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I received an email from Pop Goes the Monkey today.
I always used their storefront site & didn't realize they went thru Shapeways.

It sounds like they are having to pursue new manufacturing avenues for anything that wasn't already in their "monkey resin"

Yeah, they've been using Shapeways as a printer and storefront since way before they even had a website.

Yeah i got the same email form Pop goes the Monkey assuring everyone they were not gonna go under cuz of shapeways. Makes you wonder which other small sites are stressing!

Now we need to find a UK mini site that used both "web elf" and shapeways...

Catoblepas wrote:
I just heard from one of the owner of one of the Shapeways shops I have bought from before. This is terrible news. In particular for Star Wars and Star Trek tabletop gamers I think, there's whole communities that just had entire lines essentially yanked out from under them. Y'know I was just talking to a coworker two days ago that I was thinking about getting into small-scale Star Wars gaming-probably something about the closing of the X-Wing miniatures game that got my interest sparked again, but this pretty much kills the possibility of exploring that option at least in the short term.

Hopefully some of those artists can relocate their shops somewhere that's run a bit better than Shapeways and not too much will be lost, but I know this is going to hurt a lot of talented people in the hobby who's income at least partially hinged on Shapeways. Really awful.

On the one hand, I do feel for them as people, having the rug pulled out from under you financially always sucks. As businesses however, and from the perspective of a consumer, it seems more like comeuppance than misfortune. As said by lord_blackfang, their continued use of a platform that objectively sucked for customers was driven entirely by a paranoid need for control and/or simple spite("I'd rather a thousand customers be priced out than even one single pirate scum get my stuff for free!" mentality). What will be interesting is seeing - assuming they don't just get in a huff and take their ball home - whether certain sellers, after moving to selling through more reasonable print farms, will pass on the saving to the customer or keep the prices the same as they were on Shapeways and just pocket the difference.

Froml Reddit:

SWBluePrints wrote:Shapeways (and so my shop) is ending services

Hello

I was among the firsts to provide 3D prints to Tau players back in 2016 (among them, the first 3D-printed Stormsurge cockpit cover and arms that some people have copied since) and I am sad to learn today that Shapeways is filing for bankruptcy, so my models will no longer be available to order from my shop ("Blue Prints") on this website.

Since I don't want to and have enough time to print and sell them myself, I am open to your suggestions and inputs regarding my models:

1: Let them be downloaded and printed by those wanting them (I still continue to give them to people asking but this is not the easiest for all). I am still wary of some 3D model sharing websites that are shady on creator revenues (I have heard of bad situations on Cults3D and MyMiniFactory for small creators).

2: Upload them on another printing service (please recommend one that is reliable, fair, and can ship at least in US and EU, as I don't want to manage many accounts & shops).

3: Let them die.

You can check my models as long as Shapeways website show them (maybe for not long), but I have others that are hidden (mostly epic-sized replicas of Tau battlesuits that I don't want to take the risk to share them openly).

Regards

Kael'yn

So there are sellers considering just giving up (and are Cults3D / MyMiniFactory really that bad?).

MMF/Cults/Printed Wargames all have their up and downsides to work for, just like I'm sure Shapways had.

Some of them are legitimate problems, some are frustrations, some are missunderstood potentials.


There's also the fact that creators who have used Shapeways are used to a certain kind of market situation on providing pre-produced models and when it comes to digital file provision there are big hurdles

It suffered one of the biggest race-to-the-bottoms on price that I've seen. In addition the product is insanely good for the customer because you can print as much as you want for no increase in payment to the creator.
So someone who buys 50 shoulderpads now only buys the file for 1.
When Patreon monthly release models already drove the price for that shoulderpad way down.

So its a very different market. It's one that thrives on LOTS of regular content creation instead of one-and-done. Though there are some cracks appearing and we've already seen volumes reducing and prices creeping up and I figure we'll continue to see that happening, simply as creator burnout and customers having vast libraries and getting more picky are happening very fast as well.


Also for many its a side business so chances are they are weighing up the stress of finding a new print farm firm (there are LOADS now) ; making sure that firm can produce quality safe product (there are lots that don't); can deliver and such. VS just calling it a day and moving on; or moving on for a while and drifting back in the future.

Big shake-ups like this can be what "breaks the camels back"; esp for small hobby/side businesses where the creator isn't relying on the income; or where they can see an "out" to just investing in other parts of their income and work-life.

 skrulnik wrote:
I received an email from Pop Goes the Monkey today.
I always used their storefront site & didn't realize they went thru Shapeways.

I've only ever bought from them through Shapeways, but bought a lot of Ultramarine and Space Wolf stuff. Their actual site is chock full of stickers and T-shirts and mugs, which for some reason makes me feel weird. I can fully 100% support a 3D modeller providing parts that GW doesn't feel it needs to, but for some reason that extra step of all the ancillary gear gives me the ick

 lord_blackfang wrote:
Paste from the other thread

Yea Shapeways was obsolete 5 years ago, I assume any artist still using it to sell prints at this point must be psychotically afraid of STL piracy, you can literally buy a home printer capable of better prints for the cost of 5, maybe 10, 28mm models done by Shapeways. Them going bust can only be good, at least for our niche, as commercial sculpts move to cheaper printers with better tech, which is literally every garage printing service.

Then have poisonous fumes at your home and have to fix printer periodically.

Not everybody has suitable room outside home for printer nor interest for tinkering with one and it's far cry from plug&play and no need for maintanance

Belthanos wrote:

 lord_blackfang wrote:
Paste from the other thread

Yea Shapeways was obsolete 5 years ago, I assume any artist still using it to sell prints at this point must be psychotically afraid of STL piracy, you can literally buy a home printer capable of better prints for the cost of 5, maybe 10, 28mm models done by Shapeways. Them going bust can only be good, at least for our niche, as commercial sculpts move to cheaper printers with better tech, which is literally every garage printing service.

Then have poisonous fumes at your home and have to fix printer periodically.

Not everybody has suitable room outside home for printer nor interest for tinkering with one and it's far cry from plug&play and no need for maintanance

Which is why I said

as commercial sculpts move to cheaper printers with better tech, which is literally every garage printing service

 Skinnereal wrote:
Not everyone wants to get a smelly resin 3D printer of their own.
But I saw their prices. It's enough to make the leap, for anything past a couple of trips there.

I have a low end 3D printer that I've used for some terrain and scatter terrain, but won't print fine details like shoulder pad inserts and such. It's just for funsies, nothing serious. So I buy those from Pop Goes the Monkey and elsewhere.

I have zero desire to get and use a better printer, so if other people stop making and selling them, then I guess I'll just go back to using gakky transfers.