem due to the brittle nature of resin. Another tactic that can be used with this is to buy legit bitz to go with recast stuff such as the cheap and often given away chain swords and bolt pistols to go on recast bodies which gives you cheap bodies that don't suffer the weakness of thin resin weapons. Also works well for large hull sections for vehicles that are prone to warping as resin.

The only company that has a wide range of recasters copying their stuff is GW, because GWs prices (and practices) are bad enough that people say "feth you GW" out of spite as much or more than wanting cheaper products. If I could get recast Mantic stuff for half the (already cheap) price I wouldn't do it because Mantic is a great company, and most supporters of recast GW stuff I know are the same.

Look, in the US making the recasts isn't illegal, selling them is.So trade!

I am much more interested in the quality of the player than the quality(or legitimacy) of his models really.

With the kind of FW prices, I can understand if some would get recasts. Not everybody has that much cash to spare.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
So yes I'd play with those who own recasts.

I have no problem playing people who use recasts.

What I do have a problem with is when those people (excessively) use those recasts in their FLGS. I firmly believe that you should pay where you play, so they can stay in business.

 milkboy wrote:
With the kind of FW prices, I can understand if some would get recasts. Not everybody has that much cash to spare.

Due to regional pricing, FW is ~= to GW in Australia. Marneus Calgar is $US95 here so yeah... ni hao GW. Ni hao.

 Cheexsta wrote:
What I do have a problem with is when those people (excessively) use those recasts in their FLGS. I firmly believe that you should pay where you play, so they can stay in business.

I firmly believe shops should rent tablespace rather than guilt people into paying more for their products than they otherwise would (I don't play at shops though). This is especially important as you know in Australia due to GW regional pricing. By enforcing buying locally, you're enforcing GW regional pricing which needs to be stopped at all costs as it damages the local scene more than buying internationally.

Depends.
I'd probably play one game regardless, however I'd avoid them in the future. I don't like to support pirates of miniatures or their customers, no matter if it's GW or some small independent.

Exceptions would be.
-OOP models, if the company no longer makes them, then I have less problem with recasting.
-Self recasting. The person has already bought one, so I don't see the harm in making "copies for personal use".

I realize the two exceptions are grey areas, but they're lines I choose anyway.

I say we burn this capitalistic system down to the melon-fething ground starting with GW.

Viva LA RECASTS!!!


No seriously, someone made the point that how many Privateer Press recasts do you see or other miniature companies. I mean when you price yourself out of the reach of your average customer what do you expect to happen. If someone can point me to a miniature gaming company that is getting pirated other than GW please do I'm sure it does happen, but I can tell you there's not some dimly lit shack on the river bank in some Chinese province cranking out knock off Perry Miniatures.

I straight up only buy EBAY and used because of the prices. I'd have no problem buying recasts either.

Maybe it's because of the apparent disgust , scorn , and outright hostility the company seems to have towards people who actually play the game instead of just buy miniatures I'd have a different opinion. I'm not invested in GW.

I'm invested in playing 40k and using that setting and rules because it's familiar to me, I've played it for 20+ years, enjoy the stuff that great writers actually came up with. Sorry but at this point GW is just lame necromancer when it comes to their rules and fluff.

I really don't care.

Piracy for PC games is a "service problem" according to Gabe Newell of steam. People mostly pirate due to things like DRM screwing legitimate users and not pirates, lack of availibility in regions, poor clients like uPlay and so on. Steam with its acceptable DRM and added features makes buying legitimate games a better proposition even though you can get the same thing for free. It's probably a similar thing with miniatures - there's no DRM screwing players, but failcast, poor rules, and general poor policies makes people really not want to support GW. Other miniature companies do not suffer this problem.

Yeah, you figure out why GW is one of the largest pirated miniatures ( I'm sure like Gundam or something is actually the largest) for wargaming and you'll point yourself directly to what is wrong with the whole damn company.


Someone literally knows that a Miniature Wargaming Company with probably a MAX customer service base of like 250K at Most it's probably super lower like in the 50s world wide , has gained such ire with it's own customer base that they sometimes actively seek out recasts.

That's ridiculous.

 Yonan wrote:

 greyknight12 wrote:
It's unethical because it's supporting intellectual property theft. It's no different than buying a Metallica CD from someone who bought one then re-burned it en-masse.

A good way to have your posts ignored is to intentionally use incorrect terms such as theft for emotive effect rather than the correct copyright infringement.

A good way to show that you're grasping at straws is to dismiss a person's argument on semantics. But, since you care so much: http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/investigate/white_collar/ipr/ipr
The US Federal Bureau of Investigation defines what you are describing as "intellectual property theft". It's a term used by people who feel that use of another's intellectual property without permission is a form of stealing, while others prefer the less harsh "copyright infringement". They are the same thing; in fact copyright infringement is just one type of intellectual property theft.

Recasting models and selling them without permission is the same as duplicating an album, a video game, or a car without permission and selling it. Robin Hood arguments aside, you can't somehow say that one or some is ok while others are not. And if you say that copyright infringement is fine, then you reject the premise that ideas and creative expression belong to the entity that originated them, be it an individual artist, a band or even an international corporation. It's a right given by society, and if you reject the right of Games Workshop to own their ideas then you've also rejected the right of Metallica to own their songs. If you think it's a right, you don't get to pick and choose. If it's not a right, then you might as well start copying and reselling BMWs too, maybe throw in some Linkin Park for good measure.

I'd really hate to see my intellectual property and sold for someone else's profit, so I don't think recasting is ok. Call it whatever you want, but it's still wrong.

greyknight12 wrote:
In the US, making those copies is illegal.

greyknight12 wrote:
A good way to show that you're grasping at straws is to dismiss a person's argument on semantics. But, since you care so much: http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/investigate/white_collar/ipr/ipr
The US Federal Bureau of Investigation defines what you are describing as "intellectual property theft". It's a term used by people who feel that use of another's intellectual property without permission is a form of stealing, while others prefer the less harsh "copyright infringement". They are the same thing; in fact copyright infringement is just one type of intellectual property theft.

Recasting models and selling them without permission is the same as duplicating an album, a video game, or a car without permission and selling it. Robin Hood arguments aside, you can't somehow say that one or some is ok while others are not. And if you say that copyright infringement is fine, then you reject the premise that ideas and creative expression belong to the entity that originated them, be it an individual artist, a band or even an international corporation. It's a right given by society, and if you reject the right of Games Workshop to own their ideas then you've also rejected the right of Metallica to own their songs. If you think it's a right, you don't get to pick and choose. If it's not a right, then you might as well start copying and reselling BMWs too, maybe throw in some Linkin Park for good measure.

I'd really hate to see my intellectual property and sold for someone else's profit, so I don't think recasting is ok. Call it whatever you want, but it's still wrong.

So, whiteknight....which of your statements that I've highlighted is correct.

Many would view your making inconsistent claims about the law as reason for questioning your credibility or to suspect that you are the one grasping at straws.

I use them, I play against them. Just like I download all my music and watch GoT on stream.

Call the feds m8, I'm just down the road from Dotcom.

If GW cared at all about its customers maybe I'd look out for them. The very least they could do is once a month sit down and write answers to questions that plague the boards and gaming community. That wouldn't cost them hardly anything.

We are a model company 1st and a game by chance seems to be their motto. It is almost like we aren't good enough for them and look down at us for playing.

It's amazing how many people here think it's ok to break the law as long as you're stealing from someone who "deserves" it. It's just a pathetic justification, and I actually have more respect for the people who admit they buy recasts/pirate games/etc because they're selfish and don't give a about anyone else, without trying to turn it into some kind of bizarre moral high ground.

Hollismason wrote:
Yeah, you figure out why GW is one of the largest pirated miniatures ( I'm sure like Gundam or something is actually the largest) for wargaming and you'll point yourself directly to what is wrong with the whole damn company.

You know why GW is the most pirated miniatures company? Because GW is the biggest miniatures company. Recasters aren't some kind of moral crusaders out to destroy the evil GW empire while leaving the good companies unharmed, they're just greedy amoral s who recast whatever is going to sell the most copies. And major GW kits sell a lot more copies than stuff from other companies with lower market share.

Warlord_Grotsnik wrote:
Look, in the US making the recasts isn't illegal, ...

Yes, it is.

Fair Use doesn't cover making copies so that you don't have to buy more.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 greyknight12 wrote:
. Recasting without permission is illegal in many places and unethical everywhere.

Not actually true. There are quite a few countries where copyright isn't particularly highly regarded, so copyright infringement isn't seen as unethical at all.

 insaniak wrote:

Warlord_Grotsnik wrote:
Look, in the US making the recasts isn't illegal, ...

Yes, it is.

Fair Use doesn't cover making copies so that you don't have to buy more.

Actually, not quite true.

US law protects until the item copied has been changed by a fairly subjective 10%. The act of recasting in a different material, using a different casting process pretty much protexts the person making the copies.
Where such a person would get into trouble is by making any attempt at passing the models off as authentic in an effort to make a profit.

For those that are paranoid that GW will send their legal thugs or the cops after them, then just paint the models in a non-standard scheme.
IP cannot limit "artistic" expression in the US.

Clearest Dakka poll ever or what? ;D

 Peregrine wrote:
It's amazing how many people here think it's ok to break the law as long as you're stealing from someone who "deserves" it. It's just a pathetic justification, and I actually have more respect for the people who admit they buy recasts/pirate games/etc because they're selfish and don't give a about anyone else, without trying to turn it into some kind of bizarre moral high ground.

Hollismason wrote:
Yeah, you figure out why GW is one of the largest pirated miniatures ( I'm sure like Gundam or something is actually the largest) for wargaming and you'll point yourself directly to what is wrong with the whole damn company.

You know why GW is the most pirated miniatures company? Because GW is the biggest miniatures company. Recasters aren't some kind of moral crusaders out to destroy the evil GW empire while leaving the good companies unharmed, they're just greedy amoral s who recast whatever is going to sell the most copies. And major GW kits sell a lot more copies than stuff from other companies with lower market share.

This is more of a case of moral ethics or ethical morality.

Piracy is a symptom of when there is a problem within the free market.

In a free market, the company is supposed to provide a good value for the price demanded for their products. A measure of that good value is to walk the line of charging what the market will bear and of not gouging your customers.

If a company decides to not give fair value for price charged then they end up price gouging their customers. People can tell when such profiteering is occuring by whether one can make the same quality product for a lower price and still be profitable enough to survive as a full-time business (hence product piracy/clones).

In cases such as these I have little to no sympathy for the corporate entities that wish to profit from the free market system while simultaneously trying to subvert such with IPs and copyrights designed to create mini-monopolies.

 SarisKhan wrote:
My friend has recast a few Tyranids models himself. I'm not 100% fine with that, but since it's mostly because of the amount of money normally required to buy such models and nothing moral, I play against them without saying anything.

I did something similur. I play IG , but didn't realy like the GW models for troops. I traded all the IG models I had for recasts of infinity models I like. My two chimeras are recast too , I bought them because a friend of a friend made 10 and needed only 6. Other people have recast titans, recast aegis gunlines. Most of the characters I see used are recast too , specialy if they are FW. The prices are crazy for the non FW stuff , and recasts are actualy more resilient then a lot of the finecast models.

It's unethical because it's supporting intellectual property theft. It's no different than buying a Metallica CD from someone who bought one then re-burned it en-masse

Isn't recasting more like creating your own band band and doing a cover.

Yeah I would, wouldn't really bother me at all.

It's amazing how many people here think it's ok to break the law as long as you're stealing from someone who "deserves" it. It's just a pathetic justification, and I actually have more respect for the people who admit they buy recasts/pirate games/etc because they're selfish and don't give a about anyone else, without trying to turn it into some kind of bizarre moral high ground.

Am not going to buy stronghold assault to use my aegis , which didn't change at all in rules , just because GW decided to remove it from the main rule book. The fact that stronghold assault is no longer sold in any shops here, only helps me to decide on that.


By the way I remember an article in ze WD that showed how to make your own purity stamp with green stuff. Is making those or weapons , and then selling them illegal too?

 Captain Avatar wrote:
If a company decides to not give fair value for price charged then they end up price gouging their customers. People can tell when such profiteering is occuring by whether one can make the same quality product for a lower price and still be profitable enough to survive as a full-time business (hence product piracy/clones).

Except that's a terrible argument that completely lacks any understanding of the situation. Recasters aren't able to undercut GW because GW is selling at some morally unacceptable price, they're able to do it because they don't have to invest any of the design work required to create that model, don't have to pay their employees a fair wage, and don't have to worry about any of those pesky safety regulations or other nonsense that might get in the way of profit. If those recasters had to design their own models instead of just making some molds from a GW kit they'd go out of business overnight.

Also, price gouging by definition does not exist for a luxury item like gaming miniatures.

In cases such as these I have little to no sympathy for the corporate entities that wish to profit from the free market system while simultaneously trying to subvert such with IPs and copy-writes designed to create mini-monopolies.

Are you serious? IP and copyright laws are essential to a free market. If a company has no way to protect their products from being copied then why would anyone make any investment in designing new products? Just let someone else invest the design work and make your own copies. This isn't one of those ridiculous cases of copyright abuse, like the constant extension of copyright lengths every time a profitable movie/book/etc is about to expire, it's just a straightforward case of a business having the right to protect their work.

Makumba wrote:
Isn't recasting more like creating your own band band and doing a cover.

No, the equivalent to that would be creating your own line of 28mm power armor soldiers that are clearly meant to be space marines for 40k, but are your own sculpts. You're using the original work as source material, but you're creating your own version of it. Recasting doesn't involve any new work, you're just creating a perfect duplicate of the original, like copying a CD so you don't have to buy it.

Recasting doesn't involve any new work, you're just creating a perfect duplicate of the original, like copying a CD so you don't have to buy it.

But that is not true , recasts are always smaller then the originals , unless someone uses a high grade printer to do them. And you have to do stuff, you have to know how to recast , get the material for it , buy it etc.

This isn't one of those ridiculous cases of copyright abuse, like the constant extension of copyright lengths every time a profitable movie/book/etc is about to expire, it's just a straightforward case of a business having the right to protect their work.

But coping is the driving motor of industry. If people weren't coping stuff , then firms from companies in countries that weren't destroyed durning WWII , which was more or less western countries. And everyone else would suffer , unless they had huge natural resources they could trade. And with each year the countries that had the untouched by war infrastructure would put a bigger and bigger gap , between themselfs and the rest of the world. Living in such a world , would be like being condemned to being III world till the end of time.

I have a FW reaver and warhound titan, and tens of thousands of points of GW plastic, much of that bought from my FLGS. Some 3rd party stuff like the Doc Thunder female Cadian parts. I run some recasts as well. No Chapterhouse though. I made that mistake once and regretted it.

 TheCustomLime wrote:
Is all thievery equally wrong?

All thievery is wrong. Maybe not equally - if you steal bread to feed your starving daughter or if you steal cancer-diagnosed person's life savings it's two morally different things, but it's still theft nonetheless and nothing makes it 'good' in everyday situation.

I personally discourage buying recasts as they're very unhealthy for the hobby in the long run. People seem to be perfectly fine with it now, some even stating that it's good as long as it's just GW(lol), but guess what happens when some other tabletop game gets so big on the international market. Think they'll not recast Warmachine models when it gets popular? Of course some of you may hesitate due to moral objections, but others will start buying them and it will hurt PP. Same goes for other games. And suddenly it'll become a whole different deal when it's not GW that's losing money thanks to someone stealing their designs(which costed them money and designers' work).

I wouldn't mind playing against recast miniatures given the fact that 40k is really expensive here due to much lower salaries and I understand that some people do it because they simply can't afford paying the prices (imagine putting an equivalent of $2000 for a 1850pts army and paying 100$ for a tact squad), but bragging about it or acting like it's something cool and that it's 100% justified and okay? No. The only acceptable recast purchases for me are finecast miniatures as most chinese recasters use much better resin with better details and little to no bubbles while keeping the hard plastic's durability rather than semi-soft rubber that'll bend(my finecast Tau Commander tips over onto his back because his legs bend at the ankles due to the model's weight and I am seriously considering a recast because I'm tired of trying to fix him and risking flaking the paint).

P.s. - "Oh, I see you wrote a book and you'd love to sell it.. it'd be a shame if someone photocopied it and sold at half of your price without investing any of the development cost and time(research, writing, spellchecking, quality control, character/location designing). What, you wrote it? You have the rights for it? It's your intelectual property? Well, too bad." - that's exactly how recasting works.

I'll be honest. I'm a kitbasher. I've recast a few things that I couldn't reasonable acquire through legitimate means.

Mostly armoured SoB heads. But whole models? No, I've never recast a whole model. There's no point or challenge. I kitbash and convert because it gives me an awesome feeling to have achieved something awesome.

Would I play against someone using recasts?

Nobody I know is stupid enough to admit to using them.

 Peregrine wrote:

 Captain Avatar wrote:
If a company decides to not give fair value for price charged then they end up price gouging their customers. People can tell when such profiteering is occuring by whether one can make the same quality product for a lower price and still be profitable enough to survive as a full-time business (hence product piracy/clones).

Except that's a terrible argument that completely lacks any understanding of the situation. Recasters aren't able to undercut GW because GW is selling at some morally unacceptable price, they're able to do it because they don't have to invest any of the design work required to create that model, don't have to pay their employees a fair wage, and don't have to worry about any of those pesky safety regulations or other nonsense that might get in the way of profit. If those recasters had to design their own models instead of just making some molds from a GW kit they'd go out of business overnight.

Also, price gouging by definition does not exist for a luxury item like gaming miniatures.

Your living in la-la world if you think that re-casters have the exact same resources as a multi-national publicly traded corporation.

You are also completely ignoring how economics work on the scale
of mass production. Bootleggers and pirates are only able to operate profitably when the corporation is drastically overcharging.

Mass production is supposed to be the corporations defense against piracy in that large scale mass production is supposed to allow them to bring a product to market at a price that small scale limited producers just can't match.

Anytime someone working alone out of their garage can beat a mass producers price and still survive as a business...then it is the corporations fault for overcharging.

Oh yeah, I'm so tired of this GW/ corporate apologist excuse about design and prototype costs. These designers make a middle class wage and 3d rapid prototyping allows for insanely fast and cheap design expenditures.
Also, drop the notion about the molds being super costly/time consuming. For and individual they are prohibitive but for a multi-national like gw they usually account for less than a penny per model.

Re-casters are able to undercut GW because GW overcharges and then overpays their board of directors. Designer pay and prototyping are nothing compared to what the company rewards their operating officers with.

And lastly, the practice of price gouging most certainly does exist on luxury items, just doing such is not a prosecute-able offense.

Peregrine wrote:]

Captain Avatar wrote:]In cases such as these I have little to no sympathy for the corporate entities that wish to profit from the free market system while simultaneously trying to subvert such with IPs and copyrights designed to create mini-monopolies.

Are you serious? IP and copyright laws are essential to a free market. If a company has no way to protect their products from being copied then why would anyone make any investment in designing new products? Just let someone else invest the design work and make your own copies. This isn't one of those ridiculous cases of copyright abuse, like the constant extension of copyright lengths every time a profitable movie/book/etc is about to expire, it's just a straightforward case of a business having the right to protect their work.

Funny, in the Washington Redskins thread weren't you one of the people arguing that the loss of copyright protection was a blow "for" the free market?

You might want to go back and look at what Copyrights and IP laws were originally designed for, not what decades of corporate lobbying has turned them into. They were there to protect small businesses and sole-proprietorship's. They were never intended to be used as a means by which corporations create mini-monopolies.

Now you ask why corporations would invest in new products if they
weren't allowed to abuse the copyright & IP laws.

My answer is simply be the first to market with the product at a fair price and your companies name becomes synonomous with that new product.
Be willing to work with other corporations in a fair and mutually benificial manner and you can dominate that industry for a decade(s).

Peregrine wrote:

Makumba wrote:
Isn't recasting more like creating your own band band and doing a cover.

No, the equivalent to that would be creating your own line of 28mm power armor soldiers that are clearly meant to be space marines for 40k, but are your own sculpts. You're using the original work as source material, but you're creating your own version of it. Recasting doesn't involve any new work, you're just creating a perfect duplicate of the original, like copying a CD so you don't have to buy it.

Re-casting does not create perfect duplicates......unless the re-caster puts as much if not more time into his casts than GW does.

Plastic manufacturing is so expensive that the average gunpla kit contains four times the number of sprues as a similarly-priced GW kit. Much smaller wargaming companies also charge half or less for comparable number of sprues. So expensive!

I'd have no qualms about playing somebody using recast GW models, although I wouldn't buy them myself, I'd rather support the wargaming business by grabbing proxies from other companies or converting my own from toys and whatnot. Purchasing counterfeit goods is generally ethically dubious, but I feel GW's policy towards their customers justifies it. I'd go as far as to say that buying directly from GW is unethical, as it only reinforces their terrible attitude and harms the market at large, stifling its growth.

greyknight12 wrote:In the US, making those copies is illegal.

No, in the US, you probably have the most protected rights to reproduce things for your personal use in the whole world. It's very, very legal to copy whatever you like for personal use because of a few key concepts in the law (which I'll go into below).

insaniak wrote:Yes, it is.

Fair Use doesn't cover making copies so that you don't have to buy more.

It's nothing to do with a fair use defense. There's some relation, but it's more than that.

Captain Avatar wrote:US law protects until the item copied has been changed by a fairly subjective 10%. The act of recasting in a different material, using a different casting process pretty much protexts the person making the copies.
IP cannot limit "artistic" expression in the US.

That's a very interesting idea. Changing the material of the miniature is your form of expression.

Now to get the key concepts I mentioned above:

Courts only care about what can be said to legally exist. A stature, miniature, painting, picture, etc., that is copied and not distributed does not exist in eyes of the court. This is true of almost every jurisdiction on the planet. I've seen this tested in court when a sculptor found out that the guy who bought his sculpture made 4 copies to put around his estate. The sculptor didn't even make it past the pre-trial hearing. Why? Those duplicates do not exist as far as the courts are concerned because they haven't changed hands.

The second key concept is damages. The rights holder has the burden of proof on proving damages. The reason file sharing lawsuits end up with people paying so much money is that the rights holder can actually show that someone distributed their song or movie without authorization and in many cases, just how widely the file was distributed and how many potential sales they lost. If they could not show this, the whole thing would get tossed.

The next concept is one of standing. If you are not the rights holder or the rights holder is not an injured party, there's no basis for any legal proceedings. I can't sue you on behalf of someone else's copyright unless they have authorized me to do so. Similarly if I were to bring a suit to stop something or to get some damages and there was no injured party, I'd have no standing in the court. No basis for my claim. Those who hear someone has recast miniatures and gets all mad about it have no standing. It's not their job to be the enforcement arm of copyright law and they have only their normal rights of expression to decry it rather than any actual power.

The next concept is that the law is not necessarily the code, but the totality of enforcement, how it interacts with other legislation, precedents and the litigation process itself. If you've been raised with a law or rule centred basis for your ethics, then you mail recoil at this practical take on the matter. The idea that a law itself is insufficient without all the messy details that goes into enforcement might strike you as deeply wrong. You may be tempted to think "just because you can get away with it doesn't make it legal!" And you'd be right, but only in a technical sense that is irrelevant to our public life. If you want to see an example of this, every area has their old and stupid laws that no one cares about. If the act of something being written down as a law really was the totality of the matter, then you should also demand that grocery stores in Texas remove limburger cheese for sale on Sundays. Or that school children who cheat on assignments or tests must receive jail time in Bangladesh. These (and a million other laws like them) are "the law" in terms of being currently valid statutes that are on the books. "Just because you can get away with it doesn't make it legal!" Get those cheating kids to jail and get that cheese out of the shop!

Enforcement (in criminal matters). Standing. Distribution. Damages. If you don't have all these things, you don't have a legal issue worthy of the courts. Someone recasting for personal use does not have distribution and you certainly don't have standing as you're not the rights holder (you're just some guy insisting that something is illegal on the internet, which is cool, I guess). Furthermore, there will be no criminal enforcement. And there are no damages without showing distribution as personal lost sales don't count. In the case of the sculptor and the guy who made four copies, he was never legally responsible to buy those four statues from the sculptor. They simply don't count for damages.

I think the poll results also show a demographic shift. The generation that grew up with electronic media being everywhere tends to have far looser views on copyright and are far more tolerant of those who ignore it. Just like we are more tolerant of those grocers who dare to sell the wrong type of cheese on Sundays. We'd never see the pro-recasting poll results like we see now had this poll been done ten years ago.

This also ties into people's perception of GW. Earlier in the thread, the point was made that the law doesn't change just because you think the person or company in question deserves it or not. And that's true. But the ethical considerations do indeed change. When we see someone or something as being against us, we naturally extend them less consideration. It's a good thing. It's an instinct that protects us against con artists and bullies. We are social animals and our ability to identify social threats and to treat them differently can be very, very useful. If you feel GW has mistreated people and want to extend them less consideration for doing so, then great. You're free to do so up to the point where you yourself violate the law (and not just the law in terms of what someone thinks it says, but the whole messy reality of it all).

.

 -DE- wrote:
Plastic manufacturing is so expensive that the average gunpla kit contains four times the number of sprues as a similarly-priced GW kit.

There's a difference there that wargaming miniatures also are used for, well, wargaming. Gunpla(or any other japanese mecha scale kits) as far as I remember are display only and serve no other purpose. Here miniatures have non-decorational uses too.

 -DE- wrote:
Much smaller wargaming companies also charge half or less for comparable number of sprues. So expensive!

Most of the companies have nowhere near the sculpt quality and/or are in 28mm scale.

 -DE- wrote:
Purchasing counterfeit goods is generally ethically dubious, but I feel GW's policy towards their customers justifies it.

Jut wait till they start recasting FoW, WM/H and Infinity models once the games get popular enough for it to be profitable for them. Chinese recasters don't care about that.

 -DE- wrote:
I'd go as far as to say that buying directly from GW is unethical, as it only reinforces their terrible attitude and harms the market at large, stifling its growth.

Given the fact that 40k's both games bring more players into non-historical wargaming in general than most likely other games combined(doesn't matter that later on they spill into other games), I guess it is only true in that they could make it even bigger, but I would never say that it hampers the growth of the market. In most FLGSes here it's the fancy, pretty painted 40k/WFB miniatures that draw newcomers' attention, especially the bigger kits as they have the oomph effect to them. If someone wants to start or check it out, here you can ask any player or the employee if you could come watch a game or even ask two players if they would be nice enough to do a demo battle, even with the possibility of asking them if you could play their army and get some advice on how to play.

Prices and business decisions aside, it's GW's products that still haul the market in many areas where Warmachine, Infinity and X-Wing didn't make their stand, and even then, in case of my country, it was former 40k and WFB players that decided to give them a shot. Vast majority(like.. 98%) of wargamers here started off with GW. Most of them stayed, some moved over, some play both GW and other companies' games simultaneously.

I have to admit that I am totally shocked Peregrine is on the side of "No" in this debate; I would have bet money that given his stance on 40k and GW in general he would have been here arguing how it's okay to cheat GW because they cheat us.

 welshhoppo wrote:
Would you play against this guy knowing that he is undercutting the hobby or would you not?

Don't care. Maybe because I'm not living on the wrong side of the Channel.

Duplicating works of art you've bought is perfectly legal here, as long as you don't sell them. Yes, that's right, if you want that 10k pts White Scars force, you just have to buy one attack bike.

Minis could be considered not to be work of arts, of course. In that case, duplication is illegal for the first 20 years (if you pay the annual fee for each patented creation), then your creation falls in the public domain and anybody can duplicate and sell these minis at will.

 Klerych wrote:
Jut wait till they start recasting FoW, WM/H and Infinity models once the games get popular enough for it to be profitable for them. Chinese recasters don't care about that.

The consumers care. There's no point in recasting if no ones buying, everyone I've talked to about it are happy to reward good companies for their products and shaft the bad companies until they play nice. Just like piracy, of course some will still buy recasts, but also just like piracy if you make it a good experience for the customers many of them will do right by you.

edit: It was mentioned above that copyright was to protect small companies, that's not true. Copyright was implemented to encourage the production of creative works for the enrichment of society. The mechanism by which it encourages this was to ensure the creator has an opportunity to make a profit on that work - which was originally 7 years. It's quite a bit longer than 7 years now ; /

 Yonan wrote:

 Klerych wrote:
Jut wait till they start recasting FoW, WM/H and Infinity models once the games get popular enough for it to be profitable for them. Chinese recasters don't care about that.

The consumers care. There's no point in recasting if no ones buying, everyone I've talked to about it are happy to reward good companies for their products and shaft the bad companies until they play nice. Just like piracy, of course some will still buy recasts, but also just like piracy if you make it a good experience for the customers many of them will do right by you.

I really understand what you're saying here, but I think that you're somewhat wrong thinking that morality regarding your stance towards the company makes that much of a difference here. Sure, it affects it, but I would rather say that it's a minor influence. Just remember that the miniatures made by the other companies are even more expensive than GW's ones while most often not being better in quality of sculpt and/or material(aside from failcast). Sure, the army for those games is cheaper than that for GW's games, but the miniatures themselves are even more expensive. I don't think I know a single person that could look me straight in the eye and tell me that, say, Sword Knights box for Warmachine is priced appropriately and I am sure that a lot of people would buy Warmachine unit recasts due to the value for price ratio model-wise, not really bothering to think about the bigger picture of the market or taking into consideration the fact how nice a company PP is. That, and some hard resins used by recasters are a lot better and easier to work with than the crappy pewter so popular in wargaming.

So, yeah, no matter how "good" they are, recasts are going to hurt them once the community is big enough for it to be profitable on an international scale as people most often don't give a crap about who they pay, but they care about how much they pay.

 Klerych wrote:

 Yonan wrote:

 Klerych wrote:
Jut wait till they start recasting FoW, WM/H and Infinity models once the games get popular enough for it to be profitable for them. Chinese recasters don't care about that.

The consumers care. There's no point in recasting if no ones buying, everyone I've talked to about it are happy to reward good companies for their products and shaft the bad companies until they play nice. Just like piracy, of course some will still buy recasts, but also just like piracy if you make it a good experience for the customers many of them will do right by you.

I really understand what you're saying here, but I think that you're somewhat wrong thinking that morality regarding your stance towards the company makes that much of a difference here. Sure, it affects it, but I would rather say that it's a minor influence. Just remember that the miniatures made by the other companies are even more expensive than GW's ones while most often not being better in quality of sculpt and/or material(aside from failcast). Sure, the army for those games is cheaper than that for GW's games, but the miniatures themselves are even more expensive. I don't think I know a single person that could look me straight in the eye and tell me that, say, Sword Knights box for Warmachine is priced appropriately and I am sure that a lot of people would buy Warmachine unit recasts due to the value for price ratio model-wise, not really bothering to think about the bigger picture of the market or taking into consideration the fact how nice a company PP is. That, and some hard resins used by recasters are a lot better and easier to work with than the crappy pewter so popular in wargaming.

So, yeah, no matter how "good" they are, recasts are going to hurt them once the community is big enough for it to be profitable on an international scale as people most often don't give a crap about who they pay, but they care about how much they pay.

The issue with that argument, as has been said constantly in these kinds of debates, is that the price per miniature is irrelevant, it's the price of the force. Those games are cheaper due to that, and that alone.

WayneTheGame wrote:
I have to admit that I am totally shocked Peregrine is on the side of "No" in this debate; I would have bet money that given his stance on 40k and GW in general he would have been here arguing how it's okay to cheat GW because they cheat us.

Based on past discussions about this and other subjects, Peregrine struggles with anything ambiguous or involving shades of grey, everything has to be binary. Therefore, because recasting = illegal in pretty much any context (and definitely if doing it for profit) recasting = wrong, any nuances or subtleties be damned.

 Klerych wrote:
So, yeah, no matter how "good" they are, recasts are going to hurt them once the community is big enough for it to be profitable on an international scale as people most often don't give a crap about who they pay, but they care about how much they pay.

I have to disagree, and I'll use game piracy which is similar enough to use as reasoning. If money was the only motivator, steam would not be as hugely successful as it is. Everything is still available on torrent sites straight away but people who used to torrent started buying from steam even though they didn't need to. Pirating media has to be the easiest thing to do, far easier than buying recasts and with no quality concerns. But still people choose to pay. I used to pirate basically everything but I haven't pirated a single game for years because steam (and GOG etc) has removed all the service issues I had (ie. lack of online distribution, intrusive DRM, limited selection). It's similar for most people i know. Only one guy I know will still pirate everything he can, everyone else at least buys what they can, when they can - usually steam sales.

So no, whilst some will buy recasts purely to save money I don't think it's anywhere near the majority, and for a labour intensive and somewhat risky proposition like recasting miniatures, I don't think it will be worth doing unless the company generates as much ill will as GW does. A poll on the topic could be interesting actually.

WayneTheGame wrote:

The issue with that argument, as has been said constantly in these kinds of debates, is that the price per miniature is irrelevant, it's the price of the force. Those games are cheaper due to that, and that alone.

"I bought an army for 50% the price" can work with any system, no matter how expensive/cheap the army/models are. And on the most basic level - a single purchase being more expensive than that with GW games is going to make people think about alternative ways of obtaining the army. Give them 50% off with recasts and a lot of people will buy them, no matter how cheap/expensive their army would otherwise be.

 azreal13 wrote:

Based on past discussions about this and other subjects, Peregrine struggles with anything ambiguous or involving shades of grey, everything has to be binary. Therefore, because recasting = illegal in pretty much any context (and definitely if doing it for profit) recasting = wrong, any nuances or subtleties be damned.

That sounds almost insulting. I disagree with Peregrine on some stuff but I can admit without any problem that he is a reasonable person and I respect his opinion. You say it like treating things in black and white is something wrong or stupid, but look at all those people trying to convince you that grey is almost just as good as white. You can go wrong both ways, you know. Justifying morally wrong things to feel better about it yourself is far, far worse than condemning all morally wrong choices even if they're not as bad as some others.

 Yonan wrote:

 Klerych wrote:
So, yeah, no matter how "good" they are, recasts are going to hurt them once the community is big enough for it to be profitable on an international scale as people most often don't give a crap about who they pay, but they care about how much they pay.

I have to disagree, and I'll use game piracy which is similar enough to use as reasoning. If money was the only motivator, steam would not be as hugely successful as it is. Everything is still available on torrent sites straight away but people who used to torrent started buying from steam even though they didn't need to. Pirating media has to be the easiest thing to do, far easier than buying recasts and with no quality concerns. But still people choose to pay. I used to pirate basically everything but I haven't pirated a single game for years because steam (and GOG etc) has removed all the service issues I had (ie. lack of online distribution, intrusive DRM, limited selection). It's similar for most people i know. Only one guy I know will still pirate everything he can, everyone else at least buys what they can, when they can - usually steam sales.

So no, whilst some will buy recasts purely to save money I don't think it's anywhere near the majority, and for a labour intensive and somewhat risky proposition like recasting miniatures, I don't think it will be worth doing unless the company generates as much ill will as GW does. A poll on the topic could be interesting actually.

Steam is a whole different thing, to be honest. It's a very popular thing and you're trading your money and 'freedom' for convenience. If you'd really want to go with the Steam example then it'd be more like "you can't play the game using any model that wasn't made by us, but if playing it on our terms you will always be able to find other players in our local store and, say, get a discount". Also comparing it to piracy is less accurate given the fact that buying recasts is, as far as I remember, not punished by law in most countries. Although it's somewhat similar to GW and recasts. Majority of people buy original models for various reasons - they want them in trays, they want them in plastic, they want to just grab them on the shelf and purchase 'physically', they want to support their FLGS, they are in a hurry, ...[insert other various reasons]... , or they just were raised the way where they find it just normal to buy stuff rather than buying copies, even though they're cheaper. Then we have the reasons why people buy recasts.. and I dare say that it's probably 5-10% with the reason "BECAUSE GW IS BAD AND THEY -SO- DESERVE IT!" and 90-95% being "Oh, it's cheaper; can't afford/ don't want to spend so much, will buy recasts".

Now don't get me wrong, I am not saying that "but the company is good, I don't want to harm them by denying them profits for their work..!" is non-existant, I'm just saying that it's a minor thing and it will only vary by a few % depending on how nice the company is once the community is big enough to contain all kinds of people with all kinds of views and opinions. Comparing 40k community to any other is in this case a bad thing because it's so exponentially bigger worldwide than any other game's community it's much different. a 100 people saying that they buy Infinity recasts would be a big thing while for GW games it's like a bunch of Guardsmen.

No insult intended, merely a statement of opinion based on several years of interaction.

If you're ascribing any sort of insult, you're projecting it.

Please do also bare in mind the Peregrine has managed to contrive to argue with me on issues where I was agreeing with him in the past, so one should also allow for the fact he just likes disagreeing!

More power to them. GW can afford to profit at the same price as the recasts, they merely choose to exploit their customers. Unfortunately for them they chose to do it in a field where their product is easily replicated.


Everyone who voted no is the kind of person that GW caters to. Believe it or not there are people who like the price of GWs miniatures, as having easy access to army compositions and total collection size that others with an average do not, makes them feel like oh such a special snowflake. Oh you have an army my size but haven't matched my investment into this hobby? How dare you sit down at the opposite side of the table expecting to have a challenging duel of strategy with miniature SciFi avatars!






Automatically Appended Next Post:
Peregrine is quite the pot-stirring contrarian, and while sometimes it places him on the correct side of an argument, more often his posts should just be viewed as a good perspective of the other side of the argument. I'm sure he doesn't even believe half the arguments he puts forth, even if he is good at arguing the underdog perspective, you already know when he posts that it's generally to fuel and argument and be contrary to popular opinion. Take it for what it's worth, and when his posts are incapable of taking in everything relevant to the topic just so that his contrary opinion doesn't fall apart (e.g this thread) that's when you know a decent counter-argument is probably not to be found, or he would have used it. Provides decent perspective and stops threads going stale by fuelling discussion. Hes a great contributing poster and undeniably gifted with a razor sharp intelligence, however "reasonable" is not a word I'd ever use to describe him.

There is more to this argument than "recasting is legally classified as theft which makes you a bad person and anything else is irrelevant". Admitting that would take away all legs to his counter argument, and as such he cannot do it.

I'm pretty sure everybody has at one point been part of or heard of an action that was unlawful and yet ethical. If a person terrorizes the neighborhood, making deadly threats, and you organize a lynch, it's clearly unlawful, but wouldn't most people say it was ethical? I would. Take the opposite situation - you stand by and remain passive, and the guy eventually axes somebody to death. You broke no laws, but wasn't your inaction unethical?

With the abuse GW has laid on their fanbase over the years, I do not find it unethical to pirate their publications or purchase illegal recasts of their models. If it was Corvus Belli, I would find it unethical, because it's a company that doesn't abuse its position and power and treats its customers with respect. All GW has towards their customers is spite. Cheating Tom Kirby and his cohort out of a couple hundred dollars would hardly sully my conscience.

 -DE- wrote:
I
With the abuse GW has laid on their fanbase over the years, I do not find it unethical to pirate their publications or purchase illegal recasts of their models. If it was Corvus Belli, I would find it unethical, because it's a company that doesn't abuse its position and power and treats its customers with respect. All GW has towards their customers is spite. Cheating Tom Kirby and his cohort out of a couple hundred dollars would hardly sully my conscience.

What a vacuous and unconvincing argument. Making up a justification that GW treats its customers with 'spite'? really?

This is like burglars who claim they did it because the world is unfair and their victim was rich, or muggers who boast how someone 'looked at them funny.' it's a morally bankrupt argument, and is a great example of today's unjustified sense of materialist 'entitlement'; I deserve to have these toys, and if I can't have them, it's OK to steal.

AS far as the OP's question, if my oppo was a nice fella I'd play him, no prob. But if he came out with claptrap like the above, no way.

Here's a decent description of "fair use": http://info.legalzoom.com/copyright-law-making-personal-copies-22200.html

Are you legally safe making recasts in your basement? Probably, GW (who would have standing) probably won't come knocking on your door. If you're a big seller, they might come after you. That's not the point though, only a few people here are advocating making their own recasts. The more common approach is to buy said recasts, which is not illegal. It is, however, unethical for the same reason it's unethical for me to buy a photocopied novel or a pirated CD. The originator of the creative work is not being allowed to profit from their work.
You don't have a right to play Warhammer 40K or any other game. On the other hand, GW does have a right to distribute their intellectual property as they see fit (within the bounds of the law). To say that right is irrelevant is to say the same for every other similar enterprise.

Nobody is arguing the legality, they're arguing if you'd play somebody who was doing it.

 Hivefleet Oblivion wrote:
Making up a justification that GW treats its customers with 'spite'? really?

If you don't think GW treats their players poorly, perhaps you haven't dealt with them raising prices by 40+% in your country and then putting ridiculous restrictions on merchants in other nations to prevent you from ordering there. I'd call that spiteful, and damn straight I'll shaft 'em back for it.

Oh my a few White Knights in here. Anyone who is claiming it is wrong to use/buy recasts (not talking about making recasts and selling them) is wrong, you telling me you NEVER EVER ONCE downloaded a GW book? Never downloaded a song or movie? A video game?

All I will say is HYPOCRIT.

Which I will correct to HYPOCRITE!

I don't give a flying gak where some on got thier models or if they are recast or not. So yes I'd play him. But I'd be extremely jealous of him and probably really try to get him to get me the same hookup xD

 Yonan wrote:

 Hivefleet Oblivion wrote:
Making up a justification that GW treats its customers with 'spite'? really?

If you don't think GW treats their players poorly, perhaps you haven't dealt with them raising prices by 40+% in your country and then putting ridiculous restrictions on merchants in other nations to prevent you from ordering there. I'd call that spiteful, and damn straight I'll shaft 'em back for it.

Exalted. We pay far more than we should. And it's higher than 40% even after factoring in exchange rates

If I'm playing an adult who I know has an income then no. If it's some kid who just wants to get into the hobby I understand.

 azreal13 wrote:
Which I will correct to HYPOCRITE!

Damn auto correct. It always keeps changing what I write sometimes.

Davor wrote:
Oh my a few White Knights in here. Anyone who is claiming it is wrong to use/buy recasts (not talking about making recasts and selling them) is wrong, you telling me you NEVER EVER ONCE downloaded a GW book? Never downloaded a song or movie? A video game?

All I will say is HYPOCRIT.

Yeah! Why not go steal someone's car? I mean.. I already have downloaded a book and pirated a game, so now I am excused in further law violations and it's perfectly okay and justified! And if I infringed someone's copyright already, why not go for more? All I'm saying that if one crime is not wrong, then maybe another one isn't either, right?

See the flaw yet? It's like saying "how can you claim that killing is wrong if you already killed someone before?" so what, killing people is okay now that you have done it before..? Yes, one can call it wrong even if he has done it, that's not being a hypocrite. I'd be a hypocrite if I said that it's wrong and that I don't do it while actually doing it.

Even though I say that it's morally wrong and I would try to convince someone to stop buying recasts, it doesn't actually mean that I can't understand his reasons. Maybe he's too poor and yet he wants to play it without saving up for one army over the year's course and buy crappily painted/mistreated models off eBay. I won't bash him, but I will never say that it's okay. A starving person stealing bread from a rich guy will still be wrong to do so and it will be at best "necessary evil" and he should be ashamed of doing so, even if it was a matter of survival. I would never accept hearing that it's perfectly okay for him to do so in his situation.

If someone's too poor to start an army but really wants to, I will not bash him for buying recasts, but if he ever brags about it or feels that it's alright to buy recasts and there's nothing wrong about it I will disagree with him. Again - no theft(and copyright/IP infringement are a theft) is -ever- okay nor justified, no matter how little love you have for the one you steal from and buying from those guys is promoting theft as they make profit off someone else's work without his consent.

I don't agree with recasting, but I'm not on GW's payroll and I think it's a personal morale choice. So yeah, I'd have no problem playing against someone with recasts.

 Klerych wrote:

See the flaw yet?

Yes, you're comparing a civil violation with criminal acts.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Just a thought, is buying a counterfeit product actually against the law anywhere? Or is it the act of making or selling counterfeit goods that's illegal?

Because if there is no law against buying, then the theoretical person in the OP has done nothing wrong.

Random Dude wrote:
If I'm playing an adult who I know has an income then no. If it's some kid who just wants to get into the hobby I understand.

I'm actually curious about this. Why does it matter to you? The models are the tools to playing the game, you would rather not play at all than play with someone who found a way to buy his chess pieces slightly cheaper?

Is it a jealousy thing, or is it a love for GW and you don't want to support people playing the game who don't support GW in return?

I'm just speculating here and I'm actually very curious to why. It's clearly not a morality thing as you are ok with the kid doing it.

 SHUPPET wrote:

Random Dude wrote:
If I'm playing an adult who I know has an income then no. If it's some kid who just wants to get into the hobby I understand.

I'm actually curious about this. Why does it matter to you? The models are the tools to playing the game, you would rather not play at all than play with someone who found a way to buy his chess pieces slightly cheaper?

Is it a jealousy thing, or is it a love for GW and you don't want to support people playing the game who don't support GW in return?

I'm just speculating here and I'm actually very curious to why. It's clearly not a morality thing as you are ok with the kid doing it.

I think you're way too negative in this regard. Your earlier post clearly reeked of some kind of spite towards people who buy GW stuff and expect others to do so too. Remember that recasting is still illegal and it's a crime. Some people consider crimes morally wrong and might have moral barriers against playing with someone who is using illegal pieces. You may not agree with such thing, but you have to respect it and accusing that person of being a spoiled brat that only wants to show off with his expensive collection because he's richer than the other player is very childish and immature. In fact you mentioning it with such spite made me think that you were bullied or insulted by the rich kids when you were young or something.

As for his adult-kid difference.. I guess it's because the adult is very, very likely to be able to afford a 40k army due to having a job unlike the kid. It's also kinda expected of a mature, adult person to not buy illegal stuff nor to encourage copyright infringement as he is supposed to be a responsible person at that age. And recasts are something even worse than piracy because you're deliberately paying thieves for stuff they stole and made profit off it when you could actually afford the genuine version of it and pay the one who actually put money and effort into making it, rather than just copying the design on cheap materials to sell them.

Buying them is not illegal, but it's still paying people that stole something from others and getting that thing from them. I don't know how that could ever be morally okay, no matter how much you dislike the company.

And it's even worse with people who say "Can't afford it! Better drink my own piss* Better buy a recast at 50% off the price!" and then spend the saved money on stuff like alcohol or cigarettes.



* -

 Klerych wrote:

 SHUPPET wrote:

Random Dude wrote:
If I'm playing an adult who I know has an income then no. If it's some kid who just wants to get into the hobby I understand.

I'm actually curious about this. Why does it matter to you? The models are the tools to playing the game, you would rather not play at all than play with someone who found a way to buy his chess pieces slightly cheaper?

Is it a jealousy thing, or is it a love for GW and you don't want to support people playing the game who don't support GW in return?

I'm just speculating here and I'm actually very curious to why. It's clearly not a morality thing as you are ok with the kid doing it.

I think you're way too negative in this regard. Your earlier post clearly reeked of some kind of spite towards people who buy GW stuff and expect others to do so too. Remember that recasting is still illegal and it's a crime. Some people consider crimes morally wrong and might have moral barriers against playing with someone who is using illegal pieces. You may not agree with such thing, but you have to respect it and accusing that person of being a spoiled brat that only wants to show off with his expensive collection because he's richer than the other player is very childish and immature. In fact you mentioning it with such spite made me think that you were bullied or insulted by the rich kids when you were young or something.

As for his adult-kid difference.. I guess it's because the adult is very, very likely to be able to afford a 40k army due to having a job unlike the kid. It's also kinda expected of a mature, adult person to not buy illegal stuff nor to encourage copyright infringement as he is supposed to be a responsible person at that age. And recasts are something even worse than piracy because you're deliberately paying thieves for stuff they stole and made profit off it when you could actually afford the genuine version of it and pay the one who actually put money and effort into making it, rather than just copying the design on cheap materials to sell them.

I think you're projecting far more emotion on to others posts than is intended, my own included, which obviously indicates you feel strongly to on the subject. Nothing wrong with that, but please try and mitigate your answers with this in mind. It's probably not the best idea to "guess" what another poster meant, for instance, but perhaps best to let them respond for themselves?

Buying them is not illegal, but it's still paying people that stole something from others and getting that thing from them. I don't know how that could ever be morally okay, no matter how much you dislike the company.

Well, I guess that boils down to one's own morals, which are an entirely personal matter, as is evidenced by the different opinions on show in this thread.

And it's even worse with people who say "Can't afford it! Better drink my own piss* Better buy a recast at 50% off the price!" and then spend the saved money on stuff like alcohol or cigarettes.

Honestly, I don't even know where to start with this, it isn't relevant, a valid argument, or... Nope, just going to leave this one hanging.

Wait so it's not ok for us to justify it morally in any way shape or form but it's ok for you to justify this poster as being morally sound in his opinion that it is ok for kids to go it and not adults, that you decided for him is morally fueled, justified by nothing but the ASSUMPTION that the adult has a larger disposable income than the kid, and the strange belief that it's less immoral for the kid to do something than an adult? Regardless of whether they are less knowledgable / expected to do the right thing than an adult, holding the adult accountable for it and refusing to play is kind of a ridiculous stand point if you are morally fine with playing the kid doing the exact same thing. All that aside, where do you think moral less adults come from if not kids that were never held accountable?

I also like how you decided all this for him, even though you like the rest of us have no idea hence why I asked him the question and not you ...

Are you sure it's ME who is the one that is too emotionally attached to this debate dude? Lol

 azreal13 wrote:

I think you're projecting far more emotion on to others posts than is intended, my own included, which obviously indicates you feel strongly to on the subject. Nothing wrong with that, but please try and mitigate your answers with this in mind. It's probably not the best idea to "guess" what another poster meant, for instance, but perhaps best to let them respond for themselves?

Well, I just thought that it was obvious enough with what he wrote and given the fact that he wanted an answer then I guess he could just as well take mine. And if my interpretation of what he meant is wrong, well, it's still a point as good as any, so why not comment on that? I know that it's cutting into someone else's 'conversation', but then again it's an open thread and we're more or less discussing the same topic.

 azreal13 wrote:
Well, I guess that boils down to one's own morals, which are an entirely personal matter, as is evidenced by the different opinions on show in this thread.

True, although saying that clearly cuts any kind of further discussion. You know, you could just as well reply to the OP saying "Well, people have opinions, no need to discuss. Mods, lock it please." and if that's a thread then, obviously, OP wanted to know and people can discuss things on topic here stating their opinions.

 azreal13 wrote:

And it's even worse with people who say "Can't afford it! Better drink my own piss* Better buy a recast at 50% off the price!" and then spend the saved money on stuff like alcohol or cigarettes.

Honestly, I don't even know where to start with this, it isn't relevant, a valid argument, or... Nope, just going to leave this one hanging.

It was only partially relevant, I admit. It's just that some people often like to justify themselves saying that they won't buy books/movies/games because they can't afford them/are too poor/have too low salary to pay for them while wasting even more money on stuff like alcohol and cigarettes. That's precisely what I call hypocricy.

I guess I just was raised to be better than that. If I can't afford something, I'll save up to get it. I won't pay a thief for a copy made off stolen design. And if I feel that I am not getting the bang for my buck, I just don't buy it and look for a discount/something else.

 SHUPPET wrote:
Wait so it's not ok for us to justify it morally in any way shape or form but it's ok for you to justify this poster as being morally sound in his opinion that it is ok for kids to go it and not adults, that you decided for him is morally fueled, justified by nothing but the ASSUMPTION that the adult has a larger disposable income than the kid, and the strange belief that it's less immoral for the kid to do something than an adult? Regardless of whether they are less knowledgable / expected to do the right thing than an adult, holding the adult accountable for it and refusing to play is kind of a ridiculous stand point if you are morally fine with playing the kid doing the exact same thing. All that aside, where do you think moral less adults come from if not kids that were never held accountable?

If a kid breaks something it'll get scolded and taught otherwise. Same goes for a fight. If an adult does it, he will face harsher punishment as he should've learned not to do such things earlier(like.. when he was a kid).

 SHUPPET wrote:
I also like how you decided all this for him, even though you like the rest of us have no idea hence why I asked him the question and not you ...

Wow, sorry for trying to give my opinion to fuel the conversation, I thought this was Americaa forum thread. Where's Randy when you need him?

 SHUPPET wrote:
Are you sure it's ME who is the one that is too emotionally attached to this debate dude? Lol

I'm not, really. It was you who came into the thread calling people spoiled brats that only want to show off and feel superior making you sound like you held some profound grudge and/or were angry.

I especially would never have a problem with playing against recasts of OOP models. You may technically be "stealing" the original IP, but there is absolutely no possible way that you are eliminating any kind of profit going to GW when dealing with a model they refuse to sell anymore.

It's like my "illegal" download of the 2nd edition Battle Bible for 40K 2nd edition, that has all the rules and all the mechanical stats from every codex. Really? I'm somehow "stealing" from GW, when they have made the active choice to stop making any profit whatsoever off 2nd edition material, starting about 15 years ago? Only the largest White Knight ever would defend that.

Technically recasts are within the same light as selling secondhand miniatures. Neither exchange gives any monetary gain to the parent company, it's just that recasting is a little more dirty-seeming. But both are toxic to the company if you are only interested in the money involved, even though I would gladly buy a secondhand miniature.

 Klerych wrote:
Remember that recasting is still illegal and it's a crime. Some people consider crimes morally wrong and might have moral barriers against playing with someone who is using illegal pieces.

Can you link me to the Dutch law that says it's illegal to buy models from a Chinese recaster?

Isn't continuing to play with the young person doing it, just the opposite of scolding them or teaching them that it's morally wrong?
At best, you are allowing yourself to draw a very very thin line between grey and black, a line that you did not allow anyone else to draw based on their own ethical perspective.

The post didn't seem at all morally influenced to me based on that fact, regardless I did even state that I was asking him for an answer because all I had was speculation. Further speculation as to the meaning, delivered as though it was an informed answer, seems nothing more than a way to further your own standpoint, one that was already clear and that you inadvertently only served to make weaker with moral exceptions that you decided are ok but did not allow for the rest of us the same luxury of having any sort of exceptions to the ethics of the situation at all.

Yes I'd love to play them. I'm willing to play against proxies, Lego stand-ins, and all that jazz. Anything that gets the game more populated.

The one exception is if they're trying to do it to run an unbound 10 riptide list or something like that. :p

I would only allow recasts of OOP models. You are not stealing what's being refused to be sold, especially when the material in question is gaming pawns. You are not reproducing Ming vases to sell for huge sums of money.

Recasting current models is stealing, as there are legitimate ways to get unlimited amounts of the models.

But there should be no reason to only allow the few people who originally bought some random Squat figure that was never produced in any kind of large quantity to have the only fun painting and playing with that figure.

It's the same as distributing the rules for games that are out of production. The only reason a company like GW would stop us from doing something like that is sheer pettiness, as it would literally do nothing but get their name out there even more and let more people enjoy some part of their IP, but with absolutely no work on their part with items they have no interest in supporting any more.

Kangodo wrote:

 Klerych wrote:
Remember that recasting is still illegal and it's a crime. Some people consider crimes morally wrong and might have moral barriers against playing with someone who is using illegal pieces.

Can you link me to the Dutch law that says it's illegal to buy models from a Chinese recaster?

Never said that buying recasts is illegal. I said that being the one that recasts and sells is. :-)

 AegisGrimm wrote:
I especially would never have a problem with playing against recasts of OOP models. You may technically be "stealing" the original IP, but there is absolutely no possible way that you are eliminating any kind of profit going to GW when dealing with a model they refuse to sell anymore.

It's like my "illegal" download of the 2nd edition Battle Bible for 40K 2nd edition, that has all the rules and all the mechanical stats from every codex. Really? I'm somehow "stealing" from GW, when they have made the active choice to stop making any profit whatsoever off 2nd edition material, starting about 15 years ago? Only the largest White Knight ever would defend that.

Well, I guess it's a lot different with discontinued stuff that no longer brings any profit to the owner of the IP and I don't think that anyone stated otherwise in this thread. :-)

 AegisGrimm wrote:
Technically recasts are within the same light as selling secondhand miniatures. Neither exchange gives any monetary gain to the parent company, it's just that recasting is a little more dirty-seeming. But both are toxic to the company if you are only interested in the money involved, even though I would gladly buy a secondhand miniature.

I don't think you are right here. A second hand miniature has been purchased from GW in the first place either directly or by the LGS owner who sold it further. Recasts on the other hand were never bought from GW in the first place, there's a huge difference in my opinion.

It's easiest explained on the book example. You write a book, someone buys one, sells it further. You got the money for that book. Few books sold, few books sold further on the market later. Then you have this situation: you wrote a book, someone bought it, then photocopied it and started selling at half the price of your book despite you being the one who wrote it and the one who holds the rights to sell it. Now he makes profit off your work with almost no effort put in as you did all the development, research, quality control, spell checking and writing, not to mention time spent on it. Every book sold that way hurts you because at least some of those books would've been bought from you, so you're looking at pretty real losses, even if they're not physical.

Why do people care so much about corporations? Especially about a corporation that views it's own fanbase with disdain and thinks our favorite part of the hobby is buying things? Honestly, it's GW's own fault if people see counterfeits as appealing as they do.

I don't think you are right here. A second hand miniature has been purchased from GW in the first place either directly or by the LGS owner who sold it further. Recasts on the other hand were never bought from GW in the first place, there's a huge difference in my opinion.

That's why I support in only for OOP models.

In not producing something any more, GW has absolved themselves of any interest in making any more money off of the material. So if they get pissed because someone makes recasts of it, I guess they should have kept selling it if they are so worried about the money.

Where do you draw the line between recasting say 60 space hulk Genestealers for your army? GW no longer stocks them and it's quite likely someone would prefer their aesthetics, however GW does stock a current option for the model to be used in games of 40k, and you just denied them the sale of 60 quite costly miniatures, that you will still be using for the exact same purpose and effect that they design and sell current Genestealer stock for?


Assuming for a second GW was a company fair to it's customers that everyone is satisfied with, I don't think I have an opinion on this yet. Asking because I'm genuinely curious once again.

What if I want to recast something from Necromunda or Epic? Those models have no modern equivalents to replace something original and hard to obtain. Or Squats? Or some Zoats? Or a Space Marine with a shuriken catapult or autocannon from Rogue Trader?

That's my line of thinking.

I don't know, that's why I'm asking. I'm not pushing forth an opinion with that post as I don't have one yet, I'm merely asking you and others who feel that recasting OOP is ok but recasting regular models is less ethical, where do you draw the line?

 Paradigm wrote:
To be honest, I'd have no issue with it. I appreciate how expensive this hobby can be, and if someone has found a cheaper way to have fun with it then all power to them. I probably wouldn't buy them myself, but I'd not stop anyone from using them.

When it comes down to it, my policy with models/rules/counts-as/anything game related is 'if you're a decent guy, then anything goes. If you're a git, feth off'.

I agree honestly I'm always hoping for more players so if someone finds a cheaper way to play then power to them and it just comes down to the player. If hes a piece of gak then why bother playing with him.

 SHUPPET wrote:
I don't know, that's why I'm asking. I'm not pushing forth an opinion with that post as I don't have one yet, I'm merely asking you and others who feel that recasting OOP is ok but recasting regular models is less ethical, where do you draw the line?

Well, the location of that line is of course purely subjective, but I would mark it between "models for discontinued games" such as Necromunda and "models for limited supply products" that would contain Space Hulk and Dreadfleet once it's sold out. The latter are more like limited run collector things and were supposed to be... limited(derp) while the former just got discontinued because of lack of interest in the game from players and/or the company. Again, purely subjective but I think it's a distinction as reasonable as any.

Its a expensive hobby, if you want to recast go ahead, everyone needs to save a bit here's and there at some times, and gw is so expensive.

Your choice do your hobby as yypu wish

If it was GW stuff, yes. Anything else, no.

So would the "no" crowd play against this:



It's somewhere between a resculpt of an unreleased GW model and could be seen as a recast (but I think it's superior to the current GW offering). Would that model be an issue?

 Klerych wrote:

 SHUPPET wrote:
I don't know, that's why I'm asking. I'm not pushing forth an opinion with that post as I don't have one yet, I'm merely asking you and others who feel that recasting OOP is ok but recasting regular models is less ethical, where do you draw the line?

Well, the location of that line is of course purely subjective, but I would mark it between "models for discontinued games" such as Necromunda and "models for limited supply products" that would contain Space Hulk and Dreadfleet once it's sold out. The latter are more like limited run collector things and were supposed to be... limited(derp) while the former just got discontinued because of lack of interest in the game from players and/or the company. Again, purely subjective but I think it's a distinction as reasonable as any.

Ok but things that were not intended to be collectors edition E.G slightly different kits like the second latest release of Stealers that they since changed the aesthetics a little and I happen to prefer the older version and want to buy some and run them in my army, but this is a service not provided by GW but is however provided by a recaster. Where does the line lay?

Nothing wrong with recasts, when they are better then the original lol. Hell I do have around 5k of chaos dwarf forgeworld style and like 10k ogres alone. If they are recasts no one ever knew yet who knows maybe they are maybe they aren't tho.

But casting is not to cheap unless you want 50+ that is. First 6 you make cost more then buying more. I made some of my own models "alot bigger then 28mm" and it cheaper to make a new one then recast after 5+ it pays off tho.

Plus I like my stuff in resign not plastic or metal.

This is an easy question when you live in a country that allows "a few" copies for personal use or to give to close family and friends So I would not care if I saw anyone use recasts. If they used recasts that they bought from a 3rd party it would be different legally, but it is not my place to suspect or investigate how someone acquired their models.

(For the rest of you under Swedish jurisdiction: Lag 1960:729, Kap 2, 12 §)

 TheKbob wrote:
So would the "no" crowd play against this:

Spoiler:

It's somewhere between a resculpt of an unreleased GW model and could be seen as a recast (but I think it's superior to the current GW offering). Would that model be an issue?

This is different because it's a case of making a new model that uses some copied GW components, not just recasting existing GW kits because you're too cheap to buy the real ones.

 Peregrine wrote:


This is different because it's a case of making a new model that uses some copied GW components, not just recasting existing GW kits because you're too cheap to buy the real ones.

Those are cheaper.

And "cheap" is a relative term. More like frugal as $15 aged jetbike model is dumb.

I am against piracy and selling illegally copied models. If they recast the models themselves for their own use then I do not care as they are copying their own property (the originally purchased models).

 Peregrine wrote:

 TheKbob wrote:
So would the "no" crowd play against this:

Spoiler:

It's somewhere between a resculpt of an unreleased GW model and could be seen as a recast (but I think it's superior to the current GW offering). Would that model be an issue?

This is different because it's a case of making a new model that uses some copied GW components, not just recasting existing GW kits because you're too cheap to buy the real ones.

Making the assumption that people buy recasts solely on price.

A dangerous assumption from what I've read.

Perhaps you should buy some Peregrine, perhaps you wouldn't be so cross at GW then?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Tressel wrote:
I am against piracy and selling illegally copied models. If they recast the models themselves for their own use then I do not care as they are copying their own property (the originally purchased models).

Please explain how this is different?

Tressel wrote:
I am against piracy and selling illegally copied models. If they recast the models themselves for their own use then I do not care as they are copying their own property (the originally purchased models).

So, if I buy a Riptide and use the sprues to cast a second, giving me two Riptides but paying GW for only one, that's ok?

What if I outsource the work of actually re-casting the second one, say to China, how does that then become not ok?


As for the original question; I have no problems with it.

 azreal13 wrote:


Making the assumption that people buy recasts solely on price.

A dangerous assumption from what I've read.

Perhaps you should buy some Peregrine, perhaps you wouldn't be so cross at GW then?

I've seen a recast Tyranid Hierophant and the caster made the model with brass rods built into the molds so the model could be free standing and never sag to it's weight or from heat damage. I could easily see paying more for such a product as it's superior to the one Forgeworld makes.

So there's an example of what I think Azreal is alluding towards.

I supply my friends with Forgeworld recasts myself so of course I would

Depends. If someone is recasting OOP minis, maybe, depending on their reason.

If they are recasting, or buying known fakes, of current minis, no matter what company they are from, is wrong. If people want to save money then make scratch builds or count as forces. Recasting is illegal and wrong. Whatever GW may have done two wrongs don't make a right. It's not "sticking it to the man", it's being cheap and is illegal and I won't support it. Don't agree with the pricing or whatever? Don't buy it.

 SHUPPET wrote:

 Yonan wrote:

 Hivefleet Oblivion wrote:
Making up a justification that GW treats its customers with 'spite'? really?

If you don't think GW treats their players poorly, perhaps you haven't dealt with them raising prices by 40+% in your country and then putting ridiculous restrictions on merchants in other nations to prevent you from ordering there. I'd call that spiteful, and damn straight I'll shaft 'em back for it.

Exalted. We pay far more than we should. And it's higher than 40% even after factoring in exchange rates

The stupidity of this argument is so manifest that it's hardly worth dealing with, but all the same...

you're complaining about GW charging too much money for something, which they spent money designing, it's theirs. Then because they're charging 40% too much in your entitled mind, you're paying money to someone else for a design they stole.

In other words, you'd rather support a crook than a price-gouger.

my position, don't particularly like recasts, but I understand why people use them and I wouldn't particularly condemn them. Except when they use the aforementioned intellectually and morally bankrupt argument of entitlement: that I deserve to have my toys at whatever price, and because GW prices are too high, it's better to support thieves.

Aren't allot of other things, like electronics and computer games, much more expensive in Australia? Assassins creed unity is 20% more than in the UK. 99 au$, which is £55. £45 in the UK. Makes me think there is some reason behind it than just "we'll charge them more"

 NecronLord3 wrote:
The recasts I own are better than what GW/FW is producing for three times the price. I can't fault anyone for choosing a superior product over an inferior one, and I also challenge anyone to prove any of my models are recasts.

You just confessed. Proof given.

I don't think it's written as a "morally argument of entitlement".
It's simply making a statement: I buy recast because GW is too expensive.

If GW-models had decent prices, I would buy them. Even if recasts were still cheaper.
I don't think Imperial Knights are really worth 110 euro, so I try to get them for less.
I surely disagree that their codex is worth 33 euro. I only want the rules so I can play them.

Can we please stop with this legal/moral off-topic discussion?
It's clear that people don't give a gak about the legality or morality.
If I want to see a movie, I will download it.
If I want to read the rules, I will download it.
And if I want a model way cheaper, I will buy recasts.
No amount of arguing on a forum will ever change that.

For some perspective on the "GW is too expensive!" argument...

There's a pet breeding game on the 'net called Aywas.

Aywas has a very cunning business model. Anyone can breed their pets. However, if you want anything other than a carbon copy of the parent, you have to buy a breeding token.

If you want some edits to the artwork, for example a reposed tail, you need a special breeding token. Oh, and you need to find someone to actually alter the artwork for you.

Special breeding tokens go for $70 US. Essentially, you are paying seventy U.S. dollars to upload your own artwork.

Now tell me that $80 for a plastic model kit that's well designed by a professional artisan is too expensive.

You've just cited the business model GW seems to be pursuing!

In fairness though, things ultimately cost what people are prepared to spend. So, if enough people are willing to pay $70 a time for the whole thing to be viable, more power to them.

I will not be one of them.

The existence of recasters, or widespread piracy of any sort in any other industry, is generally indicative of a disconnect between the customer base and the price/quality of the product on offer, which would suggest GW have overstepped the mark in that regard.

 Klerych wrote:

Davor wrote:
Oh my a few White Knights in here. Anyone who is claiming it is wrong to use/buy recasts (not talking about making recasts and selling them) is wrong, you telling me you NEVER EVER ONCE downloaded a GW book? Never downloaded a song or movie? A video game?

All I will say is HYPOCRIT.

Yeah! Why not go steal someone's car? I mean.. I already have downloaded a book and pirated a game, so now I am excused in further law violations and it's perfectly okay and justified! And if I infringed someone's copyright already, why not go for more? All I'm saying that if one crime is not wrong, then maybe another one isn't either, right?

See the flaw yet? It's like saying "how can you claim that killing is wrong if you already killed someone before?" so what, killing people is okay now that you have done it before..? Yes, one can call it wrong even if he has done it, that's not being a hypocrite. I'd be a hypocrite if I said that it's wrong and that I don't do it while actually doing it.

Even though I say that it's morally wrong and I would try to convince someone to stop buying recasts, it doesn't actually mean that I can't understand his reasons. Maybe he's too poor and yet he wants to play it without saving up for one army over the year's course and buy crappily painted/mistreated models off eBay. I won't bash him, but I will never say that it's okay. A starving person stealing bread from a rich guy will still be wrong to do so and it will be at best "necessary evil" and he should be ashamed of doing so, even if it was a matter of survival. I would never accept hearing that it's perfectly okay for him to do so in his situation.

If someone's too poor to start an army but really wants to, I will not bash him for buying recasts, but if he ever brags about it or feels that it's alright to buy recasts and there's nothing wrong about it I will disagree with him. Again - no theft(and copyright/IP infringement are a theft) is -ever- okay nor justified, no matter how little love you have for the one you steal from and buying from those guys is promoting theft as they make profit off someone else's work without his consent.

Huh, what? Where did I say it was wrong? Where did I say it was ok? All I said was some white knights are claiming to its wrong, and I am calling them out that they never done this themselves.

Where do you get I am saying it's ok to kill people or what ever you are trying to prove? How can someone say it's wrong, but yet they have done the same thing in the past?

Kangodo wrote:

Can we please stop with this legal/moral off-topic discussion?

It fundamentally IS a legal and moral choice. How can it possibly be anything else?

If buying counterfeits is as attractive as it is for a lot of people then is it the fault of the consumer for wanting to save money or the fault of GW for their horrible prices? I don't think we owe anything to corporations. If anything, they owe it to us to make their genuine products more appealing than the fakes if they want to stay in business. That's how a free market works.

 azreal13 wrote:
You've just cited the business model GW seems to be pursuing!

In fairness though, things ultimately cost what people are prepared to spend. So, if enough people are willing to pay $70 a time for the whole thing to be viable, more power to them.

I will not be one of them.

The existence of recasters, or widespread piracy of any sort in any other industry, is generally indicative of a disconnect between the customer base and the price/quality of the product on offer, which would suggest GW have overstepped the mark in that regard.

No, it's an indication that people place no value on intellectual property and when you look at the number of people still pirating books and music, despite the price drops and availability in multiple formats, that some people will always chose free over legal.

 azreal13 wrote:
existence of recasters, or widespread piracy of any sort in any other industry, is generally indicative of a disconnect between the customer base and the price/quality of the product on offer, which would suggest GW have overstepped the mark in that regard.

No, the existence of piracy is indicative that the capability exists to copy a product and sell it for less/free.

And that is all that it indicates.

So much self deception in this thread. Pirating GW/FW is no different morally from pirating any other mini manufacturer. The recasters don't give one feth about GW's policies, or pricing, or rules imbalance. They recast GW because that's what sells. If you think for one solitary second that they wouldn't do the same to Privateer Press or Victoria Miniatures or anyone else then you are very very wrong.

Seriously people, if you must buy your knock offs then do so, but stop pretending that you're taking some sort of stand against Big Bad GW by doing so.

 TheCustomLime wrote:
If buying counterfeits is as attractive as it is for a lot of people then is it the fault of the consumer for wanting to save money or the fault of GW for their horrible prices? I don't think we owe anything to corporations. If anything, they owe it to us to make their genuine products more appealing than the fakes if they want to stay in business. That's how a free market works.

That's simply not true. Fakers will always be cheaper than the real thing. They have no intellectual costs and have another business to build there market. It's not about who owes who what. Every country has IP laws for a reason. The free market lets other companies develop competing products, not people make fakes. Fundamentally the market needs protections to encourage innovation. Without IP protection no one will have a guarantee of being able to profit from the work so why bother innovating?

 Steve steveson wrote:

 azreal13 wrote:
You've just cited the business model GW seems to be pursuing!

In fairness though, things ultimately cost what people are prepared to spend. So, if enough people are willing to pay $70 a time for the whole thing to be viable, more power to them.

I will not be one of them.

The existence of recasters, or widespread piracy of any sort in any other industry, is generally indicative of a disconnect between the customer base and the price/quality of the product on offer, which would suggest GW have overstepped the mark in that regard.

No, it's an indication that people place no value on intellectual property and when you look at the number of people still pirating books and music, despite the price drops and availability in multiple formats, that some people will always chose free over legal.

I think Apple iTunes want a word with you. If all those people wanted free, how come iTunes have made Billions?

 TheCustomLime wrote:
If buying counterfeits is as attractive as it is for a lot of people then is it the fault of the consumer for wanting to save money or the fault of GW for their horrible prices? I don't think we owe anything to corporations. If anything, they owe it to us to make their genuine products more appealing than the fakes if they want to stay in business. That's how a free market works.

That's a fair point, I've often seen consumer affairs programs on the TV which will talk about counterfeit shoes, handbags etc. There is always inevitably a mini "how to" guide designed to highlight the most obvious way of spotting if your handbag is fake, and these guides inevitably revolve around quality of workmanship and materials.

From my understanding, and, I strongly suspect, the ownership of some large FW resin kits whose provenance is less than stellar, the reverse can often be applied to GW model recasts.

That's a huge deal for a company, and one they really should, you'd feel, address strongly and in the most urgent terms, but as I guess the majority of recasts are bought online, maybe they just don't know about it.

Klerych wrote:
Yeah! Why not go steal someone's car? I mean.. I already have downloaded a book and pirated a game, so now I am excused in further law violations and it's perfectly okay and justified! And if I infringed someone's copyright already, why not go for more? All I'm saying that if one crime is not wrong, then maybe another one isn't either, right?

See the flaw yet?

Yes, it is in your analogy.

A more accurate automotive analogy would be to ask if it is ok to pull molds of the body panels and then "build" your own car.

To do such is perfectly legal. In fact there is an entire industry built around it. They are called "Kit Cars" or "Repli-cars".

The only time this becomes illegal is of someone tries to pass of the copy as an authentic original.

klerych wrote:
[color=red] Remember that recasting is still illegal and it's still a crime.

No, it is not. One can recast to their hearts contentment without breaking the law.

The crime is attempting to profit off of said recasting by passing them off as authentic.

Matter of fact, one could recast the models and sell them as "replicas" and the worst thing that could happen is GW would file an injunction to cease and desist, then file for civil damages.

A crime would be to fraudulently pass off a copy as an original.

Selling replicas is a civil matter and while they have good lawyers and a strong IP, such lawsuits are not a sure win for gw as recent cases have shown.

Davor wrote:

 Steve steveson wrote:

 azreal13 wrote:
You've just cited the business model GW seems to be pursuing!

In fairness though, things ultimately cost what people are prepared to spend. So, if enough people are willing to pay $70 a time for the whole thing to be viable, more power to them.

I will not be one of them.

The existence of recasters, or widespread piracy of any sort in any other industry, is generally indicative of a disconnect between the customer base and the price/quality of the product on offer, which would suggest GW have overstepped the mark in that regard.

No, it's an indication that people place no value on intellectual property and when you look at the number of people still pirating books and music, despite the price drops and availability in multiple formats, that some people will always chose free over legal.

I think Apple iTunes want a word with you. If all those people wanted free, how come iTunes have made Billions?

What on earth are you talking about? I'm aware of itunes thank you. But despite services such as that music piracy still exists. That's my whole point. I didn't say everyone pirates, I said SOME.

 azreal13 wrote:


The existence of recasters, or widespread piracy of any sort in any other industry, is generally indicative of a disconnect between the customer base and the price/quality of the product on offer, which would suggest GW have overstepped the mark in that regard.

No. The existence of piracy is generally a reflection of the fact that a product is desirable and that dodgy people can make a quick buck. Everything is counterfeited, VW brake parts, baby milk, Lego, Levi's, Beats, any/all DVDs, wines, viagra, olive oil, salmon. Remember the kids poisoned with fake baby milk containing melamine?


You're distorting the argument to make it look like GW are being counterfeited because they're bad and after a quick buck. The reality is it's the counterfeiters who are thieves, after a quick buck.

 ashcroft wrote:

 azreal13 wrote:
existence of recasters, or widespread piracy of any sort in any other industry, is generally indicative of a disconnect between the customer base and the price/quality of the product on offer, which would suggest GW have overstepped the mark in that regard.

No, the existence of piracy is indicative that the capability exists to copy a product and sell it for less/free.

And that is all that it indicates.

So much self deception in this thread. Pirating GW/FW is no different morally from pirating any other mini manufacturer. The recasters don't give one feth about GW's policies, or pricing, or rules imbalance. They recast GW because that's what sells. If you think for one solitary second that they wouldn't do the same to Privateer Press or Victoria Miniatures or anyone else then you are very very wrong.

Seriously people, if you must buy your knock offs then do so, but stop pretending that you're taking some sort of stand against Big Bad GW by doing so.

Except with the rise in the accessibility and drop in price of entertainment media via the likes of Netflix and iTunes, the evidence is that piracy has actually dropped, supporting my point and refuting yours.

Also, yes, the recasters recast GW because that's what sells.

Stopped to consider the reasons underlying why the other stuff doesn't?

 Captain Avatar wrote:

Klerych wrote:
Yeah! Why not go steal someone's car? I mean.. I already have downloaded a book and pirated a game, so now I am excused in further law violations and it's perfectly okay and justified! And if I infringed someone's copyright already, why not go for more? All I'm saying that if one crime is not wrong, then maybe another one isn't either, right?

See the flaw yet?

Yes, it is in your analogy.

A more accurate auto motive analogy would be to ask if it is ok to pull molds of the body panels and then "build" your own car.

To do such is perfectly legal. In fact there is an entire industry built around it. They are called "Kit Cars" or "Repli-cars".

No. Most car manufactures either licence or tolerate replica/lookalike kits. Some don't:

http://m.autoblog.com/2012/03/23/daimler-crushes-unauthorized-mercedes-benz-300-sl-body/

 Hivefleet Oblivion wrote:

 azreal13 wrote:


The existence of recasters, or widespread piracy of any sort in any other industry, is generally indicative of a disconnect between the customer base and the price/quality of the product on offer, which would suggest GW have overstepped the mark in that regard.

No. The existence of piracy is generally a reflection of the fact that a product is desirable and that dodgy people can make a quick buck. Everything is counterfeited, VW brake parts, baby milk, Lego, Levi's, Beats, any/all DVDs, wines, viagra, olive oil, salmon. Remember the kids poisoned with fake baby milk containing melamine?


You're distorting the argument to make it look like GW are being counterfeited because they're bad and after a quick buck. The reality is it's the counterfeiters who are thieves, after a quick buck.

Except the quick buck cannot be made without someone willing to purchase.

That person needs to be motivated to do so, and yes, frequently the price will be enough. But in the case of GW models, we seem to have multiple factors, not only price, but actually improved quality and also discontent.

My contention that if there were more satisfied customers who could purchase kits at a high standard of QC at what enough felt was a reasonable price, then the issue of piracy resolves itself.

Of course, you'll always get some counter-culture hipsters "sticking it to the man" but ultimately, studies of the changes in consumer behaviour in the entertainment industry are showing that if the product is right, people are happy to pay what they perceive to be a fair price for legal product.

Apathy is a powerful thing, the easiest way to stamp out piracy is to make it not worth the effort for the majority.

 azreal13 wrote:
[Except with the rise in the accessibility and drop in price of entertainment media via the likes of Netflix and iTunes, the evidence is that piracy has actually dropped, supporting my point and refuting yours.

Piracy has only dropped in the sense that it's fallen off the news media radar for now, and the steps taken to restrict access to pirated material has been effective only in (perhaps) dissuading the casual browser. I could still lay my hands on just about any digital media product, for free, within a day or so of it's release. Price drops have helped perhaps, but no price will ever be able to compete with Free and so piracy will continue.

Also, yes, the recasters recast GW because that's what sells.

Stopped to consider the reasons underlying why the other stuff doesn't?

For the same reason that World of Warcraft has more goldsellers than any other MMO. More players = more potential customers.

But there has to be more to it.

Surely you can sell enough Warmachine to make money? It's not like there's a massive investment, hell, you could list the box on your recaster website and only go out and get it if someone ordered it.

With such low risk, low level up front investment, and, while agreed smaller, an established worldwide playing community, it should be worth it, surely?

Assuming that players are only buying recast product on the basis of cost, and no other reason, of course.

Steve steveson wrote:
That's simply not true. Fakers will always be cheaper than the real thing. They have no intellectual costs and have another business to build there market. It's not about who owes who what. Every country has IP laws for a reason. The free market lets other companies develop competing products, not people make fakes. Fundamentally the market needs protections to encourage innovation. Without IP protection no one will have a guarantee of being able to profit from the work so why bother innovating?

Source please.

It has been pretty much proven that "fakers" can not profitably undercut the manufacuter's price unless the company is overcharging by a fair margin. It is simply a matter of the scale of production.

Also, design and prototyping make up about a penny of the sale price of most models. Look at who gets paid what and what tools are available for prototyping and you will see that HW staff "artists" and designers make a middle class wage and that those teams are quite small.

Last, even the best equipped knock off companies can't match gw's facilities......with one exception.

The exception is for the "unauthorized" model producers that GW created themselves by farming out their production to china while still claiming everything was Nottingham made.

In that case, I view it as karma. For years, GW defrauded their customers by selling cheap Chinese plastics as expensive Nottingham pieces. Now those same Chinese manufacturers are still producing and selling at the cost GW should be charging all along.

Thats right the price they should be charging because they are producing GW models with GW molds and with GW methods. The price difference between GW and thier former Chinese factories should be pennies but due to GW's price gouging the chinese can operate profitably at 50% of the price.

 azreal13 wrote:
...ultimately, studies of the changes in consumer behaviour in the entertainment industry are showing that if the product is right, people are happy to pay what they perceive to be a fair price for legal product.

I'll leave it here to avoid a repetitive to-and-fro.

Did parents buy lethal powdered baby milk because breast milk is not available for a fair price?

Criminals will do whatever they can to sell their product. Blaming legit companies, who pay taxes, minimum wage, for piracy is not a morally-justifiable position.

 Captain Avatar wrote:

It has been pretty much proven that "fakers" can not profitably undercut the manufacuter's price unless the company is overcharging by a fair margin. It is simply a matter of the scale of production.

Also, design and prototyping make up about a penny of the sale price of most models.

Says a source you just made up.

Hivefleet Oblivion wrote:

 Captain Avatar wrote:

It has been pretty much proven that "fakers" can not profitably undercut the manufacuter's price unless the company is overcharging by a fair margin. It is simply a matter of the scale of production.

Also, design and prototyping make up about a penny of the sale price of most models.

Says a source you just made up.

Nope, data extrapolated from GW financials.

 Hivefleet Oblivion wrote:

 azreal13 wrote:
...ultimately, studies of the changes in consumer behaviour in the entertainment industry are showing that if the product is right, people are happy to pay what they perceive to be a fair price for legal product.

I'll leave it here to avoid a repetitive to-and-fro.

Did parents buy lethal powdered baby milk because breast milk is not available for a fair price?

Criminals will do whatever they can to sell their product. Blaming legit companies, who pay taxes, minimum wage, for piracy is not a morally-justifiable position.

Yeah, I'm not sure selling rat poison as baby milk, or whatever the details were, or any other product, when the consumer is ignorant of the fact is really comparable to people openly selling a reproduction/counterfeit at a substantially discounted price to consumers who, in the main, know what they're buying.

There's no deception in the latter, at least none between vendor and consumer.

 azreal13 wrote:
Surely you can sell enough Warmachine to make money?

Sure, of course you could probably make money on Warmachine stuff. But it's a question of opportunity cost, if you're spending your time on Warmachine recasts you're not spending that time making GW recasts. And GW simply has a bigger market share and therefore a larger number of potential customers.

 Captain Avatar wrote:
It has been pretty much proven that "fakers" can not profitably undercut the manufacuter's price unless the company is overcharging by a fair margin.

Sigh. It really hasn't been proven, because there is no such thing as "overcharging" in this context. There is no "fair" price for a 40k model, the price is simply what GW feels like charging. The fact that you wish the prices were lower does not mean that they're too high in some objective sense.

Also, design and prototyping make up about a penny of the sale price of most models. Look at who gets paid what and what tools are available for prototyping and you will see that HW staff "artists" and designers make a middle class wage and that those teams are quite small.

The point is that it's a huge up-front investment, even if the per-model cost is small. If recasters had to do all that work before making a new kit they'd be out of business overnight. The only reason they can make a profit selling at their current prices is that all they have to do to start production of a new kit is buy one from GW and make some molds from it.

For years, GW defrauded their customers by selling cheap Chinese plastics as expensive Nottingham pieces.

Did GW ever advertise where the models were produced? Because I don't remember seeing any claims about that.

Thats right the price they should be charging because they are producing GW models with GW molds and with GW methods. The price difference between GW and thier former Chinese factories should be pennies but due to GW's price gouging the chinese can operate profitably at 50% of the price.

First, no, price gouging does not exist for gaming miniatures. Please stop making this absurd claim that "I want it to be cheaper" is the equivalent of increasing bottled water prices 100000% when a natural disaster hits.

Second, you're still ignoring all of the other costs GW has to pay. The cost of a model kit includes a lot more than just the raw materials and manufacturing cost, and those Chinese factories avoid paying those costs by stealing GW's work. You wouldn't be getting those kits at the same price if the Chinese factory had to design their own kits (including the rules to use them), advertise them, and back them with GW's level of customer service.

 Peregrine wrote:

 azreal13 wrote:
Surely you can sell enough Warmachine to make money?

Sure, of course you could probably make money on Warmachine stuff. But it's a question of opportunity cost, if you're spending your time on Warmachine recasts you're not spending that time making GW recasts. And GW simply has a bigger market share and therefore a larger number of potential customers.

Unless you're under the (I strongly suspect) mistaken impression that anyone recasting is working flat out, all the time, with more orders than they can handle, then there is no opportunity cost, just another order.

 Captain Avatar wrote:
And lastly, the practice of price gouging most certainly does exist on luxury items, just doing such is not a prosecute-able offense.

No, it really doesn't, you just don't understand what price gouging is. Price gouging refers to taking advantage of exceptional but temporary need to charge significantly more than the usual price for an essential product. For example, doubling the prices of bottled water when a natural disaster hits and contaminates the local water supply is price gouging. The normal market value of the water isn't that high, you're just taking advantage of the fact that nobody has any option besides paying your inflated prices. Even at $100 a bottle you have to buy it because otherwise you die of dehydration or take your chances with contaminated water. This can't happen with 40k models for two reasons: there's no unusual situation to drive up prices, and it's a luxury product that you can just decline to buy if the prices get too high.

Funny, in the Washington Redskins thread weren't you one of the people arguing that the loss of copyright protection was a blow "for" the free market?

No, I haven't participated in that thread at all. Please don't try to tie me to someone else's argument.

They were never intended to be used as a means by which corporations create mini-monopolies.

...

Are you serious? Do you actually have any clue what a monopoly is? Let me give you a hint: GW being the only company that can produce space marines for 40k is not a monopoly.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 azreal13 wrote:
Unless you're under the (I strongly suspect) mistaken impression that anyone recasting is working flat out, all the time, with more orders than they can handle, then there is no opportunity cost, just another order.

They might not be working flat out, but how much more time do they have? And remember that doing Warmachine recasts requires a certain minimum time commitment, both to make the molds and initial stock, and to finish all of the orders in a reasonable amount of time so that you don't lose all of your customers. If the market for Warmachine recasts is small (primarily because the market for Warmachine in general is small compared to GW) then it's a case of diminishing returns compared to focusing on your profitable GW recasts.

My oh my. Looks like people are willing to even defend GW`s pricing policy if that lets them feel like they are on a moral high horse.

Me? I played against someone with a recast FW avatar and 3 hornets just the other day. I know for a fact that person hasn't pirated a PC game ever since Steam became a thing. People will pay what they feel is a fair price even if they could get it for free. And they will pirate it if they feel the price is unfair.

 Peregrine wrote:

 azreal13 wrote:
Unless you're under the (I strongly suspect) mistaken impression that anyone recasting is working flat out, all the time, with more orders than they can handle, then there is no opportunity cost, just another order.

They might not be working flat out, but how much more time do they have? And remember that doing Warmachine recasts requires a certain minimum time commitment, both to make the molds and initial stock, and to finish all of the orders in a reasonable amount of time so that you don't lose all of your customers. If the market for Warmachine recasts is small (primarily because the market for Warmachine in general is small compared to GW) then it's a case of diminishing returns compared to focusing on your profitable GW recasts.

Yeah...no.

Sorry, but do you have the impression that Beijing is littered with massive factories churning out nothing but knock off Gw product?

 TheCustomLime wrote:
I wouldn't care. I'm not GW legal and it is none of my business where he got his models. Unless he stole them from another player, of course.

This.

Only other thing is if it looks atrocious.

I could care less if they are GW models or not as long as they look the part and the person put some time into them. Saying "I won't play against those, they are not official" to recasts, is about the same as a special build from scratch model. If someone has the skills to build, cast, or recast nice looking models, good for them.

 azreal13 wrote:
Sorry, but do you have the impression that Beijing is littered with massive factories churning out nothing but knock off Gw product?

No, of course not. But what does that have to do with the opportunity cost of making non-GW models?

 azreal13 wrote:
Surely you can sell enough Warmachine to make money? It's not like there's a massive investment, hell, you could list the box on your recaster website and only go out and get it if someone ordered it.

With such low risk, low level up front investment, and, while agreed smaller, an established worldwide playing community, it should be worth it, surely?

Why bother? TTG is a niche market... why waste time and effort on a niche of that niche?

Assuming that players are only buying recast product on the basis of cost, and no other reason, of course.

The substantial hatedom that follows GW does, I imagine, make them more attractive to recasters. In any form of piracy the big guys are always seen as fair game, and smaller 'friendlier' companies may have a more loyal (and less hypocritical) fanbase that will support them regardless.

But that is, I suspect, a statistically insignificant factor. An individual may make the decision to pirate or not to pirate based on conscience, but the internet has no conscience and will take whatever is Free, or cheap.

 lord_blackfang wrote:
My oh my. Looks like people are willing to even defend GW`s pricing policy if that lets them feel like they are on a moral high horse.

Who said anything about defending it? Arguing that it's not price gouging is not the same thing as defending it, you can have a pricing policy that is bad business even if it isn't price gouging. GW's prices are arguably too high, but if you don't like it just stop buying. Whining about how expensive everything is doesn't justify stealing it.

And they will pirate it if they feel the price is unfair.

And for a lot of people "unfair" is "anything above $0". Stop trying to turn this into some bizarre moral high ground where piracy is just a statement about fairness. It isn't, it's simply a decision that you'd rather steal something than not have it.

 Peregrine wrote:

 azreal13 wrote:
Sorry, but do you have the impression that Beijing is littered with massive factories churning out nothing but knock off Gw product?

No, of course not. But what does that have to do with the opportunity cost of making non-GW models?

Because if you're just someone doing some recasting in your spare time, which is I assume what most recasters are, and today you woke up, and you had 4 orders, and you filled them, then tomorrow you wake up and have 5 orders, one of which is Warmachine, unless you can only fill 4 orders a day, theres no fething opportunity cost!

These aren't factories with production planned months in advance who have to shut down the Centurions machine in order to do a batch of Khador Warjacks.

 azreal13 wrote:
Because if you're just someone doing some recasting in your spare time, which is I assume what most recasters are, and today you woke up, and you had 4 orders, and you filled them, then tomorrow you wake up and have 5 orders, one of which is Warmachine, unless you can only fill 4 orders a day, theres no fething opportunity cost!

Sure there is. You have to get the Warmachine kit and make the molds, two things that require multiple sales just to break even and make you lose money if you just get that one sale. And then you have to make the molds and make the model, something you may or may not be willing to do depending how much time you're willing to invest into your little side business. And then you have to be prepared to spend the time required when you get four orders for Warmachine kits, since you can't afford to have angry customers who didn't get their products. So the question is whether it's really worth it to make that commitment for the occasional Warmachine sale when, even in ideal circumstances, Warmachine stuff will never make up more than a small percentage of your total sales.

In fact, these things are probably bigger factors if recasting is a "spare time" business, since it's a lot harder to reach the break-even point on new molds with such low production volume, and the recaster is a lot more likely to say "screw it, I'm not spending more than 3 hours a day on this, I'm going to go play video games" instead of rearranging their production schedule to accommodate demand for Warmachine kits.

But that's not opportunity cost.

That's just cost

If you're going to throw recognised terms around, please be sure that you know what they mean, and be consistent in their application.

I am curious to see within the next few to 10 years from now, if these people who are up in arms over recasts, if they will be using their 3D printers to be making GW minis or terrain.

Davor wrote:
I am curious to see within the next few to 10 years from now, if these people who are up in arms over recasts, if they will be using their 3D printers to be making GW minis or terrain.

You reckon they'd ever admit to it if they were?

Davor wrote:
I am curious to see within the next few to 10 years from now, if these people who are up in arms over recasts, if they will be using their 3D printers to be making GW minis or terrain.

If and when 3D printing becomes viable - as cheap and ubiquitous as pcs are now, and with the definition to make it possible to duplicate these models - then it will hit the entire mini making industry very hard indeed. I doubt the arguments will change - people will still claim that to pirate GW is justified and to do so to other manufacturers is not.

The fact is that this tech is potentially less threatening to the survival of GW than it is to the little guys who are more reliant on each individual sale.

 ashcroft wrote:

Davor wrote:
I am curious to see within the next few to 10 years from now, if these people who are up in arms over recasts, if they will be using their 3D printers to be making GW minis or terrain.

If and when 3D printing becomes viable - as cheap and ubiquitous as pcs are now, and with the definition to make it possible to duplicate these models - then it will hit the entire mini making industry very hard indeed. I doubt the arguments will change - people will still claim that to pirate GW is justified and to do so to other manufacturers is not.

The fact is that this tech is potentially less threatening to the survival of GW than it is to the little guys who are more reliant on each individual sale.

That's true, but if X-wing shows anything there is a market for miniatures that are fully painted and assembled. So the 3D printer shouldn't be taking away these sales, but I see what you mean it will hurt the little guys. Then again, how is Magic doing? By that I mean can not people just copy and print their cards? Sales are still going strong right? So how is the Magic sceane doing with "printed" cards.

 Klerych wrote:

And it's even worse with people who say "Can't afford it! Better buy a recast at 50% off the price!" and then spend the saved money on stuff like alcohol or cigarettes.

How about twice as many miniatures? I have a strong moral opposition to both of those things. Does this mean I'm going to become an alcoholic smoker because I buy recasts from China? That's a really odd and very baseless assertion.

Davor wrote:
Then again, how is Magic doing? By that I mean can not people just copy and print their cards? Sales are still going strong right? So how is the Magic sceane doing with "printed" cards.

I'm fairly sure that WotC took some measures against that. I mean.. some cards are worth quite some money.

 Frozen Ocean wrote:

 Klerych wrote:

And it's even worse with people who say "Can't afford it! Better buy a recast at 50% off the price!" and then spend the saved money on stuff like alcohol or cigarettes.

How about twice as many miniatures? I have a strong moral opposition to both of those things. Does this mean I'm going to become an alcoholic smoker because I buy recasts from China? That's a really odd and very baseless assertion.

I already covered that when asked what I meant.. 'ere ye go:

 Klerych wrote:
It was only partially relevant, I admit. It's just that some people often like to justify themselves saying that they won't buy books/movies/games because they can't afford them/are too poor/have too low salary to pay for them while wasting even more money on stuff like alcohol and cigarettes. That's precisely what I call hypocricy.

Please make sure to notice the "some" in second sentence.

 azreal13 wrote:
But that's not opportunity cost.

That's just cost

If you're going to throw recognised terms around, please be sure that you know what they mean, and be consistent in their application.

Except it IS opportunity cost because the point is that the "spare time" recaster has a limited budget of time and money for things like buying new kits or making new molds, and that's very important when the choice is between buying a Warmachine kit to recast or buying the latest big GW thing to recast.

 Klerych wrote:

I already covered that when asked what I meant.. 'ere ye go:

 Klerych wrote:
It was only partially relevant, I admit. It's just that some people often like to justify themselves saying that they won't buy books/movies/games because they can't afford them/are too poor/have too low salary to pay for them while wasting even more money on stuff like alcohol and cigarettes. That's precisely what I call hypocricy.

Please make sure to notice the "some" in second sentence.

Yeah, but I really don't think that's at all relevant to pirated miniatures. I'd venture that most (if not all) people who buy recasts are already knee, waist, or neck-deep in the hobby. When the GW store guy tells you to buy multiple Devastator boxes just to make a four-man Lascannon squad, you know something is wrong.

Always angry all the time.

 Peregrine wrote:
And for a lot of people "unfair" is "anything above $0". Stop trying to turn this into some bizarre moral high ground where piracy is just a statement about fairness. It isn't, it's simply a decision that you'd rather steal something than not have it.

People might stop with the moral high ground if you stop acting as if everyone in this thread wants it as cheap as possible.

There will always be piracy, there will always be people buying recasts!
The amount of recast-buying would drastically decrease if Mega Boyz did not cost 50 euro; 35 would be a more realistic price.

 Steve steveson wrote:
It fundamentally IS a legal and moral choice. How can it possibly be anything else?

It's a moral choice in the sense of "Do I play against it or not."
But we don't need a discussion where people are calling eachother criminals because they buy recasts.
That is not the question that the TS asked and it's not a healthy discussion.

I really don't care about the morality thing, I just like miniatures. I'll be getting some recast Death Company as a bits source for a conversion (mad experiments of a heretical Sanguinary Priest, part of the lore for my CSM), among other things.

Kangodo wrote:


The amount of recast-buying would drastically decrease if Mega Boyz did not cost 50 euro; 35 would be a more realistic price.

This. If GW models were more realistically priced third party recasters wouldn't be able to undersell GW by more than a couple bucks and at that point people would go to GW for thier quality.
For the same price, I'd much rather have two pretty good quality riptides from china than one very good quality riptide from GW. However, if I was only saving 5-10$ by buying the chinese recast I'd stick with GW. The only reason this problem exists is because of the unrealistic markup on GW plastic.

 Hivefleet Oblivion wrote:

 SHUPPET wrote:

 Yonan wrote:

 Hivefleet Oblivion wrote:
Making up a justification that GW treats its customers with 'spite'? really?

If you don't think GW treats their players poorly, perhaps you haven't dealt with them raising prices by 40+% in your country and then putting ridiculous restrictions on merchants in other nations to prevent you from ordering there. I'd call that spiteful, and damn straight I'll shaft 'em back for it.

Exalted. We pay far more than we should. And it's higher than 40% even after factoring in exchange rates

you're complaining about GW charging too much money for something

No, I'm complaining about them charging one person 40%+ more than another person. If I meant high prices I would have said high prices. I meant regional pricing. Charging me 40%+ more than they charge you and preventing me from ordering where you order from with trade restrictions is spiteful.

 Hivefleet Oblivion wrote:
You're distorting the argument to make it look like GW are being counterfeited because they're bad and after a quick buck. The reality is it's the counterfeiters who are thieves, after a quick buck.

Gabe Newell, CEO of Steam who has far more knowledge about this than you disagrees with you. Piracy is a service problem, it increases when customers find a disconnect between what they expect from the company and what the company delivers. Youc an't compete with free, but you *can* compete with service - every other miniature company competes better on price and is so much better than GW on the service aspect (ie. not being douches) that they don't / won't be widely recast.

Yea, this argument has already been shut down in other formats on a digital front. Provide a better service and a lower price and you can get people to stop pirating for sheer convenience alone.

When you have recasters that produce goods at a lower price and in better quality than Games Workshop, then the issues lies with Games Workshop. They have a popular product, and if they were smart, they would recognize volume sales, which lowers the cost barrier to entry, which then spreads word of mouth, is what they would want.

You essentially cannot buy any mini used on eBay these days because it can be a counterfeit. Looking at publicly forward sites you can easily find with Google, there are recasters making all the old metals still in metal. Some people prefer metal, painters for example, and this is a missed market. Then you have the same option in a more resilient resin than Finecasts or Forgeworld's.

So you have a cheaper and better product that gets the consumer what they want. A smart company sees this and realizes it's much easier to fix in house problems (volume, margins, MSRP, etc.) than litigation or trying to shut down the "bad guys." Or you try to pull an Apple and price fix to success, but we know how well that goes over (loved watching all the publishers tuck tail on that one!).

So in the end, the only reason why Games Workshop has a large recasting market is because they are at a good mix of solid market share, price gouging, and poor quality that is a perfect storm to make that a sustainable business model. The thing is, GW is losing sales to that at the same time they are losing sales to poor management of the game; it's a double hair-on-fire situation and they are solving it by litigating and bunkering up versus doing what already been shown the successful path.

I'd like to interject briefly to point out that this is not at all illegal in China, so the recasters are not "crooks".

 Frozen Ocean wrote:
I'd like to interject briefly to point out that this is not at all illegal in China, so the recasters are not "crooks".

Outside of the narrow scope that is our plastic army man addiction, intellectual property as a whole is in dire need of reform the world wide. As much as patent control is needed in the USA. It's a subject no one wants to slice and dice, but when you have corporations extended their profitability thanks to Disney, it's getting a bit asinine. Twenty years was quite generous, now it's at 70+ in the US?

Our society would prosper more if we actually allowed for the lending of ideas. Yes, some nod needs to be given for those specifically invested in R&D in various expensive industries that are a boon to us all, but I can only hope for IP reform to hit sooner than later.

The idea of granting legal, thus financial, rights to someone just because they "thought of it first" is silly in the context of society, thus denying the people who actually strive to make that idea a reality the real benefit. The concept of internet connectivity on cellular phones is an interesting one with regards to the US patent holder in that he got rich off the mere concept but was not involved in the actual creation of said concept, the making it happen.

Once you look into Games Workshop's past and realize how much of the fiction we love is actually stolen or based upon other mythos, then you realize that complaining about some recasters is might bit hypocritical if your aim is to defend GW.

 Peregrine wrote:

 azreal13 wrote:
But that's not opportunity cost.

That's just cost

If you're going to throw recognised terms around, please be sure that you know what they mean, and be consistent in their application.

Except it IS opportunity cost because the point is that the "spare time" recaster has a limited budget of time and money for things like buying new kits or making new molds, and that's very important when the choice is between buying a Warmachine kit to recast or buying the latest big GW thing to recast.

Whatever Peregrine, I'm pretty sure if you ever conceded a point then Dakka would implode, so rather than you have to constantly rejig the criteria to maintain your aura of invulnerability, you can have this.

I'll just add your name to the "all opinion, no clue" list when it comes to matters corporate and financial.

I'm one of the people in the camp that if GW would produce better quality for a more reasonable price I would buy from them.

When I started out with my Necrons, I got an Overlord so badly cast it had a hole in it's chest you could see through. GW sent a replacement with while not as bad was still crap. After going through this for a few weeks and ending up with 1 decent model and 3 finecrap piles, I looked elsewhere for anything resin from GW. All my Necron characters are recasts, and I've never had a single problem with them. Since buying IA:12 I've been picking up the Necron FW line via recasts. I've had minimal problems with the resin, and nothing ever has arrived so badly cast I wanted to throw it away.

 Steve steveson wrote:
Aren't allot of other things, like electronics and computer games, much more expensive in Australia? Assassins creed unity is 20% more than in the UK. 99 au$, which is £55. £45 in the UK. Makes me think there is some reason behind it than just "we'll charge them more"

Well, that's where you'd be wrong. Companies take advantage of the fact that we have no neighbouring countries to visit even if they charge a price well above what it's worth. People can claim international exportation prices, but really it's no different for here than anywhere else in the world that gets a fair price. And, it's even the same with downloadable products that have the same expense to sell globally.

Adobe was recently invested and asked under fair trading investigation by authorities, exactly why their downloadable program was sold in Australia for 150% the price of everywhere else. They could come up with no answer other than "we are free to charge whatever we like".

Is stealing from these companies still morally wrong? Yes, sure. I'm a thief. They are correct, they are free to charge whatever they like. But when it's cheaper for me to buy my stuff in a different country and pay for my international shipping myself, and they then restrict all retailers from selling international orders for no other reason than to allow themselves to bump up prices by 150%, I know that they are not delivering on a product worth the cost. It's easily arguable that they already don't before that. I don't even want to give my money in support of ANY business choosing to do this hence why I do pirate, I want to fight this unjustified mark up, that could easily be argued as far more immoral than the act of supporting sellers willing to charge a reasonable price as opposed to the original creator and owner of the product, giving them incentive to actually charge a sensible amount, at which point I will go back to them. As it stands I refuse to buy anything from GW as it just serves to support their decisions to deliver a subpar product for an overpriced retail cost. Does this make me a bad person? Possibly. I don't see what they are doing as much more than collusion for our country which is also illegal hence why their is a slow fight happening to put an end to the Australia mark up. Remember, not everyone who breaks the law is in the wrong, the law was written by people and sometimes it doesn't account for everything. Not everyone who kills someone is a bad person. I'm fighting them because I can't morally justify supporting them, whether or not that makes me a bad person in your eyes couldn't bother me the slightest.

Davor wrote:
Then again, how is Magic doing? By that I mean can not people just copy and print their cards? Sales are still going strong right? So how is the Magic sceane doing with "printed" cards.

From what I recall, sanctioned tournaments require the actual card. People can and do use printed cards for casual games, particularly for the rarer (and thus harder to get, more expensive) cards. I've also seen people playing with a junk card in a sleeve with the name of the card they want it to be written on the front of the sleeve in texta.

Overall, though, the existence of cheap inkjet printers and paper doesn't seem to have killed MtG off just yet. Just as it didn't kill off the publishing industry in general, which was what was predicted back when desktop printers first became a thing.

3D printing will be the same, at least to begin with. There will be those who will use it to make copies... and there will be those who will still prefer to buy the 'real' thing. At least until the printers get good enough that companies just start selling printable files as the 'real thing'.


And for your previous comment, there are plenty of people out there who have never downloaded an illegal copy of a GW book, or a song, movie or game. There are also plenty who may have done so when they were young and needed everything immediately in order to live, but who in later life have realised that if they can't afford to buy it legitimately they probably don't actually need it.

Just because a lot of people don't have a problem with this sort of thing, that doesn't mean that everyone does it.

 insaniak wrote:

And for your previous comment, there are plenty of people out there who have never downloaded an illegal copy of a GW book, or a song, movie or game. There are also plenty who may have done so when they were young and needed everything immediately in order to live, but who in later life have realised that if they can't afford to buy it legitimately they probably don't actually need it.

Just because a lot of people don't have a problem with this sort of thing, that doesn't mean that everyone does it.

I will just leave my exalt here.

I know I've already been branded an elitist jerk and show-off, but I'd love to make it clear - I have nothing against playing someone using recasts. For whatever reason he decided that he should buy them rather than save up for genuine models, doesn't matter - I can condemn his actions, I can disagree, I can not care, it's not my business and what I think about his choices and morality has nothing to do with my ability to play with him. Especially when it comes to Forge World - the prices are ridiculous and I am less likely to condemn him than I would be with someone buying recast tactical squad or Sternguards. I have seen Death Korps army made with ten times better resin that doesn't break and crumble when looked funny at at 40% the price and all-MK IV Space Marines army that'd normally cost as much as a used car and I had a blast playing against them.

Wow, I go to work and when I come back my threat has exploded.


However, it appears that there are a few reasons why people would or would not.

Would.
1. It's cheaper and Games Workshop is expensive.
2. I really don't care who I play so long as I get to play.
3. There is no difference between not using models from GW and not using glue/paint from GW.
4. Corporations are evil and must be treated as such.
5. Because they are cheaper it allows for a greater variety of units and we can have larger games containing more and more models.
6. Recasting is often better quality, people are just going for the better model.

Would not.
1. Recasting is theft and thievery is illegal.
2. It is unethical to cheat people out of all their hard work.
3. Just because some people believe that GW 'deserve it' doesn't mean it is actually okay to do it.
4. I most people pay the full whack for these items, it is only fair if you do too.


Personally, I'm on the side of 'I would.' I'm mostly on the side of I would because of the costs. Not just in GW, Warmachine is also just as expensive, even more so on a unit to unit basis (yes I know PP games are maybe a fifth or a tenth of the size of full warhammer ones. But £30 for what is basically 13 Imperial Guardsmen with mono-pose and poor plastic quality is much worse than anything GW have done, at least their models look the part.) I'm really tempted to start up a Horus Heresy Death Guard army. I wrote up a standard 2000 point list which I could use. The cost from Forge World was just shy of £700. My first motorcycle was £750. And this is for an army in which I wouldn't be able to swap a single unit out, it was all the models I needed.

Like a few people have said, I would much rather play a friendly good guy thief than an uptight WAAC player who bought all his stuff at full retail.

 welshhoppo wrote:
I'm really tempted to start up a Horus Heresy Death Guard army. I wrote up a standard 2000 point list which I could use. The cost from Forge World was just shy of £700. My first motorcycle was £750. And this is for an army in which I wouldn't be able to swap a single unit out, it was all the models I needed.

So then don't buy it. Just don't act like you're entitled to have it, even if you have to steal it because GW won't sell it to you as cheaply as you want.

 Peregrine wrote:

 welshhoppo wrote:
I'm really tempted to start up a Horus Heresy Death Guard army. I wrote up a standard 2000 point list which I could use. The cost from Forge World was just shy of £700. My first motorcycle was £750. And this is for an army in which I wouldn't be able to swap a single unit out, it was all the models I needed.

So then don't buy it. Just don't act like you're entitled to have it, even if you have to steal it because GW won't sell it to you as cheaply as you want.

Except I will probably by it from Forgeworld, just so I can tell people that I have more money than sense.

 Peregrine wrote:

 welshhoppo wrote:
I'm really tempted to start up a Horus Heresy Death Guard army. I wrote up a standard 2000 point list which I could use. The cost from Forge World was just shy of £700. My first motorcycle was £750. And this is for an army in which I wouldn't be able to swap a single unit out, it was all the models I needed.

don't act like you're entitled to have it, even if you have to steal it because GW won't sell it to you as cheaply as you want.

Don't act like they're entitled to the horrible copyright system we have in place, just because companies bought extensions far beyond it's original goal just to make more profit at the cost of creativity.

Just to weigh in on this one: a big problem, as with lots of companies, is that while you like the product, you do not want to support the company behind it in any way. To me, this is the very case with GW as I don't want to support the company behind the products and would gladly pay to see them going down if that was somhow possible.

It's worse when it comes to the rules part as their rules are terrible and extremely poor and not worth the cash they charge them for - that's why we don't buy the rules anymore. It's not a cost issue, as money is no issue for us, it's a "Vote with your wallet" issue.

Can we get a Kickstarter going to get rid of GW's management?

Davor wrote:
Again to the OP. What is wrong? What are you going to say when someone is using Privateer Press, or Vallejo paints instead of GW paints?

Heaven forbid if someone is not using GW paint brushes.

How about people who don't use GW glue?

When does it stop? Where does it start?

If you read the question properly youd see thats its about recasts, direct copies of copyrighted content, not alternatives to gw.

My thoughts are unclear to me on this matter. I would play somone with recasts, but im not sure id get recasts myself.
Thats being said, ive often thought about casting some basic sm bodies so that I can make the most of out of these multipart kits we get these days.
Its all so muddy...

bt

Just FYI, after GW gave me the copy paste speed written piece of trash that they called Tyranids 6E codex, I went at spent $300 on an iPad specifically to avoid giving them my money. I use it for no other purpose than a portable pirate copy of the codex.

I don't have an issue with spending money - but I refuse to support GW after the trash they have delivered. At this stage I am invested into the 40k game, and I want to see GW fail so that they can stop holding it back.

Luckily for me they made my iPad purchase worthwhile by releasing 7th as a lackluster grab for cash and trying to charge me $140 good one guys, wonder who here bought that and not just a brand-new tablet of their own for the same price.

 TheKbob wrote:

 Frozen Ocean wrote:
I'd like to interject briefly to point out that this is not at all illegal in China, so the recasters are not "crooks".

then you realize that complaining about some recasters is might bit hypocritical if your aim is to defend GW.

I'm not, though. I honestly don't care about the situation with copyright worldwide, GW, or anything. I am taking no moral high or low ground on this subject. My above post was just to challenge the thought that the recasters are criminals, because they're not. "Criminal" meaning "breaking the law".

First of all let me preface things with the statement that I do not own any recasts, unless somehow they are extremely good secondhand ones, which were made in metal, then bought by someone, painted badly, stripped partially, and then sold to me on Ebay to strip fully and then paint, all without me figuring out that they are recasts.


But......I would still like someone to pose a good argument as to why I should resign myself to never owning an original version of some extremely limited OOP model, like a Squat or a Zoat (or even something more relatively modern like a metal Marneus Calgar), versus it being possible to purchase a recast of that model. How would it possibly be stealing from and weakening GW if they themselves absolutely refuse to make a single dollar more on that product range?

And if someone decides to sell a recast of some old OOP model, how is that different than selling a secondhand version of the same model? Neither sale benefits GW, and both kinds of sale came from an original sale that way back in the day benefited GW, because even a recast, no matter how many of them are made, had to come from a real model bought from GW.

 Frozen Ocean wrote:

 TheKbob wrote:

 Frozen Ocean wrote:
I'd like to interject briefly to point out that this is not at all illegal in China, so the recasters are not "crooks".

then you realize that complaining about some recasters is might bit hypocritical if your aim is to defend GW.

I'm not, though. I honestly don't care about the situation with copyright worldwide, GW, or anything. I am taking no moral high or low ground on this subject. My above post was just to challenge the thought that the recasters are criminals, because they're not. "Criminal" meaning "breaking the law".

Well, given the fact that it's crime in pretty much every western country and China decided to make it legal because they make profit off it and they're rich and powerful enough to make anyone who has any objections gobble on their rice balls, it's kinda dubious. Of course there it's not a crime, but european/american recasts would be criminals. You know, in India rape is not a crime/noone cares and in some african countries genocide ain't a crime either as long as it profits the warlord. That way you can challenge the thought that even murder is not a crime depending on the location. :-)

So, if it's legal to produce them in the country that is selling them, and it is legal to buy them everywhere, then there is no argument based in legality, this is just a moral choice.

Oh, and if you're going to start throwing claims around like "rape and genocide are legal/no one cares" you'd better have some citations ready, or I might just accuse you of hyperbole.

Wha.... What??? There are people who would say NO to a game solely because they are using re-cast models????

Sheesh.

I have 2 lynxs and a few squads re-casted from china, and when I go for a game and I tell them, more often then not they ask me where it was, the name of the website, how much it costs, and how long shipping is so that they themselves can buy some. Ive not once had someone not play me because of off cast models.
I didnt realize there were white knights that serious.

Refusing to play someone with recasts is pathetic. It's their choice to buy them and it's not my place to judge them for it.

Let GW and the lawyers judge them if they have an issue. As for me? I'm there to play a game - not pretend to have the moral high ground over such a pointless non-issue at the gamer level.


Sure you can whine and complain that it's this complacency that means GW has to raise it's prices blah blah... frankly I don't care for this guilt tripping. I, and many other players buy models from Games Workshop or discount official models. If anything, it's GW's business model that would drive gamers like me towards other vendors.

I parted out a DKoK army. It was exactly $1 per point and an $1,850 list.

I laughed at that.

BrotherTitus wrote:

Davor wrote:
Again to the OP. What is wrong? What are you going to say when someone is using Privateer Press, or Vallejo paints instead of GW paints?

Heaven forbid if someone is not using GW paint brushes.

How about people who don't use GW glue?

When does it stop? Where does it start?

If you read the question properly youd see thats its about recasts, direct copies of copyrighted content, not alternatives to gw.

My thoughts are unclear to me on this matter. I would play somone with recasts, but im not sure id get recasts myself.
Thats being said, ive often thought about casting some basic sm bodies so that I can make the most of out of these multipart kits we get these days.
Its all so muddy...

bt

Oh I have read. My question is what is the difference? What is the difference between a GW product and a non GW product? For some, it's about legality as was mentioned before. For others, it's NON GW so it's not allowed. For some people, you CAN'T use PP minis or anything else into a 40K game. Recasts or not. That is why I said, when does it stop? Where does it start? Now I see the OP opinion which he never stated before so that is why I was asking.

Your going to have to make a strong case to say that recasting is immoral or instead just against a cultural norm that the United States has.

Cause, in other countries that is in fact not the case. With copyright law as well as the production of goods.

for me it depends on what they're doing with it.

if someone had recast something extremely powerful for the sole purpose of spamming it, such as wraithknights, wraithguard, ironclad dreadnaughts, etc then I wouldn't play them. if it was someone who simply recast some units but still ran a friendly list, then I'd have no concerns. if it was someone who recast parts for conversions, I'd also have no problem whatsoever.

I wish I had more time to go through this thread and exalt every single one of azreal13's posts, but unfortunately there aren't enough hours in the day.

 welshhoppo wrote:
Would you play against this guy knowing that he is undercutting the hobby or would you not?

Yes.

And removing the loaded-ness of the question (ie. knowing beforehand), how would you know anyway?

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
I wish I had more time to go through this thread and exalt every single one of azreal13's posts, but unfortunately there aren't enough hours in the day.

Shucks....

 some bloke wrote:
for me it depends on what they're doing with it.

if someone had recast something extremely powerful for the sole purpose of spamming it, such as wraithknights, wraithguard, ironclad dreadnaughts, etc then I wouldn't play them. if it was someone who simply recast some units but still ran a friendly list, then I'd have no concerns. if it was someone who recast parts for conversions, I'd also have no problem whatsoever.

How is that any different to just buying the latest spam units?

You could just as equally say you don't play people who play spammy power lists and instead only play people who run "friendly" lists. I'm not sure why recasts needs to come in to it.

 Klerych wrote:

Well, given the fact that it's crime in pretty much every western country and China decided to make it legal because they make profit off it and they're rich and powerful enough to make anyone who has any objections gobble on their rice balls, it's kinda dubious. Of course there it's not a crime, but european/american recasts would be criminals. You know, in India rape is not a crime/noone cares and in some african countries genocide ain't a crime either as long as it profits the warlord. That way you can challenge the thought that even murder is not a crime depending on the location. :-)

Yes, because rape, genocide, and the process of copying and selling a luxury product are all totally equivalent. I also did not at all say that it changed anyone's perceived morality towards the subject. So yes, you are right, there are plenty of laws (or lack thereof) in other countries that are downright evil. You'd do well to gain the respect of others in a discussion if you don't result to being so flippant about serious issues that involve such suffering.

 Klerych wrote:
Well, given the fact that it's crime in pretty much every western country and China decided to make it legal because they make profit off it and they're rich and powerful enough to make anyone who has any objections gobble on their rice balls, it's kinda dubious. Of course there it's not a crime, but european/american recasts would be criminals. You know, in India rape is not a crime/noone cares and in some african countries genocide ain't a crime either as long as it profits the warlord. That way you can challenge the thought that even murder is not a crime depending on the location. :-)

Are you now comparing recasts to murder, rape and genocide?

Different countries have different laws. Your country probably outlaws stuff that I find normal, that's why cannabis-threads always get messy.
And that's why it's so useless to talk about the legal aspect!

I play games, not politics. If a person came to me and over the course of the game, we take time and just look over each other's models, admiring paint jobs and the like, and it comes out that it's a recast, the only reaction you would probably get from me is, "Looks good." The way I see it, is this. If you bought something that was obviously a recast, then you clearly could live with it, and so can I. That being said and you are recasting the things personally, do the right thing at least and take the time to remodel the things to your personal preference so that you can say that it is sufficiently your own style.

 Klerych wrote:
Well, given the fact that it's crime in pretty much every western country and China decided to make it legal because they make profit off it and they're rich and powerful enough to make anyone who has any objections gobble on their rice balls, it's kinda dubious. Of course there it's not a crime, but european/american recasts would be criminals. You know, in India rape is not a crime/noone cares and in some african countries genocide ain't a crime either as long as it profits the warlord. That way you can challenge the thought that even murder is not a crime depending on the location. :-)

It's a good thing this isn't a forum about rape and murder then, because we might actually have to address your concerns! Luckily, this is not a forum about rape and murder, it's a forum about little toy soldiers, so we can stick to talking about little toy soldiers.

The word "crime" does not have a single definition. It can mean something punishable by law, therefore if it's not against the law it's not a crime. But it can also be defined as something morally wrong, so something that is not against the law but is considered morally wrong can be a crime under that definition.

With that in mind, lets move away from the term "crime" and stick to terms that are better defined like "illegal" and "morally wrong".

Is it illegal and is it morally wrong? Things can be illegal and not be morally wrong. Things can be morally wrong and still be legal.

It is legal, so is it morally wrong? I think it is, but I don't really care enough to make a stand against it and since I don't work for GW, you won't find me railing against people who buy recasts. Seeing as it's not illegal (and even if it was that doesn't mean it's morally wrong anyway) it's their choice if they find it morally wrong and whether they can live with themselves for doing it.

As a society I think we should be moving toward an attitude of paying the content creators for their content and if we don't like the price they charge, we should just not partake of the content, thus they go out of business due to lack of desire to pay for their content rather than going out of business because someone else on the other side of the world has an hourly wage a tenth of yours and can afford to reproduce it for almost nothing. My reason for this thinking is simple: We should encourage the content creators and not discourage them. It costs more to create than it does to copy, so by purchasing (or pirating depending on the medium) you are showing a self entitled disregard for the process of content creation.

But that said, in the context of recasts of GW models, I don't care enough to make a stand against it, it's up to society to decide and up to the individual to decide.

Seems pretty unequivocal that it's unethical. Whether it's amoral is probably more of a grey area. (Personally, I'ma come down on the 'no,' side.)

So it's unethical and immoral for me to use my dot matrix printer to print out a picture that someone else took and is normally sold and then place it on my wall?

Yeah.. no it's not theft. It's not even immoral or unethical.

It's a constraint of the capitalistic system that we live in that you believe it to be "unethical" or "immoral" as your view point is driven by a desire to see this capitalistic system sustain itself.

Again I advocate the burn this melon-fether down viewpoint of capitalism.

 Cheexsta wrote:
I have no problem playing people who use recasts.

What I do have a problem with is when those people (excessively) use those recasts in their FLGS. I firmly believe that you should pay where you play, so they can stay in business.

Basically this, playing against copied stuff doesn't bother me in the least, if they are good enough you can only tell if you are told the quality is there.

That said, if the opponent makes a point of noting they are recasts, and how much cheaper they are, then I'd probably think they are a bit of a twit, more so if they keep going on about it.

At a local shop its something I'd play against, but would prefer them to keep quiet about it there, basic respect really.

Agree on buying stuff from a shop if you play there, doesn't have to be everything, but if they have it in stock I'd get from them over ordering elsewhere.

I wouldn't mind in the slightest. I know I try to buy the real deal when I can, but since I collect so much retro stuff, recasts are inevitable in some capacity. Whatever they do to get their models is their prerogative. If you're concerned about the models not being "official GW" or whatever, then you can rule out third party models too, which I wouldn't want to do. There are guys in my group who are upfront that the models are recasts, and nobody really minds. Most of us (even those guys) still buy the legit stuff when they can, but things happen.

Oh man, that was just an example, guys, don't flip out and turn it into a lynch. He said that it's legal in China, so there's nothing wrong with it. I exaggerated it to show how worse things are legal in some other countries just to show how flawed such logic is, no matter what it is.

Sheesh, let's drop the topic.

Hollismason wrote:
So it's unethical and immoral for me to use my dot matrix printer to print out a picture that someone else took and is normally sold and then place it on my wall?

Yeah.. no it's not theft. It's not even immoral or unethical.

Well, it's not nice either as you're taking a thing he made without paying him even though the 'legal' way of obtaining it is buying it from him if he decided to sell it rather than hand out for free. But yeah, seeing how this thread goes it's more about taking his photo and selling your own prints of it cheaper than he does, denying him sales on something he made. Even less nice.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

 some bloke wrote:
for me it depends on what they're doing with it.

if someone had recast something extremely powerful for the sole purpose of spamming it, such as wraithknights, wraithguard, ironclad dreadnaughts, etc then I wouldn't play them. if it was someone who simply recast some units but still ran a friendly list, then I'd have no concerns. if it was someone who recast parts for conversions, I'd also have no problem whatsoever.

How is that any different to just buying the latest spam units?

You could just as equally say you don't play people who play spammy power lists and instead only play people who run "friendly" lists. I'm not sure why recasts needs to come in to it.

I think it's just the combination of 2 things they probably shouldn't be doing. it's similar to proxying - proxy one un it, sure, but saying that 4 squads of marines are actually sternguard with plasmas and combi-plasmas is too far. if someone finds a model they love but can't afford and buys it cheap, like a spartan assault tank, then no worries. if someone buys 5 of them, all recast, then there's a problem.

and yes, i do refuse to play people with pure-spam lists. but pure spam and everything is recast cheap models, then they're taking the urine.

 Klerych wrote:
Oh man, that was just an example, guys, don't flip out and turn it into a lynch. He said that it's legal in China, so there's nothing wrong with it. I exaggerated it to show how worse things are legal in some other countries just to show how flawed such logic is, no matter what it is.

Sheesh, let's drop the topic.

I'm all for dropping the topic, but first let me point out that reductum ad absurdum is a lousy argument technique, and if you employ it again in future, you'll likely get a similar response, even if you use a less emotive analogy than rape and murder.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:


As a society I think we should be moving toward an attitude of paying the content creators for their content and if we don't like the price they charge, we should just not partake of the content, thus they go out of business due to lack of desire to pay for their content rather than going out of business because someone else on the other side of the world has an hourly wage a tenth of yours and can afford to reproduce it for almost nothing. My reason for this thinking is simple: We should encourage the content creators and not discourage them. It costs more to create than it does to copy, so by purchasing (or pirating depending on the medium) you are showing a self entitled disregard for the process of content creation.
.

First of all your sociaty is not ours. There is a huge difference between a rich country , with a lot of natural resources and one that has non of it. If China , Korea ,India or Japan went that way , they would be super poor countries. That becomes when one goes back a century or two back in time and sees that non of the rich copyright enforcing wester countries of today got rich by doing moral stuff.

 azreal13 wrote:

 Klerych wrote:
Oh man, that was just an example, guys, don't flip out and turn it into a lynch. He said that it's legal in China, so there's nothing wrong with it. I exaggerated it to show how worse things are legal in some other countries just to show how flawed such logic is, no matter what it is.

Sheesh, let's drop the topic.

I'm all for dropping the topic, but first let me point out that reductum ad absurdum is a lousy argument technique, and if you employ it again in future, you'll likely get a similar response, even if you use a less emotive analogy than rape and murder.

Oh well, the responses were just absurd as my intentionally exaggerated example, so yeah.

As for the recasts.. I guess I can be called a hypocrite by those more inclined towards arguing, but I think that it's not -that- wrong when the model is better than original like the aforementioned hierophant or some models I've seen in person, but it's mostly with resin/finecast which is terribad.

Nope. I expect all models to be strict WYSIWYG, 100% GW, and fully painted with three different colours.

Nah, just kidding. I don't care as long as it is roughly the right size for the model.

 Peregrine wrote:

And they will pirate it if they feel the price is unfair.

And for a lot of people "unfair" is "anything above $0". Stop trying to turn this into some bizarre moral high ground where piracy is just a statement about fairness. It isn't, it's simply a decision that you'd rather steal something than not have it.

Yes, some people will always pirate. And some people will always pay full price, or be content with not having the thing at all.

But then there's loads of people (including myself and every gamer I know IRL) who will pirate an exorbitantly priced game or mini, but will be happy to pay what we feel is reasonable. It's about respect. If i get treated with respect, I will be an honest customer. If I feel like I'm being fleeced, I will retaliate in the best way known to me, with a swift kick right at your bottom line.

And please don't use the word steal when you're referring to piracy, they are far from being the same.

OT chatter removed.

Toy Soldiers, folks. Please check your discussion of comparative societal structures at the door.

Related topic, I saw a tournament in Oz require proof of ownership of physical books in order to use digital copies before they were a thing from GW. I wasn't going to it, but had to lol at non-employees policing that stuff for GW when it's perfectly legal to format shift here.

The only people who can legitimately criticise others for buying recasts due to it being theft of intellectual property are those who never illegally download or stream songs, films, books, audiobooks etc, otherwise it is just pure hypocrisy. If you don't do that, good on you, you're a model citizen and can sleep soundly at night.

OT, why would I have a problem playing against recasts? I wouldn't know unless I was told, and all I would be interested in would be the quality of the cast and the details of where they got it from so I could buy something.

I don't see how that isn't relative as the whole concept of "Intellectual Property " is a product of the failed Capitalistic system we currently exist in. This whole discussion is about "the legal or ethically" use of recast figures.

On one side we have people state that is in fact theft.
Then we have one side that says they do not care because it is not their job to police models that their opponent uses.
Then we have people who state that while it is theft, it is justified
Then we have me who says that this entire discussion is moot as it only in unethical because you are trapped in a failed capitalist system.

I'd say it's your imperative to in fact cast your own and take the means of production into your own hands.

I point that out because the original sculpture of the model itself does not receive a proportionate amount of compensation and themselves do not own their own creation. If anything we should be paying the original sculpturer.

it would be pretty hypocritical if i did make a scene......

gw's prices are the one major thing stopping more people enjoying the game, if they've found a way around it then it means i have more people to play against.

I'm still somewhat offended that there is any sort of level of expectation of morality leveled against the general public at all.

Steve steveson wrote:

 Captain Avatar wrote:

Klerych wrote:
Yeah! Why not go steal someone's car? I mean.. I already have downloaded a book and pirated a game, so now I am excused in further law violations and it's perfectly okay and justified! And if I infringed someone's copyright already, why not go for more? All I'm saying that if one crime is not wrong, then maybe another one isn't either, right?

See the flaw yet?

Yes, it is in your analogy.

A more accurate auto motive analogy would be to ask if it is ok to pull molds of the body panels and then "build" your own car.

To do such is perfectly legal. In fact there is an entire industry built around it. They are called "Kit Cars" or "Repli-cars".

No. Most car manufactures either licence or tolerate replica/lookalike kits. Some don't:

http://m.autoblog.com/2012/03/23/daimler-crushes-unauthorized-mercedes-benz-300-sl-body/

Thank you for proving my point. The car in question was seized and later destroyed not because it was a copy, but that it was sold for profit. You know, What I have been saying all along.

You see, the Kit and Replicar industry actually sells the tools to help people to pull their own molds off of existing cars. They can use these home made molds to them make as many copies as they want.

It only becomes illegal if a person or company tries to profit from an "exact replica" without a licensing agreement or if they attempt to pass off the replica as genuine.

Note, selling such as a replica without a license ends up in civil litigation and trying to pass off a replica as an original ends up as a criminal case.

.........What I have been saying all along.

Btw, next time instead of trying for a quick Google headline How about putting a bit of work in and researching the case. Just saying.

Hivefleet Oblivion wrote:

 Captain Avatar wrote:

It has been pretty much proven that "fakers" can not profitably undercut the manufacuter's price unless the company is overcharging by a fair margin. It is simply a matter of the scale of production.

Also, design and prototyping make up about a penny of the sale price of most models.

Says a source you just made up.

I have already replied to this but felt that a bit of history would help to put things into perspective.

The following link is to a 2006 web page where the person did the leg work to find out industry pricing and costs at the time. He uses the then only 5 y.o. Land Raider model as the model for cost analysis. At that point. The Kit was $40-$45 US and design and mold costs were about
$ .08 (8 cents/kit).
The Land Raider is a large single model kit that has a low volume of sales compared to the infantry kits.

Also please note that the Land Raider has now had another 8 years of sales with a current price about $75 US.

Finally, Remember I stated design and mold costs at about a penny per model, not per kit.

Here is the link:http://www.fightingtigersofveda.com/roarseconomics.html" target="_new" rel="nofollow"> http://www.fightingtigersofveda.com/roarseconomics.html

Peregrine wrote:

Captain Avatar wrote:It has been pretty much proven that "fakers" can not profitably undercut the manufacuter's price unless the company is overcharging by a fair margin.

Sigh. It really hasn't been proven, because there is no such thing as "overcharging" in this context. There is no "fair" price for a 40k model, the price is simply what GW feels like charging. The fact that you wish the prices were lower does not mean that they're too high in some objective sense.

Yes, there is. A company can be viewed as overcharging if they have applied for and received special protections and permissions from the government concerning there products. That by asking for copyright and IP protection that leaves them as the sole suppliers of a certain product they are supposed to to provide their products at a fair price.
Same reason why congress can get involved in pro sports. Pro sports leagues have received a special dispensation/protection from anti-trust litigation in order to provide "national" leagues that are somewhat protected from the emergence of competing leagues.
Same should apply to companies that use copyright laws to gain control over certain parts of the market.

Peregrine wrote:

Captain Avatar wrote: Also, design and prototyping make up about a penny of the sale price of most models. Look at who gets paid what and what tools are available for prototyping and you will see that HW staff "artists" and designers make a middle class wage and that those teams are quite small.

The point is that it's a huge up-front investment, even if the per-model cost is small. If recasters had to do all that work before making a new kit they'd be out of business overnight. The only reason they can make a profit selling at their current prices is that all they have to do to start production of a new kit is buy one from GW and make some molds from it.

As you can see by the link I provided to Hivefleet Oblivion, The costs in business term are minor. To design a mold and to have it produced. $36,000 US up front isn't that much when you only have to sell 2,500 kits @ $50 US a piece To recoup your investment in tooling, labour, design and mold costs. After the first 2,500 kits they will be making a rough pre-tax profit of $36-$38 US per Land Raider kit after costs.
GW makes an estimated rough pre-tax profit of $58-$61 US per Land Raider Kit kit.

Peregrine wrote:

Captain Avatar wrote:For years, GW defrauded their customers by selling cheap Chinese plastics as expensive Nottingham pieces.

Did GW ever advertise where the models were produced? Because I don't remember seeing any claims about that.

Yes, they vigorously maintained that their products were from either the Nottingham or Memphis plants at that time. This was right after the US production move fro Anne Arundel, MD to Memphis, Tn.

Peregrine wrote:

Captain Avatar wrote:That's right the price they should be charging because they are producing GW models with GW molds and with GW methods. The price difference between GW and thier former Chinese factories should be pennies but due to GW's price gouging the chinese can operate profitably at 50% of the price.

First, no, price gouging does not exist for gaming miniatures. Please stop making this absurd claim that "I want it to be cheaper" is the equivalent of increasing bottled water prices 100000% when a natural disaster hits.

Second, you're still ignoring all of the other costs GW has to pay. The cost of a model kit includes a lot more than just the raw materials and manufacturing cost, and those Chinese factories avoid paying those costs by stealing GW's work. You wouldn't be getting those kits at the same price if the Chinese factory had to design their own kits (including the rules to use them), advertise them, and back them with GW's level of customer service.

A) You're only using one very narrow definition of Price Gouging(not surprising). Here are the Others:

http://www.thefreedictionary.com/price+gouging- This states it as...[Noun 1. price gouging - pricing above the market price when no alternative retailer is available]

http://www.webster-dictionary.org/definition/price%20gouging- Websters says the same.....Noun 1. price gouging - pricing above the market when no alternative retailer is available

Yes there are legal definitions concerning "criminal price gouging" but I never made reference to GW commiting a crime via Price gouging.....only that they made a habit of the basic practice of price gouging as defined by the above references.


The only illegal action that I have implied as to GW is when they sold Chinese models while marketing them as GW made in Nottingham.

Peregrine wrote:

Captain Avatar wrote: They were never intended to be used as a means by which corporations create mini-monopolies.

Are you serious? Do you actually have any clue what a monopoly is? Let me give you a hint: GW being the only company that can produce space marines for 40k is not a monopoly.

First please note that I typed "mini-monopolies".

Second, You ask if I know...here you go:http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/monopoly" target="_new" rel="nofollow"> http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/monopoly
This states a monopoly as
1: exclusive ownership through legal privilege, command of supply, or concerted action
2: exclusive possession or control
3: a commodity controlled by one party

The problem is that your view is so narrow that you seem to be unable to see how Corporations like GW use the copyright and IP laws as a means of gaining exclusive control of certain parts of the market. Remember, GW was the company that tried to use the civil court system to bully a private individual over the use of the name Space Marines. I mean forget that the term was coined back in the 1930's and was regularly used in sci-fi through the 1960's, 70's and 80's before GW ever thought to Rip-off the Aliens franchise with a game that would grow to become 40K.

This is why IP and copyright reform are so badly needed. Seriously, think what would of happened if Isaac Asimov or Gene Roddenberry had to deal with such non-sense back in the 1950's golden age of sci-fi. We probably wouldn't have most of their contributions and would have lost the works who were inspired by these imaginative writers.

 Captain Avatar wrote:
That by asking for copyright and IP protection that leaves them as the sole suppliers of a certain product they are supposed to to provide their products at a fair price.

Lol? GW is not the sole supplier of any product, unless you use an absurdly narrow product definition like "GW is the sole supplier of GW plastic model kits". There are plenty of other suppliers of gaming miniatures in the market, and GW doesn't get any special protection beyond the standard IP laws (which exist for very good reasons).

GW makes an estimated rough pre-tax profit of $58-$61 US per Land Raider Kit kit.

...

Did you even bother reading the article you posted? You know, the one that estimates GW's profit on the Land Raider kit at about $5-7? Or are you just forgetting that profit is not just the sale price minus the raw material costs?

http://www.thefreedictionary.com/price+gouging- This states it as...[Noun 1. price gouging - pricing above the market price when no alternative retailer is available]

http://www.webster-dictionary.org/definition/price%20gouging- Websters says the same.....Noun 1. price gouging - pricing above the market when no alternative retailer is available

Note the key part of that definition: no alternative retailer is available. Lots of alternatives to GW exist, therefore GW charging prices that are above what you want to pay is NOT price gouging.

The problem is that your view is so narrow that you seem to be unable to see how Corporations like GW use the copyright and IP laws as a means of gaining exclusive control of certain parts of the market.

...

Are you serious? GW does NOT have exclusive control of any market, unless you define the market as "space marine kits for Warhammer 40k" instead of "tabletop gaming miniatures". They have lots of competition and companies are free to make their own scifi gaming miniatures, they just can't sell recasts of GW's kits.

Seriously, think what would of happened if Isaac Asimov or Gene Roddenberry had to deal with such non-sense back in the 1950's golden age of sci-fi. We probably wouldn't have most of their contributions and would have lost the works who were inspired by these imaginative writers.

You do realize that there are lots of authors/TV writers/etc making good scifi right now, right? In fact, there are even companies making scifi gaming miniatures, including scifi gaming miniatures that draw from some of the same inspiration as GW, without any interference at all from GW!

 Peregrine wrote:

 Captain Avatar wrote:
That by asking for copyright and IP protection that leaves them as the sole suppliers of a certain product they are supposed to to provide their products at a fair price.

Lol? GW is not the sole supplier of any product, unless you use an absurdly narrow product definition like "GW is the sole supplier of GW plastic model kits". There are plenty of other suppliers of gaming miniatures in the market, and GW doesn't get any special protection beyond the standard IP laws (which exist for very good reasons).

Which by GW's stance they can not produce models for GW games or in some cases models that "might" be used in or with a GW product. GW has done and will continue to try to pull off some seriously absurd stances on how far their IP extends control.

Also note that you may feel that current IP laws exist for good reason, I and many disagree with you. Having watched GW and other corporations exploit the system in a constant effort to prevent the emergence of potential competitors has lead many to not have such a blindly positive view towards these laws.

Peregrine wrote:

Captain Avatar wrote: GW makes an estimated rough pre-tax profit of $58-$61 US per Land Raider Kit kit.

Did you even bother reading the article you posted? You know, the one that estimates GW's profit on the Land Raider kit at about $5-7? Or are you just forgetting that profit is not just the sale price minus the raw material costs?

Obviously you missed the part where the thread and pricing within it are 8 years old AND that I stated Pre-tax.

Also note that at the time of the linked page, GW was investing heavily in their retail presence which they have pretty much cannibalized over the past 8 years. So I left the retail operating costs out and went with a more modern internet store model for "pre-tax" profits.

Lastly, I used that link because it was overly generous to GW in its pricing estimations. even with them being overly generous they illustrated just how little design and tooling account for GW model pricing. If a company can produce the same model for 2/3's the price them maybe GW stock holders should be contacting a couple of these economic geniuses to take over as CEO and CFO.

Again, seriously, Scale of Production matters. No outsider should be able to profitably undercut GW's pricing by 25%-50% and stay in business. GW should be able to bury the recasters just based off of volume discounts for raw materials If recasters are able make the same quality models and beat GW's prices then it is a corporate management failure and failure at just being a business in a capitalist market.

In a free market a company knows that if another company can produce the same quality product for less and stay in business then that company will. Undercutting a competitors price is an integral part of capitalism.
Erecting barriers to competition so that a company can charge what ever they want without fear of competition is NOT how the free market system is supposed to work.

Peregrine wrote:

Captain Avatar wrote:http://www.thefreedictionary.com/price+gouging- This states it as...[Noun 1. price gouging - pricing above the market price when no alternative retailer is available]

http://www.webster-dictionary.org/definition/price%20gouging- Websters says the same.....Noun 1. price gouging - pricing above the market when no alternative retailer is available

Note the key part of that definition: no alternative retailer is available. Lots of alternatives to GW exist, therefore GW charging prices that are above what you want to pay is NOT price gouging.

Except for GW's past attempts to shut down any company that makes a model that looks anything remotely similar to a 40K model.For years they stifled competition via use of Civil suit harassment. Its all in their attitude that they ARE the "Hobby".

Well if they want to claim to be the only game in town then instead of arguing with them I say "OK, you are a monopoly and as such are open to prosecution or at least litigation..

Peregrine wrote:

Captain Avatar wrote:The problem is that your view is so narrow that you seem to be unable to see how Corporations like GW use the copyright and IP laws as a means of gaining exclusive control of certain parts of the market.

...

Are you serious? GW does NOT have exclusive control of any market, unless you define the market as "space marine kits for Warhammer 40k" instead of "tabletop gaming miniatures". They have lots of competition and companies are free to make their own scifi gaming miniatures, they just can't sell recasts of GW's kits.

The emergence of viable competitors is both recent and still weak mainly due to GW's attempts at being "The Hobby". Up until recently they managed to dominate the miniature game market through their very aggressive abuse of the copyright and IP laws.

Also, would like to correct you on something. A company does not have to be the only one of its type to be considered a monopoly. There are many instances of company's being ruled as trusts when they had competitors still in the market. If that company could be viewed as to having control over their entire market in a manner that stifles their competitors then they can be declared as to having a monopoly.