there would be a lot of people not playing the game if the had to buy the books and models for full price
yet selling direct scans is another thing as giving them away for free and it is not ok to make money with the work from others
and browsing the site, there are a lot who sell copies
against it. As Albertorius said: creating something similar from scratch is OK in my book (there might be exceptions), but outright scanning not. Wouldn't be OK for any other companies/artists work.
Because today its GW and GW are the "big bad" in the market who can "take it". Tomorrow its Infinity, Privateer Press and Burrows and Badgers being scanned and sold like that.
Basically if you feed that kind of attitude within the market it will spread and it will eventually cause damage.
Personally I also think its lazy and useless and is only feeding a "race to the bottom" in terms of pricing for a luxury product that doesn't need to be produced. Encouraging that race means that 1 guy with a scanner can make a profit, but that a firm which creates art, lore, stories, rules, models and more; which promotes the hobby and pushes it forward - all dies because they can't compete with copy-cat products that basically have such an insanely low overhead and none of the original production costs.
In the end we gamers should be just as concerned with IP theft as the firms themselves.
Heck I personally try to avoid any outright copies, I'd rather we reward 3D artists who are creating new ideas and fresh takes, even if they are designed along a similar thematic line. I'd rather see original works rewarded and pushed up than just seeing it as a means to get "cheaper models".
Heck 3D designers already have an uphill struggle with a bunch of people who steal STLs and then put them up for sale at insane prices and market heavily - plus many are hard to shut down because they host in China and other nations that are hard to issue takedown orders too.
Yes, fully support new creations that may complement an existing line and not downright scanned copies of existing models. Yes, lots out there and sometimes hard to know it is something that has been copied, as I am not always aware of every model in every line, so when I see something cool, I might grab it, not knowing it was a blatant rip-off.
I'm good with it. Plenty of Chinese companies copy Gucci but people still buy the real thing because they want an actual Gucci wallet and not just a chinese wallet that has little Gs on it. Maybe it will make GW rethink their pricing structure and stop raising prices at 2-3x the rate of inflation every other year.
Toofast wrote: Maybe it will make GW rethink their pricing structure and stop raising prices at 2-3x the rate of inflation every other year.
Why would they? Even with the price hikes they are still selling out of everything that people want to buy. Stores can't even get product from them other than the latest releases. They are only incentivized to keep hiking prices further as the demand is outweighing their ability to supply.
I have no problem with OOP models. If GW want's to make money on OOP models, they can do what Wargames Foundry does and start making the old models once again.
Feel free to scan so you can have a template or a scale sample or whatever to help make your own creation though. But just an "asset flip" using a scanner is in poor taste, and I wouldn't buy from any seller who does it.
What if your playing at a shop? Never played the opponent before and they are fielding a mix of 3d prints and Forgeworld models that you don't know where they purchased them from? Do you ask for a receipt?
Not trying to be rude, but I went to play AOS up at the local shop a while back, and one player was using large models to count as his Sons of Behemat(probably spelled wrong). His army was on the right sized bases and scaled correctly to another players SOB army, it wasn't painted, but then again half the tables were not painted or horribly painted and the new armybook just came out. The player was nice to play with and talk too, and he was testing out the army before spending hundreds of dollars on 5 models to build his army.
Toofast wrote: I'm good with it. Plenty of Chinese companies copy Gucci but people still buy the real thing because they want an actual Gucci wallet and not just a chinese wallet that has little Gs on it. Maybe it will make GW rethink their pricing structure and stop raising prices at 2-3x the rate of inflation every other year.
This.
Was looking forward to buying some Russian recasts earlier this year but...
Toofast wrote: I'm good with it. Plenty of Chinese companies copy Gucci but people still buy the real thing because they want an actual Gucci wallet and not just a chinese wallet that has little Gs on it. Maybe it will make GW rethink their pricing structure and stop raising prices at 2-3x the rate of inflation every other year.
This.
Was looking forward to buying some Russian recasts earlier this year but...
I bought a squad of venatari as a test. They were better than the FW models in terms of casting quality and mold slips. Before I could order anything else from the guy, Russia did a Russia and now I'm back to FW prices
oni wrote: 3D prints and re-casts... Not on my table.
How would you know? Once they're painted, a good recast is indistinguishable from the real thing.
For a pickup game with someone I just met or someone I don't know that well; I likely wouldn't unless they told me. Though, I do tend to ask when I see a FW model.
oni wrote: 3D prints and re-casts... Not on my table.
How would you know? Once they're painted, a good recast is indistinguishable from the real thing.
For a pickup game with someone I just met or someone I don't know that well; I likely wouldn't unless they told me. Though, I do tend to ask when I see a FW model.
When people I ask, I ask them to pick out which units in my army are 3D printed, which ones are from the forge worlds of Russia, and which ones are legit. When they can't do that, I ask why it matters. Unless it's a sanctioned GW event and then I just say "yup all GW/FW here" and I'm good. When it comes to game time, these are game pieces and as long as they look the part, WYSIWYG and painted then it doesn't really matter if they were made by GW, a Russkie huffing resin fumes, or a 3d printer.
oni wrote: 3D prints and re-casts... Not on my table.
How would you know? Once they're painted, a good recast is indistinguishable from the real thing.
For a pickup game with someone I just met or someone I don't know that well; I likely wouldn't unless they told me. Though, I do tend to ask when I see a FW model.
When people I ask, I ask them to pick out which units in my army are 3D printed, which ones are from the forge worlds of Russia, and which ones are legit. When they can't do that, I ask why it matters. Unless it's a sanctioned GW event and then I just say "yup all GW/FW here" and I'm good. When it comes to game time, these are game pieces and as long as they look the part, WYSIWYG and painted then it doesn't really matter if they were made by GW, a Russkie huffing resin fumes, or a 3d printer.
Yes, well... We obviously have very different opinions on the matter and likely conflicting personalities. At least this little pre-game Q&A would alleviate us from not getting along for 2 hours.
Most of my games are tournaments so if someone doesn't want to play me, fine by me. I'll grab some Cuban food next door, have a smoke and enjoy the free win.
Toofast wrote: Most of my games are tournaments so if someone doesn't want to play me, fine by me. I'll grab some Cuban food next door, have a smoke and enjoy the free win.
Just curious if this does come up often at tournaments? While recasts may be difficult to spot on the table most of the stand in printed stuff I would think would be pretty easy to see and raise a stink about
On one hand, sure, giving the finger to GW always feels good. On the other hand, like someone else already said, today it's GW, tomorrow it's Warlord/Mantic, then Reaper, then who else? So, no, I'm not really in favor of a direct scan of a model.
That said, now that I own a 3d resin printer, I would like it if more companies would be willing to sell the STLs of their models. It feels like we're back in the early days of the internet and media distribution all over again. The fear that the companies had that, once they put something online, they'll sell just one digital copy and everyone will share and pirate that one copy all over the place. But we've proven, countless times, that it doesn't work that way. Sure, there will always be some piracy, but that happens even now with physical products. But once you make things easier to buy at a good price point, people will buy it. Steam, iTunes, Amazon, they're all proof of that.
It is pretty cute how we've cultivated a sense of moral outrage at playing against someone using recasts or prints. Like really, if you work at a game store sure fine. Protect your inventory, but then again... why aren't you investing in a printer that people can rent?
From a archival stand point I 100% feel like everything should be scanned. A digital archive could be the difference between something being able to be restored and something getting binned.
Should people go out and scan then print and entire army? No I think you should support the games you enjoy playing. I'm also not your dad and can't stop you.
There is also the fact that (at least the ones from the OP example)... well, those scans are crap, honestly.
If you go check the actual previews of the pieces, they're basically blobs with the general shape of the part instead of what I am used to get when I open a patreon's monthly minis, for example.
Why would I prefer to get that instead of someone's own 3d sculpt based on the same GW mini?
Hairesy wrote: It is pretty cute how we've cultivated a sense of moral outrage at playing against someone using recasts or prints. Like really, if you work at a game store sure fine. Protect your inventory, but then again... why aren't you investing in a printer that people can rent?
Here's the thing. When we enjoy something most people want to support those who create the thing we enjoy. It not only rewards them, but provides them money to invest into providing more of the thing we enjoy.
It doesn't matter what company or individual it is - if they make something we like then financially supporting them enables them to create more of what we like. Sure "BIG COMPANIES" are often seen as faceless and sure they are 100% in it for the money. So sure some goes into fat pensions, investors, bonuses and holidays for the boss. And some goes to Joe who spends all day doing a job sculpting stuff we love to play with.
For wargaming there's a sensitive part because a great many of the firms - ok lets be real pretty much every firm except GW - really is a small business. They really are a handful of people working at a job they love. Heck even within GW its not a business that generates vast sums of pay so most of the staff are there in creative roles partly because of the passion they have.
Stolen designs, however, aren't feeding into the system. A recaster or someone who copies a sculpt (be it copies sculpting or copies via recasting or via a 3D scanner) is just leaching off that. They aren't producing an original work; or giving us more. They are simply taking something someone else has developed, copying it and then selling it to us at a reduced rate to make quick money. They are worse than a company being "all in it for the money" because they aren't even putting the money they earn back into the hobby; its purely leached out.
So sure sometimes people do get irate at the idea of promoting that within hobby clubs and groups. You aren't paying to the store you play in, or at least any store. So you're not helping hold up the infrastructure that enables us to play nor which advertises and gets new people in; you're not paying to the creators and the company that created the thing; you're not paying into any part of the established structure that provides the game.
One person does it, it doesn't matter. A whole game club starts doing it because its cheap? Well chances are they'll lose their local physical store support so in time might well lose any newblood joining in. A culture that is allowed to grow within the greater hobby? BOOM suddenly avenues for new firms are cut off. You can't become the next Infinity or Burrows and Badgers if everyone is happy to use stolen designs/scans/recasts because its cheaper. Heck 3D printing already has to battle this in extreme because its so easy to steal STLs and put them up for sale. There's even one group that regularly advertises in the very FB groups that creators manage, offering 1000s of STLs for £30 or something similarly insanely low.
“Depriving the rightful owner of a piece of intellectual property of relevant income related to the acquisition of a physical manifestation of the said intellectual property by an infringer of said copyright”
It is when we're talking about real, tangible goods, not 01s. You still take money that should have went to people who actually made concept art, sculpts, 3D models of sprues, tooled them, made photos for boxes and art for books, etc, and give them to thieves that did nothing besides being parasites stealing the design and casting it in Emperor knows what cheap, toxic resin getting profit margins two orders of magnitude bigger than what GW did (which makes usual lame excuse of people buying from said thieves 'because GW margin is too big' especially stupid)
I can understand pirating digital music from colossal company that pays musicians next to nothing, especially seeing it's out there in radio, spotify, youtube and such and you could just record it. Stealing real, physical goods from company that makes a point in having workers in western country paying them local wages and benefits (plus big end of year performance bonus instead of just shuffling all the money to bosses) when they could move operations to Africa or Asia ain't it, chief, and equating it is just wrong.
Hairesy wrote: It is pretty cute how we've cultivated a sense of moral outrage at playing against someone using recasts or prints. Like really, if you work at a game store sure fine. Protect your inventory, but then again... why aren't you investing in a printer that people can rent?
Part of the "Charm" of one of my local shops. I offered to Print terrain for them....Hard Pass.
If there is a jurisdiction in which IP violations are prosecuted under theft statutes, I am unaware of it. Otherwise it really is a case of false equivocation to make a loss of potential revenue look like like a harsher treated and regarded crime.
A chihuahua is not a rottweiler despite some similarities and words mean things.
Also, since when are scanners even good enough to do this? Every 3D scanner I've ever seen sort of sucked and had nowhere near the resolution you'd want for this kind of thing.
As long as you play their games (or use models that look like theirs) you still are "feeding into the system", no matter if you pay money to GW or someone else
Businesses must either compete, or go broke. All we are doing by slavishly devoting ourselves to GW is enabling crony capitalism to overtake a niche hobby.
What you are proposing isn't supporting a business competing with GW but a company stealing from GW. There is a difference
The first is a company like Privateer Press, Infinity, Arch Villain Games, Lord of the Print etc.... Companies that hire (or are) artists to create work which is then put into production and sold as models/STLs. Who pay for artwork, lore, rules, models, world settings. Who promote the game, provide structure for competitive events etc...
The second is a person with a 3D scanner. Or a casting machine. Or skill in sculpting, but perhaps not in original designs. They aren't spending money on making something new, on supporting it with artwork, lore, rules, helping community events etc.. They are purely copying and reselling for a lower price. A price that a firm doing all the above can't compete.
Again you are perfectly free to not pay money to GW. You don't have to play their games. You can use 3rd party models from a range of firms making counts as armies; or 3D print ones. You can pay One Page Rules if you want. You can promote other games like Infinity, OPR, Warmachine at your local club etc...
You have the power to do a whole lot of good with your purchase choices and to help and support other competing firms.
Again I'm all for competition and competing firms in the market. I'm all for choice and having more models and creative designs and stuff. I'm all for making the market a better place for both gamers and creative people who have talent who choose to spend their working life producing stuff that I love to buy. I'd rather do that and encourage that than encourage people to steal/use recast/scanned etc... stuff that is just leaching out of the hobby that I love. Again by all means buy 3rd party stuff, but don't give it to Bob and his 3D scanner or Dave and his "I've got billions of STLs for £1" mega download. Give it to AVG, Wargame Exclusive, OPG, Badgers and Burrows, Infinity etc....
As far as I'm concerned, if it's made from scratch it's legit and I'll happily use it. Sure, I've got files that are almost 1:1 replicas of the MkIV Space Marines (for instance) I could buy from GW, but they're not scans, they were sculpted by someone generous enough with their time to make them and put them out there for the gaming/printing community. I was never going to buy those Marines from GW as I've not actually played any of their games since the early days of 40k 7th ed, and I download the files on the off chance that I decide one day that I fancy painting a Marine. GW is not losing my business because it was never there, and I have no involvement in their side of the hobby beyond filling my own shelves at home.
When it comes to original sculpts based on existing IP, I'm all for it. It's essentially fan art, and I think the key word there is art. Art should be paid for, and the person who made a Primaris version of a long-neglected Space Marine character or a large-scale figurine of Guilliman is definitely not 'leeching' or stealing from anyone, they're channeling their enjoyment of GW's game/lore/fiction into a new artistic endeavour and offering a product GW definitively does not sell, so a) they deserve to be compensated for their time and b) GW (or whoever) are not losing any money to the customer of this artist (if anything, said customer is already a fan and is/has given them plenty of support and money over the years and is just looking to expand their options).
This basically speaks to my stance on IP in general, which is that laws should protect the original work in its original format and not things inspired by/derived from elements of it in a different format/media. To me, anyone should be able to sell a print of some Witcher art they painted, or a Batman cosplay prop they made, or a Mandalorian figurine they sculpted.Those things are explitly not the same as the original product and are created from scratch, often with more care and attention than any 'official' merchandising is (the difference in quality between my knock-off Chinese replica Skywalker lightsaber and the Hasbro/Disney ones it sits next to is not a favourable comparison for the House of Mouse). Essentially, I don't really think that the first person to come up with an idea should be the only one to benefit from it, when that idea goes on to inspire tons of other people to produce their own art in different ways.
People like to defend IP laws by saying they're what stops Disney going and making a movie of your self-published novel or Amazon mass-producing your teacup design, but faaar more often they're used by corporations to shut down small-scale creative endeavours while they sit on piles of cash (which almost certainly does not find its way to the original artists, despite them claiming to care about that), and that to me is just crappy.
Me printing a Space Marine, or an Iron Man, or a Drizzt or a Gandalf to stick on my shelf is not going to bring down anyone, but if I pay for those things it might just lift up the person who produces the art that I enjoy.
I am a bit amused about how "IP theft" done by british garage companies has always been tolerated and welcome. Hasslefree, Copplestone, Heresy, GZG... have always lived off of other creatives' work, if we want to put it like some above have.
In my local scene, our attitude toward recasts is "don't ask, don't tell".
Proxies and stuff like that, we're pretty much universally good with, as long as the model has about the right dimensions and it's easy to tell what it counts as.
If there is a jurisdiction in which IP violations are prosecuted under theft statutes, I am unaware of it. Otherwise it really is a case of false equivocation to make a loss of potential revenue look like like a harsher treated and regarded crime.
A chihuahua is not a rottweiler despite some similarities and words mean things.
Also, since when are scanners even good enough to do this? Every 3D scanner I've ever seen sort of sucked and had nowhere near the resolution you'd want for this kind of thing.
In Japan currently you can go to jail up to 2 years and be fined with up to 10 million yen for copyright violations. I haven't heard of anybody being sent to jail so far but it's there since the Abe goverment modified the law to apease manga an anime publishers (that not creators)
I don't like the current GW aesthetic, but I do like some of the more foundational concepts.
Most of the GW-adjacent or GW-proxy STLs that interest me are interpretations of the GW-thing in the creator's own style. (A good example is OnePageRules's Robot Legions over GW Necrons.) Especially if it's in a more "Middlehammer" or "Herohammer" style over the modern, overwrought bling-a-ding-ding GW style.
So a straight 3D scan of a GW model interests me as little as the GW model itself does. Now, a 3D scan of an old, OOPGW model that's not available anymore? I'm still more interested in, for example, Monstrous Encounter's own twist of 4e/5e era orcs than a scan of the old plastic orcs, but at the same time it sure would be nice to be able to print a replacement for my long-lost WHQ elven ranger. (Though, again, if I found someone who'd sculpted said model in their own style, I'd probably throw them some money for it. I'd expect a straight 3D scan to be free on Thingiverse as more of a "for the community" archival effort.)
Businesses must either compete, or go broke. All we are doing by slavishly devoting ourselves to GW is enabling crony capitalism to overtake a niche hobby.
What you are proposing isn't supporting a business competing with GW but a company stealing from GW. There is a difference
The first is a company like Privateer Press, Infinity, Arch Villain Games, Lord of the Print etc.... Companies that hire (or are) artists to create work which is then put into production and sold as models/STLs. Who pay for artwork, lore, rules, models, world settings. Who promote the game, provide structure for competitive events etc...
The second is a person with a 3D scanner. Or a casting machine. Or skill in sculpting, but perhaps not in original designs. They aren't spending money on making something new, on supporting it with artwork, lore, rules, helping community events etc.. They are purely copying and reselling for a lower price. A price that a firm doing all the above can't compete.
Again you are perfectly free to not pay money to GW. You don't have to play their games. You can use 3rd party models from a range of firms making counts as armies; or 3D print ones. You can pay One Page Rules if you want. You can promote other games like Infinity, OPR, Warmachine at your local club etc...
You have the power to do a whole lot of good with your purchase choices and to help and support other competing firms.
Again I'm all for competition and competing firms in the market. I'm all for choice and having more models and creative designs and stuff. I'm all for making the market a better place for both gamers and creative people who have talent who choose to spend their working life producing stuff that I love to buy. I'd rather do that and encourage that than encourage people to steal/use recast/scanned etc... stuff that is just leaching out of the hobby that I love. Again by all means buy 3rd party stuff, but don't give it to Bob and his 3D scanner or Dave and his "I've got billions of STLs for £1" mega download. Give it to AVG, Wargame Exclusive, OPG, Badgers and Burrows, Infinity etc....
Couldn't agree more. Support other, more competent, businesses. And hey, if Bob wants to start 3D printing, support him too I say. It wasn't that long ago games included extra cardboard tokens, 3d printing is just an extension of that. Or could be. I'd happily pay GW for quality STL files of older units. They're stupid not to do it, imagine the money they could make by releasing old metal models as STLs.
Hairesy wrote: I'd happily pay GW for quality STL files of older units. They're stupid not to do it, imagine the money they could make by releasing old metal models as STLs.
I suspect that they're imagining the money they make by selling new plastic kits to people instead. Selling STLs of older models would mean diverting resources to get those models scanned and cleaned up to an acceptable standard, for a very uncertain return on investment and the potential for those STLs to just wind up getting shared around and undercutting their sales.
I wouldn't expect to see GW selling STLs until the technology hits a point where the files can be reliably governed by some form of DRM.
One problem with the STL market is that STLs are insanely fast at devaluing. Because the market has early on latched onto the Patreon model there's been a massive race to the bottom in 3D printing in terms of volume of delivery and value for a an STL.
You have some charging £10 or less for 100 or more models per month. That's 1200 new models from one creator group a year.
This has impacts on quality control, features, detailing, practicalities and a host of other things that impacts a lot of creators.
I think its why right now it works for small firms - small teams. But for a firm GW's size I can't see it working out over plastic model delivery.
There's also an element of customer burn-out that's yet to really hit because the market is growing' let alone creator burn out
tneva82 wrote:You are proposing to support guy who does nothing of value though. Talentless scum.
Support people with talent. Not talentless thiefs.
You are basically saying you don't want anything new of good value come in future. Death of models.
That is quite a leap, on both accounts. Our fictitious 3d printing entrepreneur is not worthless, or at least he wasn't when I made him up, why you gotta devalue my fictitious characters man? Sure, he could be feeding a crack habit, he could also be feeding four kids by himself because his wife died in a horrible ballooning accident. You don't know that Bob the 3d printer guy is scum. I mean, sure he could be, but then what are you saying about me? You think I support crackhead 3d printer people? That's rough bro.
insaniak wrote:
Hairesy wrote: I'd happily pay GW for quality STL files of older units. They're stupid not to do it, imagine the money they could make by releasing old metal models as STLs.
I suspect that they're imagining the money they make by selling new plastic kits to people instead. Selling STLs of older models would mean diverting resources to get those models scanned and cleaned up to an acceptable standard, for a very uncertain return on investment and the potential for those STLs to just wind up getting shared around and undercutting their sales.
I wouldn't expect to see GW selling STLs until the technology hits a point where the files can be reliably governed by some form of DRM.
But what happens to that money? These companies just exist to pay shareholders, so who cares about what people want so long as the company can support itself while turning a profit. Sometimes it's not even necessary that the company should support itself, if that's what the shareholder decides. And when we get to the point where DRM can reliably govern files on peoples computers, shareholders will decide how that works too and we'll just keep shoveling money at them. I know it's ultimately nothing but altruism to think a company with a decades long legacy beloved in a niche market would throw their fans a bone by letting them print old minis they had no intention of making again, but goddamn it if you can't hope at least a little then what the hell, right?
Is it an OOP miniature that I could only buy from a reseller on ebay, who is themselves not GW, so there is no option to give the original creator money to obtain the thing?
Love those folks. Proper little museum curators, IMO.
Overread wrote: One problem with the STL market is that STLs are insanely fast at devaluing. Because the market has early on latched onto the Patreon model there's been a massive race to the bottom in 3D printing in terms of volume of delivery and value for a an STL.
You have some charging £10 or less for 100 or more models per month. That's 1200 new models from one creator group a year.
This has impacts on quality control, features, detailing, practicalities and a host of other things that impacts a lot of creators.
I think its why right now it works for small firms - small teams. But for a firm GW's size I can't see it working out over plastic model delivery.
There's also an element of customer burn-out that's yet to really hit because the market is growing' let alone creator burn out
Exactly my thought. My first patreon was Titanforge because I loved their Eastern Empire line, but their current stuff just does not do it for me. really blocky, looks like it was forced. Other companies do some magnificent work, but then over the months it starts looking like they had 2-3 really good models and the rest were rushed to meet a certain quantity count to keep subscribers happy.
tneva82 wrote: You are proposing to support guy who does nothing of value though.
While it's still unambiguously copyright infringement, I see value add coming from these STL uploaders that you don't see with recasters. All recasters do is undercut the legitimate product by offering a direct equivalent, but anyone distributing STLs is providing a specific product that GW does not. People buy from recasters because they want GW models without GW prices; people buy STLs because they don't want the physical model, they want the design, and there is no legitimate option for that.
This is especially relevant to OOP models. Someone who uploads an STL of an OOP model is illegally infringing on GW's copyright, but they're not siphoning a dime from GW and they are absolutely creating value. If GW offered STLs of OOP models I can think of quite a few I'd like to buy, but I can't, so I have no compunctions about buying third-party STLs that copy those designs.
The reality of the situation is that as 3D printing gets more popular, there will be more and more people willing to pay for STLs that they can print at home on their own hardware, rather than expensive injection-molded models. I'd guess that GW isn't willing to go down the route of selling files when there isn't credible DRM for it, but that leaves demand in the market that others are willing to (legally or not) fulfill.
Hairesy wrote: I'd happily pay GW for quality STL files of older units. They're stupid not to do it, imagine the money they could make by releasing old metal models as STLs.
I suspect that they're imagining the money they make by selling new plastic kits to people instead. Selling STLs of older models would mean diverting resources to get those models scanned and cleaned up to an acceptable standard, for a very uncertain return on investment and the potential for those STLs to just wind up getting shared around and undercutting their sales.
I wouldn't expect to see GW selling STLs until the technology hits a point where the files can be reliably governed by some form of DRM.
But what happens to that money? These companies just exist to pay shareholders, so who cares about what people want so long as the company can support itself while turning a profit.
That's not true, and is the point that Overread was making earlier. GW exists to turn a profit through selling wargaming models, rules and related products. In order to do that they have to reinvest most of their revenue into continuing to produce those things. That's what Overread was getting at when he points out someone selling a straight scan isn't competing. There's no way any business that creates new, original models can compete with a guy who simply scans them and sells them on, whether the company is GW, PP, or any one of the myriad one-man sculptors out there. If everyone decides it's fine to just go and buy a scan of an existing model the end result is no more models to scan.
Hairesy wrote: I'd happily pay GW for quality STL files of older units. They're stupid not to do it, imagine the money they could make by releasing old metal models as STLs.
I suspect that they're imagining the money they make by selling new plastic kits to people instead. Selling STLs of older models would mean diverting resources to get those models scanned and cleaned up to an acceptable standard, for a very uncertain return on investment and the potential for those STLs to just wind up getting shared around and undercutting their sales.
I wouldn't expect to see GW selling STLs until the technology hits a point where the files can be reliably governed by some form of DRM.
But what happens to that money? These companies just exist to pay shareholders, so who cares about what people want so long as the company can support itself while turning a profit.
That's not true, and is the point that Overread was making earlier. GW exists to turn a profit through selling wargaming models, rules and related products. In order to do that they have to reinvest most of their revenue into continuing to produce those things. That's what Overread was getting at when he points out someone selling a straight scan isn't competing. There's no way any business that creates new, original models can compete with a guy who simply scans them and sells them on, whether the company is GW, PP, or any one of the myriad one-man sculptors out there. If everyone decides it's fine to just go and buy a scan of an existing model the end result is no more models to scan.
Exactly, but it also goes further than that too. GW especially so, but in general all companies turning a profit on their product also benefit from marketing that product. They build games, rules, marketing campaigns, competitions, heck GW has stores of their own on the highstreet. Those companies work by spreading awareness and getting more people into their respective games and into wargaming itself (again GW does a lions share of that I feel for wargaming, but others do their best too).
It's also not just them, its supporting the local game store (be it indie or gw or whatever). The place where locally people will be marketed too, tempted to join and which ideally can act as a local hub. Even if you can't or don't play there, its a physical common resource and focal point. It's where you can at least advertise your local game group.
This is the structure you help support by buying models from official sources. You spending money is paying those for those stores overheads, wages, profits, holidays, shareholders if they are big enough.
That's why I say even if you don't want to buy GW models, at least buy stuff that reinforces the structure of wargaming.
And sure one person is not going to make a difference. However the attitude we present toward things like scans and recasts is what influences other people's purchase choices. Online we can present our angle to a vast population and if we generate a social attitude that is ok with scans and such then it isn't just one person's money, its dozens, hundreds. It can risk becoming a growing population that eventually can become a significant impact.
Overread wrote: One problem with the STL market is that STLs are insanely fast at devaluing. Because the market has early on latched onto the Patreon model there's been a massive race to the bottom in 3D printing in terms of volume of delivery and value for a an STL.
You have some charging £10 or less for 100 or more models per month. That's 1200 new models from one creator group a year.
This has impacts on quality control, features, detailing, practicalities and a host of other things that impacts a lot of creators.
I think its why right now it works for small firms - small teams. But for a firm GW's size I can't see it working out over plastic model delivery.
There's also an element of customer burn-out that's yet to really hit because the market is growing' let alone creator burn out
I don't know if that's necessarily the case.
The Patreon model is a limited-time promotional discount. Most of the big name patreons where you can get a crazy number of STLs for a low price...do sell those STLs at more typical prices for STLs on myminifactory - for the most part, anecdotally, it seems like you pay about 15$ for a single large model or a unit, and about 5$ for a single model character STL.
Take for example Lost Kingdom Miniatures - I got in on the patreon this month after falling in love with their Mori Elves line, because this month is an expansion of that line. There's 10 infantry minis, 3 unicorns, a big deer, and a magic tree, for 13 bucks.
Go on their online store, and you'll see most of their units, that's about what you pay for them. I think I paid 12$ for a unit of heavy infantry about the same size as the 3 unicorns, and 15 for a big golem thing the other day.
So the patreon is effectively a limited time sale for about 75% off for a replicable digital good. to me, saying that that devalues what an STL should cost is a bit like saying that the existence of Steam Sales devalues what a video game should cost. Maybe. But since steam's introduction, video games have not actually gotten any cheaper at full price. Steam just introduced deeper, more frequent sales, because it is a digital medium with fewer production costs than a video game that you've put on a disc with an instruction booklet in a cardboard box and then shipped around the world and stored in a warehouse for a while.
That's it. Theyre still making the same profit vs sales volume calculations, theyre just not factoring in the costs for physical goods.
Hairesy wrote:Our fictitious 3d printing entrepreneur is not worthless, or at least he wasn't when I made him up, why you gotta devalue my fictitious characters man? Sure, he could be feeding a crack habit, he could also be feeding four kids by himself because his wife died in a horrible ballooning accident. You don't know that Bob the 3d printer guy is scum.
If the only worth that Bob the 3D printer guy contributes to the hobby community is directly copypasting and printing other people's work, then yes, Bob is worthless and scum.
We don't care about his hypothetical crack habit or his fictional children, because that's not what's being criticised here, and you know it.
Overread wrote: One problem with the STL market is that STLs are insanely fast at devaluing. Because the market has early on latched onto the Patreon model there's been a massive race to the bottom in 3D printing in terms of volume of delivery and value for a an STL.
You have some charging £10 or less for 100 or more models per month. That's 1200 new models from one creator group a year.
This has impacts on quality control, features, detailing, practicalities and a host of other things that impacts a lot of creators.
I think its why right now it works for small firms - small teams. But for a firm GW's size I can't see it working out over plastic model delivery.
There's also an element of customer burn-out that's yet to really hit because the market is growing' let alone creator burn out
I don't know if that's necessarily the case.
The Patreon model is a limited-time promotional discount. Most of the big name patreons where you can get a crazy number of STLs for a low price...do sell those STLs at more typical prices for STLs on myminifactory - for the most part, anecdotally, it seems like you pay about 15$ for a single large model or a unit, and about 5$ for a single model character STL.
Take for example Lost Kingdom Miniatures - I got in on the patreon this month after falling in love with their Mori Elves line, because this month is an expansion of that line. There's 10 infantry minis, 3 unicorns, a big deer, and a magic tree, for 13 bucks.
Go on their online store, and you'll see most of their units, that's about what you pay for them. I think I paid 12$ for a unit of heavy infantry about the same size as the 3 unicorns, and 15 for a big golem thing the other day.
So the patreon is effectively a limited time sale for about 75% off for a replicable digital good. to me, saying that that devalues what an STL should cost is a bit like saying that the existence of Steam Sales devalues what a video game should cost. Maybe. But since steam's introduction, video games have not actually gotten any cheaper at full price. Steam just introduced deeper, more frequent sales, because it is a digital medium with fewer production costs than a video game that you've put on a disc with an instruction booklet in a cardboard box and then shipped around the world and stored in a warehouse for a while.
That's it. Theyre still making the same profit vs sales volume calculations, theyre just not factoring in the costs for physical goods.
I think the key difference is that normally a product launches at X price and, typically, thereafter its price reduces over time. Be that through depreciation and/or through timed sales. Yes sometimes things do increase, but that's typically a result of things like production cost increase or limited production runs making for limited supply. Now the former can have an effect on any market, but the latter really isn't unless a creator chooses to make it so with 3D printing by restricting sale.
So the product starts off at a heavily discounted rate through Patreon. Like it or not that sets a "price" in people's mind as to the value of that product. When it goes on retail later it seems REALLY expensive. So people are more likely to wait for a sale (or sign up to the patreon for the patreon sale price which many do offer). The risk, however, is that if its anything "popular" in design people might just wait for the next patreon.
Eg myself I got interested in Lizardmen. Now I know that Lost Kingdom do a fantastic line of them; heck I think they were one of the first big STL releases and the quality is still there today. But its expensive to buy into all the STLs now for the full army. It's vastly cheaper for me to find other designers doing similar work and buy from them through patreon. Yes I might still get the LK models, but not all, maybe only some and maybe only on sale.
This is the same kind of reasoning as to why when Epic Games Store was getting started and did a big sale on games, a lot of the developers got up an arms against them and against the sale. Sure it drove sales and sure Epic covered all the monetary difference so the developer got full price whilst the customer got a discounted price. But the developers argued that now the game had been on sale, a portion of the customer base (which must be significant) would now never buy the game once it went full retail price again. They would wait for it to go on sale again because the "sale price" was the value of the product now that it had been discounted.
That as I see it is a concern for the STL market, but I don't think its one we will see worry people right now whilst the market is growing; whlist the number of designers is growing, but still small and a million other reasons. Heck it might be we never reach a point where it is a concern for the market; but I can see it being a concern for individuals who aren't part of larger teams who might have to step back from the Patreon model due to design burn-out; who then need to rely on their backlog of models to support them and, perhaps, a slower release schedule going forward.
We copy IP all the time often we call this experience and learning. Every day billions of photographs are taken and probably only a handful are "original". More than 99.9% try to mimic some kind of photograph the shooter has seen before. The same is with books and stories or the billions of songs sung under the shower. So when does it become a problem ? When you sing a song under the shower the composer will not mind. When you play it with your band in the cellar he will not mind. If you record the song and sell it, competing with the composer/interpret using his own song and cutting into his potential profit, he will take offence.
IMHO this is quite simple and understandable.
I use the same "measure" for 3D printing. If you create a lookalike model or a clone from the ground up for yourself and nobody else it's fine. It does not matter whether you scanned it or designed it. As long as you didn't buy the stl it will be fine.
As soon as you create and sell a lookalike/clone it's wrong. Again no matter how you created it, there's no difference in scanning and designing a clone.
If you do a similar model i find it ok to do so as long as there is no doubt that it is not a clone of a model or even a model from the manufacturer.
What is similar or not similar enough is open for discussion. A model that could be mistaken for a certain model from the original manufacturer is definitely too similar.
I assume that the people who think copying and selling work cloning other peoples products is ok, are those people who never have anything created worth copying or at least nothing they earn money from.
Even "a model no longer available" is no excuse. We do not have a god given right to get/own a certain miniature.
The point is to make people feel okay with doing their own thing. Why should GW have the monopoly on gaming? Should people not buy older editions and play them now too? Honestly. GW just rereleased Squats, now was that a community driven decision or were they just renewing the IP on space dwarfs? You guys are disagreeing that companies exist to turn a profit, but your argument is that GW exists to turn a profit doing wargaming stuff... well the truth is that if GW was all we had half the community would be priced out. Should I refuse games against people who built their own terrain, because GW sells some nice factorum stuff. I'm gonna try that next time I get a match and see some scratch built terrain, see how it goes.
And you know what they say about the word assume, so...
The real test of this will be if or when GW releases a new Battlefleet Gothic. BFG is a game that has been out of print for years, with second hand models so rare and pricey that the only way for new gamers to play is to buy proxies or prints.
I don’t believe any of us have a problem with companies like Battlegroup Helios making original minis in the style of BFG. (Right?)
But the prints. There are so many 3D prints of BFG out there. Some are stylistic homages, some are straight up tips from the BFG video games, but most are “close enough” attempts to recreate the old BFG ships in a form suitable for printing and playing. People also print the ships in different scales, both huge and small, making the hobby their own in a way that could never be done before 3D printing.
At this moment, these prints are not taking money away from GW. In fact, they are making money for GW, as new players end up buying paints, novels, perhaps some plastics from the 40k range that caught their eyes.
If GW brings out BFG, a lot of players will want the official rule books, bases, tokens, range rulers, and so on. They would likely buy the miniatures if they felt the price was worth the value. If GW prices weren’t cuckoo-bananas-bonkers, buying official minis would be a no-brainer.
As we know, there are a lot of customers who will pay a lot of money for GW products so long as they can find games. GW already killed BFG once, and they would do it again. 3D prints would, however, provide a lot more opponents for the actual GW customers to play against, so that they could continue to find games and buy product.
Do you believe GW would make more from having a supported game that brings in “whales” and few casual customers, or do you believe GW would make more money eliminating 3D prints and the overwhelming bulk of the player base?
I admit I am a bit biased in that I would never buy GW products at their current prices, even if there were no alternatives. I find it ridiculous to assume most 3D prints represent a lost sale.
I'm going to go against the grain and say I'm totally fine with scans.
Actual 3D prints? Not fine with that. But just the digital scan? That seems okay to me, it's a different medium to what GW are selling.
We're not far off people being able to scan miniatures to a decent quality with their phones anyway.
What people then do with those scans is where we start to have issues. Like, 3D printing them identically to the originals, yeah, that's a problem, but what about rescaling them? If someone wants to do a 15mm scale 40k army and scans 32mm scale models, resizes them and edits them so that they print well at 15mm, is that then a problem? If that is a problem, is it also a problem if someone fires up Blender and makes a 15mm Space Marine from scratch instead of starting with a scanned model?
I'm not sure if copyright law is advanced enough to account for things like scanning, editing and printing tools being in the hands of regular consumers.
Where is anyone saying that you should only support GW? Yes if you want GW terrain or GW models or products then YES you support GW.
However if you want Warmachine go support PP; if you want Infinity go support Corvus; if you want Kings of War... etc....
It's not about just GW, its about all the firms that are part of wargaming. As I said its also about the shops and retail outlets that might well be local to you that support those games and might even be local gaming hubs. Heck that even touches on the aspect that whilst you are free to spend your money at whatever store you want, there's good justification to spend locally to support the local store; not just spend online hunting the biggest bargins you can find.
And in general if you want out of print stuff the second hand market exists. Yes you aren't now supporting the original firm, but you are at least not supporting the recast market. You are recycling money around the hobby (chances are many selling secondhand might well be using it to fund new purchases); but importantly its not being leached out of the community and hobby into recasters/etc....
Again its about the attitude and the tolerances we have within the social network. If we tolerate and encourage behaviour and purchasing patterns that will hav ea net negative impact on the hobby then, whilst it might not hurt today, it might setup the ground work to harm the hobby in the future. Even if just a local level - eg you buy from recasters and encourage your friends to do so and suddenly your local wargame store closes or stops supporting wargames (GW closes - indie just end up supporting board and card games); suddenly you stop getting new people to play (or it becomes much harder) and the local scene suffers.
Hairesy wrote:The point is to make people feel okay with doing their own thing.
So they should do their own thing, and not wholesale steal and resell from others.
Want to do your own thing? Design, market, and produce your own thing, simple as that.
Why should GW have the monopoly on gaming?
They don't. They have a monopoly on their games. If you want to support other games and designers, you can, and should.
Should I refuse games against people who built their own terrain, because GW sells some nice factorum stuff.
Unless you're identically copying GW's existing designs, of course not.
The issue isn't "I'm not allowed to do this because GW already sells something kinda similar", it's "I'm going to identically reproduce what someone else has already made, and make a profit off it myself".
Again its about the attitude and the tolerances we have within the social network. If we tolerate and encourage behaviour and purchasing patterns that will have a net negative impact on the hobby then, whilst it might not hurt today, it might setup the ground work to harm the hobby in the future.
And yet we have tolerated GW for so many years and allowed them to actively monopolize and harm the gaming community to the point where if you don't play one of their games, your options are limited. How many fantastic games are out there that go unplayed because 40k or MtG has a stranglehold on the gaming tables? I can tell you I had a hell of a time running a gaming club when service is catered to those two crowds. I was always butting heads with the store owners for table time, despite the fact that I alone had created a burgeoning gaming scene and made them a ton of money. It was simply not enough to be able to compete with GW and WotC who can pack stores on every release. So you're right, a big part of it is mentality. The mentality that you stick with what sells, and corporations like GW have been browbeating the consumer with it for ages. IP infringement, really? Okay, lets talk about Tyranids, Necrons, Eldar and every single other faction that is LITERALLY based on media tropes! Like, I don't know how we went from writing articles about making your own terrain and taking very liberal amounts of inspiration from the movies and trends of our time to renaming things so you can have copyright... on the thing you stole!
People can cry about copyright law all they want, but when it comes right down to it companies can and do steal whatever they want and they've been doing it for ages. Harmony Gold should ring a bell for anyone who is a fan of the other, other toy robot game; Battletech. HG is not a creator, they do not make things. They exist solely to buy the rights to things with which they think they can make money. That's it. That company plagues Battletech to this day! And all because some dildeau figured out they could buy the rights to an image of an imaginary robot, so yeah - pretty low opinion or regard for copyright law. GW has low regard for copyright law and has done nothing but make money off of "inspiration" while doing their utmost best to protect that same "inspired" IP from guys in basements making shoulder pads. I have zero sympathy for GW, they made the bed they lie in.
That's more down to the community than the companies themselves. It's down to the community to leave the mold and play and grow these "fantastic" games themselves. GW, Magic, they just create and sell a product, same as any other business. Spouting off about monopolies or community harm just speaks of ignorance.
Heck GW went for many years under Kirby doing far less outreach and marketing than historically and they didn't even do any online marketing beyond putting products up for sale on their website.
Yes if you want to play other games YOU have to put a lot more work into marketing that game locally; into building up a playerbase. It CAN be done. Heck until 3rd edition and a series of issues, PP was ruling the roost second place and very healthy after GW.
Thing is it takes skill and dedication to grow a game locally. You need at least 2 well painted different armies for playtesting games; you need to bring playtest games to the weekly meetings regularly; you need to work at it like a job to grow the game locally. Because in the end most of those firms rely on that. GW even relies on it heavily too. It's just easier because they've got 30+ years of groundwork paving the way.
Again there are so so so many options outside of GW that you can support. YES it means more work and more effort if you want local games. Yes it means you might have to do way more training games for a year or more to build up a playerbase; heck it might even mean bringing in new people to gaming and the club who aren't already invested into 40K or AoS or MTG.
Inquisitor Gideon wrote: That's more down to the community than the companies themselves. It's down to the community to leave the mold and play and grow these "fantastic" games themselves. GW, Magic, they just create and sell a product, same as any other business. Spouting off about monopolies or community harm just speaks of ignorance.
If you think GW is the idle spectator who does nothing but create and sell a product then it is not I who speaks ignorantly. GW has and continues to take predatory action to "defend their IP", to the point that now if you want to watch Astartes without a subscription you have to go on bitchute and watch gakky low-res versions. Spouting off, indeed.
Inquisitor Gideon wrote: That's more down to the community than the companies themselves. It's down to the community to leave the mold and play and grow these "fantastic" games themselves. GW, Magic, they just create and sell a product, same as any other business. Spouting off about monopolies or community harm just speaks of ignorance.
If you think GW is the idle spectator who does nothing but create and sell a product then it is not I who speaks ignorantly. GW has and continues to take predatory action to "defend their IP", to the point that now if you want to watch Astartes without a subscription you have to go on bitchute and watch gakky low-res versions. Spouting off, indeed.
That's not predatory that's normal.
Every company protects their IP, trademarks and copyrights.
Also don't forget the fan scene online has changed over the last years. Back in the 90-2000s you couldn't earn money off fan content online. There was no easy donation system setup so fan stuff was purely fan stuff.
Today you can setup a Patreon or any one of a number of other similar services overnight to get donations. Astartes was earning something like £20K per month from the video work. That isn't just fan work that's serious business at that stage. The fact GW allowed this to continue for so long was actually the most abnormal element of the whole thing
Again we can't blame GW for doing what you'd expect of most firms and individuals. You can bet if you start going to make Witcher fan-films and profiting off them that you'll get letters from the Witcher author/rights holders to media.
Of course nothing stops you making a video about heavily armoured gothic space warriors fighting in the future. You can go do that right now. You just can't go copy GW's space marines and expect to not get legal challenge. Same as Snoopy or Marvel or DC or basically most stuff. It's actually rare to abnormal for companies not to protect what they have. Heck Trademarks can even be lost under the US system if the company isn't seen to be taking active measures to prevent their unapproved use.
HOWEVER all this has no impact on your ability to go out right now and buy some Infinity models and play Infinity. Or Warmachine, Starwars Armada (hey SW protect their IP, Trademarks and copyrights too - and SW is FAR bigger than GW and is owned by the MOUSE who is even bigger still); or Battletech (who also do defend their stuff in the miniature world too);
I think going after Chapterhouse was in bad form, they were making bitz. There was a level of mutual benefit there. Astartes making 20K a month, is that the makers fault or is that just what happens when you hit a vein? That was a damn good animation and it captured the feel of the subject matter perfectly, but did he go out of his way to make something to make money? I think if his motives fell along those lines it was more to get the attention of GW, and nothing proves proof of concept better than a profit. But as I understand it, he's on the team now, and where is the new content?
And you know, really this desire to not have to pay to play toy soldiers hasn't had much effect on the hobby, or community. Dakka is still here, the shops still have nerds in them and pretty much all the games are still in town. And I still haven't even bought any 3d printed stuff. Or recasts for that matter. But dammit, I want that option! Besides, I'm getting older now and there is really no point kicking up a fuss about prints and recasts. A persons money is so much wiser spent than on $90 models, I can in no way fault anyone who doesn't want to pay that. The bare minimum to play, 1 HQ and 3 troops, how much is that off the shelf these days? $40-50 for the HQ, at least that each for your troops. $200 out of your fun budget should not be nothing, if it is you're not well off you're bad with money. Even a starter box with a codex is sitting at around $200, more if you need the rules. What kind of entry point is that? That can't all be business as usual.
Edit: I should add that I've never knowingly played against anyone using recasts or prints either. I only ever met one person who was getting recasts from China I think, and they were pretty good. We never ended up playing a match though.
GW going after Chapterhouse was a mess because at the time GW had a very poor legal grasp of what they could and could not defend. Partly as a result of their legal guy basically not being a copyright lawyer by training and, until that point, GW had basically thrown their weight around being big enough against smaller firms who didn't really have the resources to even risk going to court.
GW was being abusive in those days; those were the days of GW sending out nasty letters to news sites just for posting rumours and leaks and such.
GW also didn't lose Chapterhouse entirely. They did win on many points, and they lost on some too. They lost more than they should have because they went in with very bad advice on what they could legally protect.
The thing is GW does have things they can protect and there's no reason they shouldn't protect them. Far as I'm aware they are more aware now than in the past, many of the CD letters sent to 3D print creators are very specific in aspects of the designs that are in breach. It's not just "no space marine" its very specific things like design elements, icons and names and such.
Hairesy wrote: I think going after Chapterhouse was in bad form, they were making bitz.
It wasn't just bad form, it was incredibly stupid. If the court had ruled in favor of GW, Brembo wouldn't be allowed to advertise brake pads as "for a 2022 Chevy Corvette". We have a very specific carveout in our copyright laws for selling aftermarket parts that are compatible with someone else's original IP. That's the only way the entire aftermarket for car parts exists. That's also why CH got the best IP law firm in the country to work for them pro bono, because GW winning that case would've set an awful precedent for an entire industry that's worth billions of dollars to our economy every year and offers essential things to consumers.
Frankly, I am of the ‘don’t do it for a living’ opinion re the OP.
Does anyone here NOT use a YouTube to mp3 type conversion site online to put tunes on the player for the gym, or news shows or audio books? What about zlibrary?
I guess everything is information when coordinates plus chemistry equals unique physical things.
I was a fan of Napster.
GW is basically a dinosaur, in the same way that record producers were and are, but the industry wrote laws and finance their enforcement to protect their own entrenched interests and as a result society doesn’t actually advance with tech and people are unable to benefit.
40k was a clearinghouse of sci fantasy tropes. Period. The best of it still is. GW went wrong thinking they could claim some sort of ownership over what was really just a way to package ideas that had been common culture forever. In the effort, we get restartes, nusquats, and so on but imhogw as a company should be just a hub for independent creator activity, just as any large food production company should be a hub facilitating trade between small local farmers and suppliers. Granted, this is not the world as it is but this is due to bad leadership for many generations and knowing that, I do not feel compelled to live accordingly just because bad leadership has delivered us to the present state of affairs.
Long story short, I would not support a person who makes his or her living scanning and printing someone else’s stuff. I would have zero problems making such copies for personal use, not for profit otherwise.
That said, gw is not someone else.
There is a famous old book by a forgotten dead guy named Abby Hoffman, Steal This Book iirc. Message is similar. Taking from corporations is not theft. Taking from private individual persons is theft.
GW deserves no protections because it is not a person, its investors create no value, and the world would be better if operating under a different political economic status quo. I feel no compulsion to defend or support the current suboptimal status quo.
Do no steal from individuals but do steal from companies is kinda strange when you consider that companies are made up of - you know - people.
Just where do you draw the line? Because a company, a business, can be just 1 person. I'm pretty sure you won't find a point at which to draw the line in the sand for that; or if you do it will have an insanely complicated reasoning behind that that will break almost every time you look at a different company or individual or group of individuals working together.
Oh well that point is quite simple, corporations are not people and thus cannot claim individual rights. The fact that they can is one of the major stumbling blocks of modern society.
One thing that I keep seeing in this thread is that some posters seem to support a "thou shall not scan" position that I find reasonable because no matter what I think from an ethical PoV the law is on GWs side, but on the other hand there are some posters that go further, and decry the copying of the themes used by GW. The fact that GW has a sculpt called Krieg cannot be grounds to send C&D letters to Patreon or other websites to shut down the accounts of people doing ww1 infantry with long coats, gas masks, and vagely German looking helmets. And that's what their legal department has been doing last year, and probably is still doing by the look of things.
As stated above my post, GW raided to their heart's content all major sci-fi themes of the 80s to the point where I've read some people complain that book based movies made after the coming of 40k copy GW's IP while ignoring that those books were written decades before GW came to be. Now we are in a similar place with 3d printing. Ghamak selling pin up "eldar" babes online does not violate any of GW's copyrights, because they don't make pin up eldar, and they don't hold the exclusive rights to the themes used on that sculpt no matter what GW wishes, or some posters might think. I don't know if Ghamak already received a C&D letter fro GW, but I know of other 3d sculptors doing the same were shut down on IP violations grounds by Patreon as mentioned in this sub-forum.
That's unacceptable to me, yet some keep defending GW no matter what it does.
Ghmak is a good example of GW's current policies because chances are he might well have had letters from GW, but they will have been specific elements of sculpts he's done whcih would have got pinged, not the whole concept of the sculpt itself.
I suspect the bulk of tickets on his stuff are not toward him, but where people selling the prints on etsy get hit with takedowns due to them using GW copyright names on the product descriptions/tags - which might even not be fully legal, but it is how GW fast-finds things through search engines and it is how etsy polices their site. So the issue isn't with GW or the law but more likely etsy's own internal policies, policing and moderation of content.
Again there's a good many 3D designers who don't just go close to the mark but outright copy a GW design and perhaps the change the pose a little; or make outright carbon copies. Even if they didn't use a scanner, they've copied the design outright. They are the ones that get the letters.
So far the few that I've seen post letters from GW had letters that were very specific in what breached the copyright aspects. In addition GW makes the offer within the letter that if the designer changes the elements that are breaching, GW will review the model. Yes you could, in theory, challenge and try going to court, but if its something like a symbol on a shoulderpad its a LOT easier to change it and move forward.
Heck even physical cast models do the same - I believe Wearhouse Exclusive will send designs to GW for pre-approval; which makes a lot of sense for them because they are dealing in cast models so really don't want to get all that way before being shut down.
In general GW is behaving as well as you could expect any firm in their primary market dealing with copyright issues. And that's an important fact to remember, this isn't a side business for GW, this is their absolute bread and butter money. It's the core of their whole business. Take the models away and GW would fold very quickly.
Hairesy wrote: Oh well that point is quite simple, corporations are not people and thus cannot claim individual rights. The fact that they can is one of the major stumbling blocks of modern society.
Many businesses in the TTG sphere are very small companies, often fewer than 10 people total. Often they're barely making ends meet doing the thing they're most passionate about. Is it OK to copy their stuff too?
Hairesy wrote: Oh well that point is quite simple, corporations are not people and thus cannot claim individual rights. The fact that they can is one of the major stumbling blocks of modern society.
Many businesses in the TTG sphere are very small companies, often fewer than 10 people total. Often they're barely making ends meet doing the thing they're most passionate about. Is it OK to copy their stuff too?
Heck get down to 3D printing or things like 6-20mm gaming and they are 1 person companies.
Thing is legally speaking, its advantageous to form a company rather than remain an individual because it gives you a layer of financial protections and such
Miguelsan wrote: One thing that I keep seeing in this thread is that some posters seem to support a "thou shall not scan" position that I find reasonable because no matter what I think from an ethical PoV the law is on GWs side,
There is no difference regarding the law, whether you create a "clone" by scan, mould or manually in an 3d program. And rightly so, because all those methods result in the same clone.
but on the other hand there are some posters that go further, and decry the copying of the themes used by GW. The fact that GW has a sculpt called Krieg cannot be grounds to send C&D letters to Patreon or other websites to shut down the accounts of people doing ww1 infantry with long coats, gas masks, and vagely German looking helmets. And that's what their legal department has been doing last year, and probably is still doing by the look of things.
I do not expect them to send the C&D letters to any company doing WWI miniatures, but only to companies that are doing miniatures with German helmets, gas-masks, french coats, is this British footwear ? and lasguns. Probably calling the miniature series something like Krieg or Kreig. Let's face it, those companies wouldn't create those miniatures in that style if GW hadn't used that design first and they do not target any market but 40K. They could do a different style - let's say British helmets - or do miniatures for WWI games. But they do not. They decide to copy miniatures and target them at this one market. If they do sell the miniatures for Infinity there would most likely be no complaint.
As stated above my post, GW raided to their heart's content all major sci-fi themes of the 80s to the point where I've read some people complain that book based movies made after the coming of 40k copy GW's IP while ignoring that those books were written decades before GW came to be. Now we are in a similar place with 3d printing. Ghamak selling pin up "eldar" babes online does not violate any of GW's copyrights, because they don't make pin up eldar, and they don't hold the exclusive rights to the themes used on that sculpt no matter what GW wishes, or some posters might think. I don't know if Ghamak already received a C&D letter fro GW, but I know of other 3d sculptors doing the same were shut down on IP violations grounds by Patreon as mentioned in this sub-forum.
That's unacceptable to me, yet some keep defending GW no matter what it does.
M.
If you do a goblin wolf rider for a different game but AoS/Warhammer, you will be quite save. But selling it as AoS Wolf Rider and looking like the GW one will.
What's unacceptable to me is that some people think something is wrong morally or legally just because GW does it. Or that somebody automatically defends GW, just because he's only defending a fact or concept. Do you think companies like Rolex, Benetton, Mercedes or Apple do defend there IP only because they are GW fanboys and do so because GW does ?
Over-here there is the concept of personal creative contribution in copyright law. If you can proof this in your design you're good to go. There is not much personal creative contribution in doing a model with a German helmet, French coat and Lasgun that looks like a Krieg model and selling it to 40k players/painters.
If you want to be sure that your song is not plagiarism, give it a unique melody and lyrics.
Here we go again. A company, any company not just GW, that creates XYZ only has the rights to that XYZ, not to something that looks like the XYZ, not to a diferent interpretation of the XYZ that happens to be ZYX..
The issue with GW raiding exisiting imagery is not a question of GW bad because they stole stuff, but rather a question that the general idea of skeleton robot is not theirs, just their view of it in the form of necrons. And the same happens with Krieg, GW only holds the rights to the combination of a certain helmet, a certain gas mask, a certain gun, and so on. They cannot claim copyright on a different artist's view of the same items, no matter what their legal department thinks, as seen in the Chapterhouse suit, suit that might have ended in a total defeat for GW on appeals if not for GW's lawyers had placed a lien (I think that what's it's called) on the guys house to cover possible indemnity.
But several good things came from that suit, and one was that suddenly everybody making 3d party bits could say compatible with GW's Space Marines, or Eldar Because the second good thing that came from the debacle was that GW did not have the rights to about 60% of the things it claimed. That's why we got all these fancy names nowadays.
And that brings me back to your examples. I can mix German helmets' with longcoats, and lasguns to my heart's content as long as it's not a carbon copy of the Krieg guardmen, I also can use a similar name as long as it's not the one GW has registered, and even further I can say my bits are compatible with GW products as long as I make clear I'm not the owner of the things GW produces.
Same with the wolf rider. Goblin wolf rider is a term common enough that GW cannot claim it (Brumbaer Wolf Riders could be protected on the other hand) so I can make a goblin that looks in general terms like GW's as long as I don't include symbols exclusive to GW, call it generic wolf rider, and say it fits nicely in AoS if I make clear that it's not a GW product in anyway, or that I'm somehow the owner of AoS.
Ofc all of the above is worthless if the creator folds the moment GW threatens to take them to court. And while according to Overread GW has been conciliatory on the terms of the letters they send, surely a result of trying not to get dragged into court just in case, I've also heard that they were outright hostile in others.
M.
TL;DR: The fact that GW has created a concept first doesn't make them the owners of that concept, only of the expression GW saw fit of it. Recasting Krieg = No Good. Creating a so called 3d printable Valour Korps that happens to use the same themes than Krieg = Good
kodos wrote: it is not that simple, because if you create a similar model, call it Kreig instead of Krieg and sell it as "for 40k"
you still will have problems as in a lot of countries this falls under scam as you trick people into buying something that is not the original
so you have to make clear in your advertising that this is a 3rd party product and it has to be different enough
and what is different enough is a case by case bases in court and nothing that we can settle here
I did oversimplify, that's true. But the opposite argument is getting close to "GW put a Greek letter on a pauldron, all the Greek letters on a pauldron now beling to GW, and using them is akin to cloning"
well, if they have a Trademark for it, you would need to fight the trademark first
and it is easy for a Trademark to get it, if you the officials think this is unique enough, no matter how stupid it is, and you need to fight the trademark first
and a trademark for greek letters on a pauldron is not the most stupid thing I have seen
in Berlin a company trademarked the colour combination of Red and Black for their brand, and went to court against everyone who used the same colour combination in logos etc.
and one of the problems with GW is, that they act as Trademarks and Copyright are the same
PS: and we don't have to pretend that 90% of 3D "artists" are creating 40k knock offs intentional to make money
they don't do it for the benefit of the community or because they love sculpting, they want to make easy money and found this to be the easiest way
hence why we see such low prices, for the 40k stuff, there is a lot of competition and they hope to sell more by undercutting each others prices for low effort copies
while those that really sculpt, make sure that their products work with different printers etc are way more expensive and are not close to the original
PPS: selling carbon copies are a no go, no matter what is copied or how (giving it away for free and we can start talking)
Ofc all of the above is worthless if the creator folds the moment GW threatens to take them to court. And while according to Overread GW has been conciliatory on the terms of the letters they send, surely a result of trying not to get dragged into court just in case, I've also heard that they were outright hostile in others.
.
The line between "hostile" and "legal" tends to be more one of interpretation. My interpretation of the letters GW has sent out (which I admit I've only seen second hand when creators have chosen to share them); and which are based only on those sent out in the last few years (ergo since the CEO change - so nothing Kirby era or earlier); is that they are within the law and as legally far as GW could expect to take them. I generally interpret them as "fair".
I know that many creators do not, some are very hostile about it and dislike it greatly. I've seen more than a few throw their patreons into hidden mode to keep doing what they do whilst insulting/shouting at GW at the same time. Some of this is purely people who were making near copies or outright copies; got caught; and did not like that fact. Some have little to no understanding of copyright and thus does seem to vary country to country as well - some countries seem to have a less general developed understanding. However many people have a poor grasp and most of their issues with it are when companies claim copyright and stop people doing what they want to do.
So broadly speaking to many copyright in general is seen as a bad thing because "big companies use it to bully" even though those exact same laws protect ever so many small firms. So even when a company is acting purely in sensible good faith to the law and isn't trying to abuse it; many will interpret it badly.
Plus GW still carries the baggage of drama caused during the Kirby era. Even though they've clearly changed attitudes and legal angles on how they respond and interact, GW still has that legacy which is likely going to take a fairly long while to move past. Heck I know a few news sites that still don't carry GW news after they stopped when the Kirby era management got into a pattern of sending nasty letters to news sites posting rumours. Though these days they tend to argue that GW has their own news site and there isn't much point them copy-catting what the GW site shows, esp when it shows articles 7 days a week,
As you point out IF they have a trademark. I'm guessing that GW is running a tighter ship nowadays with TMs but my stance in all this issue is that just because GW has a trademark for space marines with Greek letters (TM), not every space marine under the sun belongs to them, no matter how hard they, or their fans decry it. Pre Chapterhouse GW seemed to believe otherwise. Hell, in the initial moves GW tried to claim Chapterhouse as their property because they used the words Space Marine Chapters (spoiler: GW didn't have a registration for the word)
I'm not blind not to see that most 3d prints are doing it for the money, but I will keep defending that there is a difference between copying the aesthetics of 40K, and copying GW's legitimate, and protected IP.
I agree GW were foolish during chapterhouse and right now they seem to have a might tighter grasp over what they can and cannot enforce legally speaking. Trademarks/IP/Copyright also vary in specific laws and what can/cannot be protected and how - though in general terms its enough for casual conversation to lump them roughly together even if in reality they will vary.
my problem here is just that those who carbon copy or make close to cc 3d models and sell them do not hurt GW, they hurt other artists who are trying to make their own and make a living from it
those want to make money on the back of GW while at the same time supporting GW as a company as without the popularity of 40k and GWs prices they won't make money
I'll also point out that while we're arguing about 3d printing and whether or not that affects the hobby, Miguelsan has a closet full of no-nonsense GW kits. I think GWs bottom line will be fine if I go buy some recasts one day.
Edit: Also, the top thread in P&M tuts is a guy building Rhinos out of paper, so... people are going to play IP protected games for free or very cheaply no matter what the medium is, hell I've been playing Chapter Master all week and GW killed that game.
But if the culture establishes itself as ok then steadily over time GW might not be fine in some countries/regions/areas.
Furthermore the local game shops in some areas might no longer stock wargames if they see zero sales because everyone in the club is using the cheap recasts/3d copies.
And when everyone decides to try Infinity why spend so much money on their models when you can get copies of them too?
That's the real risk; that the attitude spreads and suddenly smaller and smaller firms are impacted. Because you can bet many recasters (or those who only copy 3D designs) will be happy to chase the money. They are purely in it for the money and nothing else, they copy other peoples work and undercut the price to get sales with no re-investment to further the hobby.
So yep they are bound to follow the money. Even if individually they might move on; the culture will be there to support that kind of market. That suddenly REALLY hurts smaller and middlesized firms.
In the end this mostly comes down to people wanting to spend less and get more. Which in a luxury product line is a risk that the product line can die if everyone chases the illegal copies.
I think the point of a free market economy is that a company either performs well or fails, I give a crap about how GW is doing on a global scale. If the company cratered tomorrow the community would persist, even past the advent of a replacement game/company. And we would be better off for it, GW has shown a remarkable lack of concern for the long time fanbase, it's history and the in-game history as well. And given the fact that the company has floated by on the goodwill of fans through some rather stupid decisions, I'd say it's very nearly a matter of familial respect to provide paying customers with access to their library of old sculpts.
Hairesy wrote:And yet we have tolerated GW for so many years and allowed them to actively monopolize
You don't seem to understand what a monopoly is. GW doesn't have one. They only have a "monopoly" on their own products and IP.
and harm the gaming community to the point where if you don't play one of their games, your options are limited. How many fantastic games are out there that go unplayed because 40k or MtG has a stranglehold on the gaming tables?
So play those other games. Convince others to play them too.
If you can't, that sounds like a you problem, not a GW one.
Inquisitor Gideon wrote:That's more down to the community than the companies themselves. It's down to the community to leave the mold and play and grow these "fantastic" games themselves. GW, Magic, they just create and sell a product, same as any other business. Spouting off about monopolies or community harm just speaks of ignorance.
QFT.
Hairesy wrote:If the company cratered tomorrow the community would persist, even past the advent of a replacement game/company.
Citation needed.
If you think the community can and will persist so much and so well, why aren't homebrew rulesets more common and widely used amongst the community?
Hairesy wrote: I'll also point out that while we're arguing about 3d printing and whether or not that affects the hobby, Miguelsan has a closet full of no-nonsense GW kits. I think GWs bottom line will be fine if I go buy some recasts one day.
Edit: Also, the top thread in P&M tuts is a guy building Rhinos out of paper, so... people are going to play IP protected games for free or very cheaply no matter what the medium is, hell I've been playing Chapter Master all week and GW killed that game.
I'm afraid you got me confused with somebody, I don't have a closet full of GW kits, just a display cabinet with half finished miniatures. I will confess a certain hostility against GW in the 3d printing/3rd party bits issue because I was in the mist of finishing an Eldar army with a heavy use of count as figures when the Chapter House suit happened. Though GWs stated aim at the time was to protect their IP everybody could see that GW was trying to curtail, if not shut down, the growing 3rd party bits market. It was the rise of all the alternate head companies, and those companies were getting bolder, and had started dipping their toes in providing alternate sculpts to units GW had never bothered with. I repeat myself, but we all know by now how Kirby's GW overextended themselves.
I was always cool with the idea of not being able to play with my 3rd party bits in a GW store, there was only one in Tokyo at the time after all, but Japanese player base being what it is GW's stance against prefectly legal 3rd party bits spread around, so my army suddenly became no good for the (not)FLGS. Currently I play in a loosely organized club, so far no issues with my IK army (Knights 100% GW, baby knights modified mecha kits) but I'm very wary that 3d printing backslash happens because GW overreaches again.
M.
Edit: I also didn't take very well GW squatting my Khemri that happened kind of at the same time.
Did you not post a picture in another thread showing off your collection of unbuilt kits?
Oh well, either way GW is going to do fine until people decide that they've had enough of their BS and quit en masse. Warhammer TV or whatever they're calling it is another indication that things haven't changed at all.
kodos wrote: my problem here is just that those who carbon copy or make close to cc 3d models and sell them do not hurt GW, they hurt other artists who are trying to make their own and make a living from it
those want to make money on the back of GW while at the same time supporting GW as a company as without the popularity of 40k and GWs prices they won't make money
while those that try to make their own fall flat
I think it's a bit of a stretch to assume that if people weren't using copied GW models they would instead be supporting other artists who are making their own thing.
Why?
Because people have done this in the past and now time has changed?
You want a cheap alternative to GW models to play 40k, you take the best thing that is available
No one will now say, if there are no carbon copies available I sell my printer and buy GW plastic again
Just because internet warriors tell people that all models outside GW are ugly and not detailed enough for wargaming does mean this is the case in real life
And other artists also try to be better than GW, but of course if the cheapest available model is the carbon copy but unless like in other cases you are told it is ok to buy rip offs because GW Evil and everyone else worse, why should you look for different and more expensive ones
kodos wrote: Why?
Because people have done this in the past and now time has changed?
You want a cheap alternative to GW models to play 40k, you take the best thing that is available
No one will now say, if there are no carbon copies available I sell my printer and buy GW plastic again
Just because internet warriors tell people that all models outside GW are ugly and not detailed enough for wargaming does mean this is the case in real life
And other artists also try to be better than GW, but of course if the cheapest available model is the carbon copy but unless like in other cases you are told it is ok to buy rip offs because GW Evil and everyone else worse, why should you look for different and more expensive ones
Again, I think that's just a bit of a stretch.
People who want cheap GW models enough to go to the effort of 3D printing them or getting recasts aren't necessarily just going to turn around and buy some other random models because they can't buy the GW ones cheaply enough.
I'd contend that the people buying GW alternatives would continue doing so regardless of the availability of "pirate" GW models.... and people who don't buy GW alternatives would continue not doing so. If they liked and wanted those models they'd be buying them already.
Like, your argument is kind of akin to that old argument of equating downloaded music to lost sales for the publisher... except you're taking it a step further and saying downloaded music is hurting some random indy artist that didn't even make the music that people wanted in the first place
but yes, pirating music and movies is a bigger problem for indy music and films rather than for big publishers
small bands depend much more on live music and than before, while even earn nothing via official streaming sites in some countries (like Germany were the share of income you get from streaming sites is not calculated on how often people click on your music but how popular your band is in the charts, while you still have to pay a fee per click) and indy films that cannot make their money back in the box office have no chance to do so on home media now
but yes it goes into the same range, you don't want to spend money on a corporation, so you go the concert of the local cover band instead
but if people want GW models, than they should buy from GW if you just want models to play 40k, support other artists
same if you want the new Album from a specific Band, buy it
if you just want some Rock/Metal/HipHop support other Artists
but yes, pirating music and movies is a bigger problem for indy music and films rather than for big publishers
small bands depend much more on live music and than before, while even earn nothing via official streaming sites in some countries (like Germany were the share of income you get from streaming sites is not calculated on how often people click on your music but how popular your band is in the charts, while you still have to pay a fee per click) and indy films that cannot make their money back in the box office have no chance to do so on home media now
but yes it goes into the same range, you don't want to spend money on a corporation, so you go the concert of the local cover band instead
I think you're just reaching based on some very tenuous assumptions. The idea that someone who would get a pirate GW model but can't, would instead buy a completely different product from some small time artist, umm, yeah, that's a stretch to me. I'm not going to say people like that don't exist, but that they form a meaningful portion of the market, naaah, pull the other one.
I reckon if people want (or do not want) models from an small time artist, they'll do it regardless of the availability of recast / scanned GW models. Especially when we're talking about 3D printing models, if someone has invested in 3D printing then they're already pretty deeply invested in the hobby.
If anything, on their hunt to find scans of GW models they'll be exposed to a lot of the alternatives they wouldn't have otherwise found and can make the decision to buy those models if they want them.
but if people want GW models, than they should buy from GW if you just want models to play 40k, support other artists
same if you want the new Album from a specific Band, buy it
if you just want some Rock/Metal/HipHop support other Artists
I don't disagree with that statement, but you're making the argument that someone wants some new album, like, they specifically want THAT album, but it's too expensive, so they pirate it... but if they couldn't have pirated it they would instead fish around for some indy artists and buy from them a completely unrelated album simply because it's the same genre? Yeah nah mate, don't believe you
so something like One Page Rules or PuppetsWars existing and making money should not be possible than?
because others are selling actual scans (carbon copies) of GW models for less than those 2 selling their count as 40k ranges
why are those still in buisness?
why are they still making new stuff?
everyone wants GW models for less, so they bought a 3D printer and buy copies of GW models
except maybe the majority of people know that selling 1:1 copies as 3D files (or recasts) is illegal and/or don't see the need of actual copies to play with
kodos wrote: so something like One Page Rules or PuppetsWars existing and making money should not be possible than?
because others are selling actual scans (carbon copies) of GW models for less than those 2 selling their count as 40k ranges
why are those still in buisness?
why are they still making new stuff?
Ummm, I don't know how anything in your post relates to what I was presenting. Maybe I'm not understanding your language because I'm not really seeing the relevance of what you're saying here.
OnePageRules and PuppetsWar sell not because they're an alternative to 1:1 copies of GW models, they sell because they're good products in and of themselves, either stuff that GW themselves don't sell or better looking alternatives to GW's models. Their customers aren't simply people who want GW models cheaper and would just get GW copies if given the opportunity, they're people who want something different to what GW is offering.
everyone wants GW models for less, so they bought a 3D printer and buy copies of GW models
except maybe the majority of people know that selling 1:1 copies as 3D files (or recasts) is illegal and/or don't see the need of actual copies to play with
I'm not sure if you're being literal or sarcastic here, but I doubt a majority of people who bought 3D printers for their wargaming needs ever had 1:1 GW copies in mind. I bought my 3D printer to get models that bear no relation to GW, or are superior to GW miniatures.
My argument was if someone wants a 1:1 copy of a GW model, but they can't get it, doesn't mean they are going to go out and buy a different model from a small time artist... I don't see how anything in your post forms a counter argument to that.
Rolsheen wrote: It's a gakky move of the talentless hoping for a quick buck and those trying to justify it have the morals of an alley cat simple as that.
Norms are tricky. Today it is enforceably normal to worship monetary profits and legal minutia protecting and encouraging social constructs, also norms, that maximise profits for one’s self and co-aligned others at the expense of everyone else. Short sighted as it is, this corporate fascistic dynamic elevates sociopaths and psychopaths over generations, resulting in the pathocracy under which people are educated today and which, sadly, many seem unable to consider not defending, due perhaps to intolerance for cognitive dissonance.
I am not a defender of contemporary pathocracy. GW is not a person. Scanning and printing a model for personal use is the same as copying a cd for personal use. Scanning and printing a model for conversion, or scanning and manipulating the scanned info, are like making a mixed tape or sampling music for recomposition… as much contemporary music is produced in this way, and as there is precedent for copying music and making mix tapes yada, I have ZERO ethical qualms about doing similar with models produced by some for profit cult of norms if I see fit to do so. I might buy an extra copy of a cd, if I want to support an artist, or buy tix for an event or concert to support an artist, and so on, but I feel zero compulsion to aid GW in such a way.
Where do I draw the line, it has been asked. I answer that this is less to do with where than why. And, if this why is not obvious to you, then I wonder what it may take for you to question whatever norm you think that you are defending.
We aren't really talking about home/personal use (which can get more grey/complicated). We are specifically talking about people who aren't just scanning and printing at home, but providing scanned or otherwise copied material to others. Ergo distributing. Be it for free or for commercial trade (ergo money).
If you want to compare to a CD, yes you can copy the contents for a personal backup and even burn them to another disk (or just copy them onto your hard drive). But you can't distribute those copies.
Overread wrote: We aren't really talking about home/personal use (which can get more grey/complicated). We are specifically talking about people who aren't just scanning and printing at home, but providing scanned or otherwise copied material to others. Ergo distributing. Be it for free or for commercial trade (ergo money).
I reckon in a few years people will likely be able to scan models to a reasonably high quality with their phones. There's already the capability there, the quality is just a bit crap for items this small. As the software improves and cameras improve I think it'll become more viable to just scan your own models.
Rolsheen wrote: It's a gakky move of the talentless hoping for a quick buck and those trying to justify it have the morals of an alley cat simple as that.
Norms are tricky. Today it is enforceably normal to worship monetary profits and legal minutia protecting and encouraging social constructs, also norms, that maximise profits for one’s self and co-aligned others at the expense of everyone else. Short sighted as it is, this corporate fascistic dynamic elevates sociopaths and psychopaths over generations, resulting in the pathocracy under which people are educated today and which, sadly, many seem unable to consider not defending, due perhaps to intolerance for cognitive dissonance.
I am not a defender of contemporary pathocracy. GW is not a person. Scanning and printing a model for personal use is the same as copying a cd for personal use. Scanning and printing a model for conversion, or scanning and manipulating the scanned info, are like making a mixed tape or sampling music for recomposition… as much contemporary music is produced in this way, and as there is precedent for copying music and making mix tapes yada, I have ZERO ethical qualms about doing similar with models produced by some for profit cult of norms if I see fit to do so. I might buy an extra copy of a cd, if I want to support an artist, or buy tix for an event or concert to support an artist, and so on, but I feel zero compulsion to aid GW in such a way.
Where do I draw the line, it has been asked. I answer that this is less to do with where than why. And, if this why is not obvious to you, then I wonder what it may take for you to question whatever norm you think that you are defending.
Do they not fluoridate the drinking water in Portugal or something? This is the most intelligent thing I've read on Dakka in a long time.
Hairesy wrote: Warhammer TV or whatever they're calling it is another indication that things haven't changed at all.
What are you referring to with this?
Their TV channel they made or whatever it is, Warhammer Plus. Streaming service? I don't know that you can call it a streaming service though, kinda have to have content for that, hahaha!
Rolsheen wrote: It's a gakky move of the talentless hoping for a quick buck and those trying to justify it have the morals of an alley cat simple as that.
Norms are tricky. Today it is enforceably normal to worship monetary profits and legal minutia protecting and encouraging social constructs, also norms, that maximise profits for one’s self and co-aligned others at the expense of everyone else. Short sighted as it is, this corporate fascistic dynamic elevates sociopaths and psychopaths over generations, resulting in the pathocracy under which people are educated today and which, sadly, many seem unable to consider not defending, due perhaps to intolerance for cognitive dissonance.
I am not a defender of contemporary pathocracy. GW is not a person. Scanning and printing a model for personal use is the same as copying a cd for personal use. Scanning and printing a model for conversion, or scanning and manipulating the scanned info, are like making a mixed tape or sampling music for recomposition… as much contemporary music is produced in this way, and as there is precedent for copying music and making mix tapes yada, I have ZERO ethical qualms about doing similar with models produced by some for profit cult of norms if I see fit to do so. I might buy an extra copy of a cd, if I want to support an artist, or buy tix for an event or concert to support an artist, and so on, but I feel zero compulsion to aid GW in such a way.
Where do I draw the line, it has been asked. I answer that this is less to do with where than why. And, if this why is not obvious to you, then I wonder what it may take for you to question whatever norm you think that you are defending.
Do they not fluoridate the drinking water in Portugal or something? This is the most intelligent thing I've read on Dakka in a long time.
Dakka and Zerohedge, Caitlin Johnstone, Steve Kirsch, Tessa Lena… there are some gems on da webz yet… and Portugal, well, I don’t belong here, Europe as a whole is a steaming cesspool rotten under terminally corrupt “leadership” … nah, I am headed back to South Korea by way of Amsterdam in a few weeks. Korea was the best place that I ever lived. I hope that this move will be the last. Tired…
Hairesy wrote: Warhammer TV or whatever they're calling it is another indication that things haven't changed at all.
What are you referring to with this?
Their TV channel they made or whatever it is, Warhammer Plus. Streaming service? I don't know that you can call it a streaming service though, kinda have to have content for that, hahaha!
I knew that part. I'm referring to what you think about it is an indicator "things haven't changed".
Hairesy wrote: Warhammer TV or whatever they're calling it is another indication that things haven't changed at all.
What are you referring to with this?
Their TV channel they made or whatever it is, Warhammer Plus. Streaming service? I don't know that you can call it a streaming service though, kinda have to have content for that, hahaha!
I knew that part. I'm referring to what you think about it is an indicator "things haven't changed".
I would like to know why the controversy around Warhammer + is not an obvious indicator for you that the company has not changed.
Rolsheen wrote: It's a gakky move of the talentless hoping for a quick buck and those trying to justify it have the morals of an alley cat simple as that.
Norms are tricky. Today it is enforceably normal to worship monetary profits and legal minutia protecting and encouraging social constructs, also norms, that maximise profits for one’s self and co-aligned others at the expense of everyone else. Short sighted as it is, this corporate fascistic dynamic elevates sociopaths and psychopaths over generations, resulting in the pathocracy under which people are educated today and which, sadly, many seem unable to consider not defending, due perhaps to intolerance for cognitive dissonance.
I am not a defender of contemporary pathocracy. GW is not a person. Scanning and printing a model for personal use is the same as copying a cd for personal use. Scanning and printing a model for conversion, or scanning and manipulating the scanned info, are like making a mixed tape or sampling music for recomposition… as much contemporary music is produced in this way, and as there is precedent for copying music and making mix tapes yada, I have ZERO ethical qualms about doing similar with models produced by some for profit cult of norms if I see fit to do so. I might buy an extra copy of a cd, if I want to support an artist, or buy tix for an event or concert to support an artist, and so on, but I feel zero compulsion to aid GW in such a way.
Where do I draw the line, it has been asked. I answer that this is less to do with where than why. And, if this why is not obvious to you, then I wonder what it may take for you to question whatever norm you think that you are defending.
I often ask myself, are we at that Napster moment with 3D printing? That happened when Tower Records became irrelevant because you could download an album, for free, faster than you could drive to the store to purchase it. You might decide to buy the CD, but you're thinking you don't need to do this. Once enough people have that thought, Tower is finished as a business.
I own a Creality 3D scanner that creates extremely faithful reproductions of objects. Takes about 20 seconds to scan a miniature. Things like backpacks, extended arms in front of the body, capturing those 0.2mm fine details that get molded onto shoulderpads, etc, give it some trouble. But for > 98% of uses, it makes a great copy and printing the scan can be as simple as one push of a button.
Would I want to scan complete models and share them with the world? Dunno about that.
I'm not personally looking to bring about the end of GW, nor do I feel intellectual property is some yoke around the neck of societies. The main reason I would make a scan is for a bit, not a finished model. I wouldn't have a moral problem with sharing a scan of, say, a Chaincannon, since they're scarce and often needed for CSM armies. But I also wouldn't feel particularly motivated to distribute said file.
There's something more personal about doing a scan. Ripping a CD was impersonal, what motivated me was the fact I wanted a digital copy instead of needing to have physical medium around. It should have been available already, and I would not have done so if there was another option.
With a scan of a 3D model, it's because there's something I need and GW doesn't offer a bits service anymore. I could create a 2 part mold and make a copy in resin, or I could point a scanner at it and print it in resin. The portability of a digital file doesn't make a difference to my relationship to the copy. I don't feel like there's some broader societal need to be addressed by sharing that file with the world.
And that's about how far any of this is going to go. A big motivation behind music sharing was draconian copyright enforcement actions, obvious innovations being ignored, and other 'villian' behavior everyone could rally around. Say what you want about prices, I don't think there's going to be a widespread movement to bring GW to it's knees through illicit scans in the near future.
Which brings me to the next red flag: manipulating scans. Before GW released Heavy Intercessors, some files were going around and I took the time to inspect them. Properly sized, proportioned, suitably impressive for an important unit that has no model. The problem was the shoulder pads, which were BA, and also the poses, which advertised the fact these were scans to anyone who was familiar. So I imported the models into Blender, rigged them, changed the poses, etc.
The process was not easy. To rig a model - where it's limbs / torso / head can be rotated and posed - you need something in more primitive than a finished model. Something more like a puppet. I was able to take parts of the 5 Heavy Intercessors to create a complete, rigged version, but it took hours and not many people have the skills to do that.
The beauty of file sharing is you get what you want, immediately, often for free. The challenge of 3D scanned miniatures is you want more than you get, and getting what you want involves time and effort that requires specialized skills that are scarce in the real world.
This is the the big obstacle to 3D scans becoming a thing. I'm certain there's an audience for them and that I will run into someone who wants to brag that their entire army was scanned and printed. But this process would need some major refinements before it could achieve the simplicity and ease of file sharing in other mediums. This is an area where AI could make some huge inroads, take a look at DALL-E for an example of what I'm talking about.
OTOH, the first time GW engages in a high profile lawsuit over a scan of a rogue-trader-era bolter, I could see this becoming a movement.
Hairesy wrote: Warhammer TV or whatever they're calling it is another indication that things haven't changed at all.
What are you referring to with this?
Their TV channel they made or whatever it is, Warhammer Plus. Streaming service? I don't know that you can call it a streaming service though, kinda have to have content for that, hahaha!
I knew that part. I'm referring to what you think about it is an indicator "things haven't changed".
I would like to know why the controversy around Warhammer + is not an obvious indicator for you that the company has not changed.
You mean the moment GW decided that people making fan videos couldn't earn money from them?
Because that is just normal.
If anything the abnormal part was that GW allowed people to earn from fan videos using GW's IP for so long before GW stepped in.
Far as I'm aware fan-videos that weren't tied to a patreon or similar revenue generating system were mostly left alone. It was the ones that were earning off the IP that GW was focused on; and of them we are led to understand many were offered pay and inclusion into the Warhammer+ system. That's actually a LOT better than most major IP holders who would have cracked down years ago and would never consider allowing fan content on their official streaming services.
Hairesy wrote: Warhammer TV or whatever they're calling it is another indication that things haven't changed at all.
What are you referring to with this?
Their TV channel they made or whatever it is, Warhammer Plus. Streaming service? I don't know that you can call it a streaming service though, kinda have to have content for that, hahaha!
I knew that part. I'm referring to what you think about it is an indicator "things haven't changed".
I would like to know why the controversy around Warhammer + is not an obvious indicator for you that the company has not changed.
I'm asking you to tell me what you are referring to, specifically. I have not commented on anything about it either way. Just going "the controversy!" doesn't say anything that can actually be discussed - I know there was a controversy, but just saying that doesn't explain what you think are the specific things that suggest "the company has not changed".
The main issue for me is that Warhammer + takes all that once free fan-made content and puts it behind a paywall. And for what you get, it simply isn't worthwhile. What about Warhammer + could not have been done with White Dwarf online or Warhammer Community?
To me this is indicative that GW has acted not in the interests of the player, but in that of profit. This is in line with other decisions they have taken to maximize profit with little effort, such as power creeping every single edition (since I've been playing anyway, 6th). Formations in 7th is another good example of GW making bad decisions in pursuit of profit.
They didn't take "ALL" they took the fan made content that was earning money. Yes you could view it for free, but the creators were taking serious money in donations.
Hairesy wrote: The main issue for me is that Warhammer + takes all that once free fan-made content and puts it behind a paywall. And for what you get, it simply isn't worthwhile. What about Warhammer + could not have been done with White Dwarf online or Warhammer Community?
To me this is indicative that GW has acted not in the interests of the player, but in that of profit. This is in line with other decisions they have taken to maximize profit with little effort, such as power creeping every single edition (since I've been playing anyway, 6th). Formations in 7th is another good example of GW making bad decisions in pursuit of profit.
As Overread said above. But you need to get it through your head that it is a business. Of course a business puts profit first, because without profit it dies. As for whether something is worthwhile, that is completely subjective. I don't subscribe personally, as the only thing i would have an interest in is the painting tutorials. But i know a number of people who do and do find it value for money.
So yes, they do act out in the interest of profit. If you've ever been involved with the running of a business at all, you would understand that.
Hairesy wrote: The main issue for me is that Warhammer + takes all that once free fan-made content and puts it behind a paywall. And for what you get, it simply isn't worthwhile. What about Warhammer + could not have been done with White Dwarf online or Warhammer Community?
To me this is indicative that GW has acted not in the interests of the player, but in that of profit. This is in line with other decisions they have taken to maximize profit with little effort, such as power creeping every single edition (since I've been playing anyway, 6th). Formations in 7th is another good example of GW making bad decisions in pursuit of profit.
As Overread said above. But you need to get it through your head that it is a business. Of course a business puts profit first, because without profit it dies. As for whether something is worthwhile, that is completely subjective. I don't subscribe personally, as the only thing i would have an interest in is the painting tutorials. But i know a number of people who do and do find it value for money.
So yes, they do act out in the interest of profit. If you've ever been involved with the running of a business at all, you would understand that.
Have I been rude to you? You are implying that I am stupid because I don't agree with the consensus. I do not need to "get anything through my head", thank you. I have actually worked for myself as a carpenter, building decks, garages and doing home renos. So your claim that if I had run a business I would understand profit is ignorant at best, and an insult. Profit was never my motivation as a carpenter, it was quality. If I was purely motivated by profit I would be building at double speed and cutting corners because I don't charge by the hour. I would have paid minimum wage and hired blockheaded mules to help me. Now if I had done that, I wouldn't still have the option to do carpentry because none of my clients would have called me back or recommended me to others. By placing quality and craftsmanship (and client relationships) above profits, I have ensured continued business. If you can't understand how that is the more effective strategy then I don't know what to tell you. Now, since you've been a knob with zero provocation, I think I'll add you to the ignore list. Cheers.
Hairesy wrote: The main issue for me is that Warhammer + takes all that once free fan-made content and puts it behind a paywall. And for what you get, it simply isn't worthwhile. What about Warhammer + could not have been done with White Dwarf online or Warhammer Community?
To me this is indicative that GW has acted not in the interests of the player, but in that of profit. This is in line with other decisions they have taken to maximize profit with little effort, such as power creeping every single edition (since I've been playing anyway, 6th). Formations in 7th is another good example of GW making bad decisions in pursuit of profit.
So... you think that because a business didn't give you their new animations and other video content, which doesn't just suddenly appear out of thin air at no cost to them, entirely for free then that's somehow some egregious thing that's insulting to the fanbase?
Hairesy wrote: The main issue for me is that Warhammer + takes all that once free fan-made content and puts it behind a paywall. And for what you get, it simply isn't worthwhile. What about Warhammer + could not have been done with White Dwarf online or Warhammer Community?
To me this is indicative that GW has acted not in the interests of the player, but in that of profit. This is in line with other decisions they have taken to maximize profit with little effort, such as power creeping every single edition (since I've been playing anyway, 6th). Formations in 7th is another good example of GW making bad decisions in pursuit of profit.
So... you think that because a business didn't give you their new animations and other video content, which doesn't just suddenly appear out of thin air at no cost to them, entirely for free then that's somehow some egregious thing that's insulting to the fanbase?
GW did not own the fan-made content, nor did they create it. Thus, they were providing nothing to me at any cost whatsoever. To then take that content and put it behind a paywall is something I find insulting, the fact that more people don't is alarming. Was I taking money away from GW by enjoying fan-made content for free? No, on the contrary it was encouraging me to buy models and paint the pile of shame. GW was doing just fine prior to Warhammer +, so the idea that GW had to protect their profit margin is an absolute fallacy. Such behavior does not inspire me to buy more models, it inspires me to not support greedy corporations. When GW did an about face after Kirby and tried to connect with their fans, I was willing to forgive and forget and hope for better. How many more times should I be willing to extend the olive branch when GW has taken advantage of that goodwill time and again?
Again, you too have made assumptions about what I think, despite the fact that I have been clear as day about my position.
GW is moving their IP into TV and film. Right now its fan works and stuff that GW has paid to be made. If their IP takes off in a good way then GW likely envisions that at some point in the future other studios will want to pay GW to use that IP in their own creations. Or at least meet GW on the table to work out a deal.
GW can't do that if their IP is being used to generate profit. Why should the studio pay when a fan can make it without licence and profit from the sale of it or at least from donations toward its creation?
GW actually didn't step down until they stepped into the market. Astartes and others earned money for a considerable length of time before GW stepped into the market.
It's no different to how any other IP is managed. You want to make your own Lord of the Rings? You've got to make an agreement with the Tolkien Estate; you want to do Harry Potter than its JK Rowling (or actually Warner as they hold the rights currently).
Again this is nothing different to what many many other firms big and small do - they defend their IP/copyright/trademarks. You can't blame GW for acting and operating like every other firm big and small is allowed and encouraged to behave.
And GW did not own the fan content, but the DO 100% own the IP that the fan content was based upon. And again the only one that I recall seeing GW going after were those that were not just making fan content, but sponsored fan content.
Yeah, WH+ to me looks like the No model no rules fiasco extended to other media in the sense that gw marketeers want total control over the content beside fan hype of said content.
This is frankly the final corner, for me, around which gw turns and we part ways. I am too invested to stop my hobby, but I no longer feel any duty to support their business model, amd this is to emphasize that there are other ways to do business. Just because one way seems normal, now, doesn’t make it right or even optimal, for society or for the company.
Imho, gw success depends on prior existing ideas and their saturation in the minds of people due to extant literature and movies, folk tales and religion, yada. GW had nothing to do with this priming, but their success depends on it nearly completely.
The best of GW games and universe has been, to date, simply that these were clearing houses of established sci fantasy tropes, depending completely on prior saturation of such ideas for which gw can claim zero credit, and for which the success of gw is nearly completely indebted.
If this is not obvious, consider how inane, yes utterly inane, the story about Cawl and girlyman and the rise of the restartes actually is… they tried to make something of their own post their og trope collators e.g. Priestley, and failed so terribly that the complete dependency of their marketing success on their parasiting on the prior familiarity of related ideas, again, grounded in folk tales and old sci fantasy lit and films, is glaring, obvious, so clear.
I feel zero compulsion to support gw. Does that mean that people should sell direct scans for profit? Not something I can condone, but the point here is that what gw actually does, in creating their models and for all their apparent success, is not so far off.
I think it's wrong for someone to scan a GW model and to sell the STL.
However, what I think GW should do is to enter into agreements with people/companies who are willing to sell those miniatures that GW has shown no interest in producing any more or has discontinued as STLs.
Think Good Old Games (gog.com), but with OOP miniatures from 20-30 years ago that could be scanned, remastered and sold with a percentage cut for GW, similar to a licensing agreement. I would love figures like the old metal dwarf slayers, which go for pretty absurd prices on eBay.
Osorios wrote: I think it's wrong for someone to scan a GW model and to sell the STL.
However, what I think GW should do is to enter into agreements with people/companies who are willing to sell those miniatures that GW has shown no interest in producing any more or has discontinued as STLs.
Think Good Old Games (gog.com), but with OOP miniatures from 20-30 years ago that could be scanned, remastered and sold with a percentage cut for GW, similar to a licensing agreement. I would love figures like the old metal dwarf slayers, which go for pretty absurd prices on eBay.
This will never happen. GW promotes itself as a "luxury" miniatures maker. GW's (at least in their view) is second to none in the miniature wargaming market. So if GW were to offer STLs they would be priced accordingly to avoid hurting their plastic counterpads even if the STLs are from old IP, so let's say 35 to 40$ per infantry STL. About the same than a plastic box because you are going to print many after all. Do you think those prices can compete with the Patreons all over the web?
All that said, while GW's way to protect its IP might not make sense to us, probably it's the best way when the CEO has to report to the shareholders. Many shareholder's reports seem to be heavy in the: we will utterly crush those that dare use our IP without permision rather than look for ways to acomodate them.
Haha, yeah GW is luxury. A luxury that most other grown ups will make fun of you for owning, and can be had for cheap on Ebay because a 10 year old stuck it in jam and left it on the porch.
GW has changed a lot from Nuns with Guns to Luxury Market.
Osorios wrote: I think it's wrong for someone to scan a GW model and to sell the STL.
However, what I think GW should do is to enter into agreements with people/companies who are willing to sell those miniatures that GW has shown no interest in producing any more or has discontinued as STLs.
Think Good Old Games (gog.com), but with OOP miniatures from 20-30 years ago that could be scanned, remastered and sold with a percentage cut for GW, similar to a licensing agreement. I would love figures like the old metal dwarf slayers, which go for pretty absurd prices on eBay.
This is getting close to a business model which might be ethically defensible imho.
just because you can get a used Porsche that needs repairs for cheap, does not mean that Porsche stopped to be luxury
GW wants to be the luxury brand, with famous people having Warhammer as their hobby and everything that comes with it
They don't want it to be a mainstream thing were everyone plays the games
And yes, GW moves away from the miniature gameing market and focus in their IP.
Income from Licence gets more and more important and moving from games to movies is the next big step to get the IP into pop culture
I predict that we will get to a point were GW will see the games as side project and not as the driving point behind model sales, but simple the fact that everyone wants to have a Space Marine Army at home on display the same way as people want to have Gundams
When introduced a bit over 100 years ago wargaming was something for the well off gentlemen that wanted to try their hand at emulating the battles of their forebearers.
Maybe GW dreams of heaps of Eton educated gentlemen as their only clients.
kodos wrote: GW wants to be the luxury brand, with famous people having Warhammer as their hobby and everything that comes with it
They don't want it to be a mainstream thing were everyone plays the games
I would struggle to believe that's true so long as GW maintains such a large network of brick and mortar stores. There's little point in having all those stores - which are a huge slab of their total costs - if they weren't trying to proselytise the mainstream.
Being "mainstream" also means they make more money for licensing on games, more people want to buy black library books and merch, and so on. They wouldn't be in the position where they are if it weren't for their mainstreamness.
I predict that we will get to a point were GW will see the games as side project...
I think we're already there, and have been for a while
kodos wrote: just because you can get a used Porsche that needs repairs for cheap, does not mean that Porsche stopped to be luxury
GW wants to be the luxury brand, with famous people having Warhammer as their hobby and everything that comes with it
They don't want it to be a mainstream thing were everyone plays the games
And yes, GW moves away from the miniature gameing market and focus in their IP.
Income from Licence gets more and more important and moving from games to movies is the next big step to get the IP into pop culture
I predict that we will get to a point were GW will see the games as side project and not as the driving point behind model sales, but simple the fact that everyone wants to have a Space Marine Army at home on display the same way as people want to have Gundams
My emphasis, in bold.
I think that this is inaccurate. Why the Hasbroification of the so-called "luxury" brand, the abysmal management of the IP from a narrative and product introduction standpoint, and so on, if this were the case? Everything about GW marketing screams 'rush to market' and to try to make a model for any old idea that had been lying around since GW had employed people who actually had ideas. Who, frankly, wants this? Unthinking, nonreflective consumers, children, meta-chasing plastic crack addicts... and people like myself who are thirty years invested in a loved hobby, too much so to let it go down the drain due to corporo-fascist mishandling without making some noise. Anyone with an education and some options, sure, might be interested in the hobby for lots of reasons, but to think that this is the target market for restartes, for instance... nah.
Porsche is OK, and maybe a good example for analogy. One reason to buy into a Porsche brand is status. Another is performance. A third is history, legacy, collectibility. GW fails miserably at the second, so lets put that aside. Status, OK sure... nice GW collections draw attention, garner respect among fellow enthusiasts. Where GW had value was the third reason, and this is getting pimped out to pump and dump to max out profits over near term business cycles seemingly without consideration of long term impact on value. Mercedes, Porsche, BMW, Rolls Royce, no established luxury brand would be so flippant about selling out to the lowest common denominator, as the value of the badge should last more than the current economic bubble. GW is not acting like this is the object... There is nothing luxury about GW aside from the price.
The more I think about this, the less I care if anyone wants to sell 'literal scans of GW models' for money, canned beans, or compressed air... treat others as you wish to be treated, as a general rule, invites anyone interested and invested in GW to return the favor that has been disloyalty and disregard for the welfare of their erstwhile most loyal supporters.
kodos wrote: GW wants to be the luxury brand, with famous people having Warhammer as their hobby and everything that comes with it
They don't want it to be a mainstream thing were everyone plays the games
I would struggle to believe that's true so long as GW maintains such a large network of brick and mortar stores. There's little point in having all those stores - which are a huge slab of their total costs - if they weren't trying to proselytise the mainstream.
same as Jacques Lemans have their own network of stores, which is part of being the luxury, having some or all products texclusive to your own stores rather than being available everywhere
and your IP being mainstream, to have people buy merchandise while at the same time you "core product" is luxury is how most companies operate (look how many people have Ferrari merch and how many people actually drive the cars)
jeff white wrote:
kodos wrote: just because you can get a used Porsche that needs repairs for cheap, does not mean that Porsche stopped to be luxury
GW wants to be the luxury brand, with famous people having Warhammer as their hobby and everything that comes with it
They don't want it to be a mainstream thing were everyone plays the games
And yes, GW moves away from the miniature gameing market and focus in their IP.
Income from Licence gets more and more important and moving from games to movies is the next big step to get the IP into pop culture
I predict that we will get to a point were GW will see the games as side project and not as the driving point behind model sales, but simple the fact that everyone wants to have a Space Marine Army at home on display the same way as people want to have Gundams
My emphasis, in bold.
I think that this is inaccurate. Why the Hasbroification of the so-called "luxury" brand, the abysmal management of the IP from a narrative and product introduction standpoint, and so on, if this were the case? Everything about GW marketing screams 'rush to market' and to try to make a model for any old idea that had been lying around since GW had employed people who actually had ideas. Who, frankly, wants this? Unthinking, nonreflective consumers, children, meta-chasing plastic crack addicts... and people like myself who are thirty years invested in a loved hobby, too much so to let it go down the drain due to corporo-fascist mishandling without making some noise. Anyone with an education and some options, sure, might be interested in the hobby for lots of reasons, but to think that this is the target market for restartes, for instance... nah.
Porsche is OK, and maybe a good example for analogy. One reason to buy into a Porsche brand is status. Another is performance. A third is history, legacy, collectibility. GW fails miserably at the second, so lets put that aside. Status, OK sure... nice GW collections draw attention, garner respect among fellow enthusiasts. Where GW had value was the third reason, and this is getting pimped out to pump and dump to max out profits over near term business cycles seemingly without consideration of long term impact on value. Mercedes, Porsche, BMW, Rolls Royce, no established luxury brand would be so flippant about selling out to the lowest common denominator, as the value of the badge should last more than the current economic bubble. GW is not acting like this is the object... There is nothing luxury about GW aside from the price.
GW wanting it to be and GW making the right decisions to achieve it are 2 very different things
and this is the only thing I can see GW going down, not because they make bad rules or the models being too expensive, but trying to be too much at the same time, get their IP child friendly making kits toys while being grimdark for adult TV shows, advance to story to have a reason for new models and retrofit all together to make a good narrative for their games (and than it collapse by trying to please everyone they pleased no one)
the main point of GW games is the easy access because everyone plays one, so they have given up trying harder than they need to in making a good game
and to stay with Porsche, the performance is not the best either compared to other similar cars, it is all about legacy and nostalgia.
the reason why GW brings back old stuff is not because those games are so much better than what they currently have, but to for the legacy and nostalgia.
paying an absurd price for a mediocre game only works because you pay into the legacy, and everyone wants it.
Cursed City is not a good game, and still the hype was real because Warhammer Fantasy sells
Everyone is hyped for the Necromunda Trucks, nobody cares how well the game will be (or even if there will be a playable game on the standard table) or how useful those are
Squats come back, no one cares about the rules or how bad 40k currently is, it is just important that the models will be good
Performance is a thing, but GW has learned that there is no need for the games to be good, they just needs to be good enough to prevent people to rage quit and nothing more
and simply selling off copies for people to have a cheaper entry into the GW bubble is not working against it but helps the status and spreading it, as everyone plays the game, so it is the only game worth buying into (buy a printer and do it for cheap if you don't have the money to start with the original stuff), but only few can afford the real plastics and hardcover books
Lol, the way you describe it makes GW look like a Japanese Idol agency. There is no need for the idols to be able to sing, compose songs, or create a dance number, they just need to follow the instructions, look cute/handsome, and the rest is all hype.
kodos wrote: GW wants to be the luxury brand, with famous people having Warhammer as their hobby and everything that comes with it
They don't want it to be a mainstream thing were everyone plays the games
I would struggle to believe that's true so long as GW maintains such a large network of brick and mortar stores. There's little point in having all those stores - which are a huge slab of their total costs - if they weren't trying to proselytise the mainstream.
same as Jacques Lemans have their own network of stores, which is part of being the luxury, having some or all products texclusive to your own stores rather than being available everywhere
I don't know much about Jacques Lemans, but I can't find a store of theirs in my city. I can find 6 games workshop stores in my city, and they're located in middle class to working class areas of the city, GW are clearly marketing to the mainstream with those stores.
and your IP being mainstream, to have people buy merchandise while at the same time you "core product" is luxury is how most companies operate (look how many people have Ferrari merch and how many people actually drive the cars)
The economies are so different between Ferrari and GW though, a Ferrari sells products that few people can afford but many people can afford their merchandise, GW sells products that (as much as we complain about the pricing) many people can afford. It might be overpriced for what you get, but it's still cheaper than a lot of other hobbies.
Businesses must either compete, or go broke. All we are doing by slavishly devoting ourselves to GW is enabling crony capitalism to overtake a niche hobby.
What you are proposing isn't supporting a business competing with GW but a company stealing from GW. There is a difference
The first is a company like Privateer Press, Infinity, Arch Villain Games, Lord of the Print etc.... Companies that hire (or are) artists to create work which is then put into production and sold as models/STLs. Who pay for artwork, lore, rules, models, world settings. Who promote the game, provide structure for competitive events etc...
The second is a person with a 3D scanner. Or a casting machine. Or skill in sculpting, but perhaps not in original designs. They aren't spending money on making something new, on supporting it with artwork, lore, rules, helping community events etc.. They are purely copying and reselling for a lower price. A price that a firm doing all the above can't compete.
Again you are perfectly free to not pay money to GW. You don't have to play their games. You can use 3rd party models from a range of firms making counts as armies; or 3D print ones. You can pay One Page Rules if you want. You can promote other games like Infinity, OPR, Warmachine at your local club etc...
You have the power to do a whole lot of good with your purchase choices and to help and support other competing firms.
Again I'm all for competition and competing firms in the market. I'm all for choice and having more models and creative designs and stuff. I'm all for making the market a better place for both gamers and creative people who have talent who choose to spend their working life producing stuff that I love to buy. I'd rather do that and encourage that than encourage people to steal/use recast/scanned etc... stuff that is just leaching out of the hobby that I love. Again by all means buy 3rd party stuff, but don't give it to Bob and his 3D scanner or Dave and his "I've got billions of STLs for £1" mega download. Give it to AVG, Wargame Exclusive, OPG, Badgers and Burrows, Infinity etc....
IDK, speak for yourself I guess.
Me personally, I picked up Lost Kingdoms recent wave of Mori Elves for the 13$...and went straight to their MMF page and picked up the remainder of the entire range for...god, mustve been something absolutely OUTRAGEOUS like the price of one single box of five (5) tiny plastic howling banshees.
Probably less though. All a matter of perspective. Now ive got 20 ballet dancer elves, a big tree portal, a giant deer made out of boulders and trees, some cool shrubbery unicorns, and big wooden golems piloted by little cute korok lookin' guys, and all told it's likely to cost me less than 1 combat patrol box to make 2,000 points worth of stuff I'm going to proxy as Sylvaneth.
Seeing a large amount of high quality product on a temporary promotional sale led me, a customer, to purchase more of said product, since it had a distinctive style unlike the products made by other people. A wild concept.
Lost Kingdoms make some fantastic stuff! They are making original designs of their own, adding value to the market and variety. The money you've spent is going right into the pockets of sculptors creating new and original ideas, even if the army uses warhammer as a base for defining unit types/selections etc...
So you get some fantastic models to print (not forgetting you still have to buy printer, resin, ipa and all that) and can paint and put on the table. You are rewarding artists for their creative work.
I've no issue with that at all; heck I'm waiting for LK to release something I want as a new army fully to back them (or put their lizardmen on a big discount and grab ab unch of them but I do have several other creators worth of lizard models already in stl form)
If you're taking them from your own games and printing yourself something for your personal edification, it seems unlikely to ever land you in any sort of trouble.
Sharing such models online would be a pretty clear copyright infringement.
insaniak wrote: If you're taking them from your own games and printing yourself something for your personal edification, it seems unlikely to ever land you in any sort of trouble.
Sharing such models online would be a pretty clear copyright infringement.
I guess it was more a question of how people feel about it. Like, there's tools for pulling STL files out of the Total War games, so you could theoretically make an army of, I dunno, Ogres, by pulling the raw files, then posing them in unique ways and print them off so you could have a full army of Ogres with no duplicate poses.
If someone showed up to the local games club with it, how would it be received?
insaniak wrote: If you're taking them from your own games and printing yourself something for your personal edification, it seems unlikely to ever land you in any sort of trouble.
Sharing such models online would be a pretty clear copyright infringement.
I guess it was more a question of how people feel about it. Like, there's tools for pulling STL files out of the Total War games, so you could theoretically make an army of, I dunno, Ogres, by pulling the raw files, then posing them in unique ways and print them off so you could have a full army of Ogres with no duplicate poses.
If someone showed up to the local games club with it, how would it be received?
I personally see it a second a failure of the parent company to produce what people want.
There are a few people online who do exactly what you are saying, but they provide the .stl files for free. If it is free, then I don’t have any issue with it, if they charge for those files then I have an issue with it.
Companies like GW sell the rights to the video game to companies to produce these models (in .stl or whatever). They have to be approved, and after such they leave the money on the table. They should be able to capitalize off of the files, but they are constantly ignoring the demand or not seeing the possibilities. If GW were to start selling their digital files from their licensed games, then its a different answer. But as long as they decide they don’t care for the money...then they have effectively (in my eyes) surrendered the rights to monetize them.
AllSeeingSkink wrote: Here's a question for you, Dakka, what about taking 3D models from video games and turning them into printable STL files?
How do we feel about that one?
Well, for starters, as a general fact that results in pretty crappy stl files, because they haven't been designed to be miniatures, but assets in a game with added textures. The most obvious case would be MWO models, which after ripping you need to basically "remodel" if you want to make them useable, or even printable.
OTOH, videogames companies don't usually sell minis, so it doesn't really feel like you're "stealing" from them or anything like that. They are two very separate niches.
Lastly, and again following the MWO example, the aforementioned ripping and remodelling of assets can lead to the miniatures company to actually take notice, work on providing what the market clearly wanted and earn loads and loads of cash by providing it. Because people buy official miniatures even when there are other options.
AllSeeingSkink wrote: Here's a question for you, Dakka, what about taking 3D models from video games and turning them into printable STL files?
How do we feel about that one?
Well, for starters, as a general fact that results in pretty crappy stl files, because they haven't been designed to be miniatures, but assets in a game with added textures. The most obvious case would be MWO models, which after ripping you need to basically "remodel" if you want to make them useable, or even printable.
OTOH, videogames companies don't usually sell minis, so it doesn't really feel like you're "stealing" from them or anything like that. They are two very separate niches.
Lastly, and again following the MWO example, the aforementioned ripping and remodelling of assets can lead to the miniatures company to actually take notice, work on providing what the market clearly wanted and earn loads and loads of cash by providing it. Because people buy official miniatures even when there are other options.
Yeah I probably made it sound like an easy process. I'm not an expert but my understanding is that (very simplified) you rip the initial STL which will be very low poly, load it up into blender, smooth it out a bit, create the model joints/limbs, apply a texture file that you've also ripped, use the texture file to create actual texture, that'll usually result in something that looks a bit crappy but has the detail roughly in the right area, then you use that as the basis to sculpt the model, then you can use the joints and limbs you created earlier to pose it and clean up any sculpting in areas that the posing messed up.
Not easy, but also not as hard as sculpting from scratch. I've seen some nice looking STLs that look to have been ripped from Total War.
Miguelsan wrote: I'd love to have the skill to rip the models of the old Command and Conquer games, and print them to be used as IG.
M.
There are quite a few of Red Alert and Tiberium Sun print files on Thingiverse. There's a variety of buildings, tanks and at least one NOD infantry model.
Miguelsan wrote: I'd love to have the skill to rip the models of the old Command and Conquer games, and print them to be used as IG.
M.
There are quite a few of Red Alert and Tiberium Sun print files on Thingiverse. There's a variety of buildings, tanks and at least one NOD infantry model.
Definitely not ripped though. Both of those games use sprites, not 3D models.
Miguelsan wrote: I'd love to have the skill to rip the models of the old Command and Conquer games, and print them to be used as IG.
M.
There are quite a few of Red Alert and Tiberium Sun print files on Thingiverse. There's a variety of buildings, tanks and at least one NOD infantry model.
Definitely not ripped though. Both of those games use sprites, not 3D models.
Oh I'm not commenting on the viability of ripping game files to turn into models. Just trying to help make someone aware of resources that already exist if they wanted to make it happen.
A lot of debate on the business model of GW, but it is pretty clear GW needed to protect their IP, but what was laughable is when they tried to do this with frankly, pretty generic orcs, elves, knights, etc. that was in no way ever intellectual property of GW, just proprietary sculpts. Let's face it, the look of these classic fantasy races and medieval were developed long before GW came around. They just had the legal and financial muscle to bully many out of the market, which they whole-heartedly did, and in many cases probably not rightfully so.
So, when they redesigned the entire world so they could come up with designs and names that could be IP protected, in both name and design, that really was a super smart business move by GW - hate it as many do. So, if you blatantly rip off, copy, scan and resell, their unique designs, it is wrong. If I do it for myself and my own enjoyment to save some money, then that is my right, given the technology of today - just do not sell it, as you have no right to do so.
GW didn't gain any additional copyright powers by moving from Old World to Age of Sigmar.
A Daughter of Khaine Melusai is just a medusa. The concept of a lower snake body upper human/elf female body armed with either spear or bow is totally open game. Heck its a highly common fantasy trope (medusa, Yuan ti) that goes back to the ancient greek times.
The only part that's protected is the specific design of the sculpt itself; the name (as that is unique) and some elements of the design itself (eg insignias and the like).
People keep saying Age of Sigmar was a copyright move and I disagree. Age of Sigmar was an attempt to take a failing product line and re-invent it. Sadly it was wrapped up with a load of other issues at the time which made it one of the worst attempts at this move ever done.
We can tell this further by the fact that GW has not destroyed the 40K universe and renamed it. Yes they renamed some armies under new names and that was, honestly, about it. GW could easily have done such things with the Old World setting if they'd wished. Many of the factions even had several different names in the lore and could easily have just used a copyrightable fantasy name from them. The Tomb Kings could have just adopted a formal title of one of the major leaders or their race from the setting - for example.
Miguelsan wrote: I'd love to have the skill to rip the models of the old Command and Conquer games, and print them to be used as IG.
M.
There are quite a few of Red Alert and Tiberium Sun print files on Thingiverse. There's a variety of buildings, tanks and at least one NOD infantry model.
Definitely not ripped though. Both of those games use sprites, not 3D models.
Oh I'm not commenting on the viability of ripping game files to turn into models. Just trying to help make someone aware of resources that already exist if they wanted to make it happen.
Overread wrote: GW didn't gain any additional copyright powers by moving from Old World to Age of Sigmar.
A Daughter of Khaine Melusai is just a medusa. The concept of a lower snake body upper human/elf female body armed with either spear or bow is totally open game. Heck its a highly common fantasy trope (medusa, Yuan ti) that goes back to the ancient greek times.
The only part that's protected is the specific design of the sculpt itself; the name (as that is unique) and some elements of the design itself (eg insignias and the like).
People keep saying Age of Sigmar was a copyright move and I disagree. Age of Sigmar was an attempt to take a failing product line and re-invent it. Sadly it was wrapped up with a load of other issues at the time which made it one of the worst attempts at this move ever done.
We can tell this further by the fact that GW has not destroyed the 40K universe and renamed it. Yes they renamed some armies under new names and that was, honestly, about it. GW could easily have done such things with the Old World setting if they'd wished. Many of the factions even had several different names in the lore and could easily have just used a copyrightable fantasy name from them. The Tomb Kings could have just adopted a formal title of one of the major leaders or their race from the setting - for example.
GW has been successful for years re-designing lines to get people to buy new minis and armies. The lines they totally moved away from in design and name, they absolutely have gained a much tighter IP copyright - whether the decision was for the failing line to re-invent it or to gain a stronger ownership, I cannot be convinced it was not more for the latter than the former. By merely re-inventing the line but NOT gaining tighter IP control, GW would end up in the same situation they have now - other companies making minis to directly compete with theirs. Make them unique enough with a new background and name and anyone caught even near this IP will be severely punished.
40k is a bit different, since there was not already a firmly established design, name and setting - that indeed was mostly due to GW, but I am no 40k expert... So no immediate need to change, since they already pounce upon anyone near their 40k IP.
insaniak wrote: If you're taking them from your own games and printing yourself something for your personal edification, it seems unlikely to ever land you in any sort of trouble.
Sharing such models online would be a pretty clear copyright infringement.
I guess it was more a question of how people feel about it. Like, there's tools for pulling STL files out of the Total War games, so you could theoretically make an army of, I dunno, Ogres, by pulling the raw files, then posing them in unique ways and print them off so you could have a full army of Ogres with no duplicate poses.
If someone showed up to the local games club with it, how would it be received?
Let me tell you: anyone who says "you can do this" and has not actually tried doing it themselves is suffering from a serious case of Dunning-Kreuger.
you run Ninjaripper on a scene from Total war Warhammer and you find out, real quick, that theres a REASON your computer is able to handle processing a scene containing hundreds and hundreds of models on it.
you get BASIC shapes of what you want to create. Then you pose, which is a manual process, the models export as T-poses because the game handles the rigging, and then you basically "Draw The Rest of the fething Owl" to get something approaching acceptable quality as a tabletop miniature piece.
what the export rip gets you is the correct proportions, the basic sizes and shapes and limb arrangements that can be really tricky to nail down if youre starting from a little cube or a ball and trying to sculpt. But think "Playstation 1" for the actual quality of the model you get out of the export.
insaniak wrote: If you're taking them from your own games and printing yourself something for your personal edification, it seems unlikely to ever land you in any sort of trouble.
Sharing such models online would be a pretty clear copyright infringement.
I guess it was more a question of how people feel about it. Like, there's tools for pulling STL files out of the Total War games, so you could theoretically make an army of, I dunno, Ogres, by pulling the raw files, then posing them in unique ways and print them off so you could have a full army of Ogres with no duplicate poses.
If someone showed up to the local games club with it, how would it be received?
Let me tell you: anyone who says "you can do this" and has not actually tried doing it themselves is suffering from a serious case of Dunning-Kreuger.
you run Ninjaripper on a scene from Total war Warhammer and you find out, real quick, that theres a REASON your computer is able to handle processing a scene containing hundreds and hundreds of models on it.
you get BASIC shapes of what you want to create. Then you pose, which is a manual process, the models export as T-poses because the game handles the rigging, and then you basically "Draw The Rest of the fething Owl" to get something approaching acceptable quality as a tabletop miniature piece.
what the export rip gets you is the correct proportions, the basic sizes and shapes and limb arrangements that can be really tricky to nail down if youre starting from a little cube or a ball and trying to sculpt. But think "Playstation 1" for the actual quality of the model you get out of the export.
Yeah, I was oversimplifying a bit. There's videos of the sort of work that needs to be done like the one linked below. I've certainly seen some nice looking sculpts pulled from Total War, but I'm sure there was a lot of work to get there.
