I posted in a FB thread were they where accusing some trader of selling recasts. I made the innocent comment that I did not see it as a big deal. You would think I would have said playing "baby baseball" is a good idea as I got attacked by sculptors in the industry and other hobbists.
When it comes to OOP minis and figures owned by big companies GW I am looking at you, I see no issues with recasts. Thoughts?
And that 'big companies' line is nonsense and you know it. "Well hey, Ford is a big company, so I stole a car." Because you aren't hurting the company by doing that, you're costing some poor guy in the store their job first, a job.
You're enabling the continued practice of stealing, some people find that abhorrent and reprehensible - and feigning ignorance is just fuel for that fire.
I for one, don't care. I think stealing is bad, yeah, but I'm not going to get on someone's case because they got a cheap Ferrus Manus on Ebay.
The only thing I have a problem with is when people argue that because the hobby is so expensive, it's somehow OK to steal. Fact is, ANY hobby is expensive, and no one is entitled to a hobby - can't afford it? Play/Do something you can.
Unsurprisingly people who make their living by sculpting war game figures are not amused when other people make their living by recasting the original creations without permission.
it is against the law.
People don't have an ethical right to have war game figures stay in production forever, and they are not necessities, so there's no ethical basis for condoning recastinge ven of OOP items.
Recasting can also discourage, or outright kill off, new starting out sculptors/companies from continuing and that leads to a bunch of cool stuff that could have been made never being made.
I'll admit I do have some recasts, 10 warp spiders because I never wanted to touch the finecast ones and they're metal. I pretty much only used them for 1-2 games anyway.
Correct me if im wrong, but isnt recasting bitz fine if it is for personal use? Didnt buttery recast an engine part and it was fine on the forum(Tear into me if im wrong, im not accusing anyone of anything. I just read the building the impossible thread that is all)
Recasting OOP stuff, I'm okay with. It's kind of a moral grey area, but if someone could get me a recast of the Epicast Imperial Knight Paladin, I'd be thankful.
As for stuff that's currently available, I know there's a lot of expensive stuff out there. I could go buy a recast Roboute Guilliman model from Russia or China for much cheaper, but I've actually met a few of the Forgeworld guys, and the thought of essentially taking food off their table and money out of their bank account doesn't make me feel good. I'd rather support the original creators than give my money to somebody else who's just undercutting them to cynically make a profit. I've had my own art stolen enough times to know how lousy that feels.
I hate it when a recast is passed off as a genuine piece. I've had it happen a few times and it's an infuriating experience. It's crass and cheapens the hobby in general.
Now, if you've (as in the royal you) knowingly bought a recast, used it and didn't tell me and I found out later, I wouldn't really be too bothered. I'd think you were a bit of an idiot, but I wouldn't berate you for it. If you boasted before or mid game, well, bye bye. In fact, if you boast about buying recasts and how you saved money and stuck it to the "big man", my opinion of you drops into a deep abyss and I'll think that you're a bit of a tosser.
Saying that, I don't have a problem with a private individual doing a tiny number of recasts of OOP miniatures for themselves with no intention to share with others.
hotsauceman1 wrote: Correct me if im wrong, but isnt recasting bitz fine if it is for personal use? Didnt buttery recast an engine part and it was fine on the forum(Tear into me if im wrong, im not accusing anyone of anything. I just read the building the impossible thread that is all)
I'm assuming that the recasting being discussed here is used for secondary market purposes, in order to make profit.
curran12 wrote: Even then, it's iffy and morally gray. After all, "it's just for personal use" doesn't exactly put money back into the artist's pocket.
But what if it is literally impossible to get your hands on what your need. I need alot of the deathwatch killteam sculpted white scars pads because Im tired of messing up my transfers and ruining models.
I suppose I would feel more mercy for them if they weren't so condescending to their customer base.
Also, looking into recasting, PP and other companies don't actually have this issue because of their customer base not actively disliking them.
Then don't buy the products!! If you have a problem with a company, don't engage with their products. Recasting just makes it bad for everybody and you're still playing the companies game and are actively advertising their (recast) products if you play in public places.
curran12 wrote: Even then, it's iffy and morally gray. After all, "it's just for personal use" doesn't exactly put money back into the artist's pocket.
But what if it is literally impossible to get your hands on what your need. I need alot of the deathwatch killteam sculpted white scars pads because Im tired of messing up my transfers and ruining models.
You don't need White Scars shoulder pads. You want them.
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beowulfhunter wrote: Fine, lets take current companies off the table. What is wrong with recasting OOP models?
Ethically, you devalue the legitimate models owned by real customers who may want to sell them, as well as the original copyright owner who might be thinking of re-issuing the piece and is discouraged by the flood of recasts. This then damages the interests of other legitimate buyers who were waiting for the re-issue that now isn't going to happen.
Kilkrazy wrote: Unsurprisingly people who make their living by sculpting war game figures are not amused when other people make their living by recasting the original creations without permission.
it is against the law.
People don't have an ethical right to have war game figures stay in production forever, and they are not necessities, so there's no ethical basis for condoning recastinge ven of OOP items.
Presuming all sculptors feel the same way. Also presuming you accept that present day IP law is based in ethics rather than being a purely legal construct necessitated by scarcity-based economics and grown far past its intended purpose.
It is against the law...in some places. And usually to make and/or sell recasts not to own them.
In short, OP, some people think it's wrong and care very much, and have the mistaken impression that not only does everyone who doesn't actually do it agree with them, but that there's no way any rational person could disagree.
And now this will get locked, because even hypothetical disagreement is not tolerated here(which is not a judgement, it's entirely Dakka's right to set and enforce their own policy on discussing the subject).
hotsauceman1 wrote: Correct me if im wrong, but isnt recasting bitz fine if it is for personal use? Didnt buttery recast an engine part and it was fine on the forum(Tear into me if im wrong, im not accusing anyone of anything. I just read the building the impossible thread that is all)
"I want more of this but don't want to pay for it" is not personal use and not protected.
"I want to practice some painting techniques, so I cast a model 10 times, do a bunch of practice techniques, then destroy all 10 pieces at the end." is personal use and is protected.
Just because you are like 'I am not selling them' doesn't protect you. If you buy 1 model and cast 9 copies to use in a game, you have impacted the market of the copyrighted work by not buying 10 models and have broken the law.
hotsauceman1 wrote: Correct me if im wrong, but isnt recasting bitz fine if it is for personal use? Didnt buttery recast an engine part and it was fine on the forum(Tear into me if im wrong, im not accusing anyone of anything. I just read the building the impossible thread that is all)
"I want more of this but don't want to pay for it" is not personal use and not protected.
"I want to practice some painting techniques, so I cast a model 10 times, do a bunch of practice techniques, then destroy all 10 pieces at the end." is personal use and is protected.
Just because you are like 'I am not selling them' doesn't protect you. If you buy 1 model and cast 9 copies to use in a game, you have impacted the market of the copyrighted work by not buying 10 models and have broken the law.
A conclusion based entirely on the fallacious assumption that the person would have bought the remaining 9 items has they not recast them. This is the same nonsense that leads Nintendo to claim that the total value of piracy of their games is greater than the GDP of developed nation states.
A conclusion based entirely on the fallacious assumption that the person would have bought the remaining 9 items has they not recast them. This is the same nonsense that leads Nintendo to claim that the total value of piracy of their games is greater than the GDP of developed nation states.
"I wasn't going to buy it but will use it for free" doesn't protect you from counterfeiting or piracy. You are an ignorant fool if you think it does and that is your planned defense.
"I want more of this but don't want to pay for it" is not personal use and not protected.
hotsauceman1 wrote: Correct me if im wrong, but isnt recasting bitz fine if it is for personal use? Didnt buttery recast an engine part and it was fine on the forum(Tear into me if im wrong, im not accusing anyone of anything. I just read the building the impossible thread that is all)
"I want more of this but don't want to pay for it" is not personal use and not protected.
.
But as said earlier, it is literally impossible for me to get the amount I need.
hotsauceman1 wrote: Correct me if im wrong, but isnt recasting bitz fine if it is for personal use? Didnt buttery recast an engine part and it was fine on the forum(Tear into me if im wrong, im not accusing anyone of anything. I just read the building the impossible thread that is all)
"I want more of this but don't want to pay for it" is not personal use and not protected.
.
But as said earlier, it is literally impossible for me to get the amount I need.
Brother SRM wrote: Recasting OOP stuff, I'm okay with. It's kind of a moral grey area, but if someone could get me a recast of the Epicast Imperial Knight Paladin, I'd be thankful.
Doing a re-cast of something (myself, for myself) of something OOP is probably the only part of this I think I would find acceptable.
As for the rest, while I wouldn't quite put it on the same level in moral terms as baby baseball, yes it's wrong. And you'll find that the guys re-casting GW stuff (if you're taking the argument of "big, corporate, over-priced, they can afford to lose the sales") are probably also re-casting smaller boutique studios as well.
As for the rest, while I wouldn't quite put it on the same level in moral terms as baby baseball, yes it's wrong. And you'll find that the guys re-casting GW stuff (if you're taking the argument of "big, corporate, over-priced, they can afford to lose the sales") are probably also re-casting smaller boutique studios as well.
Yeah, there's a few ebay shops that sell recasts, and I've seen them sell recasts of Brother Vinni, Kromlech, MaxMini, and other boutique studios too.
hotsauceman1 wrote: Correct me if im wrong, but isnt recasting bitz fine if it is for personal use? Didnt buttery recast an engine part and it was fine on the forum(Tear into me if im wrong, im not accusing anyone of anything. I just read the building the impossible thread that is all)
"I want more of this but don't want to pay for it" is not personal use and not protected.
.
But as said earlier, it is literally impossible for me to get the amount I need.
3 versions of sculpted, White Scars shoulder pads, available for sale, directly from the creator (Games Workshop).
They take cash (in person), credit card, and paypal.
Those are preheresy symbols(Despite the fact White scars never had a pre heresy forgeworld, way to screw people over) so those are useless. thye look nothing like the current sumbol.
Can you legally buy the original, at any price, even one you cannot afford?
If Yes then its immoral to recast.
If No then it is morally acceptable to recast.
Recasting is wrong when there is a victim, if the figure is long OOP and someone recasts it then its ok to get it. You aren't harming anyone.
Recasting is a grey area, its not a case or definitive right or wrong. Even some manufacturers accept this.
Case Study 1.
For a long time now if you go to the Battltech forums and look about quietly you can get recasts of unseen, and Battlemechs rescaled for N gauge (which is IP infringement) this is done by the community for the community and the people who own the IP for Battletech and run the website know who is doing it. Thre bottom line is if you make N guage mechs on the side, and sell them so long as you take the trade elsewhere its ok.
Now that the unseen are coming back the bootleggers were quietly asked to stop producing some of the miniatures they were previously doing and because they were by the community for the community that was ok.
Case Study 2.
A few years ago some people right here on Dakka bought bootleg miniatures for 40K. We traded ideas quite openly, one of the successful projects was female Cadians, another were Cadian roughriders riding Moas. Now these were not recasts, but the concept is very similar because the miniatures made were Cadians and were made to fit with GW Cadian parts, it crossed the line more than Chapterhouse did on these regards.
GW was aware of our casting club, and did nothing, purportedly because it was a casting club, essentially very similar to a kickstarter with stretchgoals only. Those who backed the project got their stuff and afterwards the casting ended. GW never gave formal permission, it would be a bad move, but decided to leave the project alone.
Dakka had a lot of contact with this project, most of the backers were Dakka members and while we made our own short lived forums, it was mainly resolved via our community right here. Nobody complained or called us thieves.
Those are preheresy symbols(Despite the fact White scars never had a pre heresy forgeworld, way to screw people over) so those are useless. thye look nothing like the current sumbol.
"Despite the fact White scars never had a pre heresy forgeworld, way to screw people over" <--- I have no idea what this means.
The only difference between this shoulderpad and the one your counterfeiting is the location of the stripe.
Just because you want something (an OOP mini) doesn't mean you can have it
Except you can, quite easily. If something is OOP then I really don't care because it is OOP so quite literally the only people who will lose out are Ebay scalpers. Legally questionable but the odds of getting into any kind of legal difficulties due to buying a recast from ebay are astronomical.
A resculpt of an in production model/component is a different issue entirely.
I've recasted around $1000~ worth of models that are OOP, terrain, or already 3rd party (epic 3d prints, FW epic terrain, HH sculpted epic models not made by GW, so on) Terrain? It's OOP and absurdly expensive. I made masters and then spammed near perfect recasts. The 6-10mm epic/tactics group of gamers tend to 3d print + recast the MOST
The models I use in a store that are casted? My own custom resin bases.
You're stealing from the livlihood of those artist and sculptors who made the figures.
You want to stick it to the 'man', don't buy the product.
No, you don't *need* any of this, it's a want, a desire. Food is needed, air is needed. Miniatures are just flippin nice to have.
You are correct here. I will still buy GW/PP products if I'm going to game with them
Digging through ebay for epic or warmaster models? No. I'll buy a master and recast. If they re-released the game I'd gladly dump WAY more money into the actual models.
As long as you don't sell it - or play in a GW/FLGS with it - it's fine IMO.
hotsauceman1 wrote: and no ridge. How can you say they look like the white scars symbon when the stripe molds into the lightning bolt and is higher up.
I've already posted the side by side pictures. They are the same image.
/debate
You can justify your counterfeiting to yourself all you want, HSM1.
Listen. I hate recasts. That is the reason I use german neberlwerfer models despite knowing where I can get recasts for actually less(my friend does) but I literally could not get what I wanted(I dont care what you say, those are not white scars symbols, their something else) so I had to resort to recasts. And I find nothing wrong with recasting shoulderpads.
hotsauceman1 wrote: Listen. I hate recasts. That is the reason I use german neberlwerfer models despite knowing where I can get recasts for actually less(my friend does) but I literally could not get what I wanted(I dont care what you say, those are not white scars symbols, their something else) so I had to resort to recasts. And I find nothing wrong with recasting shoulderpads.
This ebay seller has 4 legit packages of GW White Scar shoulder pads for sale. Tell us how many you're buying, HSM1.
Wait. I thought if you recanted it for your own use you were stealing from the eBay sellers who normally sell the item at extortionate rates. Personal Use is every bit as unethical as buying recasts, if you believe recasts are theft. One way or the other, you are keeping money away from somebody who wants to sells you OOP minis for dollars on the penny.
Also, isn't the White Scars symbol was a stylized kanji, the "middle" part of "Middle Kingdom"? Why is the preheresy version different?
Even though hotsauce man is a notorious yet hilarous troll with 12k posts - he has a point
ONLY SINCE YOU CAN NO LONGER GET THE OLD METAL PADS: If you want X Bitz part and cannot get the old metal White Scars one, SM Shouldpads are ABSURDLY EASY to two part inject a/b resin alumnite cast with entry level casting experience. If he tosses $60 into materials, ebay orders 10 of the old metal ones and casts 100~ thats up to him
When they're painted to tabletop standard - as long as he doesnt ebay them and another user strips the paint and finds out they are fake yellow/grey resin not white metal he should be in the clear.
By no means should he recast legs/head/bolters and so on. I've casted a few plasma guns for an IG army before, but I would feel iffy on recasting legs/actual bodies of models to mass produce.
BobtheInquisitor wrote: Wait. I thought if you recanted it for your own use you were stealing from the eBay sellers who normally sell the item at extortionate rates. Personal Use is every bit as unethical as buying recasts, if you believe recasts are theft. One way or the other, you are keeping money away from somebody who wants to sells you OOP minis for dollars on the penny.
Also, isn't the White Scars symbol was a stylized kanji, the "middle" part of "Middle Kingdom"? Why is the preheresy version different?
This is what my other post was about. Not buying FWIG Epic Tanks for $40 for a 2.5 inch baneblade
It's counterfeiting, not theft. Still illegal, but covered by different laws.
Technically speaking, it's not counterfeiting either. It is a little grey, but essentially counterfeiting requires an element of deception (trying to pass the fake off as original) which the Chinese recasters do not.
In all likelihood the worst crime committed is copyright infringement, albeit at a pretty large scale.
I really don't care, judge not lest you be judged and all that, but I'd have far more of an issue with someone priming a fake and trying to sell it to me as an original than if have with someone selling me a fake, telling me it was fake, and pricing it accordingly.
Someone out there sculpted / made that object.
They also have the benefit of making that part for sale or to license out that creation to others.
If someone else receives that product and makes their own copies: it is now product competing with the creator's.
This is why copy-write was invented: to allow invention to be rewarded and to eventually move the product to open domain when it runs out.
Recasting makes inventing pointless, it is a parasitic connection.
It is benefitting from someone else's design, their marketing and in this case the game they made.
The only reason the recast has worth, is due to the creator's efforts.
I personally get a bit upset when I do all the work and someone swoops in and profits from it.
I remember before there were Thousand sons add-on bits I had modified and sculpted on my own bits and made a mold.
This was not re-casting because it was my own creation and GW did not have anything at that time AND I used it only for my own purposes: not for sale.
This is where I see the most legitimate use of molding up stuff for a game and remain clean with the law.
Buying recasts is against the law is the blunt response but it does pose a strong ethical argument against as well.
Buying recasts is against the law is the blunt response but it does pose a strong ethical argument against as well.
Actually, in most countries, it could only be classed as illegal if you could unequivocally prove the purchaser knew with certainty they were buying an illegal copy. Making and selling them is illegal, buying is largely down to the customer's conscience.
Ok, another Idea, Broken Bitz. Lets say a bike handle breaks of(as has happened to me many many times. I loose it. Is it ok to make a small green stuff recast of that? or is that considered wrong.
Buying recasts is against the law is the blunt response but it does pose a strong ethical argument against as well.
Actually, in most countries, it could only be classed as illegal if you could unequivocally prove the purchaser knew with certainty they were buying an illegal copy. Making and selling them is illegal, buying is largely down to the customer's conscience.
Would then the bought product fall under the same category as "possession of stolen goods"?
Which typically can be confiscated?
I'm only OK with OOP recasting. If you want in production kits cheaper, you can always find deals if you're patient, and it won't be resin versions of plastic kits which I'd imagine are hell to put together. Besides, I know how much I could get the recast resin versions for, and it's really not much cheaper than trolling swap shop for a good deal.
However, let's say I want some of the oop metal cadians. They go for stupid amounts right now. If someone walked up to me and said, "hey I recast those, would you like some?" I would gladly pay for them. GW has the tooling, and if they continued to make them I would gladly buy them from GW. But they don't, so I look elsewhere. When GW refuses to sell those models, and the collectors market has hacked them up to stupid prices, GW loses any right (in my mind, obviously not legally technically speaking) to complain about lost money.
This is especially true for OOP games like Epic and Battlefleet Gothic. The only reason those communities exist is dedicated recasters keeping the game alive, because if you tried to collect a 100% legit army you could buy a car for what you would spend. And again, if GW wanted that money, they should've kept the game alive.
And this is ignoring another issue. If GW doesn't want to sell models, what's the ethical difference between me buying a recast metal Cadian, or buying an obvious copy like Vic's Arcadians? GW doesn't want to sell them, so if I just buy them elsewhere does GW have right to complain? Does GW have the right to complain if I make my own Valhallans or catachans because I dislike the official models? There's a lot of grey area and I don't always feel like it's as cut and dry as people like to claim.
And what about OOP games where even the company wishes it could revive it, like Mongoose's Starship Troopers game. The models go for hideous prices right now, especially the core plastic units. If someone told me they were selling recast brain bugs, tankers, and warriors I'd probably reach for my wallet so fast I'd break my arm. People are trying to scalp plastic starter sets for $200 alone on some sites. If I want to play the game with properly sized bug models, recasting is pretty much the only option, as I can't think of any company that makes warrior sized bugs that aren't meant to be centerpiece models and wouldn't be even more expensive than the legit models. Obviously I would have no need to buy recasts of many metal models that rebelminis still sells, but it's the OOp plastic kits that you desperately need to play the game.
Recasting is in some cases the only reason some of these OOp classic games are alive at all. I guarantee you if you went on an epic forum you couldn't throw a stone without hitting at least one guy who had to get a recast army.
However, if a recasters tries to pass it off as legitimate, then he needs to be shut down. It would absolutely infuriate me to find out the model I thought was real (and paid for it as if it was real) as a recast. If the guy straight up tells me it's recast, and sells it accordingly, then I'm alright with it. Again, I'm not a collector, I just want to play old games sometimes without resorting to papercraft or tokens.
Im talking about an handle bar, not both. And I mean stuff like the left side breaks off, I need a new one cause shag carpets are evil. So lets say I grab another bike, make a mold of the left one, greenstuff it then glue it to the repair one. Is that ok?
curran12 wrote: Even then, it's iffy and morally gray. After all, "it's just for personal use" doesn't exactly put money back into the artist's pocket.
But what if it is literally impossible to get your hands on what your need. I need alot of the deathwatch killteam sculpted white scars pads because Im tired of messing up my transfers and ruining models.
You don't need White Scars shoulder pads. You want them.
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beowulfhunter wrote: Fine, lets take current companies off the table. What is wrong with recasting OOP models?
Ethically, you devalue the legitimate models owned by real customers who may want to sell them, as well as the original copyright owner who might be thinking of re-issuing the piece and is discouraged by the flood of recasts. This then damages the interests of other legitimate buyers who were waiting for the re-issue that now isn't going to happen.
Ok as for the shoulder pads if GW supplied them no one will look for other suppliers.
The only things I don't mind on OOP recasts is the old maker is gone so no chance of remake I.E. A dead game or the have remade with a subpar replacement I.E. Assassins or fine crap.
Now I will try to get GW if I can even for kitbash productions BUT I don't care about people who think of the game as a CCG I have wanted a VSG but GW will not make it and even recasters want a ton for it as some will not let you use 3ed party
What really bugs me is the FW tax that NA buyers must pay
Talizvar wrote: Which the creator would be able to dust off (if out of production as you infer) at any point facing increased demand... oh wait, not in your scenario.
Im talking about an handle bar, not both. And I mean stuff like the left side breaks off, I need a new one cause shag carpets are evil. So lets say I grab another bike, make a mold of the left one, greenstuff it then glue it to the repair one. Is that ok?
I'll answer your question right after you answer mine.
How many of the legit GW shoulder pads that I linked via ebay did you buy, now that you don't have to counterfeit them?
Why has no one pointed out that those of us that buy legit models have the cost of recasters passed on to us? People complain that the game is too expensive but think about what is driving the cost up. Obviously not the only factor but it plays a part.
hotsauceman1 wrote: Correct me if im wrong, but isnt recasting bitz fine if it is for personal use? Didnt buttery recast an engine part and it was fine on the forum(Tear into me if im wrong, im not accusing anyone of anything. I just read the building the impossible thread that is all)
"I want more of this but don't want to pay for it" is not personal use and not protected.
.
But as said earlier, it is literally impossible for me to get the amount I need.
I really don't see oop as excusing recasts. You missed your chance buying at retail, simple as. Prices are high second hand? Welcome to collecting, if you don't want to pay the market price, you don't get to have the model. Wanting something doesn't mean that you are entitled to buy it at whatever price suits you. When I want oop models, I ask around, I check eBay regularly, I make offers and message sellers. Most things I've been able to get with a little patience, and without breaking the law, or my morals.
On that note, if anyone has an original krell model (preslotta with sword) they wish to sell, get in touch
mhelm01 wrote: Why has no one pointed out that those of us that buy legit models have the cost of recasters passed on to us? People complain that the game is too expensive but think about what is driving the cost up. Obviously not the only factor but it plays a part.
From what I seen recasts of imprint kits are not that much cheaper and need a lot more work to make passable or even put together
The only ones that save cash are OOP or FW
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JamesY wrote: I really don't see oop as excusing recasts. You missed your chance buying at retail, simple as. Prices are high second hand? Welcome to collecting, if you don't want to pay the market price, you don't get to have the model. Wanting something doesn't mean that you are entitled to buy it at whatever price suits you. When I want oop models, I ask around, I check eBay regularly, I make offers and message sellers. Most things I've been able to get with a little patience, and without breaking the law, or my morals.
On that note, if anyone has an original krell model (preslotta with sword) they wish to sell, get in touch
At what point did war gaming become a CCG not everyone wants to collect some want to play the game
Talizvar wrote: Which the creator would be able to dust off (if out of production as you infer) at any point facing increased demand... oh wait, not in your scenario.
Has that ever happened?
If you are thinking of GW, see if their newly revived specialist games group does anything. (Holding breath is optional).
Other more pure art I have seen this quite often usually when the artist was "digging around in the back".
Buying recasts is against the law is the blunt response but it does pose a strong ethical argument against as well.
Actually, in most countries, it could only be classed as illegal if you could unequivocally prove the purchaser knew with certainty they were buying an illegal copy. Making and selling them is illegal, buying is largely down to the customer's conscience.
Would then the bought product fall under the same category as "possession of stolen goods"?
Which typically can be confiscated?
No. Because recasting isn't theft. It is, as has already been discussed, copyright violation. It isn't even counterfeiting unless the seller is passing the recasts off as originals, it isn't theft because the recasts aren't taken from anyone - unless you'd like to suggest that the recasters are also shoplifting the originals from stores and breaking into FW to get their hands on stuff? Even then, that would be a separate offense.
It's just the same old hyperbole that's trotted out whenever the subject comes up. I've seen many interesting arguments about the nature of IP protection, whether it actually achieved what was intended, how attitude towards IP law varies in different cultures etc.. There's much of interest to discuss, much isn't clear or cut and dried. But inevitably people just throw themselves around using the wrong terms because they're more emotive.
Actually I'd buy the metal shoulder pads in this case - as the metal is NICE/give the marine weight/I really like the Ultramarine metal shoulder pads I have. If I'm considering mass buying sternguard, I can afford metal shoulder pads off ebay.
to break even, It would cost me (to recast to 99% quality) around 100$ to produce around 100 shoulder pads. If I only need 30-40, I'd buy the damn ebay metal ones. If I had a whole battle company to do? The cost and time would out weigh the result/desire. I'm not painting 100 marines at once, I only will paint a dozen or so a week at most.
MrMoustaffa wrote: This is especially true for OOP games like Epic and Battlefleet Gothic. The only reason those communities exist is dedicated recasters keeping the game alive, because if you tried to collect a 100% legit army you could buy a car for what you would spend. And again, if GW wanted that money, they should've kept the game alive.
Only way Epic is alive right now. Seriously.
JamesY wrote: I really don't see oop as excusing recasts. You missed your chance buying at retail, simple as. Prices are high second hand? Welcome to collecting, if you don't want to pay the market price, you don't get to have the model. Wanting something doesn't mean that you are entitled to buy it at whatever price suits you. When I want oop models, I ask around, I check eBay regularly, I make offers and message sellers. Most things I've been able to get with a little patience, and without breaking the law, or my morals.
Your best bud wants to start 6mm gaming - he decides on Warmaster and buys non-GW minis. How would you go about starting Warmaster? eBay will run you a solid 300-400 for a damaged/poorly painted Warmaster army, or $100 for a non GW equivalent (solid companies out there with 6mm) (Not just a starter force, but a full army).
Recasting for me will be: Hunt on ebay for all of the original models $100-200, buy them, strip/repair the 10+ year old models, create masters, make sure you get the mold correct/sprues/inject, spend a few days recasting, QC product, now I can duplicate XYZ amount of ranks for my massive Warmaster Army. Most of the characters/off models will be originals. I'm now playing this wonderfully painted army with my buddy and I had a TON of fun casting/painting/making packed unit stands with the extra models/converting/and so on. This is how the Epic community is... except we have a few AMAZING artists who produce the quality HH models (do not PM me about this)
I see. Only you said earlier that you were going to recast the shoulder pad. Now, you don't have to! The legit GW shoulder pad is for sale. So when you do get to the point where you are going to hobby and build a White Scars unit, you'll look for the legit pads?
Im talking about an handle bar, not both. And I mean stuff like the left side breaks off, I need a new one cause shag carpets are evil. So lets say I grab another bike, make a mold of the left one, greenstuff it then glue it to the repair one. Is that ok?
Sure, that's OK. In my book, that's a repair job. You bought the model and broke a piece. That is 100% different from recasting 10 shoulder pads that are for sale from the manufacturer because you don't want to spend the money.
I love these threads because they let me know who not to trade with.
I am firmly against re-casting. I find it to be a moral issue, and since I hope to eventually make a living off intellectual properties I create I want to honor the IPs of others and pay those artists for their work.
However, it does get morally murky when dealing with OOP items. I acknowledge that and understand where this camp is coming from to a degree. I still think recasting is wrong even for OOP items, but only on the grounds that it potentially muddies the waters for people trying to obtain legitimate copies of those OOP models.
And the counter argument of "Yeah, but these are for my personal use and I'd NEVER pass them off as legit" leaves me very, very skeptical. Things happen, and it is still very likely that those recast bits or models will make their way to the secondary market either through forgetfulness on the seller's part or apathy because the seller is getting out of a specific game system or gaming all together. So, in a perfect world OOP recasting could be a victim-less crime, but in reality I see a lot of fake crap in the market and it is frustrating to deal with as a game collector.
Like a few others on here I bristle at the sense of entitlement pro-recasting folks seem to have regarding models. It strikes me as gross when a person resorts to ethically questionable behavior to get something as frivolous as a gaming model just because they want it.
Buying recasts is against the law is the blunt response but it does pose a strong ethical argument against as well.
Maybe in Canada. In the US, the only state with laws that apply to the purchase of such products is in New York (last time I checked).
In the US it's illegal to produce or sell, "traffic", these infringing products but not illegal to purchase them. Feel free to argue with the Department of Justice if you don't agree.
DoJ:
Under this definition, the scope of the act is limited to commercial activities. Thus it is not a crime under this act for an individual knowingly to purchase goods bearing counterfeit marks, if the purchase is for the individual's personal use.
Copying does two things. 1. It encourages competition; look at the generic drug market for how this works. 2. It encourages constant innovation. I own recasts from China and originals from forgeworld and have found the recasts to be higher quality casts with less remedial work needed. GW loses money to recasters, invests money in new production facilities. The result is a higher quality original product. If a recaster can improve on your design, you're doing something wrong. If you go out of business because you can't compete with people recasting your product, you're doing something wrong (business model, pricing structure, etc.)
I buy the highest quality and lowest priced product that I can with my money because it's my money and as long as I'm not breaking any laws, nobody gets to tell me how to spend my money.
DarkTraveler777 wrote: I love these threads because they let me know who not to trade with.
I am firmly against re-casting. I find it to be a moral issue, and since I hope to eventually make a living off intellectual properties I create I want to honor the IPs of others and pay those artists for their work. However, it does get morally murky when dealing with OOP items. I acknowledge that and understand where this camp is coming from to a degree. I still think recasting is wrong even for OOP items, but only on the grounds that it potentially muddies the waters for people trying to obtain legitimate copies of those OOP models.
And the counter argument of "Yeah, but these are for my personal use and I'd NEVER pass them off as legit" leaves me very, very skeptical. Things happen, and it is still very likely that those recast bits or models will make their way to the secondary market either through forgetfulness on the seller's part or apathy because the seller is getting out of a specific game system or gaming all together. So, in a perfect world OOP recasting could be a victim-less crime, but in reality I see a lot of fake crap in the market and it is frustrating to deal with as a game collector.
Like a few others on here I bristle at the sense of entitlement pro-recasting folks seem to have regarding models. It strikes me as gross when a person resorts to ethically questionable behavior to get something as frivolous as a gaming model just because they want it.
It's extremely hard to actually get epic models outside tacticalwargames - and being a member for years (or a caster/sculptor yourself). The only actual recasts I've sold has been unloading extra resin bases (that I created myself) onto eBay for cheap. Trading is a core part in the dead specialist games community. I've also purchased epic tyranids that were recast... and was quite upset. The quality was horrible too - but it was the only lot on for the entire month that had Hierophants. I was buying these to THEN strip and recast for my own army.
I do look down upon a time in 40k 5th ed when I casted 20x Plasma Guns from press magic molding a week before a tournament. That was my early days of casting. They were terrible and I don't know who exactly I gave those gunners too and they might have been sold, then stripped..
For your last statement, I actually just enjoy casting now. It's fun to do. From buying the hirst arts molds, to extreme amount of recasting for dungeons and dragons, I have a handful of custom base types I've made for friends armies. It's another hobby side.
As a musician and a software developer / games designer - recasting is to me theft. Its the same as lifting music or downloading software from pirate bay.
Talizvar wrote: Which the creator would be able to dust off (if out of production as you infer) at any point facing increased demand... oh wait, not in your scenario.
Has that ever happened?
For small companies yes things go out of production possibly as sales are low, possibly if moulds need replacing (which may cost more than the owner thinks he'll get in sales profit in an appropriate time froms) and so the mini is OOP,
but if customers keep asking for it (perhaps its one of those things that lots of folk plan to buy but never quite get round to) it may come back
they also get sold on to other small producers who think they can do better with them (perhaps they do their own casting so costs are lower, perhaps it fits within a range/game they sell so they'll get more people buy), if there are tons of recasts out there for sale the masters/production rights would be devalued
For large businesses not so much (or at all) so I'll agree with you there
DarkTraveler777 wrote: I
Like a few others on here I bristle at the sense of entitlement pro-recasting folks seem to have regarding models. It strikes me as gross when a person resorts to ethically questionable behavior to get something as frivolous as a gaming model just because they want it.
I bristle at people who think they can pass judgment on other people based on one tiny sliver of information. But hey, people making personal moral decisions about what they do with their money gets up your nose, people feeling entitled in adopting a position of moral superiority, frequently alongside a position of factual inaccuracy, gets up mine.
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auticus wrote: As a musician and a software developer / games designer - recasting is to me theft. Its the same as lifting music or downloading software from pirate bay.
Which still isn't theft.
Theft is a legal term with its own definition, which doesn't apply to piracy in any form. How often does this have to be stated before people grasp this?
Your best bud wants to start 6mm gaming - he decides on Warmaster and buys non-GW minis. How would you go about starting Warmaster? eBay will run you a solid 300-400 for a damaged/poorly painted Warmaster army, or $100 for a non GW equivalent (solid companies out there with 6mm) (Not just a starter force, but a full army).
Then there are two options, either I choose not to collect 6mm warmaster, or I would accept the cost and pay it. That way I am not breaking any laws, my ethics, or devaluing other people's collections. Again, wanting something doesn't come with an entitlement to it.
Stevefamine wrote:(do not PM me about this)
I can't imagine for a moment why I would.
Oldmike wrote:
At what point did war gaming become a CCG not everyone wants to collect some want to play the game
So? If you need an army to play a wargame, you should pay for it legitimately. No one's motivation for wanting a model is any better than anyone else's.
I will guiltily admit to buying recast from time to time. Or at least I did back when I was more avidly collecting. Frankly it was just too good to pass off when you wanted volume. I would still buy FW direct quite often as well, but if you wanted 30 mkIV back in the pre-plastic days then it was really, really tough to turn down a 50% + discount for really well done recasts.
I am not sure I would go do it again now a few years later, but a thriving recast market is the result of prices out of reach for many of the people wanting to play. Vicious circle. I would say although I cannot expect GW or FW to lower their prices per unit, they do seem to be moving in the direction of volume discounts and to me that is a very smart move.
It is extremely easy to recast the old metal models. Simply take a clay and a metal model and stick it in with a square box border. Pour a casting rubber on it and let it cure. remove the box border and clay, keep the model in the rubber mold, flip it over and do the other half. Then melt some pewter ingots (can get from ebay) and pour that hot metal into the mold. Let it cool and you have an exact replica of the metal model (if you did it right). There is NO WAY to tell a recast old metal model if you use pewter ingots and make the recast metal as well. So let that be a lesson to all those who think their precious metal models are safe. Its actually easier to recast them and near impossible to tell a recast from an original.
DarkTraveler777 wrote: I
Like a few others on here I bristle at the sense of entitlement pro-recasting folks seem to have regarding models. It strikes me as gross when a person resorts to ethically questionable behavior to get something as frivolous as a gaming model just because they want it.
I bristle at people who think they can pass judgment on other people based on one tiny sliver of information. But hey, people making personal moral decisions about what they do with their money gets up your nose, people feeling entitled in adopting a position of moral superiority, frequently alongside a position of factual inaccuracy, gets up mine.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
auticus wrote: As a musician and a software developer / games designer - recasting is to me theft. Its the same as lifting music or downloading software from pirate bay.
Which still isn't theft.
Theft is a legal term with its own definition, which doesn't apply to piracy in any form. How often does this have to be stated before people grasp this?
Its theft. Its bypassing the owner to create either a cheap knock off or offering it for free. You can pedantically try to nit pick the term to death but its still taking compensation away from the creator. The unauthorized copying and sharing of material.
I'd point out that since the Star Wars decision, it's extremely likely that GW miniatures are only covered by design rights and not copyright and as such only get protection for 15 years (10 years in some cases.)
Also even if they do qualify as "sculpture" to get Copyright protection "under Section 52 of the 1988 Act, copyright which exists in an artistic work which is used as a model for copies made by an industrial process is limited so that, once a 25-year period from the end of the calendar year in which such articles are first marketed, the work may be copied by making articles of any description without infringing copyright in the work."
So it seems that old GW models, older than either 15 or 25 years old are completely fair game to be recast in the UK.
(the same does not apply at all in the US or possibly most other places)
So you can see why GW has been so desperate to talk about their models as collector's items rather than game pieces in the last several years (especially in the Chapterhouse case)
DarkTraveler777 wrote: I
Like a few others on here I bristle at the sense of entitlement pro-recasting folks seem to have regarding models. It strikes me as gross when a person resorts to ethically questionable behavior to get something as frivolous as a gaming model just because they want it.
I bristle at people who think they can pass judgment on other people based on one tiny sliver of information. But hey, people making personal moral decisions about what they do with their money gets up your nose, people feeling entitled in adopting a position of moral superiority, frequently alongside a position of factual inaccuracy, gets up mine.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
auticus wrote: As a musician and a software developer / games designer - recasting is to me theft. Its the same as lifting music or downloading software from pirate bay.
Which still isn't theft.
Theft is a legal term with its own definition, which doesn't apply to piracy in any form. How often does this have to be stated before people grasp this?
Its theft. Its bypassing the owner to create either a cheap knock off or offering it for free. You can pedantically try to nit pick the term to death but its still taking compensation away from the creator.
I think you're conflating it because you're close to the topic. Calling it theft instead of the correct, legal term of "Copyright Infringement" is done to evoke an emotional/moral response. The sad fact is that companies like Disney have taken trademark and copyright to such an extreme that they can continue to make money on something for decades after the death of the artist. It benefits the company, not the artist. If they call it theft, then people will stop and say, "Well, stealing is wrong." but if they call it copyright infringement, they're less likely to get that instinctual emotional response based upon local mores. Calling it theft is also a deft way to attempt to avoid such gray areas as "fair use."
Ask yourself, how long has the concept of copyright been around and how long as theft been around. I remember recording songs off of the radio with my boombox when I was a kid; I suppose I was stealing then....oh wait, SOPA/PIPA didn't exist then.
DarkTraveler777 wrote: I
Like a few others on here I bristle at the sense of entitlement pro-recasting folks seem to have regarding models. It strikes me as gross when a person resorts to ethically questionable behavior to get something as frivolous as a gaming model just because they want it.
I bristle at people who think they can pass judgment on other people based on one tiny sliver of information. But hey, people making personal moral decisions about what they do with their money gets up your nose, people feeling entitled in adopting a position of moral superiority, frequently alongside a position of factual inaccuracy, gets up mine.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
auticus wrote: As a musician and a software developer / games designer - recasting is to me theft. Its the same as lifting music or downloading software from pirate bay.
Which still isn't theft.
Theft is a legal term with its own definition, which doesn't apply to piracy in any form. How often does this have to be stated before people grasp this?
Its theft. Its bypassing the owner to create either a cheap knock off or offering it for free. You can pedantically try to nit pick the term to death but its still taking compensation away from the creator. The unauthorized copying and sharing of material.
No, it's not
If you were guilty of piracy and were charged with theft, you'd walk free from the court room.
There is nothing pedantic about it, you're using the wrong term, probably because you're emotionally involved in the subject and want to throw around what you feel is the term that most reflects how you feel.
Accusing a recaster of theft is like accusing a murderer of speeding, they're both against the law, but they're not the same offence.
It is important to keep the conversation grounded in fact, because people will get very emotional about the topic, and that generally leads to thread lock.
MajorTom11 wrote: I will guiltily admit to buying recast from time to time. Or at least I did back when I was more avidly collecting. Frankly it was just too good to pass off when you wanted volume. I would still buy FW direct quite often as well, but if you wanted 30 mkIV back in the pre-plastic days then it was really, really tough to turn down a 50% + discount for really well done recasts.
I am not sure I would go do it again now a few years later, but a thriving recast market is the result of prices out of reach for many of the people wanting to play. Vicious circle. I would say although I cannot expect GW or FW to lower their prices per unit, they do seem to be moving in the direction of volume discounts and to me that is a very smart move.
I've never purchased any GW recasts before or handled any of those china rip offs. I'm aware they have a rep for being better - but looking at picture reviews on popular mainstreeam upvote boards - they're not that much better. Forgeworld has sent me some extremely poor Hydra casts back in 5th edition. Still mad about hours of hot water and greenstuff. I was unaware the price was that much lower - I expected it was a "Send your money here and hope the product shows up".
Again - I've not sold casts except my custom resin bases
Xerics wrote: It is extremely easy to recast the old metal models. Simply take a clay and a metal model and stick it in with a square box border. Pour a casting rubber on it and let it cure. remove the box border and clay, keep the model in the rubber mold, flip it over and do the other half. Then melt some pewter ingots (can get from ebay) and pour that hot metal into the mold. Let it cool and you have an exact replica of the metal model (if you did it right). There is NO WAY to tell a recast old metal model if you use pewter ingots and make the recast metal as well. So let that be a lesson to all those who think their precious metal models are safe. Its actually easier to recast them and near impossible to tell a recast from an original.
A fellow recaster friend had a 1/6~ success rate with metal XYZ chaos character. It's unforgiving and not worth the control vs resin. I've also seen many posts of fake Necromunda models (I've never handled these).
No. Because recasting isn't theft. It is, as has already been discussed, copyright violation. It isn't even counterfeiting unless the seller is passing the recasts off as originals, it isn't theft because the recasts aren't taken from anyone - unless you'd like to suggest that the recasters are also shoplifting the originals from stores and breaking into FW to get their hands on stuff? Even then, that would be a separate offense.
It's just the same old hyperbole..
this is the same old nonsense you churn out every time.
Counterfeiting copyrighted or trademarked items is a criminal offence. Note the word "criminal". It's there in countless laws, across countless territories. Including China. Just because you have a corrupt regime that doesn't enforce it doesn't make it legal.
If you're talking about overseas producers selling stuff and being honest about it, even that is morally suspect. But once those recasts change ownership, do you really think the vendor will be open and honest with the sale?
I'm not doing this ping pong all over again, but I'll correct one more bit of nonsense that appeared on this thread.
Copyright was essentially first enacted by ARTISTS. William Hogarth, whose prints were getting pirated. Hogarth wasn't the man - he was simply someone who made money the hard way, and was assailed by people who wanted to make money the easy way
I have a couple of items I bought from eBay which I'm certain are recasts, and I don't stay awake nights worrying about them. But to present something that is often criminal, and invariably suspect, as somehow cool and sticking it to the man is laughably naive. Perhaps one day you'll have an idea or an invention that someone wants to rip off - then you'll care.
I've never purchased any GW recasts before or handled any of those china rip offs. I'm aware they have a rep for being better - but looking at picture reviews on popular mainstreeam upvote boards - they're not that much better. Forgeworld has sent me some extremely poor Hydra casts back in 5th edition. Still mad about hours of hot water and greenstuff. I was unaware the price was that much lower - I expected it was a "Send your money here and hope the product shows up".
They really shouldn't be better at all should they?
As for prices, I can't really give a full response without crossing the line, but let's just say we're talking orders of magnitude, secure payment methods and people who care about the customer experience as much as pretty much any other business.
Stevefamine wrote: Actually I'd buy the metal shoulder pads in this case - as the metal is NICE/give the marine weight/I really like the Ultramarine metal shoulder pads I have. If I'm considering mass buying sternguard, I can afford metal shoulder pads off ebay.
to break even, It would cost me (to recast to 99% quality) around 100$ to produce around 100 shoulder pads. If I only need 30-40, I'd buy the damn ebay metal ones. If I had a whole battle company to do? The cost and time would out weigh the result/desire. I'm not painting 100 marines at once, I only will paint a dozen or so a week at most.
MrMoustaffa wrote: This is especially true for OOP games like Epic and Battlefleet Gothic. The only reason those communities exist is dedicated recasters keeping the game alive, because if you tried to collect a 100% legit army you could buy a car for what you would spend. And again, if GW wanted that money, they should've kept the game alive.
Only way Epic is alive right now. Seriously.
If you paid me $100 dollars to recast you a shoulderpad 100 times I would profit about 80 bucks. You must never ever have recast anything, or anything with precision, or you have sloppy technique or something. Mold 1 shoulder pad. Cast it 10 times. Mold those 10 casts, cast ast that
9 times. Beck it wouldn't even take more than a couple hours.
I think you're conflating it because you're close to the topic. Calling it theft instead of the correct, legal term of "Copyright Infringement" is done to evoke an emotional/moral response. The sad fact is that companies like Disney have taken trademark and copyright to such an extreme that they can continue to make money on something for decades after the death of the artist. It benefits the company, not the artist. If they call it theft, then people will stop and say, "Well, stealing is wrong." but if they call it copyright infringement, they're less likely to get that instinctual emotional response based upon local mores. Calling it theft is also a deft way to attempt to avoid such gray areas as "fair use."
Ask yourself, how long has the concept of copyright been around and how long as theft been around. I remember recording songs off of the radio with my boombox when I was a kid; I suppose I was stealing then....oh wait, SOPA/PIPA didn't exist then.
It seems pretty silly to compare even the likes of GW to a behemoth like Disney. Most game manufacturers are tiny, tiny companies and "copyright infringement" of their IP means loss of real dollars to their business and their livelihood. I call that "theft".
Getting into a semantic pretzel in order to differentiate theft from copyright infringement seems needlessly pedantic when for this discussion about model miniatures the end result is essentially the same: unauthorized copies of models redistribute monies from the model creator to the recaster in a manner that is in most cases ethically questionable.
And regarding your boom box example, I used to do that too. I also sometimes went out and bought the single (ah... cassette tapes!) because I wanted the non-radio edit version of a song. But for the songs that I recorded and didn't buy, yeah, I was kinda stealing those songs. You were too. Shall I meet you in the town circle for our long overdue floggings?
Azreal13 wrote: No. Because recasting isn't theft. It is, as has already been discussed, copyright violation. It isn't even counterfeiting unless the seller is passing the recasts off as originals, it isn't theft because the recasts aren't taken from anyone - unless you'd like to suggest that the recasters are also shoplifting the originals from stores and breaking into FW to get their hands on stuff? Even then, that would be a separate offense.
And I get painted with stating "hyperbole".
We are getting suspiciously in the realm similar to software copying violations.
I found it interesting looking up in the past that I could be penalized worse copying than breaking in a home and stealing the program.
It can be easy to be caught comparing relative offenses that are distinct in how they are categorized and enforced.
Yep, in the letter of the law theft and counterfeiting are treated in their own categories but recasting is against the law (civil initially) and could be a felony (more than 10 copies or cost over $2500).
100% correct that terms of law have to be very exacting. I think I am saying you are choosing to be nitpicky, more helpful would be pointing out that there may be some legal violation but enforcement may be difficult in the extreme.
It's just the same old hyperbole that's trotted out whenever the subject comes up. I've seen many interesting arguments about the nature of IP protection, whether it actually achieved what was intended, how attitude towards IP law varies in different cultures etc.. There's much of interest to discuss, much isn't clear or cut and dried. But inevitably people just throw themselves around using the wrong terms because they're more emotive.
I am not sure a point is being made here other than a perceived use of "wrong terms" and being dismissive.
The Berne Convention removes a bit of that "latitude" you are mentioning but any non-member (significantly China) does add some to grey-zone to this.
I would not be so quick to dismiss it all as amounting to "hysteria" when private citizens and companies are willing to spend thousands to protect their income: a lot of money is at stake.
GW's suit against Chapterhouse was mentioned specifically in their yearly financial report of being a significant drain on their finances and those guys were not even copying.
At the very least ,making a stand against those "lawless foreigners snatching food from local families" should be enough (I think that was more in the "emotive' realm).
I think you're conflating it because you're close to the topic. Calling it theft instead of the correct, legal term of "Copyright Infringement" is done to evoke an emotional/moral response. The sad fact is that companies like Disney have taken trademark and copyright to such an extreme that they can continue to make money on something for decades after the death of the artist. It benefits the company, not the artist. If they call it theft, then people will stop and say, "Well, stealing is wrong." but if they call it copyright infringement, they're less likely to get that instinctual emotional response based upon local mores. Calling it theft is also a deft way to attempt to avoid such gray areas as "fair use."
Ask yourself, how long has the concept of copyright been around and how long as theft been around. I remember recording songs off of the radio with my boombox when I was a kid; I suppose I was stealing then....oh wait, SOPA/PIPA didn't exist then.
It seems pretty silly to compare even the likes of GW to a behemoth like Disney. Most game manufacturers are tiny, tiny companies and "copyright infringement" of their IP means loss of real dollars to their business and their livelihood. I call that "theft".
Getting into a semantic pretzel in order to differentiate theft from copyright infringement seems needlessly pedantic when for this discussion about model miniatures the end result is essentially the same: unauthorized copies of models redistribute monies from the model creator to the recaster in a manner that is in most cases ethically questionable.
And regarding your boom box example, I used to do that too. I also sometimes went out and bought the single (ah... cassette tapes!) because I wanted the non-radio edit version of a song. But for the songs that I recorded and didn't buy, yeah, I was kinda stealing those songs. You were too. Shall I meet you in the town circle for our long overdue floggings?
I am unaware that I made a comparison, I simply pointed out that the current copyright and trademark laws are due to the efforts of those behemoths like Disney; small companies like GW just get to reap the benefits.
I won't get into an ethics/morality conversation because such a conversation would be completely subjective so I'll stand on my original point that according to the laws of my nation and state where I live, my purchase of recast products is most certainly not illegal. Since the laws of the land are meant to reflect the overall morality of the citizenry, I can only assume that the majority of my fellow citizens feel the same way whereas New York's population feels differently.
We'll have to check the whip prior to the distributions to ensure it's not made in China.
p.s. on a somewhat related note, did anyone see the new Chinese company, "Uncle Martian" that is a blatant ripoff of under armour?
Sort of. Some stuff like Tau are near impossible to find, others like 'Nids and some Eldar are merely ridiculously expensive but Orks, Marines etc are still fairly easy to get via Ebay for a few £. This may well be different in the US.
Talizvar wrote: If you are thinking of GW, see if their newly revived specialist games group does anything. (Holding breath is optional).
Other more pure art I have seen this quite often usually when the artist was "digging around in the back".
Allegedly all the Epic molds were destroyed, including the FW ones, and I doubt that GW would reuse them anyway.
I can't think of a single example with this happening in wargaming, I'm sure it has happened, but its hardly a common occurrence. OOP tends to mean that the mold is too worn to replace, the company has gone tits up or the sculpt has been replaced.
Basimpo wrote: If you paid me $100 dollars to recast you a shoulderpad 100 times I would profit about 80 bucks. You must never ever have recast anything, or anything with precision, or you have sloppy technique or something. Mold 1 shoulder pad. Cast it 10 times. Mold those 10 casts, cast ast that
9 times. Beck it wouldn't even take more than a couple hours.
You seem to be at the entry level of press mold casting / just starting out. it's okay, but don't add to the discussion if you do not understand casting. Thats on par with commenting on NMM techniques if you can barely drybrush/wash. You just made two molds to make a mold of 10 without QC. Why would you make two molds? Recast a recast bit x10 times? I don't even
You would purchase an original 10, build lego/box, then setup a sprue inj and calc silicone. Wait a day for the silicone to dry, attempt a cast - sit, check molds, toss 3-4 of the shoulder pads if you used a cheap a/b that dries in a minute, hopefully you vibrated out the bubbles and get a solid 10 shoulder pads off your sprue. Clean mold, go again.
Can you quickly calculate the cost of the setup to start casting at a FW quality?
Nice... setup you have there... Basimpo. From your Gallery
With the FW Tau example above, a friend of mine easily put in $1000 USD for a solid force this past winter. It looks great - we only recasted a few turrets/missile pods. Extremely hard to duplicate the Devilfish and we were unable to at a FW high quality
agnosto wrote: Copying does two things. 1. It encourages competition; look at the generic drug market for how this works.
No.
Wife works for generic drug company with the active ingredients.
Direct copying of the self-same formulation is not allowed, period.
Creating a similar activating outcome with different concentrations or different ingredients is the only way it is allowed.
2. It encourages constant innovation.
No.
Why spend all that money for R&D if some turkey copies it within weeks?
How do you get that time and money back other than selling your product?
Why bother?
I own recasts from China and originals from forgeworld and have found the recasts to be higher quality casts with less remedial work needed. GW loses money to recasters, invests money in new production facilities.
I missed seeing any evidence of this fact.(of new facilities made to combat this)
The result is a higher quality original product. If a recaster can improve on your design, you're doing something wrong.
Innovation out of thin air is one thing.
Cleaning up and improving on a manufacturing process can be easy if the cost and time is justified for the tooling.
I think a recaster has a bit less overhead to pay for.
If you go out of business because you can't compete with people recasting your product, you're doing something wrong (business model, pricing structure, etc.)
Most companies do not expect to compete against their own product.
Not in any business plan I know.
Getting a bunch of guys in a 2nd or 3rd world country pounding out recasts in their back yard OR a company in China that tools-up a nice die and pounds them out are each difficult to compete against.
Lately, our greatest competitive advantage is the innovation and creative development and copying completely bypasses the payment for those efforts.
I buy the highest quality and lowest priced product that I can with my money because it's my money and as long as I'm not breaking any laws, nobody gets to tell me how to spend my money.
I guess the real question is: "do you know for sure you are not breaking any laws"?
You at least have given a valid answer to the OP that you do not care if you buy a recast.
Recasting is not an issue of theft. It is one of duplication. As a consumer, I generally believe that when you buy something commercially, you've bought everything relating to the item, and have every moral right to duplicate it for personal use if you wish. Generally speaking, it's not of anyone else's business what I do in my shed with my own legally purchased property but my own.
I do accept that there are times that it is in the public interest for the Government to intervene (so drugs manufacture for example). And I do accept that in certain fields, the concept of intellectual property is required to ensure that innovation can continue (medicine, for example).
When it comes to commerical recasters though, I personally, do not care if others infringe on GW's intellectual property. Why?
Because I feel that Games Workshop is quite frankly a gang of IP criminals no better than the recasters. Their actions throughout the Chapterhouse debacle with regards to trying to retroactively claim intellectual possession of artworks by fooling artists into signing them away, declaring they never took any influence from anyone (Starship Troopers, Alien and Terminator would like a word), and trying to stake a claim to owning the concept of a 'grenade launcher' and 'halberd' made me lose whatever respect I might have had for GW's claim to intellectual property rights. I mean, Christ, the Spots the Space Marine debacle ring a bell? Roman numerals? Also apparently invented by GW, especially when applied to a shape!
So yes, when I hear of serial intellectual property infringers having their intellectual property infringed upon, I find I can bear it with remarkable equinamity. I don't believe in an eye for an eye when something physically harmful like violence is involved, but this feels more akin to watching the bloke nicking a telly getting home after selling it at the pawn shop, finding someone swiped his box, and complaining loudly about it. The response in both cases is, 'Who really cares?' Much like the title of the thread.
Azreal13 wrote: No. Because recasting isn't theft. It is, as has already been discussed, copyright violation. It isn't even counterfeiting unless the seller is passing the recasts off as originals, it isn't theft because the recasts aren't taken from anyone - unless you'd like to suggest that the recasters are also shoplifting the originals from stores and breaking into FW to get their hands on stuff? Even then, that would be a separate offense.
And I get painted with stating "hyperbole".
Yep. I wasn't being hyperbolic, I was outlining the situation that would need to exist for it to be actual theft. If that seems hyperbolic to you, then perhaps that should illustrate how far this topic is from actual theft.
We are getting suspiciously in the realm similar to software copying violations.
That's because, in broad, layperson terms, they're very similar.
I found it interesting looking up in the past that I could be penalized worse copying than breaking in a home and stealing the program.
Financially maybe, and I'm not familiar with Canadian law, but I'm pretty sure the scope of a copyright infringement operation would have to be massive to carry a jail term, whereas one break in would probably do it.
It can be easy to be caught comparing relative offenses that are distinct in how they are categorized and enforced.
Yep, in the letter of the law theft and counterfeiting are treated in their own categories but recasting is against the law (civil initially) and could be a felony (more than 10 copies or cost over $2500).
In Canada maybe, but China, the U.K. etc will have different lines in the sand on that. While I don't know exactly how true it is personally, it seems to be widely understood that the Chinese government have little to no interest in enforcing these laws at all, making it largely irrelevant to your average enterprising recaster.
100% correct that terms of law have to be very exacting. I think I am saying you are choosing to be nitpicky, more helpful would be pointing out that there may be some legal violation but enforcement may be difficult in the extreme.
No, I'm pulling people up on the use of terms that experience has taught me are used for their emotive content. I couldn't give a monkeys for legal accuracy except where it skews the discussion. As Agnosto has already said "it's copyright infringement" carries a lot less emotive weight than "it's theft" and in the interest of balanced discussion we need to be clear about what we're discussing.
It's just the same old hyperbole that's trotted out whenever the subject comes up. I've seen many interesting arguments about the nature of IP protection, whether it actually achieved what was intended, how attitude towards IP law varies in different cultures etc.. There's much of interest to discuss, much isn't clear or cut and dried. But inevitably people just throw themselves around using the wrong terms because they're more emotive.
I am not sure a point is being made here other than a perceived use of "wrong terms" and being dismissive.
The Berne Convention removes a bit of that "latitude" you are mentioning but any non-member (significantly China) does add some to grey-zone to this.
I would not be so quick to dismiss it all as amounting to "hysteria" when private citizens and companies are willing to spend thousands to protect their income: a lot of money is at stake.
GW's suit against Chapterhouse was mentioned specifically in their yearly financial report of being a significant drain on their finances and those guys were not even copying.
At the very least ,making a stand against those "lawless foreigners snatching food from local families" should be enough (I think that was more in the "emotive' realm).
The CHS suit was a clusterfeth, it is barely relevant to the topic and serves to illustrate how copyright law can be abused far more than any sort of example of how desperate companies are to protect their works. It's also a good illustration of GW's hubris and ignorance.
Given that there's already a question over whether what GW makes is "sculpture" or merely "toys" then the Berne Convention may not really quite cover it. I'm not intimately familiar with the whole thing, but the definition of "creative works" in the UK that the convention covers doesn't automatically apply if they're considered toys. Interesting idea for discussion though.
Basimpo wrote: If you paid me $100 dollars to recast you a shoulderpad 100 times I would profit about 80 bucks. You must never ever have recast anything, or anything with precision, or you have sloppy technique or something. Mold 1 shoulder pad. Cast it 10 times. Mold those 10 casts, cast ast that
9 times. Beck it wouldn't even take more than a couple hours.
You seem to be at the entry level of press mold casting / just starting out. it's okay, but don't add to the discussion if you do not understand casting. Thats on par with commenting on NMM techniques if you can barely drybrush/wash. You just made two molds to make a mold of 10 without QC. Why would you make two molds? Recast a recast bit x10 times? I don't even
You would purchase an original 10, build lego/box, then setup a sprue inj and calc silicone. Wait a day for the silicone to dry, attempt a cast - sit, check molds, toss 3-4 of the shoulder pads if you used a cheap a/b that dries in a minute, hopefully you vibrated out the bubbles and get a solid 10 shoulder pads off your sprue. Clean mold, go again.
Can you quickly calculate the cost of the setup to start casting at a FW quality?
Nice... setup you have there... Basimpo. From your Gallery
With the FW Tau example above, a friend of mine easily put in $1000 USD for a solid force this past winter. It looks great - we only recasted a few turrets/missile pods. Extremely hard to duplicate the Devilfish and we were unable to at a FW high quality
Heh, good pic from when I started back in the day. How about you pm me and I'll send you a link to what I'm capable of now.
You really have no clue, especially if you're using alumilite. Smooth on supplies FW with their resin. If I sent you a box of fw originals and my recasts you'd have no way of telling which is which.
Actually, go to my post in the dakka swap shop and check out the picture link, in that library is stuff I'm not selling.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Why would you buy a vibrating table? It's unnecessary for silicone rubber and resin. you need a vacuum chamber to degas the rubber and a pressure pot to degas the resin. That's it. You're comparing hirst arts mold that use dehydrated rock powder essentially
curran12 wrote: Even then, it's iffy and morally gray. After all, "it's just for personal use" doesn't exactly put money back into the artist's pocket.
But what if it is literally impossible to get your hands on what your need. I need alot of the deathwatch killteam sculpted white scars pads because Im tired of messing up my transfers and ruining models.
You're supposed to buy the shoulder pads you need, of course.
curran12 wrote: Even then, it's iffy and morally gray. After all, "it's just for personal use" doesn't exactly put money back into the artist's pocket.
But what if it is literally impossible to get your hands on what your need. I need alot of the deathwatch killteam sculpted white scars pads because Im tired of messing up my transfers and ruining models.
You're supposed to buy the shoulder pads you need, of course.
You missed 2 pages of back and forth on that topic, I see.
hotsauceman1 wrote: Correct me if im wrong, but isnt recasting bitz fine if it is for personal use? Didnt buttery recast an engine part and it was fine on the forum(Tear into me if im wrong, im not accusing anyone of anything. I just read the building the impossible thread that is all)
"I want more of this but don't want to pay for it" is not personal use and not protected.
.
But as said earlier, it is literally impossible for me to get the amount I need.
Not impossible because Overkill is still in production. And even if you didn't have to spend $165 for each copy to get the one shoulder pad, people are selling the model separately for about $10/white scar biker.
curran12 wrote: Even then, it's iffy and morally gray. After all, "it's just for personal use" doesn't exactly put money back into the artist's pocket.
But what if it is literally impossible to get your hands on what your need. I need alot of the deathwatch killteam sculpted white scars pads because Im tired of messing up my transfers and ruining models.
You're supposed to buy the shoulder pads you need, of course.
You missed 2 pages of back and forth on that topic, I see.
I am unaware that I made a comparison, I simply pointed out that the current copyright and trademark laws are due to the efforts of those behemoths like Disney; small companies like GW just get to reap the benefits
Perhaps I misunderstood your point but I thought you were arguing that large corporations have obfuscated the law with the use of terminology like "copyright infringement" as a way to benefit their own holdings. I would understand where you are coming from if this were a discussion about whether or not Mickey Mouse should be public domain, but since we are talking about what happens when a knock-off Warhound titan is sold it seems entirely inappropriate to the discussion at hand, or that you were making a comparison about Disney's practices as related to GW.
I'd argue most of the models people buy recasts of are current production pieces that they can't or won't pay the retail price for. So, for the 40k crowd essentially all of FW's catalog. The lost sales due to copyright infringement represent money taken out of FW's pockets. Certainly some of those buyers would never have bought those models at retail, but even if a handful would have but opt not to because cheaper knock-offs are available, then those are sales stolen from the rightful holder of the IP. Call it copyright infringement or theft, the end result remains the same: someone who did nothing to create a desired object profits from that object and the creator gets nothing for their effort.
Talizvar wrote: I guess the real question is: "do you know for sure you are not breaking any laws"?
You at least have given a valid answer to the OP that you do not care if you buy a recast.
I won't answer the rest because it's all opinion. Sure, we could split hairs about "similar activating outcomes" but when I'm in CVS and they have their brand of whatever next to the major producer of whatever, the ingredient list is often exactly the same. I'm sure your wife knows the particulars of how they can get away with that better than I ever could though so I'll just not comment further.
As for whether I am breaking a law or not, I'll refer you to the department of justice who clearly state that I am not. Further, you can check out the National Intellectual Property Rights Coordination Center (https://www.iprcenter.gov/). All of the investigations and arrests are related to "trafficking" rather than purchase and/or ownership of counterfeit goods; in alignment with what the DoJ has stated. I've researched the matter locally and there are no laws in my state or municipality related to the purchase/ownership of counterfeit goods. Not being an attorney, of course I'm not 100% certain of my legal status but I have performed "reasonable and prudent" due diligence in the matter.
hotsauceman1 wrote: ... but I literally could not get what I wanted(I dont care what you say, those are not white scars symbols, their something else) so I had to resort to recasts. ..
I feel that it should be pointed out that 'I want it!' does not mean 'I need to have it!'.
You won't die without those shoulder pads.You had other options - You could have sourced them from eBay. You could have hand-painted the symbol. You could have used decals. You could have used the Forgeworld version. You could have chosen a different chapter, for which you could get shoulder pads. You could have made a pressmould of your chapter badge and made your own. You could have had a custom shoulder pad made. You could have simply put the army aside until GW made the pads available again.
All of those are options, whether you like them or not. You chose to resort to recastes. You didn't have to.
I recast terrain primarily and extremely large 8" models at times as well - I vibrate the resin after mix before I pour it. Vac is also a must - you are correct. I really like the vibrating for the 1-2% bubble reduction I seem to be getting.
I linked alumnite since it's a quick recast/mid tier resin. I like some of their products. Recasting a PP garg worked well with them, but Smoothon is great for 6-28mm and I've used them quite a bit.
It's a 1 in 10,000 chance you'd actually know what you were doing, and I just saw your picture in the gallery and went "oh no". I just assumed you posted before thinking
Edit:
Basimpo wrote: For $100 I could cast probably 60 full iron hands fw models btw. Is that fast enough calculation for you?
It would take me a few weeks of casting after work and yes - it would probably be less to cast. That is still solid chunk of time to do that.
Azreal13 wrote: Given that there's already a question over whether what GW makes is "sculpture" or merely "toys" then the Berne Convention may not really quite cover it. I'm not intimately familiar with the whole thing, but the definition of "creative works" in the UK that the convention covers doesn't automatically apply if they're considered toys. Interesting idea for discussion though.
You do make the point clearly that "the devil is in the details".
I appreciate the direct responses, I may not agree with all of them, but the reasoning for them are clear.
Well done.
I had a few creations of mine copied without permission, so that can elicit an emotional response with me in that regard, hence my position.
Legally it is NOT theft I agree, I still have what I made... but to lose control of it into the world feels more a violation than a pure loss of income.
What gets further maddening is when it is misrepresented as another's work which we are not discussing here.
hotsauceman1 wrote: ... but I literally could not get what I wanted(I dont care what you say, those are not white scars symbols, their something else) so I had to resort to recasts. ..
I feel that it should be pointed out that 'I want it!' does not mean 'I need to have it!'.
You won't die without those shoulder pads.You had other options - You could have sourced them from eBay. You could have hand-painted the symbol. You could have used decals. You could have used the Forgeworld version. You could have chosen a different chapter, for which you could get shoulder pads. You could have made a pressmould of your chapter badge and made your own. You could have had a custom shoulder pad made. You could have simply put the army aside until GW made the pads available again.
All of those are options, whether you like them or not. You chose to resort to recastes. You didn't have to.
Wait, isnt making a press mold the exact same as everything else, cause that is what im doing. Im pressing the symbol up against my models shoulders.
hotsauceman1 wrote: ... but I literally could not get what I wanted(I dont care what you say, those are not white scars symbols, their something else) so I had to resort to recasts. ..
I feel that it should be pointed out that 'I want it!' does not mean 'I need to have it!'.
You won't die without those shoulder pads.You had other options - You could have sourced them from eBay. You could have hand-painted the symbol. You could have used decals. You could have used the Forgeworld version. You could have chosen a different chapter, for which you could get shoulder pads. You could have made a pressmould of your chapter badge and made your own. You could have had a custom shoulder pad made. You could have simply put the army aside until GW made the pads available again.
All of those are options, whether you like them or not. You chose to resort to recastes. You didn't have to.
Wait, isnt making a press mold the exact same as everything else, cause that is what im doing. Im pressing the symbol up against my models shoulders.
Jesus fething Christ...
If you could explain yourself in a fething coherent sentence, this misunderstanding would not have happened.
I am unaware that I made a comparison, I simply pointed out that the current copyright and trademark laws are due to the efforts of those behemoths like Disney; small companies like GW just get to reap the benefits
Perhaps I misunderstood your point but I thought you were arguing that large corporations have obfuscated the law with the use of terminology like "copyright infringement" as a way to benefit their own holdings. I would understand where you are coming from if this were a discussion about whether or not Mickey Mouse should be public domain, but since we are talking about what happens when a knock-off Warhound titan is sold it seems entirely inappropriate to the discussion at hand, or that you were making a comparison about Disney's practices as related to GW.
I'd argue most of the models people buy recasts of are current production pieces that they can't or won't pay the retail price for. So, for the 40k crowd essentially all of FW's catalog. The lost sales due to copyright infringement represent money taken out of FW's pockets. Certainly some of those buyers would never have bought those models at retail, but even if a handful would have but opt not to because cheaper knock-offs are available, then those are sales stolen from the rightful holder of the IP. Call it copyright infringement or theft, the end result remains the same: someone who did nothing to create a desired object profits from that object and the creator gets nothing for their effort.
No worries, I don't always express myself well when writing; I can be a bit scatterbrained and jump between thoughts so thanks for hanging with me enough to hold a conversation.
I would rather say that companies (large and small) conflate or attempt to create linkages between such concepts as copyright infringement and theft because it benefits them to do so. On the legal front, I would say that current juris prudence in the matter was spearheaded by companies, Disney in particular, so that they are able to create a source of income that exceeds the previous limitations of copyright law. Even though large companies forged the path, smaller companies like GW benefit from the results of having an extraordinarily long period of ownership of their intellectual properties. In that way, the two are related as they are both companies that benefit from copyright protection under various laws.
So that's my take on the "copyright vs. theft" discussion.
The other matters are either legal or moral/ethical. I feel that I've covered my thoughts on the legal angle pretty well and I don't really want to address morals and ethics because such things are subjective, depending upon where you live in the world, the culture you were brought-up in, and personal bias on the topic.
For me this debate breaks down into two things. Legal and economics. Is what I'm doing illegal? and What benefits me economically?
I'll readily admit that I'm selfish. I care about as much for how a faceless person who works for GW earns their living about as much as they care about how I earn mine. I won't actively seek their ruin but neither will I shed a tear if they live on the street. That may seem cold but as my father would say, "I didn't take you to raise."
I like GW, I even own GW stock; that said, I think their prices on certain things are asininely high and for no other reason than, "because." I have no problem paying a reasonable price for a reasonable product but the FW prices are beyond what I consider reasonable (YMMV) so I have purchased certain items from GW and other items from the most reasonably priced source in others. Sure, I could live without these items, as noted in parallel conversations on this topic, I won't if I don't have to. Again, I'm a selfish person and though I may possess more than enough funds to purchase whatever I wish from GW/FW, I believe some items to be priced beyond at which I value them. Had these items been more reasonable (again in my own subjective calculation), I would not hesitate to purchase the originals.
I know that you and others may object to my reasoning on multiple levels but please realize that I am entirely unapologetic nor am I attempting to reason my way through some existential morality play; I'm simply expressing my thoughts on the topic. With that said, please feel free to disagree all that you like; we can have a friendly conversation (and we have so far) on a potentially contentious topic; in fact, sometimes these can be the most thought provoking and enjoyable.
If GW was reasonably pricing their products there would be no need for a recast market.
However GW has decided that all their miniatures are in effect "collectors" items and in general massively overpriced compared to most other similar products on the market.
I personally have only bought 1 single book from a game store at full GW MSRP just to support that store in years.
Pretty much second hand or other avenues are the best ways to buy GW products anymore and even then only at a very steep discount are the prices even reasonable.
There is a reason GW has suffered poor sales for the last 2 years...its called completely pricing themselves out of the market.
So no I personally have no issue with recasts, I feel if anything it will help/make/force GW to become a better company or go out of business.
You will also find recasting is much more limited or almost non-existent for other game systems.....as its not profitable for the recaster because they price their product lines more competitively .
hotsauceman1 wrote: But how is it now OK? im still making counterfeit shoulderpads aint I? Im taking the symbol and making my own.
Yes and no. Duplicating parts of components as opposed to duplicating complete things is viewed differently by the law. Casting the entire shoulder pads might potentially be an issue, even though they're a part of a larger kit, as GW have also sold them on their own... but making greenstuff pressmoulds of specific details is much more of a grey area, and is something that GW have themselves provided tutorials for in the past, so would be hard for them to claim it's bad for their business.
However GW has decided that all their miniatures are in effect "collectors" items and in general massively overpriced compared to most other similar products on the market. .
And that is entirely their right as the owner of those products. A right that is backed up by the laws of most (if not all) western countries.
MajorTom11 wrote: I will guiltily admit to buying recast from time to time. Or at least I did back when I was more avidly collecting. Frankly it was just too good to pass off when you wanted volume. I would still buy FW direct quite often as well, but if you wanted 30 mkIV back in the pre-plastic days then it was really, really tough to turn down a 50% + discount for really well done recasts.
I am not sure I would go do it again now a few years later, but a thriving recast market is the result of prices out of reach for many of the people wanting to play. Vicious circle. I would say although I cannot expect GW or FW to lower their prices per unit, they do seem to be moving in the direction of volume discounts and to me that is a very smart move.
This is kind of the way I see recasting. For filling out volumes of GW models, it can be pretty expensive; and when it comes to stretching your [insert currency here] as far as it can go, choosing whether to pay X for a single unit or paying X for 2-3 units.
One of the things I try to do to stretch my money is to buy recast bits. For my Necron Immortals/Deathmarks, I bought recasts of the front torso bit and the spine bits. I would eBay the plastic spine bits and buy plastic legs with those funds. In the end, I would be able to end up with 5 Immortals and 5 Deathmarks for only $30, and use all the bits in the kit. And when I wanted to do some conversions or scenery, I would get recast bits to do those. I could have easily made green stuff molds and done press casts, but for the amount of time that I would have put into making and casting everything, especially 2 part molds, it was easier to get some recast bits.
My other GW recasts are of the Necron characters. After going through 4 failcast Zahndrekhs and getting replacements from GW and them finally refusing to send me anymore, I just gave up and got a recast one. I only had to buy 1.
As to OOP miniatures, for me it varies on why they are OOP. Limited Run miniatures are designed to run out, so I try to avoid buying any. Dead companies such as Rackham or the Illyad miniatures I see as fair game. To me, it can mean spending $20 for 3 recast Ira Tenebrae to use in a RPG game or spending $95 for 3 of them. http://www.ebay.com/itm/Rackham-Confrontation-Ira-Tenebrae-/262385823808?hash=item3d1769f040:g:1E8AAOSwUUdXDsgE. If Rackham was still around, or if CMON would actually do something with the IP, I would buy from them.
For the most part, I avoid buying recasts of other miniature companies. Reaper, Dark Sword, Kromlech, Secret Weapons, Micro Arts Studio: all of these companies produce good quality mini's and materials at fair prices, and I'm happy to support them with my money.
I know that you and others may object to my reasoning on multiple levels but please realize that I am entirely unapologetic nor am I attempting to reason my way through some existential morality play; I'm simply expressing my thoughts on the topic. With that said, please feel free to disagree all that you like; we can have a friendly conversation (and we have so far) on a potentially contentious topic; in fact, sometimes these can be the most thought provoking and enjoyable.
Cheers!
All good man. I do disagree with your stance heartily, because, as I stated earlier, I am trying to make it in the gaming business so I am approaching the matter from the perspective of the small time operator who has their work infringed upon by others looking to make a quick buck. That just doesn't sit right with me.
However, there are a lot of models I want, and many of them I cannot afford at the moment. There have been a few times where I had to talk myself out of buying from recasters which was tough because the prices were so damn good. So I understand your position. "LIfe is short, the models are cool, so feth it!"
I just ultimately can't support that position because by doing so I would have to approve of others hypothetically doing the same to my work in the future and that is an untenable position for me.
If someone was copying my work and making money off my effort I'd be furious so I avoid doing that to others to avoid indulging in behavior that I find gross and inappropriate.
Which of course gets me labeled as judgmental by some on here.
Anyway, the conversation has been a good one so far (one or two posters excepted) and this is a topic that merits discussion so lets keep it up!
As well GW can price their products however they want just as I am free to spend my money however i want.
An if someone is making a comparable product for much less I see no reason not to send my money that way.
Which all legality aside....you are either funding a greedy corporation- GW or funding smaller operations that are most likely only feeding their families so take your pick as to the ethics on that choice.
Also to my knowledge there is nothing illegal about buying recasts.
The legality/legal issues are all on the person doing the selling. So I have no ethical issues in spending my money how I see fit to get the most bang for the buck so to speak.
All good man. I do disagree with your stance heartily, because, as I stated earlier, I am trying to make it in the gaming business so I am approaching the matter from the perspective of the small time operator who has their work infringed upon by others looking to make a quick buck. That just doesn't sit right with me.
Then you're not even remotely in the crosshairs of the recasters.
Even PP barely show up on their radar. Recasting is 90+% GW with the odd smattering of other bits and pieces (I suspect they got commissioned to do a bunch of these then added them to the catalogue as they had the stuff, but don't quote me.)
Recasting really won't impact the majority of games and miniatures producers, their market share isn't big enough to make it worthwhile, their pricing is more competitive, and I daresay many people's disposition to "not-GW" companies will make them more inclined to support them directly.
When we talk about recasts in this context, we're essentially talking about "recast GW product."
It's amazing the amount of twisted logic and over explanation people are going to in this thread to justify recasting, selling and buying.
Whether you like GWs business practices or not, it's still theft. Dont try and pass it off as anything else.
I've been sold recasts on eBay in the past. And damn right I've used the grievance system to report the donkey-cave who sold them to me. I'm not going to pay good money for your shoddy knock offs.
To the OP: you'll find forums like this is chock full of people who decry recasting as a moral sin and an abomination that strips the original sculpter of his basic human rights, a law breaking phenomena that deserves no less than to be strung up and hung until the twitching stops.
That's fine, that's their opinions.
You'll also find an equal number of people that would jump on the chance to own 20 recasts of 'x' for the price of 5 originals, or a trade of some sort.
There's a casting and molding forum you can hop on to talk about recasts and get a better view of the other half. Dakka dakka has a bunch of the first types that posts. I've been throwing my 2 cents in for a number of years now and it's usually the first type here.
I don't believe in hiding that a recast is a recast. That's dumb. But if someone is straight up, then cool. While we can discuss the topic of recasting, we can't condone the doing-of. So please don't offer to do it for other users, thanks motyak
And that 'big companies' line is nonsense and you know it. "Well hey, Ford is a big company, so I stole a car." Because you aren't hurting the company by doing that, you're costing some poor guy in the store their job first, a job.
Ehhhhh no. 1. No...2. No no...3... HELL NO.
Not even REMOTELY similar. Recasting isn't taking a dime or costing anyone a job. The CORRECT analogy is "Hey Ford is a big company, but I can't afford the car I want, or they don't make the car available for purchase anymore, OR they don't offer the car in my region....so...I'll get some parts and contact this fellow: http://www.factoryfive.com/kits/type-65-coupe/concept/ Invest what money I CAN, and BUILD IT MYSELF! Because recasting is labor intensive, just not 'as' expensive, though there is still cost in materials, and it allows a person to enjoy something otherwise unattainable.
JamesY wrote: I really don't see oop as excusing recasts. You missed your chance buying at retail, simple as. Prices are high second hand? Welcome to collecting, if you don't want to pay the market price, you don't get to have the model. Wanting something doesn't mean that you are entitled to buy it at whatever price suits you. When I want oop models, I ask around, I check eBay regularly, I make offers and message sellers. Most things I've been able to get with a little patience, and without breaking the law, or my morals.
On that note, if anyone has an original krell model (preslotta with sword) they wish to sell, get in touch
I see your point but let me play devil's advocate here. You have a ultra rare model, you bought it, you own it. But it's old school lead, or pewter, etc. and the model takes a tumble off the gaming table one day and shatters some part on it beyond the point of a simple reglue. Now no one carries that model cause it's OOP, no one has a backlog of parts because the certain company were idiots in getting rid of their bitz services and catalogs. And you can't find one to purchase. BUT, someone has a recast for cheap. Why is it wrong to replace the part, with the recast part? Why would it be wrong to recast the broken parts in in a material that could REPAIR your original?
Personally I have no issue with recasting as long as I know I'm getting a recast product. It's a super overblown issue. But then again so is the whole state of copyright laws right now.
What I'm saying [stevefamine] is that you really have no clue about recasting. The description of how you would do the things and the reality of what actually works does not add up. Furthermore, just to prove how inaccurate you are, the alumilite high strength 3 rubber can be bought for under $20, same for the resin. That's $40. You don't even need all or a quarter of that stuff to cast 100 backpacks beautifully. That's the cheap crap too. Using a vibrating table wouldn't remove all the airbubbles from the rubber, so voids would still be present. That's why you'd use a vacuum chamber. If your resin cures within 5-10 minutes (as most cheap resins are wont to do) then 10 casts of a 10 model mold is only about 2 hours. Not all rubbers need 24 hours to cure.
hotsauceman1 wrote: But how is it now OK? im still making counterfeit shoulderpads aint I? Im taking the symbol and making my own.
Yes and no. Duplicating parts of components as opposed to duplicating complete things is viewed differently by the law. Casting the entire shoulder pads might potentially be an issue, even though they're a part of a larger kit, as GW have also sold them on their own... but making greenstuff pressmoulds of specific details is much more of a grey area, and is something that GW have themselves provided tutorials for in the past, so would be hard for them to claim it's bad for their business.
Ok, so let me get this right
If I cast the entire rhino door of the FW space wolf rhino upgrade that is bad.
But If I take instamold, press it up against it, then greenstuff it in, that is fine morally? even though the same results are acheived?
I have no aspirations to cast anything, that's what I have a variety of emails in my address book for!
What I'm saying is that you really have no clue about recasting. The description of how you would do the things and the reality of what actually works does not add up. Furthermore, just to prove how inaccurate you are, the alumilite high strength 3 rubber can be bought for under $20, same for the resin. That's $40. You don't even need all or a quarter of that stuff to cast 100 backpacks beautifully. That's the cheap crap too. Using a vibrating table wouldn't remove all the airbubbles from the rubber, so voids would still be present. That's why you'd use a vacuum chamber. If your resin cures within 5-10 minutes (as most cheap resins are wont to do) then 10 casts of a 10 model mold is only about 2 hours. Not all rubbers need 24 hours to cure.
It feels like your condescending posts inferring that others are trolling are really in of themselves trolling posts.
And I fear you've rather embarrassingly confused me with someone else, then proceeded to be rude to me.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Might I suggest you aim your ire at the user "SteveFamine" who you were engaged in a discussion about casting, and not me, who you weren't?
@kingsman if it was a model that was a) that rare and b) I was hugely attached to, I wouldn't be gaming with it for it to get damaged. However, it wouldn't be ultra rare if there was an easily accessible source of recasts, as any one would be able to obtain it just as easily.
Let's say it is your model. You own it, you love it, you saved for six months to be able to afford it on the resale market. Life throws you a surprise and so you decide to sell it on. Suddenly it's borderline worthless because that recaster has meant everyone who wants one got it for a fiver, and the market price for originals has dropped. I doubt you'd be happy with that reversal.
General Kroll wrote: It's amazing the amount of twisted logic and over explanation people are going to in this thread to justify recasting, selling and buying.
Whether you like GWs business practices or not, it's still theft. Dont try and pass it off as anything else.
I've been sold recasts on eBay in the past. And damn right I've used the grievance system to report the donkey-cave who sold them to me. I'm not going to pay good money for your shoddy knock offs.
But what about the instances where the recasts are actually the same or better quality?
Automatically Appended Next Post:
JamesY wrote: @kingsman if it was a model that was a) that rare and b) I was hugely attached to, I wouldn't be gaming with it for it to get damaged. However, it wouldn't be ultra rare if there was an easily accessible source of recasts, as any one would be able to obtain it just as easily.
Let's say it is your model. You own it, you love it, you saved for six months to be able to afford it on the resale market. Life throws you a surprise and so you decide to sell it on. Suddenly it's borderline worthless because that recaster has meant everyone who wants one got it for a fiver, and the market price for originals has dropped. I doubt you'd be happy with that reversal.
Same thing happens with an expensive MtG card when it gets reprinted. Sucks to be the one who bought it when it was expensive, but feels better when you can buy it when the price is down. I've been on both sides of it. It's the way it is.
Im talking about an handle bar, not both. And I mean stuff like the left side breaks off, I need a new one cause shag carpets are evil....?
Shag carpets are indeed evil. So much filth accumulates in them. Massive germ and dust repositories... However, This is your friend in such situations. Just keep the thing cleaned out so that it'll be easy to find the bit.
,
hotsauceman1 wrote: ... but I literally could not get what I wanted(I dont care what you say, those are not white scars symbols, their something else) so I had to resort to recasts. ..
I feel that it should be pointed out that 'I want it!' does not mean 'I need to have it!'.
You won't die without those shoulder pads.You had other options - You could have sourced them from eBay. You could have hand-painted the symbol. You could have used decals. You could have used the Forgeworld version. You could have chosen a different chapter, for which you could get shoulder pads. You could have made a pressmould of your chapter badge and made your own. You could have had a custom shoulder pad made. You could have simply put the army aside until GW made the pads available again.
All of those are options, whether you like them or not. You chose to resort to recastes. You didn't have to.
How are press molds ethically viable? Recasting for your own purposes instead of buying more product is apparently theft, so why isn't press molding? If press molding is okay, how about if I pay someone to make a press mold for my personal use?
For the record, I have never bought any recasts and only acquired one through a trade. However, I find the logic behind the debate fascinating.
Various forms of forging or copying things aren't the same as stealing. But, both take profits.
Either way, it impacts small companies more dramatically than large ones. The smaller the company, the more I care about it, where I'll even point out infringements to companies to try to catch people. With big (especially in the case of unpleasant) companies, I don't really care.
Actually, that isn't exactly true. Various copies are something I don't really care about. People trying to make a profit off of someone else's work? Yeah, that pisses me off.
I have no aspirations to cast anything, that's what I have a variety of emails in my address book for!
What I'm saying is that you really have no clue about recasting. The description of how you would do the things and the reality of what actually works does not add up. Furthermore, just to prove how inaccurate you are, the alumilite high strength 3 rubber can be bought for under $20, same for the resin. That's $40. You don't even need all or a quarter of that stuff to cast 100 backpacks beautifully. That's the cheap crap too. Using a vibrating table wouldn't remove all the airbubbles from the rubber, so voids would still be present. That's why you'd use a vacuum chamber. If your resin cures within 5-10 minutes (as most cheap resins are wont to do) then 10 casts of a 10 model mold is only about 2 hours. Not all rubbers need 24 hours to cure.
It feels like your condescending posts inferring that others are trolling are really in of themselves trolling posts.
And I fear you've rather embarrassingly confused me with someone else, then proceeded to be rude to me.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Might I suggest you aim your ire at the user "SteveFamine" who you were engaged in a discussion about casting, and not me, who you weren't?
Hey youre right! You are just a victim of android circumstance. My bad!
Stevefamine, hey, everything I meant about Azrael13 is actually about you.
chaos45 wrote: My take is its capitalism and free market.
If GW was reasonably pricing their products there would be no need for a recast market.
You do understand just how ignorant of a statement that is, don't you? It doesn't matter what GW priced their models at, recasts will ALWAYS be significantly cheaper. All the recaster needs is one legitimate model, a casting setup, and resin, do their costs are minimal and quickly recouped. The only way GW could price their models to the point that it wouldn't be worth it to recasters would be if it covered material cost and nothing else.
Xerics wrote: So let that be a lesson to all those who think their precious metal models are safe. Its actually easier to recast them and near impossible to tell a recast from an original.
If you understood how pewter casting worked, you wouldn't be so sure of that statement. Doing it the way you said would pretty much ensure you got a sloppy model with double mold lines and poor detail. If someone took the care to make their molds precisely matching up the mold lines, as well as venting it properly to make sure you got the right metal flow into your new mold, then it's possible.
But making a good knock off pewter model certainly isn't easy by any standard definition of the word.
chaos45 wrote: My take is its capitalism and free market.
If GW was reasonably pricing their products there would be no need for a recast market.
You do understand just how ignorant of a statement that is, don't you? It doesn't matter what GW priced their models at, recasts will ALWAYS be significantly cheaper. All the recaster needs is one legitimate model, a casting setup, and resin, do their costs are minimal and quickly recouped. The only way GW could price their models to the point that it wouldn't be worth it to recasters would be if it covered material cost and nothing else.
Except that isn't really true. Technically, yes, it would always be possible to produce a recast for less than the real thing, because there's less overhead involved. But there's also a point where it is no longer worth the recaster investing the time and effort for the price they can realise.
Then there's the fact that some people would be more inclined to buy original if the price deficit weren't as great, meaning that there'd be fewer people buying at the reduced price.
Sure, there'll always be a few people who refuse to buy originals on some sort of ideological basis or for other reasons, but generally speaking rampant piracy is a symptom of a disconnect between the perceived value of a product by the consumer and the asking price.
To be honest though, I'm not sure how many real sales are lost to piracy, I'm in a limited budget right now, but I'd never have bought a Fellblade at full retail, but on sale from a recaster brought it within the scope of what I could afford. So I'm skeptical about a) the impact piracy has on GW's bottom line and b) how many people really buy recasts deliberately and regularly, as a % of the overall GW buying public.
If it does have an impact though, it will essentially boil down to 2 things - poor perceived value and poor PR.
General Kroll wrote: It's amazing the amount of twisted logic and over explanation people are going to in this thread to justify recasting, selling and buying.
Whether you like GWs business practices or not, it's still theft. Dont try and pass it off as anything else.
I've been sold recasts on eBay in the past. And damn right I've used the grievance system to report the donkey-cave who sold them to me. I'm not going to pay good money for your shoddy knock offs.
How is it theft? The recasters didn't steal anything tangible from anyone unless they, using another poster's example, stole the models they recasted. What they're doing is using other people's images without permission which falls under copyright laws.
As for my opinion on the matter? I really, really, really don't care. I am of the opinion that a sale going to a recaster isn't necessarily a lost sale for the actual seller of the model because some people just wouldn't buy it for the actual price. And in some cases people who buy recasts end up buying legitimately anyway. It's silly to think that $1000 in sales of recast space marines equates to $1000 in lost sales for Games Workshop.
(For the record, I don't buy recasts. I like Forge World and I want to support them)
Trying to price to beat recasts is a fool's errand. Its like beating piracy of music and movies. You need a way to beat them in accessibility and instant gratification. You also need to realize that you will never, ever, 100% eliminate it and instead just accept that at a certain point you can't cut it down anymore.
Simply put, people are lazy. The success of Netflix,Hulu, Spotify, etc. Points to this. I could easily get my music for free and illegally rip TV shows if I trolled download sites, but why would I bother when I can get just as good quality "instantly" with a streaming service to any device i own for the price of a burger every month? If someone could figure out a similar system for games you'd see piracy fall off there too.
Simply put the main way to beat piracy is to make the models accessible. Price is a factor in this, as GW has seen, but it also has to do with ease of getting the models and making them available. GW's situation is kind of unique in that price does in fact play a part in it, and the odds of a person buying recast increases as that price goes up. For example, I would imagine Australians are far more likely to buy recasts than Americans, because Americans get the models almost half price.
Additionally, recasting of OOP models would sharply drop if they were just available. Recasting Epic would be next to nill if GW still made it. Recasting of vintage models would be far lower if they were available at decent prices.etc. etc.
If GW (and to a far lesser extent other companies, as I'd say that all other companies combined would be lucky to be 5% of the recast market) embraced the policies other mediums have, they'd find the problem far smaller. And it's really not that big in terms of actual damage to begin with. They don't need to price match recasters, but a price decrease across the board of say 20%, and the fact that it's actual plastic, with decals, and it'll ship far faster, would be enough to seriously cut down on recasting. Other tricks would be to even out regional prices, bring back or rerelease high demand OOP models, and ironically to make their models more available in more stores.
Fighting recasters like they are now, by refusing to change and just smacking them over the head with a legal sledgehammer is like trying to bail out the Titanic with a bucket. The recording industry had to learn this lesson, Hollywood had to learn this, the Gaming industry is still fighting it (and used games frustratingly enough), and GW will have to learn it too.
chaos45 wrote: My take is its capitalism and free market.
If GW was reasonably pricing their products there would be no need for a recast market.
You do understand just how ignorant of a statement that is, don't you?
Seriously, yeah, copying something always has less development costs than making something in the first place. That's why there are copyright laws protecting what people/companies have made for a while. (Copyright laws, like a lot of them, have gotten corrupted since, but I believe in the principles.)
MrMoustaffa wrote: Simply put the main way to beat piracy is to make the models accessible.
But GW has already done this. It's not like the movie/music industry, where piracy offered much greater convenience until the legal business embraced digital sales. Everything GW sells is available online whenever you want to buy it. In fact, legal models are easier to get than recasts since you just go to GW's website and click "buy", instead of having to find where a decent recaster is selling at the moment after all their previous ebay accounts/websites/etc were closed.
And yeah, OOP stuff will still be recast because of availability issues, but there's probably a reason why those models went OOP. If there wasn't enough demand to keep the models in production then the only reason to care about the recasters is IP defense issues, the lost sales are negligible.
chaos45 wrote: My take is its capitalism and free market.
If GW was reasonably pricing their products there would be no need for a recast market.
You do understand just how ignorant of a statement that is, don't you? It doesn't matter what GW priced their models at, recasts will ALWAYS be significantly cheaper. All the recaster needs is one legitimate model, a casting setup, and resin, do their costs are minimal and quickly recouped. The only way GW could price their models to the point that it wouldn't be worth it to recasters would be if it covered material cost and nothing else.
Except that isn't really true. Technically, yes, it would always be possible to produce a recast for less than the real thing, because there's less overhead involved. But there's also a point where it is no longer worth the recaster investing the time and effort for the price they can realise.
Then there's the fact that some people would be more inclined to buy original if the price deficit weren't as great, meaning that there'd be fewer people buying at the reduced price.
Sure, there'll always be a few people who refuse to buy originals on some sort of ideological basis or for other reasons, but generally speaking rampant piracy is a symptom of a disconnect between the perceived value of a product by the consumer and the asking price.
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This, in a nutshell. Recasters can't operate a standard webcart without fear of getting it taken down, and GW is always squashing different ebay accounts left, right, and centre. If the difference in price was not so extreme, GW could throttle the recasters with ease. People like it when things are easy to buy, and they'd have no desire (generally speaking) to spend £25 buying a model from a dubious source in China if they could get it for £35 from GW nice and legally. But when that model is £80 from GW....then suddenly it becomes worth putting in a bit more time and energy on their part to track down a recaster.
GW has clearly, with their price policy, decided that recasters do not take a large enough slice of their market pie for it to be worth reducing prices to the point where it would make recasters unviable. They have doubtless calculated that they make more money charging £80 for that model and losing maybe 5-10%(being seriously over-optimistic here) of their sales to China then they would if they reduced that model to £35 and crushed them through direct competition.
Which is entirely their decision to make, and probably the wisest one. So long as they dominate the legal methods of procurement, they dominate the market, and continue to soak up most of the profit. Trying to beat China in a price game would only hurt their company in the long term, I would surmise.
Ketara wrote: They have doubtless calculated that they make more money charging £80 for that model and losing maybe 5-10%(being seriously over-optimistic here) of their sales to China then they would if they reduced that model to £35 and crushed them through direct competition.
No, they've calculated that they either sell it at £80 or go bankrupt. We know GW's profit margins, and they aren't very impressive. Cutting prices in half would mean selling every model at a loss, very quickly followed by the death of the company.
I have to agree with the dude who said that if prices were cheaper for gw models, recasting would be pointless. Recasting provides an oppurtunity to afford to play the game. Look at the new rules gw is squishing out, it's all about buy buy buy! How could you keep up with that in your local meta, if for example you're a lower class worker solely supporting a wife and three kids? No rich parents to bail you out nothing.
I got.into molding and casting to circumvent spending 1000's on models.
Now I'm into infinity and what do I see? Very affordable 'units'. A hundred bucks and you're playing max point lists. Why recast a $10 'unit' when one is fine, beautiful and affordable? (By unit I mean model, but I'm using the word unit to get across my meaning to the non infinity heretics)
Ketara wrote: They have doubtless calculated that they make more money charging £80 for that model and losing maybe 5-10%(being seriously over-optimistic here) of their sales to China then they would if they reduced that model to £35 and crushed them through direct competition.
No, they've calculated that they either sell it at £80 or go bankrupt. We know GW's profit margins, and they aren't very impressive. Cutting prices in half would mean selling every model at a loss, very quickly followed by the death of the company.
Please. No doomsday statements, there's a range of perfectly respectable business options in the middle (God only knows I read about enough of them these days....). We're talking about Forgeworld resin models specifically here for the vast part.
If (in this example) China can produce and ship a copy of a resin Forgeworld model for £25, it won't be costing them more than £15 to make. Games workshop should be at about the same production price (the bulk discount on materials used plus lack of international shipping and paypal fees should roughly cancel out the higher wages on their end).
A resin model costs about £200-£300 to sculpt normally. £400 at the upper end of the market. Tanks and suchlike cost more (because they usually utilise more computer design methods) but costs can be reduced if you're employing people fulltime instead of hiring for piece work. Ergo, GW could easily sell at the £35 mark and make a profit on their Forgeworld items. If they couldn't, then every other miniature manufacturer would already be out of business! What's more, they sell in such bulk that they could recoup the cost of the design/master from across a far larger number of sales than most other manufacturers have the luxury of attempting.
No, any issues of bankruptcy tie into existing and unrelated business issues, such as the desire to subsidise a retail chain, give out above odds dividends for their earnings, and a declining player base/turnover on non-Forgeworld items due to poor market choices. It's not that they wouldn't be making a fair and decent profit on a Forgeworld resin model in that £35 scenario, No, it's that they'd be making a smaller profit per item that can be fed back into subsidising other separate unsustainable business decisions and screwups.
In which circumstance, it's not the recaster which sank Games Workshop and made them go bankrupt. It's not charging a more affordable, yet still profit making sum that drives them to bankruptcy. No, it's Games Workshop themselves waltzing along the edge of business failure on the backs of their own decisions.
Ketara wrote: In which circumstance, it's not the recaster which sank Games Workshop and made them go bankrupt. It's not charging a more affordable, yet still profit making sum that drives them to bankruptcy. No, it's Games Workshop themselves waltzing along the edge of business failure on the backs of their own decisions.
So its the victim's fault they were the target of criminals? GW held a gun to their heads and forced them to make recasts of their product?
Ketara wrote: In which circumstance, it's not the recaster which sank Games Workshop and made them go bankrupt. It's not charging a more affordable, yet still profit making sum that drives them to bankruptcy. No, it's Games Workshop themselves waltzing along the edge of business failure on the backs of their own decisions.
So its the victim's fault they were the target of criminals?
It's a company's fault that they lost out to competition. Piracy/copyright infringement is not the same as someone getting mugged on the street.
Ketara wrote: In which circumstance, it's not the recaster which sank Games Workshop and made them go bankrupt. It's not charging a more affordable, yet still profit making sum that drives them to bankruptcy. No, it's Games Workshop themselves waltzing along the edge of business failure on the backs of their own decisions.
So its the victim's fault they were the target of criminals?
It's a company's fault that they lost out to competition. Piracy/copyright infringement is not the same as someone getting mugged on the street.
TheCustomLime wrote: It's a company's fault that they lost out to competition. Piracy/copyright infringement is not the same as someone getting mugged on the street.
Ketara wrote: In which circumstance, it's not the recaster which sank Games Workshop and made them go bankrupt. It's not charging a more affordable, yet still profit making sum that drives them to bankruptcy. No, it's Games Workshop themselves waltzing along the edge of business failure on the backs of their own decisions.
So its the victim's fault they were the target of criminals?
If the sole reason that they cannot utilise their vast market power to crush foreign replication of a toy design with minor (and they are pretty minor) design costs without going bankrupt, is that they have to support a tottering mountain of unsustainable business decisions made elsewhere....then yes. They made that cross to carry. Nobody made them do it.
And indeed, nobody is making them keep on doing it. They could try and do something about that aforementioned mountain, and make some good business decisions to extract profit from elsewhere. If that ludicrous markup on FW is quite literally the only thing keeping them afloat, and lowering those prices to a point where you're making a good profit instead of a ridiculous one would drive them bankrupt as was claimed, they're the ones culpable of having a crap unsustainable business model.
But quite frankly, the idea that making less money on FW would drive GW into bankruptcy was ludicrous hyperbole anyway, so it's a moot point.
TheCustomLime wrote: It's a company's fault that they lost out to competition. Piracy/copyright infringement is not the same as someone getting mugged on the street.
It's still a criminal act.
Which I never disputed. But framing recasting in the same vein as, say, being robbed is disingenuous. Piracy, which I would argue is what recasting is, is a much more nuanced problem.
Ketara wrote: In which circumstance, it's not the recaster which sank Games Workshop and made them go bankrupt. It's not charging a more affordable, yet still profit making sum that drives them to bankruptcy. No, it's Games Workshop themselves waltzing along the edge of business failure on the backs of their own decisions.
So its the victim's fault they were the target of criminals?
It's pretty obvious what you're implying, but making the "If she didn't dress that way" straw man doesn't equate to the recasters and GW.
The reason why GW products have been the most common recast miniatures is due to their price.
This is a single, plastic, mono-pose model. It's $28!
There are a number of resin or metal miniatures that are more detailed and a third/half the price of a plastic miniature from GW. That is why recasters will make copies of GW miniatures instead of something like Dark Sword Miniatures or other smaller companies.
TheCustomLime wrote: Piracy, which I would argue is what recasting is, is a much more nuanced problem.
No, it's not nuanced at all. People just invent "nuances" to justify their selfish actions.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
RivenSkull wrote: This is a single, plastic, mono-pose model. It's $28!
And? If you don't think it's worth $28 then don't buy it. But you aren't entitled to buy an illegal recast just because you want to get it at a cheaper price.
It's a bit like hostile takeovers, or asset stripping, or failing to diversify and being left to the whims of a monopsonist or sole supplier. They're not very nice things to have happen to your company, but if you're the moron who left your company wide open to it through poor business decision, then you have a certain amount of culpability.
Granted you could say, 'Yes, but those things are legal. Recasting isn't, it's unfair competition!.' But the truth of the marketplace is that the three examples I just provided above often happen on the shadier side of the law, and later get marked as being illegal. They still happen ( a certain company's attitude to trying to control online web carts breaches certain competitive laws for example...).
They still happen anyway though. It's not fair, and it's not pleasant. But if you're the idiot executive who made your company that vulnerable, you have the lions share of the blame.
The price of Louis Vuitton bags or Rolex watches doesn't give the counterfeiters a moral or legal right to copy their products. Its the same with Games Workshop. Trying to blame Games Workshop because of their pricing is trying to lay the blame on the victim and justify the illegal activity.
Ghaz wrote: The price of Louis Vuitton bags or Rolex watches doesn't give the counterfeiters a moral or legal right to copy their products. Its the same with Games Workshop. Trying to blame Games Workshop because of their pricing is trying to lay the blame on the victim and justify the illegal activity.
You're missing the point. I'm not even talking about recasters here particularly. The query was made that if Games Workshop was forced to make less profit on their FW, and subsequently went bankrupt, whether or not the fault would lie with the recasters. The answer, quite logically from a business/holistic perspective of GW, is that FW is a minor part of their operation and turnover, and if deflating some minor profits from there kills their entire company, it has little to do with recasters, and more to do with the fact GW cannot run a sustainable business.
Perhaps another example is required, one that doesn't affect ethical...sensibilities. If GW's resin supplier marks up their prices by 5% because the oil market has gone up in price, and GW folds, is it the fault of the resin supplier? Yes, it was their action that caused the crumbling edifice to come tumbling down. But the reason that edifice was crumbling was down to the builders, not the resin supplier.
But to reiterate for a second time, it was a ludicrous statement to begin with, as GW aren't that fragile, and there would be many other factors to take into account around a profit decrease on individual items (improved sales, for one).
TheCustomLime wrote: Piracy, which I would argue is what recasting is, is a much more nuanced problem.
No, it's not nuanced at all. People just invent "nuances" to justify their selfish actions.
And you can yell that at the internet all day and night but it won't solve the issue of piracy. Piracy can't be solved by more stringent enforcement of the law like robbery can. Industries that have more or less successfully dealt with that issue improved their products to out compete illicit competitors because, regardless of it's morality, piracy is a competitor. The music and movie industries made their products more accessible in order to combat piracy. The reason why Games Workshop recasts are so popular is because people believe they are simply not worth the price yet they want to enjoy their products. Whether or not this reeks of entitlement is besides the point. If GW wants to stamp out piracy making their products more accessible and a better value would be a start.
I'll agree that most of the differences are technicalities.
Copyright law is ALL about technicalities. The ENTIRE law practice (corporate, civil, criminal) is built upon a foundation of technicalities.
Where I live, the two things (theft and copyright infringement) are NOT the same, certainly not legally - despite what the PTB have tried to pull in the last few years.
beowulfhunter wrote: I posted in a FB thread were they where accusing some trader of selling recasts. I made the innocent comment that I did not see it as a big deal. You would think I would have said playing "baby baseball" is a good idea as I got attacked by sculptors in the industry and other hobbists.
When it comes to OOP minis and figures owned by big companies GW I am looking at you, I see no issues with recasts. Thoughts?
OK, If full disclosure is stated by the seller(your first sentence), I personally have no issue with it and I really don't care if anybody has issue with my opinion. However, if the individual is selling recasts as "real" that's a problem. I would never sell/trade a recast without full disclosure and appropriate discount.
So to answer your subject line, I don't really care unless it was being passed off as legit.
RivenSkull wrote: The reason why GW products have been the most common recast miniatures is due to their price.
And their popularity. If you were a recaster in China there's no point buying a model and recasting it 1000 times if there's not 1000 people who are willing to buy it from you to save a few bucks with all the negatives that it comes with.
TheCustomLime wrote: Piracy can't be solved by more stringent enforcement of the law like robbery can.
Why not? The primary reason that piracy is possible is that the law isn't strictly enforced. It's written off as "too small to matter" and not given much attention. If websites/ebay sellers/etc were treated as seriously as, say, someone putting up a site offering one-click deals on assassination it would eliminate the problem almost entirely. Recasters wouldn't be able to stay in business with only a handful of stubborn buyers trading illegal models in absolute secrecy.
The music and movie industries made their products more accessible in order to combat piracy.
But, again, GW can't do this. GW's products are already as accessible as possible for a physical product, and much more accessible than any recasts. The only way for GW to attempt to compete with illegal recasts is to slash their prices to the point where their prices are equal to or cheaper than "competition" that doesn't have to pay any of GW's design/marketing/etc expenses. The movie and music analogy just doesn't hold up at all.
It's true morality doesn't always come in to whether something is legal or not....
But morally speaking, I think supporting recasters is being a leech on wargaming.
I know it's culturally biased, and it's culturally engrained to think recasting is bad. But guess what? I prefer that culture. I prefer the culture that allows artists to dictate (to some extent) the price and terms of use of what they create and where consumers are free to weigh up whether they like what has been created enough to pay the price and agree to those terms. If the consumers feel like they aren't getting the value they desire, the respectful thing to do is go to another artist who is offering what you want, not a leech of a recaster who is simply able to reproduce it cheaper.
If I wanted to live in China where the culture supports reproducing things at the lowest cost possible rather than putting in the effort to make something new and desirable, I'd go live in China.
Ghaz wrote: The price of Louis Vuitton bags or Rolex watches doesn't give the counterfeiters a moral or legal right to copy their products. Its the same with Games Workshop. Trying to blame Games Workshop because of their pricing is trying to lay the blame on the victim and justify the illegal activity.
I can choose to buy much more reasonably priced watches, as I have. I can choose to buy my girlfriend much more reasonably priced handbags as well. And I can ridicule the inflated prices of those luxury items all I want, because I can buy what is essentially the exact same thing. I can buy 3rd party miniatures at a reasonable price as well. Lets see if GW lets me play my Necrons in their store with my Puppets Wars miniatures I have with them.
Those things you listed are luxury items - people are doing nothing more than paying for the brand name to inflate their ego's. These are toy soldiers that are used to play games with - not the collector's models that GW is desperately trying to convince everyone that they are. When people look at GW's prices and go "That's over priced" and the only response is "If you don't like the price, don't buy it", it seems that people are following that option and spending their money elsewhere. Hence GW's falling revenue and profit for the last number of years. If people are getting priced out of something, other things will rise up to cater to them.
If GW wants to be a luxury item like Rolex or Louis Vuitton, then spending the "luxury" price for GW products just becomes the same ego feeding, dick measuring of "I have more money that you". And at that point, I feel less problems with buying GW recasts.
Peregrine wrote: The only way for GW to attempt to compete with illegal recasts is to slash their prices to the point where their prices are equal to or cheaper than "competition" that doesn't have to pay any of GW's design/marketing/etc expenses.
Or somewhat more expensive. As long as they retain the legal copyright required to keep recasters to obscure email chains for 98% of the time, and models aren't ludicrously overpriced, the vast, vast majority of people will take the legal route for purchasing. As said, when it's a £10 saving, who wants to go to that sort of effort and risk in finding a recaster? It's only when the price differential reaches ludicrous levels (like £15 more per individual model, or £70 more per tank) that people are willing to go to the extra effort.
You claimed that lowering their prices to a more reasonable and competitive level that would enable them to squash the recasters would drive them to bankruptcy. I maintain that GW isn't so financially fragile and that other benefits (such as increased sales to offset less profit per model and spreading the design cost amongst more units) would accrue. I remain convinced that the reason they choose not to do so, is because they have calculated that they derive more net profit by charging maximum price per unit and leaving the recasters operational, than by reducing prices to a point where they'd make a fair, but far smaller profit, and crush the recasters.
Indeed, frankly, they'd be idiots to not have performed that calculation.
To quote many a poster already, 'Theft is theft'. There is no grey area, there never has been and those trying to make an argument that recasting a model because it's OOP is acceptable are dead wrong. There's not a single model out there that isn't readily available on Ebay or through one of the Swap Shops on community boards like Dakka. If you can't afford it, tough! Get something else or get a better job/allowance/return bottles for deposit/whatever so you can afford it.
If you've ever been a victim of theft, then you know how it feels and you know it's unequivocally wrong. Recasting is theft and if you think it doesn't affect GW, et al, then you're wrong again, because it does, which means, ultimately, it will affect us all...and not in a good way.
Ketara wrote: Or somewhat more expensive. As long as they retain the legal copyright required to keep recasters to obscure email chains for 98% of the time, and models aren't ludicrously overpriced, the vast, vast majority of people will take the legal route for purchasing. As said, when it's a £10 saving, who wants to go to that sort of effort and risk in finding a recaster? It's only when the price differential reaches ludicrous levels (like £15 more per individual model, or £70 more per tank) that people are willing to go to the extra effort.
It's hardly difficult to find recasts. A quick search on ebay will give you plenty of options, with ebay's refund policies protecting you if it's a scam instead of just a recast. So you're left with speculation that people will magically grow a conscience if they can't save as much money instead of continuing to buy the cheapest option because they don't care about the morality of it.
You claimed that lowering their prices to a more reasonable and competitive level that would enable them to squash the recasters would drive them to bankruptcy.
And this is almost certainly true. GW has to tell us their financial information, and we know what their profit margins are. If you take away half of GW's revenue to match prices with recasters their revenue drops below their expenses. To argue that GW can survive such massive price cuts you have to believe that recasting is taking up such a high percentage of the the total market for 40k models that putting the recasters out of business would result in a massive flood of new honest customers and allow GW to completely reinvent its business model to take advantage of economies of scale.
Now, could it be possible if you only consider FW models? Possibly, but probably not. Cut the price of the average FW kit in half and it's down to the level of similar plastic kits that have much lower production costs. I'm skeptical that this would be profitable at all, and really skeptical that it would be enough for GW to continue to sell those product lines. Cutting FW to making a tiny profit and struggling to survive most likely results in GW closing that branch of the company to focus on their core product lines.
BigWaaagh wrote: To quote many a poster already, 'Theft is theft'. There is no grey area, there never has been and those trying to make an argument that recasting a model because it's OOP is acceptable are dead wrong. There's not a single model out there that isn't readily available on Ebay or through one of the Swap Shops on community boards like Dakka. If you can't afford it, tough! Get something else or get a better job/allowance/return bottles for deposit/whatever so you can afford it.
If you've ever been a victim of theft, then you know how it feels and you know it's unequivocally wrong. Recasting is theft and if you think it doesn't affect GW, et al, then you're wrong again, because it does, which means, ultimately, it will affect us all...and not in a good way.
But it's not theft. It's a copyright infringement.
One of my recast models is a Necron Sentry Pylon. I got it at what I thought was a reasonable price. There was no way I would pay the $80 for a single model of that size/quality. If FW sold it at 10% higher than what I paid for the recast, I would have gladly gotten it through FW.
But because I would never, and will never pay FW $80 for such a simple model, is it a lost sale?
BigWaaagh wrote: There's not a single model out there that isn't readily available on Ebay or through one of the Swap Shops on community boards like Dakka.
Not true. There are quite a few OOP models that are very difficult to find for sale at ANY price. As in "if you watch ebay obsessively for 5 years you might see one" levels of difficulty, not just "this might take me a few hours of searching to find a seller".
It's hardly difficult to find recasts. A quick search on ebay will give you plenty of options,
Fortunately for GW, the people who sell on ebay aren't recasters. They're resellers of recasted goods, which means the item has already gone through another pair of hands (requiring a second cut of profit), a shipping fee, another 10% ebay fee, and another 3% paypal fee. The result being the prices are actually a lot closer to GW's.
Unfortunately, some people don't know the recasts on ebay are recasts, and get stung. It's why I've reported about six accounts in the last month alone. Generally speaking though, the accounts get hammered quite quickly by GW, before they can pass the maximum 15 items a new account can list. That's why a new account is a good indicator of a recaster.
I suspect that the number of people buying recasts off ebay is quite slim these days though regardless. I see many items ending with no bidders. Christ, if GW lowered their prices by a mere 20%, they'd kill off the ebay resellers, even if not the Chinese producers. There wouldn't be enough profit for it to viable.
And this is almost certainly true. GW has to tell us their financial information, and we know what their profit margins are.
Somewhere in the region of 9 million last year wasn't it?
If you take away half of GW's revenue
Woah there.....half?! You think forgeworld accounts for HALF of their revenue? Source, please.
to match prices with recasters their revenue drops below their expenses. To argue that GW can survive such massive price cuts
you have to believe that recasting is taking up such a high percentage of the the total market for 40k models that putting the recasters out of business would result in a massive flood of new honest customers and allow GW to completely reinvent its business model to take advantage of economies of scale.
Now, could it be possible if you only consider FW models?
Ah, I see now. Your above statements moved the goalposts to consider recast GW generally. As opposed to the heavily specified Forgeworld I've only ever made reference to. So in other words, everything said before this was in response to an argument I never made, and is thus null and void. Gotcha.
Although, thinking about it, who buys non-FW from abroad? I mean, I know some of them do crappy ABS versions of HIPS kits, but those are very noticeably inferior in quality, and I don't think they sell many of them. Certainly, I know I've never seen any on Ebay.
Possibly, but probably not. Cut the price of the average FW kit in half and it's down to the level of similar plastic kits that have much lower production costs. I'm skeptical that this would be profitable at all, and really skeptical that it would be enough for GW to continue to sell those product lines. Cutting FW to making a tiny profit and struggling to survive most likely results in GW closing that branch of the company to focus on their core product lines.
Mate, if resin casting was that expensive and bleak, none of the existing third party companies would exist. Look at the Solar Auxilia Tactical Command. It's £65 for five 28mm models. They'll cost a pittance to make a mould and resin for, and the models won't have cost them more than a grand (absolute tops) to design. If they're making £55 per transaction on every one of those sold, they're hardly borderline! Cutting the price of those five models to £35 would hardly drive FW to the wall, and I maintain if it did so even with increased sales, what the hell were they spending their money on?! Gold plated blackjack and hookers? Vic Miniatures will sell me twice as many models for less money and still turn a profit!
Ketara wrote: Fortunately for GW, the people who sell on ebay aren't recasters. They're resellers of recasted goods, which means the item has already gone through another pair of hands (requiring a second cut of profit), a shipping fee, another 10% ebay fee, and another 3% paypal fee. The result being the prices are actually a lot closer to GW's.
That seems kind of off, since I'm right now looking at FW recasts on ebay that are around 50% of the price of the real model. And good casts, not garbage made by someone who can't sell for decent prices.
Ah, I see now. Your above statements moved the goalposts to consider recast GW generally. As opposed to the heavily specified Forgeworld I've only ever made reference to. So in other words, everything said before this was in response to an argument I never made, and is thus null and void. Gotcha.
It's hardly "moving the goalposts" to consider GW recasts in general, especially when various price complaints in this thread involve GW plastic kits, not FW.
Mate, if resin casting was that expensive and bleak, none of the existing third party companies would exist. Look at the Solar Auxilia Tactical Command. It's £65 for five 28mm models. They'll cost a pittance to make a mould and resin for, and the models won't have cost them more than a grand (absolute tops) to design. If they're making £55 per transaction on every one of those sold, they're hardly borderline! Cutting the price of those five models to £35 would hardly drive FW to the wall, and I maintain if it did so even with increased sales, what the hell were they spending their money on?! Gold plated blackjack and hookers? Vic Miniatures will sell me twice as many models for less money and still turn a profit!
Ok, now consider something like their tank kits. ~$100 for a FWLRBT (resin conversion kit + some of the GW sprues), compared to ~$50 for the GW plastic kit. We know that GW's plastic kits aren't making that much of a profit margin, and we know that resin kits cost more to manufacture than plastic kits. So if FW cuts the price in half they're now selling a kit that costs more to manufacture at the same price as the plastic kit, which almost certainly eats up the small profit margin that the plastic kit is selling for at that price.
That seems kind of off, since I'm right now looking at FW recasts on ebay that are around 50% of the price of the real model. And good casts, not garbage made by someone who can't sell for decent prices.
Link? I'll report them to FW. PM, of course.
It's hardly "moving the goalposts" to consider GW recasts in general, especially when various price complaints in this thread involve GW plastic kits, not FW.
It kind of is in specific discussion with me I feel. Moving briskly on though.
Ok, now consider something like their tank kits. ~$100 for a FWLRBT (resin conversion kit + some of the GW sprues), compared to ~$50 for the GW plastic kit. We know that GW's plastic kits aren't making that much of a profit margin, and we know that resin kits cost more to manufacture than plastic kits. So if FW cuts the price in half they're now selling a kit that costs more to manufacture at the same price as the plastic kit, which almost certainly eats up the small profit margin that the plastic kit is selling for at that price.
If we're going to look at tank kits, let's rock with the full scale ones. A Sicarian Battle Tank is £76. For a similar size, Maxmini do a Gothic KV2 for £35. And that's the cheap end of Forgeworld. FW Spartan Assault Tank? £105. Ramshackle Games? £20 for a chimera counts as (slightly smaller tank than the Spartan but not by that much!) Cerastus Knight Castigator Titan? £175. Mecha Prometheus by Blight Wheel Miniatures? £70.
Face it, Forgeworld takes the reasonable amount any other resin miniatures manufacturer charges for a given model of a shape or size (whilst still making a profit), then doubles it, then adds half again for good measure. Resin manufacture is not cheap. But it is not expensive. Forgeworld could trim 50% off every price and still be turning more of an average profit per item than everyone else in the industry.
Ketara wrote: If we're going to look at tank kits, let's rock with the full scale ones. A Sicarian Battle Tank is £76. For a similar size, Maxmini do a Gothic KV2 for £35. And that's the cheap end of Forgeworld. FW Spartan Assault Tank? £105. Ramshackle Games? £20 for a chimera counts as (slightly smaller tank than the Spartan but not by that much!) Cerastus Knight Castigator Titan? £175. Mecha Prometheus by Blight Wheel Miniatures? £70.
Face it, Forgeworld takes the reasonable amount any other resin miniatures manufacturer charges for a given model of a shape or size (whilst still making a profit), then doubles it, then adds half again for good measure. Resin manufacture is not cheap. But it is not expensive. Forgeworld could trim 50% off every price and still be turning more of an average profit per item than everyone else in the industry.
But these aren't very fair comparisons. Whatever the reason is (higher design costs, higher labor costs, etc) GW's prices are higher than their competition despite not making better profit margins. So yeah, it's nice that other companies can sell kits at lower prices, but GW can't. If they're barely making money on a $50 plastic LRBT there's no way they're going to be making a profit on a $50 resin LRBT.
The fact that GW have previously specifically encouraged it helps.
Recasting for your own purposes instead of buying more product is apparently theft, so why isn't press molding? If press molding is okay, how about if I pay someone to make a press mold for my personal use?.
I already covered this. Casting a model is (probably) prohibited by copyright law. Casting part of a model is not the same thing, so far as the law is concerned.
You possibly still run into potential trademark issues if the thing you're copying is a trademarked symbol, though.
But these aren't very fair comparisons. Whatever the reason is (higher design costs, higher labor costs, etc) GW's prices are higher than their competition despite not making better profit margins. So yeah, it's nice that other companies can sell kits at lower prices, but GW can't. If they're barely making money on a $50 plastic LRBT there's no way they're going to be making a profit on a $50 resin LRBT.
Wait, wait, what? I really don't see where you're conjuring these additional costs from. Their labour is the same as anyone else casting resin in the UK, the raw materials will be cheaper (because they order in bulk), and their design costs are cheaper (because they don't have to hire out, but do it all in house). They are literally making an incredibly good profit margin. They don't charge £65 for a five man Solar Auxilia set because it somehow costs them £45 to make it. They charge it because they can, and because they think people will pay it, and because they hope that they'll equal more net profit with lower overhead/manufacturing costs (up for debate).
And who told you they can barely make a profit on a plastic Leman Russ? It costs them about £10-15,000 to design and make a new plastic kit (depending on complexity and number of sprues) right now (far cheaper than any direct competitor) because they do it all in house. The material cost in plastic/cardboard of making each kit after that is measured in the single digits (around £2 per sprue IIRC). So long as they sell enough kits to cover that initial design cost, they're laughing all the way to the bank. Something like a Leman Russ, which has been around for ages, will have made back that initial investment a decade ago most likely.
I'm sorry, but I don't understand where you're getting this idea from that their models cost a huge amount to produce. GW's major expenses are in other places such as rent and fixed cost overheads from their retail chain, dividend payments, and so forth. Not in the material production of models. The models themselves, unless it's a plastic kit that sells incredibly badly (exceedingly rare, I'm not aware of any) always make money. They don't lose it.
That's why when I say they can slash the cost of a FW model by 50% and still be making an excellent above market standard profit, it's true for the vast majority of their models. GW's problem is that all those vast profits are drained away into GW's other costs unrelated to the business of making and selling those items, and they can't raise prices fast enough to equalise the score with the number of people who quit buying as the prices get too high for them. Combined with several other factors, the result has been diminishing net profit and turnover, whilst a higher and higher profit per item is attained.
Ebay is the padawan learner of the recast world. Kiddy pool stuff.
Getting on mailing lists from Russian and China is the true underworld. A dark grim malevolent place where words are spoken in hushed tones and secrecy.
People arguing that it isn't theft are arguing in a semantic level. Your still profiting from someone else's work, and it's still taking something (in this case intellectual property) that isn't yours.
If you want to argue about the legal status of intellectual property, and if it should or shouldn't be a thing, fine. But right now, it's generally accepted worldwide by lawmakers to be a thing.
This thread absolutely reeks of self entitlement. "I only did it because GW charge too much" "I wouldn't have bought a fell blade at their prices"
You aren't entitled to have cheap models, sorry, but if you can't afford the original, the high price does not justify buying knock offs from China. Model kits are not a vital necessity like food and shelter. You're not Robin Hood, even though some of you are trying to make out that you only do it against the big bad Sherrif of Nottingham GW.
Ketara wrote: I'm sorry, but I don't understand where you're getting this idea from that their models cost a huge amount to produce. GW's major expenses are in other places such as rent and fixed cost overheads from their retail chain, dividend payments, and so forth. Not in the material production of models. The models themselves, unless it's a plastic kit that sells incredibly badly (exceedingly rare, I'm not aware of any) always make money. They don't lose it.
We can argue that GW's business practices aren't great, but they all have to be considered in the cost of the model and it's part of the reason GW can't maintain the low prices that recasters can.
GW operate a retail chain. They have a website. They sell to independent stockists (which they have to do for around half of retail price).
The making of the models themselves is only a small part of the costs.... yeah... but that just means they ONLY need to sell slightly more than twice as many models as they do now if they were to halve the price unless they cut all their other costs as well.
You can definitely argue that all those other costs can be cut, but lets not forget it's a lot of those other costs that got them to the top of the pile and huge popularity, popularity that if it did not exist, neither would the recasters Unless you're suggesting GW needs to trim themselves back to a handful of staff working out of a garage like some other operations, in which case I don't think that would be beneficial for the community if that's what you're suggesting.
AllSeeingSkink wrote: We can argue that GW's business practices aren't great, but they all have to be considered in the cost of the model and it's part of the reason GW can't maintain the low prices that recasters can.
GW operate a retail chain. They have a website. They sell to independent stockists (which they have to do for around half of retail price).
The making of the models themselves is only a small part of the costs.... yeah... but that just means they ONLY need to sell slightly more than twice as many models as they do now if they were to halve the price unless they cut all their other costs as well.
Sure. It might work. It might not. On one hand, you have produce twice as much stuff, which is higher staffing costs generally. On the other, the products are more affordable, meaning you'll sell more.
One thing's for sure though, it would certainly drive those recasters out of business!
You can definitely argue that all those other costs can be cut, but lets not forget it's a lot of those other costs that got them to the top of the pile and huge popularity, popularity that if it did not exist, neither would the recasters Unless you're suggesting GW needs to trim themselves back to a handful of staff working out of a garage like some other operations, in which case I don't think that would be beneficial for the community if that's what you're suggesting.
Unfortunately, they're losing money hand over fist, so clearly charging ever-higher prices is not the winning strategy either here.
Contextual data should be examined here as well. GW are far from bankrupt, they can easily take a slight hit to profits for a few years if it puts them in a better market position. Unfortunately, they've been taking those hits to achieve things like additional dividend payouts, as opposed to reinvesting in growth. They continue to put all their eggs in one basket (models) instead of diversifying out (vertical integration would usually be the logical move for a company in their position). But because Kirby had to borrow so much money to buyout the company originally, he stifled any form of risk, and so the corporate culture and structure has become intensely risk averse and stagnant. The company as a whole, is draining those excellent profits from Forgeworld.
Games Workshop could slash FW's prices, I would estimate, by half, and I believe they'd make up in additional custom what they lost in profit per item. Even if it was a minimal financial loss, it would be a net gain, because they'd drive the recasters out of business. Alternatively, there are other ways (as mentioned, vertical integration is logical) by which they could invest to cut production costs further still for Forgeworld whilst dropping prices to retain a higher profit per unit level than any competition.
tl;dr You are correct, you do have to look at the business as a whole when considering what FW charges, but that means you have to look at the entire business holistically, as opposed to just 'Their overall costs are higher therefore they can't afford to charge less than what they do'. It's not that simple, and ignores that a publicly quoted company sitting on the assets they do has many, many options and a lot of flexibility in how they deal with things.
But, as I said in my initial analysis, I believe they have calculated that recasters are part of the cost of maintaining such ludicrously high prices, and that it is a considered part of their business strategy. I also believe that the current data indicates their current growth strategy is non-existent though, and they should be looking into ways to streamline their business, whilst taking well-calculated risks. A drop in FW price, as a non-core part of their business with large potential for growth that doesn't contribute as much to their coffers as normal 40K yet has an exceptionally high per unit profit margin, would be a good testing step. As opposed to waiting for the mountain to come to Mohammed, so to speak.
TheCustomLime wrote: Piracy can't be solved by more stringent enforcement of the law like robbery can.
Why not? The primary reason that piracy is possible is that the law isn't strictly enforced. It's written off as "too small to matter" and not given much attention. If websites/ebay sellers/etc were treated as seriously as, say, someone putting up a site offering one-click deals on assassination it would eliminate the problem almost entirely. Recasters wouldn't be able to stay in business with only a handful of stubborn buyers trading illegal models in absolute secrecy.
Well, yeah, I'll concede the point that stricter law enforcement can't beat piracy.
But, again, GW can't do this. GW's products are already as accessible as possible for a physical product, and much more accessible than any recasts. The only way for GW to attempt to compete with illegal recasts is to slash their prices to the point where their prices are equal to or cheaper than "competition" that doesn't have to pay any of GW's design/marketing/etc expenses. The movie and music analogy just doesn't hold up at all.
Not true. GW could allow 3rd party retailers to offer their products online with discount limits built in like PP does. And they don't have to slash their products to recaster levels. All they need to do is reduce their costs enough so that buying from the legitimate seller is attractive enough over the discount from buying illicitly. But they would have to introduce a whole lot of other changes to their product line to go with that imo. Their status quo seems to be only held up by collectors and newcomers eating the high prices.
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General Kroll wrote: People arguing that it isn't theft are arguing in a semantic level. Your still profiting from someone else's work, and it's still taking something (in this case intellectual property) that isn't yours.
If you want to argue about the legal status of intellectual property, and if it should or shouldn't be a thing, fine. But right now, it's generally accepted worldwide by lawmakers to be a thing.
This thread absolutely reeks of self entitlement. "I only did it because GW charge too much" "I wouldn't have bought a fell blade at their prices"
You aren't entitled to have cheap models, sorry, but if you can't afford the original, the high price does not justify buying knock offs from China. Model kits are not a vital necessity like food and shelter. You're not Robin Hood, even though some of you are trying to make out that you only do it against the big bad Sherrif of Nottingham GW.
Hopefully the authorities can return the stolen intellectual property back to their proper owners. I am sure they are missing it dearly.
@ketara where is your info on how much it costs gw to make models coming from? I don't think you are factoring in a very large number of costs, specifically an 18 month r&d process before production even begins. Most stores are in low rent locations now, and hq is on an industrial site so very low rent there. Most production is done on site, meaning paying British wages, not Chinese wages, for hundreds of employees (along with the sick pay, holiday entitlement, pensions etc).
If they were as cheap to make as you say, their profits would be a lot higher.
Ketara wrote: And who told you they can barely make a profit on a plastic Leman Russ?
GW did, in their financial reports. They don't state specific numbers for the LRBT, but we know that their profit margins aren't very impressive and there's no reason to believe that the LRBT is exceptional relative to their other kits. Any speculation about how much GW's profits "should" be is meaningless because we have GW's own numbers.
GW's problem is that all those vast profits are drained away into GW's other costs unrelated to the business of making and selling those items, and they can't raise prices fast enough to equalise the score with the number of people who quit buying as the prices get too high for them.
Err, you're completely misunderstanding how this works. You don't sell a product, make $X worth of profit from it, then use that profit to pay your non-manufacturing expenses. Profit is what is left after you pay all of your costs. So it doesn't matter how GW's costs break down between materials, labor, store rent, etc. All that matters is their total costs relative to the sale price of the kit.
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TheCustomLime wrote: Not true. GW could allow 3rd party retailers to offer their products online with discount limits built in like PP does. And they don't have to slash their products to recaster levels. All they need to do is reduce their costs enough so that buying from the legitimate seller is attractive enough over the discount from buying illicitly. But they would have to introduce a whole lot of other changes to their product line to go with that imo. Their status quo seems to be only held up by collectors and newcomers eating the high prices.
But that isn't improving accessibility (like how the music industry beat piracy), it's just a different way of reducing the price tag. From an accessibility point of view a third-party online store is no better than GW's own online store.
JamesY wrote: @ketara where is your info on how much it costs gw to make models coming from? I don't think you are factoring in a very large number of costs, specifically an 18 month r&d process before production even begins. Most stores are in low rent locations now, and hq is on an industrial site so very low rent there. Most production is done on site, meaning paying British wages, not Chinese wages, for hundreds of employees (along with the sick pay, holiday entitlement, pensions etc).
If they were as cheap to make as you say, their profits would be a lot higher.
My info comes from talking to a few of other people in the industry who've produced HIPS sprues. I won't name names, and the prices can vary quite drastically depending on where you produce, and who with. For example, Renedra naturally charge more than Wargames Factory ever did. But once you own the various machines involved in the production and have the staff working full-time on fixed costs (calculated annually), they drop quite substantially. With a 3 month production plan, you can economise and timetable in such a way as to make expenditure as minimal and predictable as possible.
GW has run into several issues relating to staff turnover, rapidly decreasing product turnover, sticker shock, and more. It's quite well detailed elsewhere if you care to go and dig. But those are the issues that the good profit on the individual items are funding.
The fact that GW have previously specifically encouraged it helps.
GW used to encourage paper Baneblades. Times have changed.
Recasting for your own purposes instead of buying more product is apparently theft, so why isn't press molding? If press molding is okay, how about if I pay someone to make a press mold for my personal use?.
I already covered this. Casting a model is (probably) prohibited by copyright law. Casting part of a model is not the same thing, so far as the law is concerned.
You possibly still run into potential trademark issues if the thing you're copying is a trademarked symbol, though.
I'm not talking about the law. I'm talking about ethics. Posters said that HSM would be a thief if he bought X recast shoulder pads instead of buying X GW pads, essentially stealing X pads' worth of dollars from GW, but they seem to be okay if he press molds X shoulder pads (presumably onto the blanks included in the kit) instead of buying X GW pads, essentially stealing X pads' worth of dollars from GW. Why is the latter okay and not the former?
I suspect it's because everyone thinks, "I use press molds and I'm honest, but only cheap, entitled thieves buy products that are functionally just press molded parts." Granted, this only applies to simple bits like shoulder pads.
I also have an issue with anyone who recasts for their own personal use but scorns someone who buys recasts. It's either stealing not to buy those items from legitimate sources or it isn't.
GW did, in their financial reports. They don't state specific numbers for the LRBT, but we know that their profit margins aren't very impressive and there's no reason to believe that the LRBT is exceptional relative to their other kits. Any speculation about how much GW's profits "should" be is meaningless because we have GW's own numbers.
Can I have a link to this quote on the LRBT please? I'm digging through financial reports and cannot spot it.
Err, you're completely misunderstanding how this works. You don't sell a product, make $X worth of profit from it, then use that profit to pay your non-manufacturing expenses. Profit is what is left after you pay all of your costs. So it doesn't matter how GW's costs break down between materials, labor, store rent, etc. All that matters is their total costs relative to the sale price of the kit.
It is possible to examine compartmentalised sections of a business (consultancy wouldn't get very far otherwise) in order to determine what 'makes' money, and what loses it, what items can be considered to be loss leaders, what departments are in profit, and what departments are not and so forth. I pointed out that GW could halve the cost of a specific range (Forgeworld), in order to gain market advantage, and potentially reap alternative financial benefits from the reduction in price. I also indicated a potential viable way of cutting further production costs in Forgeworld manufacture.
I'm really not sure what you're not getting here. You seem to be holding out the consolidated income statement as some sort of holy grail from which to read everything to do with individual product profits and turnover, and it's something of a simplistic way of viewing things.
I'm not talking about the law. I'm talking about ethics. Posters said that HSM would be a thief if he bought X recast shoulder pads instead of buying X GW pads, essentially stealing X pads' worth of dollars from GW, but they seem to be okay if he press molds X shoulder pads (presumably onto the blanks included in the kit) instead of buying X GW pads, essentially stealing X pads' worth of dollars from GW. Why is the latter okay and not the former? .
You appear to be merging statements from different people into one single opinion.
Ketara wrote: Can I have a link to this quote on the LRBT please? I'm digging through financial reports and cannot spot it.
I said they don't state specific numbers for the LRBT.
It is possible to examine compartmentalised sections of a business (consultancy wouldn't get very far otherwise) in order to determine what 'makes' money, and what loses it, what items can be considered to be loss leaders, what departments are in profit, and what departments are not and so forth. I pointed out that GW could halve the cost of a specific range (Forgeworld), in order to gain market advantage, and potentially reap alternative financial benefits from the reduction in price. I also indicated a potential viable way of cutting further production costs in Forgeworld manufacture.
I'm really not sure what you're not getting here.
What I'm getting at is that you're assuming GW could reduce prices by significant margins by neglecting to consider their complete costs. You're only considering manufacturing costs and then assuming that if GW's sale price is greater than the manufacturing costs then GW must be making money on the sale. But you can't do that. You can talk all you want about how things like GW's retail chain are bad for their business, but those costs still exist and still have to be paid. Cutting FW prices in half would almost certainly result in every FW model selling at a loss, because even if it is selling for more than the manufacturing cost it isn't covering its share of GW's other costs.
Now, you could argue that making FW's product lines into loss leaders is a good business plan, but I seriously doubt it would be a successful argument. FW products are usually bought by veteran customers and would be a spectacularly bad introduction for a new customer to deal with, even at a much cheaper price. So it's doubtful that taking a loss on every FW sale would drive enough sales of "core" products to justify the lost money.
JamesY wrote: @ketara where is your info on how much it costs gw to make models coming from? I don't think you are factoring in a very large number of costs, specifically an 18 month r&d process before production even begins. Most stores are in low rent locations now, and hq is on an industrial site so very low rent there. Most production is done on site, meaning paying British wages, not Chinese wages, for hundreds of employees (along with the sick pay, holiday entitlement, pensions etc).
If they were as cheap to make as you say, their profits would be a lot higher.
My info comes from talking to a few of other people in the industry who've produced HIPS sprues. I won't name names, and the prices can vary quite drastically depending on where you produce, and who with. For example, Renedra naturally charge more than Wargames Factory ever did. But once you own the various machines involved in the production and have the staff working full-time on fixed costs (calculated annually), they drop quite substantially. With a 3 month production plan, you can economise and timetable in such a way as to make expenditure as minimal and predictable as possible.
GW has run into several issues relating to staff turnover, rapidly decreasing product turnover, sticker shock, and more. It's quite well detailed elsewhere if you care to go and dig. But those are the issues that the good profit on the individual items are funding.
I was asking as I used to work for gw, so I know that the production cost is higher than you have been suggesting. I haven't been talking about predictability of costs, that isn't the issue, my point was that some of their fixed costs are lower than you suggested (like rent, although admittedly it will still be a large expense) and others, like labour, and the design process, are much higher. I don't think that the issues you raise are necessarily responsible for the final price tag, but they are undoubtedly eating into the profit from the sale of the item.
What I'm getting at is that you're assuming GW could reduce prices by significant margins by neglecting to consider their complete costs. You're only considering manufacturing costs and then assuming that if GW's sale price is greater than the manufacturing costs then GW must be making money on the sale. But you can't do that. You can talk all you want about how things like GW's retail chain are bad for their business, but those costs still exist and still have to be paid. Cutting FW prices in half would almost certainly result in every FW model selling at a loss, because even if it is selling for more than the manufacturing cost it isn't covering its share of GW's other costs.
We're halfway there. Let me copypaste that bit again.
Cutting FW prices in half would almost certainly result in every FW model selling at a loss, because even if it is selling for more than the manufacturing cost it isn't covering its share of GW's other costs.
The Forgeworld models are not selling at a loss. Those are selling at a profit. Once you've taken into account the wages for the manufacturers, the materials used in manufacture, and an appropriate share of fixed operating expenses relevant to the department (utilities, pensions, managerial wages, office supplies, etc), the Forgeworld department is operating at a profit. It's bringing in more than it costs to run it.
That's why they're so desperate to drive it's growth right now. They can sit down, circle the income and outgoings of that part of the company and say, 'This is making money'. It is making so much money (I would speculate based on my knowledge of the costs involved and from what I can surmise from their own actions) that they could cut those prices down, and still be making a solid profit in that department. If they strategised correctly, possibly even more money than make now.
The fact that other parts of the company do not pull their weight, are quite financially draining, and rely on those profits to make up their shortfall does not detract from the fact that the Forgeworld section of the company IS in profit (or making more money than it costs). To what extent it subsidises those other aspects can only be guessed at. If we look at the last annual report, we see the company spent millions on a frivolous redecoration of the HQ. We see vast sums wasted on a lawsuit, and a new website. We see nice sums being paid out in dividends. Suffice to say, I would suspect that if GW got it's act together, it could cut the prices and still come out ahead of the game.
But, to repeat for the umpteenth time, I suspect that GW have calculated that they would rather continue making a higher profit per item on Forgeworld, and tolerate recasters as part of their 'price higher, sell less units' strategy. This strategy has not worked in a good while now, but they appear to remain optimistic.
General Kroll wrote: People arguing that it isn't theft are arguing in a semantic level. Your still profiting from someone else's work, and it's still taking something (in this case intellectual property) that isn't yours.
If you want to argue about the legal status of intellectual property, and if it should or shouldn't be a thing, fine. But right now, it's generally accepted worldwide by lawmakers to be a thing.
This thread absolutely reeks of self entitlement. "I only did it because GW charge too much" "I wouldn't have bought a fell blade at their prices"
You aren't entitled to have cheap models, sorry, but if you can't afford the original, the high price does not justify buying knock offs from China. Model kits are not a vital necessity like food and shelter. You're not Robin Hood, even though some of you are trying to make out that you only do it against the big bad Sherrif of Nottingham GW.
Hopefully the authorities can return the stolen intellectual property back to their proper owners. I am sure they are missing it dearly.
By that logic, stealing food can't be theft because once it's eaten it can't be returned. You can try and justify it to yourself anyway you like using all sorts of twisted logic and spurious reasoning. It won't change the fact that recasting is intellectual property theft.
If you want to do it then fine, if you want to buy it then fine, but don't try and make out that you aren't doing anything wrong.
General Kroll wrote: By that logic, stealing food can't be theft because once it's eaten it can't be returned. You can try and justify it to yourself anyway you like using all sorts of twisted logic and spurious reasoning. It won't change the fact that recasting is intellectual property theft. .
At this point in the discussion, people conflating copyright infringement with theft should be warned for trolling.
It's not a matter of opinion. You are factually incorrect. Words have meanings. Just because they both have 4 legs and a tail does not make a chihuahua into a tiger.
I was asking as I used to work for gw, so I know that the production cost is higher than you have been suggesting.
Just to clarify, are we talking HIPS or resin? Because resin, I know the manufacturing costs quite well (I've done some small scale casting myself and looked into setting up a casting workshop quite intensively). HIPS wise, I'm going off of things I've heard 3 people who've produced in it say, and stuff I've read browsing around the web.
I know GW spend a fair bit on retooling at the moment, but I heard that's more to do with replacing older machinery with newer, more capable machines (so plant investment). Retail costs a certain amount beyond normal operating expenses, (they spend a million a year just on refurbishing stores), and of course, there have been plenty of frivolous expenditures by GW of late as mentioned above.
@ketara price elasticity is exceptionally hard to gauge, and reducing prices does not automatically equate to increased sales. Your suggestion could equally well result in the reduction of the "prestige" element that attracts some FW collectors, and so alienate those customers. If the new price point didn't invite 2 new customers to replace each one lost, you are left worse off than before, and with a devalued product. I'm not saying that lower prices couldn't increase turnover, but it is very risky and definitely not a guaranteed way to increase sales.
I have a good anecdotal knowledge of the figures for the year so far in large brush strokes. FW is very far from supporting other arms of the business.
Edit I was referring to the entire production process, as to omit anything wouldn't be an accurate reflection of the total cost spent.
Stevefamine wrote: I've recasted around $1000~ worth of models that are OOP, terrain, or already 3rd party (epic 3d prints, FW epic terrain, HH sculpted epic models not made by GW, so on) Terrain? It's OOP and absurdly expensive. I made masters and then spammed near perfect recasts. The 6-10mm epic/tactics group of gamers tend to 3d print + recast the MOST
The models I use in a store that are casted? My own custom resin bases.
You're stealing from the livlihood of those artist and sculptors who made the figures.
You want to stick it to the 'man', don't buy the product.
No, you don't *need* any of this, it's a want, a desire. Food is needed, air is needed. Miniatures are just flippin nice to have.
You are correct here. I will still buy GW/PP products if I'm going to game with them
Digging through ebay for epic or warmaster models? No. I'll buy a master and recast. If they re-released the game I'd gladly dump WAY more money into the actual models.
As long as you don't sell it - or play in a GW/FLGS with it - it's fine IMO.
I agree with what this guy says - recasts of your own are fine for personal use (e.g. YOU AND YOU ONLY - not your friends as well), even up to ordering a titan to build and paint from china. AS LONG AS you don't play with it in any GW or FLGS or even in just friendly games, AND YOU ARE NOT SELLING/GIVING RECASTS AWAY TO OTHERS! One of the people I know ordered a cerastus knight and a bunch of sisters from China and it irked me because when I played against him - it ended up being his £25 chinese cerastus vs my genuine £115 FW Chaos Knight. I felt slightly pissed off when his knight blew up mine. Now, don't lecture me, usually I'm quite a chill player, but this made me salty because recasts from places like china allow people to become 'better' at games in the hobby, while spending very little compared to others. I mean I spent 6 months saving up for that FW kit, and for all that to be undone by some copy cat bloody recast annoys me. I have no problem if they don't show up on the table, in painting competitions or on ebay, but if they are I'm not a happy person. I would apply this to OOP miniatures too.
People should always tell you if something that they have is a recast, they shouldn't take the credit for something that is counterfeit and a scam. If they don't, you should probably avoid them as a hobbyist and friend in general.
General Kroll wrote: People arguing that it isn't theft are arguing in a semantic level. Your still profiting from someone else's work, and it's still taking something (in this case intellectual property) that isn't yours.
If you want to argue about the legal status of intellectual property, and if it should or shouldn't be a thing, fine. But right now, it's generally accepted worldwide by lawmakers to be a thing.
This thread absolutely reeks of self entitlement. "I only did it because GW charge too much" "I wouldn't have bought a fell blade at their prices"
You aren't entitled to have cheap models, sorry, but if you can't afford the original, the high price does not justify buying knock offs from China. Model kits are not a vital necessity like food and shelter. You're not Robin Hood, even though some of you are trying to make out that you only do it against the big bad Sherrif of Nottingham GW.
Hopefully the authorities can return the stolen intellectual property back to their proper owners. I am sure they are missing it dearly.
By that logic, stealing food can't be theft because once it's eaten it can't be returned. You can try and justify it to yourself anyway you like using all sorts of twisted logic and spurious reasoning. It won't change the fact that recasting is intellectual property theft.
If you want to do it then fine, if you want to buy it then fine, but don't try and make out that you aren't doing anything wrong.
Okay, how do I put this? Food is a concrete object. Intellectual property is an idea. You can't steal ideas anymore than you can steal thoughts. If I bought a recast space marine I didn't take the idea of space marines away from Games Workshop. They didn't actually lose anything. If I made recast space marines I am just using their ideas without permission. That's what copyright infringement is. Using other people's ideas without their okay.
Also, are you addressing me or anyone who wants to commit piracy? Because I do believe I posted earlier that I don't buy recasts.
Stevefamine wrote: I've recasted around $1000~ worth of models that are OOP, terrain, or already 3rd party (epic 3d prints, FW epic terrain, HH sculpted epic models not made by GW, so on) Terrain? It's OOP and absurdly expensive. I made masters and then spammed near perfect recasts. The 6-10mm epic/tactics group of gamers tend to 3d print + recast the MOST
The models I use in a store that are casted? My own custom resin bases.
You're stealing from the livlihood of those artist and sculptors who made the figures.
You want to stick it to the 'man', don't buy the product.
No, you don't *need* any of this, it's a want, a desire. Food is needed, air is needed. Miniatures are just flippin nice to have.
You are correct here. I will still buy GW/PP products if I'm going to game with them
Digging through ebay for epic or warmaster models? No. I'll buy a master and recast. If they re-released the game I'd gladly dump WAY more money into the actual models.
As long as you don't sell it - or play in a GW/FLGS with it - it's fine IMO.
I agree with what this guy says - recasts of your own are fine for personal use (e.g. YOU AND YOU ONLY - not your friends as well), even up to ordering a titan to build and paint from china. AS LONG AS you don't play with it in any GW or FLGS or even in just friendly games, AND YOU ARE NOT SELLING/GIVING RECASTS AWAY TO OTHERS! One of the people I know ordered a cerastus knight and a bunch of sisters from China and it irked me because when I played against him - it ended up being his £25 chinese cerastus vs my genuine £115 FW Chaos Knight. I felt slightly pissed off when his knight blew up mine. Now, don't lecture me, usually I'm quite a chill player, but this made me salty because recasts from places like china allow people to become 'better' at games in the hobby, while spending very little compared to others. I mean I spent 6 months saving up for that FW kit, and for all that to be undone by some copy cat bloody recast annoys me. I have no problem if they don't show up on the table, in painting competitions or on ebay, but if they are I'm not a happy person. I would apply this to OOP miniatures too.
People should always tell you if something that they have is a recast, they shouldn't take the credit for something that is counterfeit and a scam. If they don't, you should probably avoid them as a hobbyist and friend in general.
So, spending money is a prerequisite to playing against you? Do you demand to see receipts to ensure the correct amount of money has been spent before you can play against that army?
By that logic, stealing food can't be theft because once it's eaten it can't be returned. You can try and justify it to yourself anyway you like using all sorts of twisted logic and spurious reasoning. It won't change the fact that recasting is intellectual property theft. .
Copyright Infringement isnt legally considered theft for the very basic reason that theft and copyright infringement are covered by completely different laws.
There is no twisting going on here. People are saying that copyright infringement isn't theft because it isn't .
Ketara wrote: So to clarify, you're basing your knowledge on how money they make from making plastic kits out of the summarised profit from their annual reports?
And the reasonable assumption that the LRBT example is fairly typical of GW's profit margins. It might not be exactly the same margin, but I would be extremely skeptical of any claim that the profit margins on that specific kit are so disproportionate to other kits that even a rough estimate of what would happen with a major price reduction is impossible.
The Forgeworld models are not selling at a loss. Those are selling at a profit. Once you've taken into account the wages for the manufacturers, the materials used in manufacture, and an appropriate share of fixed operating expenses relevant to the department (utilities, pensions, managerial wages, office supplies, etc), the Forgeworld department is operating at a profit. It's bringing in more than it costs to run it.
They are selling at a profit RIGHT NOW. They would not be selling at a profit if GW cut prices on FW kits in half to compete with recasters. That would mean selling a FWLRBT with higher manufacturing costs at the same price as a plastic "main GW" LRBT kit with lower manufacturing costs and an underwhelming profit margin. GW is simply not making as much money as you seem to think they are.
If we look at the last annual report, we see the company spent millions on a frivolous redecoration of the HQ. We see vast sums wasted on a lawsuit, and a new website. We see nice sums being paid out in dividends.
And guess what: a proportionate share of that goes to the cost of producing FW kits. You can not neglect those costs when determining what price the kit has to sell for to make a profit.
TheCustomLime wrote: You can't steal ideas anymore than you can steal thoughts. If I bought a recast space marine I didn't take the idea of space marines away from Games Workshop. They didn't actually lose anything.
Yes, Yes and... well, no. If you bought a recast Space Marine, Games Workshop lost out on a sale - the value of a Space Marine. It's not theft, but it's not victimless either.
Even if it was OOP, then the IP holder has the right to determine if it's in production or not. If they make some hideous models, and then decide they don't fit their aesthetics or whatever and let them go OOP, and you cast and sell them, then you're hurting their brand, and their ability to define themselves in the marketplace. I mean, that's pretty hard to quantify obviously but again, they have a right to decide what to sell, and they have a right to decide what they don't want to sell, either.
TheCustomLime wrote: You can't steal ideas anymore than you can steal thoughts. If I bought a recast space marine I didn't take the idea of space marines away from Games Workshop. They didn't actually lose anything.
Yes, Yes and... well, no. If you bought a recast Space Marine, Games Workshop lost out on a sale - the value of a Space Marine. It's not theft, but it's not victimless either.
Not necessarily. This is a common misconception about piracy and is why when a company says the lost x number of dollars to pirates you should take it with a grain of salt. Not all acts of piracy are necessarily a lost sale for the vendor. It can be but you shouldn't equate $100 in sales of recast models to $100 lost to GW.
But you're right. Piracy is harmful to companies but not in the same way outright theft is.
TheCustomLime wrote: Not necessarily. This is a common misconception about piracy and is why when a company says the lost x number of dollars to pirates you should take it with a grain of salt. Not all acts of piracy are necessarily a lost sale for the vendor. It can be but you shouldn't equate $100 in sales of recast models to $100 lost to GW.
Sure, but now we're arguing about the degree of harm. All I'm saying is that it's a non-zero value, since a sale took place.
Anyway, we agree a lot more than we disagree., anyway.
FWIW I don't care if people recast, but I download tons of music and it would be pretty hypocritical of me to suddenly find an imaginary line there. I just accept that what I do is bad without trying to rationalize why it isn't.
Ouze wrote: Well, now we're arguing about the degree of harm. All I'm saying is that it's a non-zero value, since a sale took place. We agree a lot more than we disagree., anyway.
BigWaaagh wrote: To quote many a poster already, 'Theft is theft'. There is no grey area, there never has been and those trying to make an argument that recasting a model because it's OOP is acceptable are dead wrong. There's not a single model out there that isn't readily available on Ebay or through one of the Swap Shops on community boards like Dakka. If you can't afford it, tough! Get something else or get a better job/allowance/return bottles for deposit/whatever so you can afford it.
If you've ever been a victim of theft, then you know how it feels and you know it's unequivocally wrong. Recasting is theft and if you think it doesn't affect GW, et al, then you're wrong again, because it does, which means, ultimately, it will affect us all...and not in a good way.
But it's not theft. It's a copyright infringement.
One of my recast models is a Necron Sentry Pylon. I got it at what I thought was a reasonable price. There was no way I would pay the $80 for a single model of that size/quality. If FW sold it at 10% higher than what I paid for the recast, I would have gladly gotten it through FW.
But because I would never, and will never pay FW $80 for such a simple model, is it a lost sale?
Its a lost sale for SOMEONE, since you didn't spend that $80 on legitimate hobby stuff.
General Kroll wrote: By that logic, stealing food can't be theft because once it's eaten it can't be returned. You can try and justify it to yourself anyway you like using all sorts of twisted logic and spurious reasoning. It won't change the fact that recasting is intellectual property theft. .
At this point in the discussion, people conflating copyright infringement with theft should be warned for trolling.
It's not a matter of opinion. You are factually incorrect. Words have meanings. Just because they both have 4 legs and a tail does not make a chihuahua into a tiger.
No, you're trolling. Stealing an idea is theft. Of course it's a non-physical entity, but it is theft. If you don't understand the concept of IP, you should go back to a previous century, as IP - designs of circuits, phones, plastic soldiers - underpins our society and is in many cases more important than physical property.
And theft of IP is a crime. So if, every time you mention this, you simply acknowledge it's a crime, then we won't have a problem.
I'm entertained by the para-legal arguments to justify this First World sense of entitlement. Just to try and broaden your minds - this isn't about making GW more money. If you hate GW and want them to make less money, buy used examples from eBay, kitbash models, or proxy from other manufacturers. No one has any problem with that, do they?
But if you're holding up recasting as a morally beneficial act, you're endorsing something that is both immoral - and illegal. Theft.
People calling out others like myself on the other side of the argument as trolls, are simply trying to shut down the discussion.
You're arguing semantics here. Theft =\= Copyright infringement. It's the same ball park. Big whoop. You're still causing damage to the industry, and thus the entire hobby, by committing a crime.
Like I said previously, if you want to do it, then fine. But at least be grown up enough to realise that yes, you are committing a crime, one that does harm the hobby.
Ouze wrote: Sure, but now we're arguing about the degree of harm. All I'm saying is that it's a non-zero value, since a sale took place.
In general I'm against recasting mainly because I don't think it's good for the hobby in general. But in the case of OOP you need to play a game I do start to take the view of not minding recasting for personal use, for the same reason that I think it's better for the hobby if you can actually play a game if the models aren't readily available.
But then I don't really view wargaming as collecting in the sense some people do, unless you plan on keeping stuff nib. Being able to actually play a game wins out in my mind to someone feeling bad because you recast a model they bought for 10 times what it's worth from an ebay scalper. Though to me in that case I wouldn't be selling recasts and would hope anyone who is would at very least be clear they aren't originals.
Everything I've read about copyright infringement has been fairly inconclusive about whether or not piracy actually hurts anyone. Those whose products are being pirated will usually say that it costs them sales. But there are several arguments against this... for one, there's the fact that some undefinable number of those pirated copies wouldn't have been purchased even if no pirated version was available - essentially, there is no way to prove whether any given act of piracy is actually a lost sale, or if it is a sale that wouldn't have happened anyway.
For miniatures games, there's also the argument that a game benefits from having more players, as the larger a community grows, the more it continues to grow. So someone showing up with an army is arguably beneficial to the game regardless of whether or not they bought their army from 'legitimate' sources or not.
Note that I'm not presenting these as arguments that recasting is ok - it's against the law, and so by that definition isn't 'ok'. But even experts in IP law are divided as to whether or not anyone is actually hurt by it.
I have no problems with recasts of OOP models, on the contrary. I'd love to get that King of Khand on Chariot, for me recast is less of a problem than people selling OOP stuff on Ebay for hundreds of €, when they paid only 10€ for them. When GW decided not so sell those anymore and there's still a demand for it, somebody has to take over. I thought that's how market economy is supposed to work.
It's something else with recasts of existing models. But even then... when FW is too expensive for me and I can get a cheap version of undoubtedly worse quality... then so be it.
Hivefleet Oblivion wrote: I'm entertained by the para-legal arguments to justify this First World sense of entitlement.
(snip)
But if you're holding up recasting as a morally beneficial act, you're endorsing something that is both immoral - and illegal. Theft.
I'm not holding up recasting as any sort of morally beneficial act, simply pointing out that you're working on a really, really debunked idea - clearly established for over 30 years now - and it's hard to have a serious conversation when one group of parties is intentionally missstating reality because they want to frame it a certain way.
General Kroll wrote: You're arguing semantics here. Theft =\= Copyright infringement. It's the same ball park.
It's not semantics. They are 2 completely different crimes with 2 completely different laws and 2 completely different sets of penalties covering them. Heart surgery and lung surgery aren't the same, even though they're both surgeries in the same general area. Jousting and Polo aren't the same just because they are both on horses. I mean, this isn't a really difficult concept.
I realize now that I'm sort of the donkey-cave for continuing to engage in this discussion, so my mistake.
Everything I've read about copyright infringement has been fairly inconclusive about whether or not piracy actually hurts anyone. Those whose products are being pirated will usually say that it costs them sales. But there are several arguments against this... for one, there's the fact that some undefinable number of those pirated copies wouldn't have been purchased even if no pirated version was available - essentially, there is no way to prove whether any given act of piracy is actually a lost sale, or if it is a sale that wouldn't have happened anyway.
For miniatures games, there's also the argument that a game benefits from having more players, as the larger a community grows, the more it continues to grow. So someone showing up with an army is arguably beneficial to the game regardless of whether or not they bought their army from 'legitimate' sources or not.
Note that I'm not presenting these as arguments that recasting is ok - it's against the law, and so by that definition isn't 'ok'. But even experts in IP law are divided as to whether or not anyone is actually hurt by it.
Those are actually good arguments well presented. I don't doubt that more players is better for the hobby, but were I a model making company, or sculpting artist, I would definitely see it as harmful for someone to be stealing my intellectual property. Harm doesn't have to be financial, though I would argue that piracy certainly does harm companies financially. Recasts also harm the second hand market, why should someone who's paid full value for a genuine product have their own collection devalued by people making knock offs? If you've built up a collection of rare oop minis. Let's say for example you have the original space marine, the one that was the basis for the anniversary model last week, there is an intrinsic harm being done when someone recasts ten dozen of them and starts flogging them on eBay.
So while it could be argues that there are some benefits to the piracy, the harms far out weigh them for me.
On a side note, I've always wondered what kind of crap these Russian and Chinese recasters use to make their resin knock offs, if they are happy to make knock offs, they aren't going to be too bothered about any harmful chemicals that might find their ways into the lungs of their customers.
General Kroll wrote: Let's say for example you have the original space marine, the one that was the basis for the anniversary model last week, there is an intrinsic harm being done when someone recasts ten dozen of them and starts flogging them on eBay.
Only if someone with an authentic model tries to sell it and gets less for it than they would have had those knock-offs not existed.
You would need to spend considerable time studying sales trends in order to prove that this actually occurs. I mean, it makes sense that it would at least in some cases (your particular example wasn't a great one, as that model never sold for that much to begin with... It's not particularly uncommon on the second hand market, particularly since GW were giving it away in the early 2000s...), but 'it makes sense' isn't proof... it's still just a guess.
Of course, that's ignoring the fact that copyright law was never intended to protect the second-hand market anyway...
General Kroll wrote: On a side note, I've always wondered what kind of crap these Russian and Chinese recasters use to make their resin knock offs, if they are happy to make knock offs, they aren't going to be too bothered about any harmful chemicals that might find their ways into the lungs of their customers.
I don't think any version of resin is made of, like, vitamins. You should be wearing a dust mask when sanding or grinding any resin product regardless of origin. Or any fine particulate matter, really.
General Kroll wrote: On a side note, I've always wondered what kind of crap these Russian and Chinese recasters use to make their resin knock offs, if they are happy to make knock offs, they aren't going to be too bothered about any harmful chemicals that might find their ways into the lungs of their customers.
I don't think any version of resin is made of, like, vitamins. You should be wearing a dust mask when sanding or grinding any resin product regardless of origin. Or any fine particulate matter, really.
Yep, it's not the resin that's toxic, it's the fact that it's bad for you to inhale any small particulates, whether they be wood dust, resin dust or even acrylic paint dust from airbrushing. The only things that are safe to inhale aaaall the way down into your lungs would be air and steam. Luckily most particles will never reach your lungs because they're too big.
Hey, you guys remember the first time you basecoated models with an airbrush without a mask on, and then you blew your nose and had black/whatever color snot?
Pepperidge Farm remembers. And so do I, which is why I only made that mistake once.
Everything I've read about copyright infringement has been fairly inconclusive about whether or not piracy actually hurts anyone. Those whose products are being pirated will usually say that it costs them sales. But there are several arguments against this... for one, there's the fact that some undefinable number of those pirated copies wouldn't have been purchased even if no pirated version was available - essentially, there is no way to prove whether any given act of piracy is actually a lost sale, or if it is a sale that wouldn't have happened anyway.
For miniatures games, there's also the argument that a game benefits from having more players, as the larger a community grows, the more it continues to grow. So someone showing up with an army is arguably beneficial to the game regardless of whether or not they bought their army from 'legitimate' sources or not.
Note that I'm not presenting these as arguments that recasting is ok - it's against the law, and so by that definition isn't 'ok'. But even experts in IP law are divided as to whether or not anyone is actually hurt by it.
The difference between online piracy, and why you can't make the same argument is that online piracy is easy and essentially free. Buying recasts you're actively paying money still, but it's not going to the original creator.
I think a legitimate argument for online piracy is that pirates are often the people who buy the most, so even though they're pirating for free they're also putting a lot of money back in to the industry to help it grow.
While I guess the same is somewhat true for wargaming, I'm sure a lot of the people buying recasts are people who spend a lot of money in general, I think the best outcome is that the money spent on wargaming stays within wargaming, not siphoned off on to recasting leeches who aren't contributing.
I personally really dislike the "stick it to GW" argument for buying recasts. Just buy a different fething game from a different fething company. It doesn't work in the entertainment industry to show movie/game makers they are bad by pirating their stuff and it's not going to show GW either. It just makes the people buying recasts come across as self entitled.
Ouze wrote: Hey, you guys remember the first time you basecoated models with an airbrush without a mask on, and then you blew your nose and had black/whatever color snot?
Pepperidge Farm remembers. And so do I, which is why I only made that mistake once.
Never happened to me. Not even once. Not even before I set up my ventilation system. It's always made me curious when people say they have coloured snot after spraying, I just picture them hovering over the models and snorting the fumes. When I lived in India for a while I got black coloured snot, and it's partly why I'm not going to live there again in the future
General Kroll wrote: On a side note, I've always wondered what kind of crap these Russian and Chinese recasters use to make their resin knock offs, if they are happy to make knock offs, they aren't going to be too bothered about any harmful chemicals that might find their ways into the lungs of their customers.
I don't think any version of resin is made of, like, vitamins. You should be wearing a dust mask when sanding or grinding any resin product regardless of origin. Or any fine particulate matter, really.
The concern with some Chinese resin is even after you get them, they smell bad. They're obviously giving off some fumes if you can still smell them after they've been shipped a few thousand miles across an ocean to get to you. How toxic are those fumes? Fethed if I know.
I'm sure whatever they use is cheaper than what FW uses.
I don't personally have a big problem with recasting figures that are OOP and in short supply, especially bits. I have piles of RT Space Marines with no metal backpacks, they've just been lost by previous owners. I don't see them for sale second hand, GW doesn't sell old bits and I need about 50 or so. So I'll be recasting the very few I have one day.
But the recasting of very OOP figures and very rare stuff, some citadel miniatures number in the dozens in existence, is not what most recasting is. Most recasting seems to be for currently available figures just to offer a cheaper alternative to the current manufacturer, that just isn't right, they are easily available and recasting directly cuts into primary sales.
If someone sells recasts of OOP figures they should be up front about it. I would buy recasts of rare miniatures because I'm a painter and modeller, not collector and investor. Some people want the genuine article and they shouldn't be tricked into paying collectors prices for something that's not genuine.
I will be upfront and say I don't think collecting wargaming miniatures for the sake of investment is a terribly great idea. Not unless you solely trade in NIB stuff.
AllSeeingSkink wrote: I will be upfront and say I don't think collecting wargaming miniatures for the sake of investment is a terribly great idea. Not unless you solely trade in NIB stuff.
Not at this point in time. But who knows how valuable some of the rarer stuff will get in 50-60 years.
Maybe in 50-60 years time, but as I said, if you care about that you're probably going to be focused on stuff that's NIB rather than wargaming pieces.
EDIT: Not just because NIB is worth more in general to collectors, but also because a lot of stuff is going to be hard to tell if it's been recast so NIB is going to be the only way to have any hope of seeing that it's genuine.
Buttery Commissar wrote: I'm curious, those who are okay with recasting, how would you feel if you were a CCG player and your opponent turned up with photocopied cards?
That they are the worst person ever and should die in a fire.
Or not. Never ran into that, but would not care for it.
Buttery Commissar wrote: I'm curious, those who are okay with recasting, how would you feel if you were a CCG player and your opponent turned up with photocopied cards?
How dare you have fun the way I am without investing the same amount of money and devaluing my own investment!
/joke
I'm truly not fussed - when I play in GW stores as part of the conditions of using their service, it's stock or converted with plasticard/resin/plywood at the upper limit, quite apart from the fact it's simply rude to do otherwise. Outside, if you know *how* to play and can keep track of what you're doing and you want to play drunk hammer (absinthe shot glasses for centurions), use cardboard cutouts, lego or soldiers made of compressed cheese cast from freezer imprints for your dudesmen, i'll play you.
I'm not holding up recasting as any sort of morally beneficial act, simply pointing out that you're working on a really, really debunked idea - clearly established for over 30 years now - and it's hard to have a serious conversation when one group of parties is intentionally missstating reality because they want to frame it a certain way.
On of the hilarious things about the internet is the belief that quoting things from Wikipedia gives you legal authority. If you want to have a serious conversation, try reading the FBI's take on it.
Again, I work in ideas, sell them for a living. People who steal my work are stealing from me so, surprise surprise, I don't like it. I naturally assume that those who think it's ok to steal ideas don't have any worth stealing.
I'm with the other posters who say, if someone has the odd recast, it doesn't really bother me. I've done many things that are morally grey - kept mistaken cheques from dodgy companies for large amounts, for instance. But I don't try and justify them as morally OK, or good. Especially because I want my toys but don't want to pay the asking price.
Buttery Commissar wrote: I'm curious, those who are okay with recasting, how would you feel if you were a CCG player and your opponent turned up with photocopied cards?
That they are the worst person ever and should die in a fire.
Or not. Never ran into that, but would not care for it.
A fire fuelled by their blasphemous photocopies?
I would feel that unless they're still learning, it's disrespectful to the opponents to be taking part in a hobby that you're not putting back into.
It's not about finances in my eyes, a gifted figure is no less valid than a bought one, to me.
Buttery Commissar wrote: I'm curious, those who are okay with recasting, how would you feel if you were a CCG player and your opponent turned up with photocopied cards?
In my gaming group we do it regularly with STAW cards. You could buy them for 50€ on Ebay or you could simply print them out. It doesn't harm the game in any way. Seriousely, I'd rather play against someone with a completely painted recast army than against someone with unpainted legal stuff.
Yeah, I used to have to print heroclix cards because if you stored them safely and forgot where, you were fethed.
But STAW doesn't depend on the cards to function, they're less of a whole event than a CCG card or mini would be to the grand scheme of a game.
That's why I drew the comparison there I guess.
I see your point. For me it really depends on how the player uses recast stuff. Did he get it because he can't afford expensive FW stuff, but nevertheless painted it nicely and participates in the hobby or did he just get the mini with the cheesiest rules and puts it in horrible recast unpainted in front of me? Of course you can't translate that part to a CCG, but I'm not into those .
Sgt. Cortez wrote: I see your point. For me it really depends on how the player uses recast stuff. Did he get it because he can't afford expensive FW stuff, but nevertheless painted it nicely and participates in the hobby or did he just get the mini with the cheesiest rules and puts it in horrible recast unpainted in front of me? Of course you can't translate that part to a CCG, but I'm not into those .
What difference does how they play the game make? If you want something that is expensive, you can save up for it. When I wanted the fw bloodthirster, I worked an extra shift, and walked home everyday for two months to save on bus fair. I actually ended up with the monstrous arcanium, tamarrkhan, and a set of skin wolves as well with what I'd put in the tin. If you genuinely can't afford fw, you can use citadel stuff instead. There is no entitlement to any product, especially in a hobby such as this.
Well, not everybody can save up for toys. Agreed, how someone plays the game is a different discussion. But if someone likes to play the game and puts effort in it I don't really care where he bought the minis. If you can afford FW, go for it, if someone else can't, there's no reason to blame him for looking for a cheaper alternative in the form of recasts.
Sgt. Cortez wrote: Well, not everybody can save up for toys. Agreed, how someone plays the game is a different discussion. But if someone likes to play the game and puts effort in it I don't really care where he bought the minis. If you can afford FW, go for it, if someone else can't, there's no reason to blame him for looking for a cheaper alternative in the form of recasts.
If I can't afford a computer, can I come and take one from your house?
Of course, that's physical theft so let's try a different example. So let's say, you make a living designing computer games. Can I take your game, call it the same name, sell it at one fifth the price? Would you mind? People are looking for a cheaper alternative after all.
In the real world, I would probably behave the same as you. If I were playing someone who was a nice guy, I wouldn't take my army off the table. But I wouldn't condone it or say it's the right thing to do.
Ketara wrote: So to clarify, you're basing your knowledge on how money they make from making plastic kits out of the summarised profit from their annual reports?
And the reasonable assumption that the LRBT example is fairly typical of GW's profit margins. It might not be exactly the same margin, but I would be extremely skeptical of any claim that the profit margins on that specific kit are so disproportionate to other kits that even a rough estimate of what would happen with a major price reduction is impossible.
So...what/where is the LRBT example? I asked where it was, and you told me you were extrapolating out of the yearly profit report, and didn't know what the margins were on a LRBT. But now here again you're saying that it's 'typical'? I thought you just said:-
I said they don't state specific numbers for the LRBT.
and then
But we know that their profit margins aren't very impressive and there's no reason to believe that the LRBT is exceptional relative to their other kits.
I'm completely failing to grasp what the LRBT example here is, on account of the fact you've told me that you don't know what it is! You've thrown out a very specific claim here, namely that:-
If they're barely making money on a $50 plastic LRBT
and
That would mean selling a FWLRBT with higher manufacturing costs at the same price as a plastic "main GW" LRBT kit with lower manufacturing costs and an underwhelming profit margin. GW is simply not making as much money as you seem to think they are.
To make the above statements, you have to know something about the cost of producing an LRBT, and you haven't told me what that is. Otherwise I can just say, 'Well the vast profit made on a Basilisk example says otherwise' (to which you'd legitimately reply 'How do you know that', and I couldn't really point to the annual profit figures as somehow substantiating it!)
Back to Forgeworld models:-
They are selling at a profit RIGHT NOW.
Excellent. So your statement:-
GW's prices are higher than their competition despite not making better profit margins.
when applied specifically to the Forgeworld model department and model costs, as opposed to to the entire company's annual turnover/profit/loss (which is how I've been approaching this the entire time) has nothing to do with what we're discussing anymore. Because I was discussing a compartmentalised section of their business (hence my constantly saying 'Forgeworld').
And guess what: a proportionate share of that goes to the cost of producing FW kits. You can not neglect those costs when determining what price the kit has to sell for to make a profit.
I totally, totally can, when examining the profit/loss of a compartmentalised section of a business. You keep conflating the ability to measure a profit on an individual item, the profit from a section of a business, and the profitability of the entire business, which is relatively meaningless in the context of the points I've moved on to making.
Not, I hasten to add here, a meaningless point in and of itself, or even meaningless within the overall original context of the discussion. Mentioning that 'GW does need to take into account financial drains from other less profitable sections of it's business when setting any price level' is a perfectly reasonable and valid point to make, and contributes to the discussion in a productive way.
But you're belabouring and repeating that one same point over and over even when the conversation has moved on. With that one point accepted and acknowledged (and it has been), continually insisting that you can't consider anything profitable unless the company as a whole is profitable doesn't get us anywhere, and is to remain focused on that point past any analytical utility.
The next stage of that discussion is to consider the place and profitability of Forgeworld within the company from that broader perspective and move on to assess other factors and options. So for example, whether Forgeworld could cut manufacturing costs further through actions like vertical integration in order to decrease prices whilst still retaining a higher profit margin, or whether cutting prices and better marketing could allow GW to utilise their market position to leverage higher sales (again whilst retaining that profitability level within Forgeworld). From a broader business scope, naturally, it would also make sense to assess whether or not the company could afford to trim the fat in certain areas in things like dividend repayments and frivolous expenses in order to be able to lower prices more generally (in order to remain competitive within the wider market). Or to split off the more profitable Forgeworld operations into a separate company altogether in order to allow more claiming of tax relief on the parts that aren't making money. Stuff like that.
The raw amounts of Holier than Thou you can find in these kind of threads never ceases to amaze me.
Almost as some people again and again stating the same "facts" that have already been debunked several times in the past (CHINESE RESIN GIVES YOU AIDS).
Korinov wrote: The raw amounts of Holier than Thou you can find in these kind of threads never ceases to amaze me.
At the end of the day, I just see defences of recasting as being defences of self entitlement. At the end of the day, it's a luxury item that you have to have so much that you're willing to buy it from a source that does nothing to add to the wargaming community and does nothing to support the company you despise yet can't live without.
Just calling it as I see it. It's not "holier than thou", I have my own vices.... but this thread isn't about them so I'm not going to bring up now am I?
Almost as some people again and again stating the same "facts" that have already been debunked several times in the past (CHINESE RESIN GIVES YOU AIDS).
I haven't seen said debunking. Link? I've never tried to say Chinese resin is harmful, simply that the ones I've encountered do obviously smell of fumes and I have no idea what those fumes are. Generally when I smell fumes and don't have knowledge of what it is or what chemicals are in it, I do my best to avoid it.
Buttery Commissar wrote: I'm curious, those who are okay with recasting, how would you feel if you were a CCG player and your opponent turned up with photocopied cards?
Like a guy I knew who wanted to field a "Circus of Pain" but did not want to spend the money on the models.
Printed card on round wood stands.
I was surprised at my emotional response: I spent MY money (legally for this topic) to field my army, no freaking way.
Do these people play at a GW store with recasts?
I dare them to play with bare resin if they see no difference.
I make hard decisions on what I buy and they "cheat" by buying recasts?
There are many competitive options for models but the difference is people want that model and pass it off as the real thing.
AllSeeingSkink wrote: At the end of the day, I just see defences of recasting as being defences of self entitlement. At the end of the day, it's a luxury item that you have to have so much that you're willing to buy it from a source that does nothing to add to the wargaming community and does nothing to support the company you despise yet can't live without.
Just calling it as I see it. It's not "holier than thou", I have my own vices.... but this thread isn't about them so I'm not going to bring up now am I?
The Holier than Thou when it comes to recasts is mostly people getting butthurt over other people getting the same product at half or a third of the price (edit: if you want an example, just check the post above this one).
If you feel like an idiot for paying 20€ for a single plastic model while someone else is getting it for much less, perhaps you're acting like an idiot.
I consider myself extremely amoral about this whole issue. Any producer/seller operates on profit margins, and counterfeit/replica items are as old as economy itself. Get too greedy with your margins, and it's only natural that unofficial replicas will appear. When people start saying that "a recaster will always be able to sell his products at a lower price", I always have to remember them that such a thing is not true. A recaster operates on profit margins like everybody else, and no recaster bothers with reasonably priced models. You won't find any recasted versions of the cheaper infantry kits from the old Fantasy range (the 10 models at 21€ ones).
Companies that offshore production to developing countries where costs are ridiculously low in order to maximize their profit margins without lowering the price of their products are in no higher moral ground than people who buy recasted/counterfeit items, and deserve all the gak they may get.
I haven't seen said debunking. Link?
A dakka veteran (can't remember exactly who right now) took the time, money and effort to have a recast model analyzed in a lab (I seem to recall it was over safety concerns regarding one of his kids being exposed to the material). Results showed it was only slighly more toxic than proper FW resin, and unless you inhaled a vast amout of its dust (which is like extremely unlikely if you don't work at the factory itself) it posed no more harm than standard FW resin.
Korinov wrote: If you feel like an idiot for paying 20€ for a single plastic model while someone else is getting it for much less, perhaps you're acting like an idiot.
Not really, given I don't but expensive character models from GW in the first place. Do you actually see that many recasts of the newer expensive plastic characters? I haven't checked to see, when I last looked at recasters it was almost all resin stuff they were doing, and mostly FW. I buy almost no FW stuff either, mainly some 6mm scale Aeronautica Imperialis stuff before it was dropped and I started a DKOK force but only got a couple of kits before I gave up on them.
For me it just gets tiring reading responses that come down to defences of self entitlement.
I'd have more respect for it if people just said "I buy it because I want it" instead of making up hollow excuses like how GW is evil but in their evilness produce kits you like so much you aren't willing to put your money where your mouth is and buy a product from another company.
And even if people are bitter that they paid $100 when you paid $50.... I think they have a right to be bitter. You're showing them you care about the product just enough to be muster the selfishness to buy it without supporting the people who actually made it.
A recaster operates on profit margins like everybody else, and no recaster bothers with reasonably priced models.
Of course a recaster can make resin stuff cheaper. Unless you expect GW to move their entire operation to China, close their stores and shut down the distribution chain that gets products on to the shelves of independents.
GW might be able to sell stuff cheaper than they currently do, but not as cheap as a recaster and frankly we have no idea how cheap they could sell it before the business becomes unprofitable, you are just making wild guesses.
You won't find any recasted versions of the cheaper infantry kits from the old Fantasy range (the 10 models at 21€ ones).
That's because those kits were bulk plastic kits. Large set up costs, large run, cheap per unit. It's not practical to recast that sort of stuff. You could set up a recasting business to make them cheaper than GW but the risk would be much larger than recasting resin kits.
I haven't seen said debunking. Link?
A dakka veteran (can't remember exactly who right now) took the time, money and effort to have a recast model analyzed in a lab (I seem to recall it was over safety concerns regarding one of his kids being exposed to the material). Results showed it was only slighly more toxic than proper FW resin, and unless you inhaled a vast amout of its dust (which is like extremely unlikely if you don't work at the factory itself) it posed no more harm than standard FW resin.
I guess I'll believe it when I see it. Most resins are fine once they're fully cured because the volatile fumes have cooked off in the curing process or reacted in to solid polymer chains. unless you cut it and inhale the dust in which case most resins are going to be bad for you.... but with the Chinese resin kits I've handled, it smells when you open the box and it smells when you cut it. It's unlikely that small amounts of it are going to be harmful, but without
Ketara wrote: So to clarify, you're basing your knowledge on how money they make from making plastic kits out of the summarised profit from their annual reports?
And the reasonable assumption that the LRBT example is fairly typical of GW's profit margins. It might not be exactly the same margin, but I would be extremely skeptical of any claim that the profit margins on that specific kit are so disproportionate to other kits that even a rough estimate of what would happen with a major price reduction is impossible.
So...what/where is the LRBT example? I asked where it was, and you told me you were extrapolating out of the yearly profit report, and didn't know what the margins were on a LRBT. But now here again you're saying that it's 'typical'? I thought you just said:-
I said they don't state specific numbers for the LRBT.
and then
But we know that their profit margins aren't very impressive and there's no reason to believe that the LRBT is exceptional relative to their other kits.
I'm completely failing to grasp what the LRBT example here is, on account of the fact you've told me that you don't know what it is! You've thrown out a very specific claim here, namely that:-
If they're barely making money on a $50 plastic LRBT
and
That would mean selling a FWLRBT with higher manufacturing costs at the same price as a plastic "main GW" LRBT kit with lower manufacturing costs and an underwhelming profit margin. GW is simply not making as much money as you seem to think they are.
To make the above statements, you have to know something about the cost of producing an LRBT, and you haven't told me what that is. Otherwise I can just say, 'Well the vast profit made on a Basilisk example says otherwise' (to which you'd legitimately reply 'How do you know that, and I couldn't really point to the annual profit figures as somehow substantiating it!)
Back to Forgeworld models:-
They are selling at a profit RIGHT NOW.
Excellent. So your statement:-
GW's prices are higher than their competition despite not making better profit margins.
when applied specifically to the Forgeworld model department and model costs, as opposed to to the entire company's annual turnover/profit/loss (which is how I've been approaching this the entire time) has nothing to do with what we're discussing anymore. Because I was discussing a compartmentalised section of their business (hence my constantly saying 'Forgeworld').
And guess what: a proportionate share of that goes to the cost of producing FW kits. You can not neglect those costs when determining what price the kit has to sell for to make a profit.
I totally, totally can, when examining the profit/loss of a compartmentalised section of a business. You keep conflating the ability to measure a profit on an individual item, the profit from a section of a business, and the profitability of the entire business, which is relatively meaningless in the context of the points I've moved on to making.
Not, I hasten to add here, a meaningless point in and of itself, or even meaningless within the overall original context of the discussion. Mentioning that 'GW does need to take into account financial drains from other less profitable sections of it's business when setting any price level' is a perfectly reasonable and valid point to make, and contributes to the discussion in a productive way.
But you're belabouring and repeating that one same point over and over even when the conversation has moved on. With that one point accepted and acknowledged (and it has been), continually insisting that you can't consider anything profitable unless the company as a whole is profitable doesn't get us anywhere, and is to remain focused on that point past any analytical utility.
The next stage of that discussion is to consider the place and profitability of Forgeworld within the company from that broader perspective and move on to assess other factors and options. So for example, whether Forgeworld could cut manufacturing costs further through actions like vertical integration in order to decrease prices whilst still retaining a higher profit margin, or whether cutting prices and better marketing could allow GW to utilise their market position to leverage higher sales (again whilst retaining that profitability level within Forgeworld). From a broader business scope, naturally, it would also make sense to assess whether or not the company could afford to trim the fat in certain areas in things like dividend repayments and frivolous expenses in order to be able to lower prices more generally (in order to remain competitive within the wider market). Or to split off the more profitable Forgeworld operations into a separate company altogether in order to allow more claiming of tax relief on the parts that aren't making money. Stuff like that.
We on the same page?
Hoo wee.
Peregrine really is peddling some abject nonsense, who stole your mojo? (Or has somebody just illegally copied it?)
GW, on average, make a very healthy profit on what they sell. It is, as quite rightly has been pointed out, impossible to narrow down the margin on a specific product. Even if it were, the LRBT would be a terrible example because at this point the cost of design and production of the dies to cast it would have been written down to almost nothing, as it's an older kit. Therefore there would be practically zero cost per unit, just the pennies of plastic and cardboard, the few seconds/minutes worth of labor to take the sprues off the machine and pack them and the tiny sliver of the cost of transporting it to a store.
But that's not how GW, or any company with a decent number of different items in production, do their accounting, so we can't possibly know the specifics.
What we do know, is that in the last half year report GW generated £55m in sales, and spent £16m on making those sales happen. That 16m includes the cost of designing and producing everything that is relevant to that accounting period. So their half year gross profit was £38.5m
That's quite healthy. The reason that the net is so small, relatively can be examined and discussed sufficiently to justify its own thread, and it has, but broadly speaking it's in a company's best interest to declare as low a net profit as it can, using as many accounting loopholes and avoidance techniques as it can, as this is the number that corporation tax is calculated on and in GW's specific case they have huge cost obligations in maintaining their stores, which cost them a significant amount of their revenue.
So the reason GW isn't making a massive net profit has nothing to do with the cost of making models, and everything to do with running a retail chain.
So their (relatively) poor net profit is almost exclusively a direct result of their business model and choices, and therefore essentially their fault if they're now obligated to charge ludicrous prices to stay in business.
Azreal wrote:
So their (relatively) poor net profit is almost exclusively a direct result of their business model and choices, and therefore essentially their fault if they're now obligated to charge ludicrous prices to stay in business.
But where are you going with this? Our expert analysis of their business is irrelevant (except if we wanted to work for them or buy the company). So the only significance of this argument is, "It's ok to recast because they're so expensive." In which case, how come Spellcrow or Kromlech prices are pretty much the same?
The GW pricing is irrelevant. They can charge what they want, and stay in or go out of business, when competitors do a better job, producing their OWN designs. But saying you find cheap recasts of GW stuff acceptable is the ultimate in hypocrisy - because you implicitly acknowledge the product or system is good, otherwise you wouldn't want it, but simply want to pay less (and give your $$$ to people who are even dodgier than GW).
Stevefamine wrote: Actually I'd buy the metal shoulder pads in this case - as the metal is NICE/give the marine weight/I really like the Ultramarine metal shoulder pads I have. If I'm considering mass buying sternguard, I can afford metal shoulder pads off ebay.
to break even, It would cost me (to recast to 99% quality) around 100$ to produce around 100 shoulder pads. If I only need 30-40, I'd buy the damn ebay metal ones. If I had a whole battle company to do? The cost and time would out weigh the result/desire. I'm not painting 100 marines at once, I only will paint a dozen or so a week at most.
MrMoustaffa wrote: This is especially true for OOP games like Epic and Battlefleet Gothic. The only reason those communities exist is dedicated recasters keeping the game alive, because if you tried to collect a 100% legit army you could buy a car for what you would spend. And again, if GW wanted that money, they should've kept the game alive.
Only way Epic is alive right now. Seriously.
If you paid me $100 dollars to recast you a shoulderpad 100 times I would profit about 80 bucks. You must never ever have recast anything, or anything with precision, or you have sloppy technique or something. Mold 1 shoulder pad. Cast it 10 times. Mold those 10 casts, cast ast that
9 times. Beck it wouldn't even take more than a couple hours.
Copying a copy leads to poor out come my VHS days showed me that
Azreal wrote:
So their (relatively) poor net profit is almost exclusively a direct result of their business model and choices, and therefore essentially their fault if they're now obligated to charge ludicrous prices to stay in business.
But where are you going with this? Our expert analysis of their business is irrelevant (except if we wanted to work for them or buy the company). So the only significance of this argument is, "It's ok to recast because they're so expensive." In which case, how come Spellcrow or Kromlech prices are pretty much the same?
The GW pricing is irrelevant. They can charge what they want, and stay in or go out of business, when competitors do a better job, producing their OWN designs. But saying you find cheap recasts of GW stuff acceptable is the ultimate in hypocrisy - because you implicitly acknowledge the product or system is good, otherwise you wouldn't want it, but simply want to pay less (and give your $$$ to people who are even dodgier than GW).
The point is Peregrine was arguing that GW can't cut prices in order to combat piracy because they don't make enough money off the sale of models. I was showing that they make plenty of cash from the sale of models and if they've painted themselves into a corner WRT pricing then it has nothing to do with the cost of making models or the profit they generate.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Buying recasts acknowledges the product is good, true, but it also acknowledges that the pricing is in excess of the perceived value of the product.
As I've already said, some will pirate for ideological reasons, but for pretty much everyone else it simply boils down to the fact that the proce of the product is too high.
Ketara wrote: So to clarify, you're basing your knowledge on how money they make from making plastic kits out of the summarised profit from their annual reports?
And the reasonable assumption that the LRBT example is fairly typical of GW's profit margins. It might not be exactly the same margin, but I would be extremely skeptical of any claim that the profit margins on that specific kit are so disproportionate to other kits that even a rough estimate of what would happen with a major price reduction is impossible.
The Forgeworld models are not selling at a loss. Those are selling at a profit. Once you've taken into account the wages for the manufacturers, the materials used in manufacture, and an appropriate share of fixed operating expenses relevant to the department (utilities, pensions, managerial wages, office supplies, etc), the Forgeworld department is operating at a profit. It's bringing in more than it costs to run it.
They are selling at a profit RIGHT NOW. They would not be selling at a profit if GW cut prices on FW kits in half to compete with recasters. That would mean selling a FWLRBT with higher manufacturing costs at the same price as a plastic "main GW" LRBT kit with lower manufacturing costs and an underwhelming profit margin. GW is simply not making as much money as you seem to think they are.
If we look at the last annual report, we see the company spent millions on a frivolous redecoration of the HQ. We see vast sums wasted on a lawsuit, and a new website. We see nice sums being paid out in dividends.
And guess what: a proportionate share of that goes to the cost of producing FW kits. You can not neglect those costs when determining what price the kit has to sell for to make a profit.
You don't have to guess...ok, you still have to guess because we don't know how many units are sold at X price but we can calculate a gross profit margin which puts GW at 11.37%. Now, before you go running to the hills screaming, "That's tiny!" we're talking about the company's gross profit margin, not a product profit margin, vast differences; to put this in perspective, the entire telecom industry sits at about 10% profit and heralthcare equipment (which is considered hugely profitable) is at about 18%.
One other thing to consider is that of total operating costs, GW only spent 2.5 million on product development and product and supply only cost them 1.5 million so let's extrapolate this out. The people, equipment, molds, manufacture, and storage of product, company wide, accounts for 4 million, about what they spent on the website to put it into perspective. There revenue generated was 55 million (pre-royalty) so product development and creation is only 7.27% of overall costs. That's tiny overhead when you consider that their business is completely geared towards the sale of model kits.
It's not accurate but it would be a fair assumption based upon this rough math that it only cost GW 7.3% ($4.01) to create the molds for and produce that $55 kit.
Yes, they are capable of lowering their prices but they can't due to the extreme costs associated with maintaining their loss producing retail store presence. This is why PP and CB are likely more profitable than GW (as a percentage) but we can't know that so it's just an assumption on my part. If GW curtailed the retail loadstone, at least in countries where it's not feasible to maintain such (i.e. US and Canada), they could produce HUGE cost-savings for the company and pass those savings on to the consumer. That they choose not to tells me that management is still wedded to a dead business model or is unwilling to differentiate their business model based upon the needs of the region of operation.
Let's put this another way. If GW is able to produce the upcoming Battle for Vedros kits at the stated prices, they could mirror those prices across their product line if they chose to do so.
The point is Peregrine was arguing that GW can't cut prices in order to combat piracy because they don't make enough money off the sale of models. I was showing that they make plenty of cash from the sale of models and if they've painted themselves into a corner WRT pricing then it has nothing to do with the cost of making models or the profit they generate.
No, he was making a valid point, that Forgeworld does have to help sustain the sorts of costs that a 3rd party company or a recaster does not (an accounting and legal department if nothing else). And he was correct that it would be an additional financial drain upon the profit margin of the items being sold.
Whether those costs are high enough to counterbalance the economies of scale GW make with regards to raw material purchase (and labour for 3rd parties) is another kettle of fish, and extremely hard to calculate or hypothesize about without the figures at your fingertips. Now I don't know how much their legal counsel costs, I don't know the salaries of all their chief executives (another drain on the company's profits) and so on. All I can begin to speculate on with any reasonable hope of accuracy is a) the physical manufacturing cost of the model, and b) the cost of running the Forgeworld department.
a) is easily calculated because anyone can create resin products, and the cost of the technology is a known factor.
b) is harder, but the level of cost can be roughly ascertained by examining the costs and prices of their competition, the third party companies who also have to take into account in their product price labour, design, and utility costs. If your average multipart resin 10 man model kit is £25-30 froma third party company, and that permits the creators to keep functioning and make a profit, it isn't unreasonable to hypothesize that Forgeworld will be making an equivalent to slightly larger profit at the same price if only those common factors and costs are taken into account. Those are the costs, in a nutshell, of the Forgeworld studio.
Now we can't speculate on c), the larger breakdown of individual departmental costs of running the business, because there's far, far too little data. It's impossible from this position. But using the data from a) and b), it becomes clear that if Forgeworld are charging roughly a price ratio to everyone else of 2.5 to 1, the Forgeworld department is making an excellent profit margin on it's own merit.
Using Peregrine's point that that profit has to sustain the largely immeasurable costs of c) though, it is possible that Games Workshop would take a sligh hit to profits if they dropped prices to comparative levels to third party producers. Perhaps they would shift sufficient additional quantity to offset it. Perhaps not. It's an unknowable. Peregrine's comment that it would bankrupt Games Workshop though is, I would say, hyperbole. They're a giant publicly quoted company with a retail chain churning out a vast amount of plastic kits. FW is ultimately boutique, even with the high profit margin per item, there's no way that that single small division of the company is responsible for all their profit (and if it was, as said, it would be their own fault for failing on those lines).
Still, it would hit their profits potentially, and so it is not unreasonable to try and ascertain other ways they could leverage their position to lower prices whilst still retaining or increasing the level of profitability.
For these people claiming recasting hurts the industry, when was the ladt time you heard a sculptor company going under because people recasted thier stuff?
We know exactly what the costs of running the business are, it's right there in the figures, again, and runs to around £8.5m for the 6 months to 29 Nov 15
In the same period, the "Retail" segment made a £2.5m loss, and the FW/BL/GW.com combined "Mail Order" segment made almost as much profit as the "Trade" segment, despite generating approx half as much money.
That operating loss on retail was over double (£1m) YOY.
So, again, the cost obligations on FW have little to do with the cost of producing the models, or the cost of supporting the infrastructure needed to run a large company (not all of which will be unique to GW, and many of their competitors will be spending the same, proportionately) but on GW maintaining a business model with a very high cost base that doesn't even pay its own way.
i don't have any serious problem with recasts as such - though nor do i have any problem with recasters being prosecuted and jailed for it. after all, it is theft. I struggle to get too annoyed by GW's shareholders getting slightly less profits. I think that in many cases people who by recasts wouldn't have bought the original instead, so it doesn't really hit profits that much.
recasting stuff that is no longer sold is no biggy either - provided that when you sell it on you're honest about it being a recast.
personally i've never knowingly bought a recast, though i might be tempted if they were cheap enough. i tend to get round the GW Is Too Expensive thing by buying stuff on ebay and stripping / rebuilding it - or buying cheaper proxies from other companies.
my problem is that i think its out of order to sell recasts as genuine - especially when it comes to rare old miniatures that people pay good money for. providing a cheaper alternative is, after all, just standard capitalism even if there are laws in place to protect the monopolies of wealthy businesses. you'd have to be . but dishonest dishonesty really boils my goat.
i don't have any serious problem with recasts as such - though nor do i have any problem with recasters being prosecuted and jailed for it. after all, it is theft
FFS.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Copyright infringement is not theft.
I believe you can thank the movie/music industry for people equating copyright infringement with theft. They really pushed that piracy was stealing back in the day.
Azreal13 wrote: We know exactly what the costs of running the business are, it's right there in the figures, again, and runs to around £8.5m for the 6 months to 29 Nov 15
You're doing the same thing Peregrine did now. You're looking at totals, when you should be looking at specifics. There's no section of the financial report that gives the breakdown of the accounts department, the customer services department, the legal department, how much management they have and what responsibility/wage level, pension contributions towards employees accounts, and so forth. You have absolutely no idea beyond one large aggregate figure. These are all services which the Forgeworld section will utilise and share the financial burden of (as they don't exactly belong specifically to retail now, do they?), but which will not make it into the costs assessed for category b), as I outlined above. Third party companies simply don't have to calculate those costs into the equation for the most part. Heck, depending on the size of the business, they might not even be over the turnover threshold for VAT.
Whether Forgeworld could be run on more of a shoestring without utilising those services is something of a moot point, without spinning FW off into a separate garage company, they will continue to utilise them, and so a share of FW's profits do need to be factored into helping to subsidise them.
I had an interesting conversation with a former colleague recently, and for all the talk of fw propping up other arms of the business, it seems that the opposite is far more likely. I'm obviously not going to share figures (and I also don't expect anyone to accept my words without proof), but fw's turnover is far lower than you would expect, less even than bl ytd.
If someone stole my car, but I still had my car, that would be okay.
Not if you made your living making cars to sell for, you know, money, it wouldn't.
Wel, if I made a game while working for a big company, then I most likely made a salary, and probably not an adequate one, and then kept no rights to the game, saw little or no return from the sales, I'd probably be happy that a lot of people want to play it so badly. That will help me command a larger salary when I leave the big corporation to freelance for the smaller, feistier competition.
Really, GW is not the artist. GW is the company that shafted the artist and then tried to trick him into signing away his rights. GW then used profits made off of someone else's work and a kitchen sink of not-quite-IP theft homagery to squash competition, intimidate wrongfans, and harass legitimate, non-recasting bits sellers. 'Stealing' is wrong, but feels less wrong when you steal from a thief and bully.
If we are talking about some small studio or one man store, the harm is more demonstrable.
JamesY wrote: I had an interesting conversation with a former colleague recently, and for all the talk of fw propping up other arms of the business, it seems that the opposite is far more likely. I'm obviously not going to share figures (and I also don't expect anyone to accept my words without proof), but fw's turnover is far lower than you would expect, less even than bl ytd.
Just to clarify, are you just asserting that FWturnover is minimal in comparison to the rest of the company, or that Forgeworld is making a very minimal profit/being subsidised by the other arms of the company?
If it's the latter, I'm happy to accept that, but then I'm forced to speculate as to why Forgeworld can barely turn a profit despite charging 2.5 times as much as 3rd party manufacturer. The logical options here would be:-
-Having to pay in any degree for c) (as laid out before) is particularly burdensome and expensive for a business of that type, or
-The designers are paid a much higher wage than the industry standard, or
-An exceptionally high wastage rate due to unskilled casting meaning more quantities of raw materials wasted.
After all, it can't be more expensive raw materials, economies of scale should work heavily in their favour here. Which of the above, following on from your conversation with your former colleague, would you speculate as being the cause of their ludicrously high expenses for the industry they work in?
If it's just the former you're asserting though, then I'm actually inclined to agree with you there, it was Peregrine's assumption that Forgeworld profits were so crucial to the business that any dip in them would cause GW to go bankrupt.
@ketara I was referring to turnover, I never ask for more information than I am offered... How much of the figure is profit I don't know, but given the actual turnover figure, it can't be high, either as a sterling figure or %.
JamesY wrote: @ketara I was referring to turnover, I never ask for more information than I am offered... How much of the figure is profit I don't know, but given the actual turnover figure, it can't be high, either as a sterling figure or %.
Roger.
I don't see an issue with profits not being high as a sterling figure, but given the data we've already discussed, I would be genuinely shocked if it wasn't high as a %. Heck, not only shocked, I'd be wondering just what kind of manager can't turn a good profit per item on a product being sold at 2.5 the price of the market average under economies of scale.
JamesY wrote: @ketara I was referring to turnover, I never ask for more information than I am offered... How much of the figure is profit I don't know, but given the actual turnover figure, it can't be high, either as a sterling figure or %.
Roger.
I don't see an issue with profits not being high as a sterling figure, but given the data we've already discussed, I would be genuinely shocked if it wasn't high as a %. Heck, not only shocked, I'd be wondering just what kind of manager can't turn a good profit per item on a product being sold at 2.5 the price of the market average under economies of scale.
One that suddenly found themselves in competition with themselves just before Christmas most likely.
If someone stole my car, but I still had my car, that would be okay.
Not if you made your living making cars to sell for, you know, money, it wouldn't.
Wel, if I made a game while working for a big company, then I most likely made a salary, and probably not an adequate one, and then kept no rights to the game, saw little or no return from the sales, I'd probably be happy that a lot of people want to play it so badly. That will help me command a larger salary when I leave the big corporation to freelance for the smaller, feistier competition.
Really, GW is not the artist. GW is the company that shafted the artist and then tried to trick him into signing away his rights. GW then used profits made off of someone else's work and a kitchen sink of not-quite-IP theft homagery to squash competition, intimidate wrongfans, and harass legitimate, non-recasting bits sellers. 'Stealing' is wrong, but feels less wrong when you steal from a thief and bully.
If we are talking about some small studio or one man store, the harm is more demonstrable.
Case in point right here. You're not Robin Hood just because you like to think of GW as a big bad evil corporation. You're not entitled to cheap model kits or bits just because GW decided to protect their own intellectual property.
JamesY wrote: @ketara I was referring to turnover, I never ask for more information than I am offered... How much of the figure is profit I don't know, but given the actual turnover figure, it can't be high, either as a sterling figure or %.
Roger.
I don't see an issue with profits not being high as a sterling figure, but given the data we've already discussed, I would be genuinely shocked if it wasn't high as a %. Heck, not only shocked, I'd be wondering just what kind of manager can't turn a good profit per item on a product being sold at 2.5 the price of the market average under economies of scale.
One that suddenly found themselves in competition with themselves just before Christmas most likely.
Is it bad I genuinely can't tell if you're referencing recasters or internal GW sales policy there?
JamesY wrote: @ketara I was referring to turnover, I never ask for more information than I am offered... How much of the figure is profit I don't know, but given the actual turnover figure, it can't be high, either as a sterling figure or %.
Roger.
I don't see an issue with profits not being high as a sterling figure, but given the data we've already discussed, I would be genuinely shocked if it wasn't high as a %. Heck, not only shocked, I'd be wondering just what kind of manager can't turn a good profit per item on a product being sold at 2.5 the price of the market average under economies of scale.
One that suddenly found themselves in competition with themselves just before Christmas most likely.
Is it bad I genuinely can't tell if you're referencing recasters or internal GW sales policy there?
Ha ha I was actually referring to BaC and it's impact on fw sales. Recasting isn't accessible enough to make it a genuine problem for them yet, although there is no denying it will be affecting their figures.
Talizvar wrote: Like a guy I knew who wanted to field a "Circus of Pain" but did not want to spend the money on the models. Printed card on round wood stands. I was surprised at my emotional response: I spent MY money (legally for this topic) to field my army, no freaking way. Do these people play at a GW store with recasts? I dare them to play with bare resin if they see no difference.
I make hard decisions on what I buy and they "cheat" by buying recasts? There are many competitive options for models but the difference is people want that model and pass it off as the real thing.
As I posted earlier in this thread:
RivenSkull wrote: If GW wants to be a luxury item like Rolex or Louis Vuitton, then spending the "luxury" price for GW products just becomes the same ego feeding, dick measuring of "I have more money that you".
When both myself and some of my friends got into 40k just out of high school, we didn't have the money to spend on the hobby, but we really wanted to play because we liked the 40k universe. So we made wooden pegs or blocks, or used printed out papers, or even got a few things off of eBay. And we played 5th edition 40k using those things, and had fun. We got to play with different armies using PDF's of the codecies, because the proxy mini's didn't have any concrete model.
But clearly, we shouldn't have done that because it wouldn't be fair to people like you who spent their money on the real, official miniatures. "Keep the lowly plebs out of our HHobby" and what not.
AllSeeingSkink wrote: Do you actually see that many recasts of the newer expensive plastic characters? I haven't checked to see, when I last looked at recasters it was almost all resin stuff they were doing, and mostly FW. I buy almost no FW stuff either, mainly some 6mm scale Aeronautica Imperialis stuff before it was dropped and I started a DKOK force but only got a couple of kits before I gave up on them.
Yeah. Looking at a number of the Space Marine, $30 plastic kits of a single model, and looking at a recaster's stock listing right now, there are a good number of recasts at 1/3rd the price. The non-FW stuff is really a mixed bag on price. Much of the single models sit around the $10 mark, while some of the squads range about 33%-50% lower than the plastic kits - making buying the actual plastic kits from an online retailer at the 25%-30% a better option.
I still feel that the plastic kits are over priced, but when the cost becomes a matter of 10%-15%, it's often worth the extra percentage to get the plastics.
For me it just gets tiring reading responses that come down to defences of self entitlement.
I'd have more respect for it if people just said "I buy it because I want it" instead of making up hollow excuses like how GW is evil but in their evilness produce kits you like so much you aren't willing to put your money where your mouth is and buy a product from another company.
I'll openly admit that I will buy recasts of FW because I want to get the model and that the retail price is far too high. Other factors (as explained below) also play into that decision. However, I would very happily buy directly from FW if the cost was much more reasonable. And while my GW spending (including recasts) has pretty much disappeared, I have been spending my hobby money on a number of other companies that offer their products at much more reasonable prices.
As I've already said, some will pirate for ideological reasons, but for pretty much everyone else it simply boils down to the fact that the price of the product is too high.
I'm somewhat in the middle of that. Yeah the cost of the product is one of the biggest factors, but I try and look at the company as well and how they act towards customers. And this goes across all platforms I pirate - Pirating Responsibly, as I try and look at it. Companies that treat me well and produce products that adequately reflected with the price will always see my monetary support. I will never pay for a Ubisoft game because of the way they openly treat PC gamers and the poor quality of their games on the PC platform; while I would never pirate anything from CD Projekt even though they don't have any DRM to worry about. They don't treat me like some lowly, money shoveling entity. In terms of recasters and the discussion at hand, I do try and look at more than just the bottom line cost of the models. GW doesn't see me as anything more than a fool with money - no market research and the "They will buy whatever we make" attitude puts me off to the company that unfortunately has been ruining it's IP's for years now. It's not that I think GW is evil or anything, it's just that why should I put up with their ridiculous pricing when they view me so poorly.
Another argument against 'just copying somebody's IP is harmless' is something we all wish we had more of
money
in all countries copying the currency (which is nothing but IP regulated by the government) is more than frowned upon,
but all it is is bits of paper or metal with specific designed on it, it costs far more than the actual production cost which is why people want to copy it (and indeed governments are so large many see it as a victimless crime)
My 2 cents: For old and long OOP models I find recasting to be a good way to spread lost beauty. Unfortunately, that case is so rare, it might as well be hypothetical. Most recasters of course will only recast what is in demand by lots of people which is not normally the case with old gak.
For new / available miniatures, it just damages the maker, disrespects him, and is against the law.
If someone stole my car, but I still had my car, that would be okay.
Not if you made your living making cars to sell for, you know, money, it wouldn't.
Wel, if I made a game while working for a big company, then I most likely made a salary, and probably not an adequate one, and then kept no rights to the game, saw little or no return from the sales, I'd probably be happy that a lot of people want to play it so badly. That will help me command a larger salary when I leave the big corporation to freelance for the smaller, feistier competition.
Really, GW is not the artist. GW is the company that shafted the artist and then tried to trick him into signing away his rights. GW then used profits made off of someone else's work and a kitchen sink of not-quite-IP theft homagery to squash competition, intimidate wrongfans, and harass legitimate, non-recasting bits sellers. 'Stealing' is wrong, but feels less wrong when you steal from a thief and bully.
If we are talking about some small studio or one man store, the harm is more demonstrable.
Case in point right here. You're not Robin Hood just because you like to think of GW as a big bad evil corporation. You're not entitled to cheap model kits or bits just because GW decided to protect their own intellectual property.
I've never bought recasts. I stopped buying FW because it wasn't worth the price, but never really considered recasts. I might for an OOP mini that is hard to find, but that's much greyer. However, I can certainly understand the justifications. I have a lot of problems with the way big companies like Disney have expanded IP and copyright laws far beyond what they originally protected. Legality is not always indicative of the morality. I find recasts are a minor and context-dependent wrong, which make hardline positions on the matter problematic to me.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Also, the have getting angry at the have nots for finding their own solutions is just such a funny thing.
JamesY wrote:I had an interesting conversation with a former colleague recently, and for all the talk of fw propping up other arms of the business, it seems that the opposite is far more likely. I'm obviously not going to share figures (and I also don't expect anyone to accept my words without proof), but fw's turnover is far lower than you would expect, less even than bl ytd.
If they have quite an unimpressive turnover after the exhorbitant prices they charge for their products, then they must be doing something terribly wrong. If they can't adjust their profit margins properly, for one reason or another, it's their fault alone.
AllSeeingSkink wrote:Do you actually see that many recasts of the newer expensive plastic characters? I haven't checked to see, when I last looked at recasters it was almost all resin stuff they were doing, and mostly FW. I buy almost no FW stuff either, mainly some 6mm scale Aeronautica Imperialis stuff before it was dropped and I started a DKOK force but only got a couple of kits before I gave up on them.
Recasters nowadays are making resin replicas of many new 40k plastic models, specially big ones and vehicles. They are more reluctant to recast infantry kits, specially if their official prices are somewhat reasonable. The general exception are spess mehreens, recasters will even sell concrete body parts of those, as it seems everybody always needs moar mehreens.
I'd have more respect for it if people just said "I buy it because I want it" instead of making up hollow excuses like how GW is evil but in their evilness produce kits you like so much you aren't willing to put your money where your mouth is and buy a product from another company.
I can agree with this one. It's as easy as taking advantage of law loopholes (which everyone does, specially big companies like GW) and the opportunities the market has to offer. The choice was between official product and counterfeit, you consider the pros and cons of each one and go for the counterfeit as you find it more suitable to your needs. No need to dress it up as some moral vengeance against evil corporations.
It should be said however, that the "entitlement" you speak about many times comes up as a result of being harassed by the "holier than thou" crowd, always eager to bemoan bad consumers who buy counterfeit/replica items, and always willing to turn a blind eye to their favourite corporations' amoral and/or outright repulsive deeds.
And even if people are bitter that they paid $100 when you paid $50.... I think they have a right to be bitter. You're showing them you care about the product just enough to be muster the selfishness to buy it without supporting the people who actually made it.
You're playing a game of toy soldiers. You get bitter because other guy got his/her models cheaper than yours. That's not "entitlement" as well? What about second hand products then? Let's say I buy some brand new models from the store at 30 gold coins, then you see a bargain at evilBay and get the same models for 10 gold coins. Would I be entitled to bitterness too in such a case? Because at the end someone has spend less than the official price, and the producer has not seen a coin.
Of course a recaster can make resin stuff cheaper. Unless you expect GW to move their entire operation to China, close their stores and shut down the distribution chain that gets products on to the shelves of independents.
GW might be able to sell stuff cheaper than they currently do, but not as cheap as a recaster and frankly we have no idea how cheap they could sell it before the business becomes unprofitable, you are just making wild guesses.
That's because those kits were bulk plastic kits. Large set up costs, large run, cheap per unit. It's not practical to recast that sort of stuff. You could set up a recasting business to make them cheaper than GW but the risk would be much larger than recasting resin kits.
No, it's because those kits are priced in such a way that leaves little room for recasters to make a profit out of them.
It's simple, really. 10 Dark Elf Corsairs at 21€, 10 Executioners/Black Guards at 40€. All of them plastic models, produced in bulk. The first ones never feature among recasters' catalogues, the others do. I don't think it's really difficult to see where the difference lies.
By the way, GW has already moved a portion of their operations to China. They currently produce all their printed stuff there. Some of their big kits (stompa) were rumored to have been offloaded to China as well. Forgeworld, for a while, offshored part of their production to China. When they took it all back to England, amusingly, the quality dropped.
I guess I'll believe it when I see it. Most resins are fine once they're fully cured because the volatile fumes have cooked off in the curing process or reacted in to solid polymer chains. unless you cut it and inhale the dust in which case most resins are going to be bad for you.... but with the Chinese resin kits I've handled, it smells when you open the box and it smells when you cut it. It's unlikely that small amounts of it are going to be harmful
Well I must be a fortunate man then. I've handled kits from several Chinese recasters, some of them metal and some of them resin (OOP stuff mostly). Never had an issue with strange smells.
It would also be nice to see some solid evidence backing up claims that resin from chinese recasters is actually harmful. Because it's common to see people demanding evidence of the contrary but never providing any to back up their own claims.
Anecdotally, Chinese law prevents you from removing the means of production from the country. So all the FW moulds got left behind when they shifted back out of China. In other words, a certain recaster may well actually be using official Forgeworld molds to make certain products.
Which raises an interesting point, is it counterfeiting if you produce the product of a company from the company's own molds? It's still IP infringement most certainly, but the product is identical and made from the original manufacturers own gear.
It's a bit like sneaking into an Iphone factory at night and assembling on there. Sure, you did it illegally, but is it an iphone or a counterfeit?
treslibras wrote: My 2 cents: For old and long OOP models I find recasting to be a good way to spread lost beauty. Unfortunately, that case is so rare, it might as well be hypothetical. Most recasters of course will only recast what is in demand by lots of people which is not normally the case with old gak.
For new / available miniatures, it just damages the maker, disrespects him, and is against the law.
I think this sums up my view pretty well, too.
To expand on that a bit, the title of this thread "Who really cares?" - given the response in this thread, it's obviously a whole lot of people! I have thought about this a lot, because I like to do crazy converted armies and sometimes the models just aren't available. Taking this down from the hypothetical, I have found that creators are often extremely willing to give someone permission to make a cast for personal use (i.e. NOT to sell or profit off of).
Some examples from my experience (not including the names of the creators) are the following: I received permission from a creator to have a bit that was out of stock and not to be produced again cast from a single copy I could find of it. I have also several times received permission to have an entire model cast - in one case, because it was out of stock and wouldn't be back in stock in time for an event, and in another case for a model that was no longer being produced and had been out of stock for years. I have a feeling that even the most ardent "anti-casting" folks in this thread would be fine with something where the owner/creator gives permission (well, how couldn't you be ). But sometimes even then it can be a bit of a grey area, depending on whether the sculptor and company are separate entities, etc.
This issue requires a lot of thought because 3d scanning and printing are going to become extremely prevalent. Right now, I have a 3d model someone is tweaking for me that I'll have printed to use in my army. Now, this 3d model was provided to me by a Kickstarter (as part of a perk for backing) with permission to print for personal use. This is pretty straightforward - but in the future you can easily picture scenarios that are not so obvious! And actually even in this case it's more complex, since the native 3d model had many errors and wasn't printable. I commissioned an artist to modify it to improve the detail and so it could be printed, and will only be using it for myself. But what if someone else wanted to use it... who does it belong to now?
In the case of models that are Not being produced, or bits, etc - I would say it's at least worth reaching out to the owner and asking if they would allow you to make a copy for yourself, as I've actually yet to have someone refuse such a reasonable request! It's really if you were to profit off of their creation (and in some ways thus take away from profit they could receive) that I think creators are almost universally Not going to be OK with it, and with good reason obviously! But if it's to use yourself, I think you'll find most are willing to work with you if you ask nicely (and you could even go the old "shareware" route and donate to them as a part of the process).
Just my take from having thought about this a lot, and the ways in which folks who might be reading this who legitimately are at a dead end in a modeling project might be able to take the next step without going against a creator's wishes. You really don't know until you ask!
@ korinov I agree with you, I buy very little fw as I don't think it is worth the price. That said, on the rare occasions that I have really wanted something, I have bought it legimately.
Sorry to cut this conversation off but, I think all that can be said about this topic has been in 10 pages.
I want to make one thing perfectly clear: the moderators of this site are volunteers who are absolutely free (and encouraged) to represent their own viewpoints when posting in a non-moderator role. These opinions, however, do not necessarily represent the viewpoints of the owners of this site.
We (the owners of the site), do not condone or promote the practice of recasting copyrighted products in any way, shape or form.
And speaking for just myself here: I find the practice morally and ethically wrong. Creating miniatures, music, TV, etc, is the creation of art, and if you are someone who loves, respects and appreciates a particular art (like particular miniatures), then you need to respect that an artist (a company in this case) took the time and effort to create that piece of art into the world, which would not have had existed if they had not done so. This also gives them the right to set whatever price they like for you to purchase that art.
You can make whatever moral equivocations you'd like, but at the end of the day, if you are spending money paying someone to knock off that art, then you are helping to break the circle that creates that art, thereby lessening the chance that the artist will continue to be able to produce that art.
The ethical choice is pretty clear: if you appreciate the work that an artist makes, then pay them the money they ask for the art. If you think they charge too much for that art, then put your money towards a different artist whose prices you feel are more appropriate.
I'm sure there are plenty of people out there who might disagree with such a black-and-white statement and would like to respond, however in this case I get to use whatever little power I have owning this site and lock this thread on that note.
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And just in case you're left wondering what is or isn't okay to post on this site when it comes to unauthorized recasting, here's a breakdown of our official policy on the matter:
motyak
