Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

 Argive wrote:

 Laughing Man wrote:

 Argive wrote:
I wonder if this will mean the AOS app is now also going behind a pay wall

The AoS app is already paid. It's $2 a month.

My bad thought it was free.

It gives you every unit Warscroll in the game for free. It charges you $1 a month for the list builder. You can buy digital rulebooks thru the app at heavy discounts. You need to have purchased a digital book thru the app to be able to read the rules for stuff like faction bonuses and battalions in the list builder.

It sounds like this app will be going away though and they’re replacing it with a new one, which will be a monumental shame as it’s quite better than the 40k app, which STILL has mistakes in list building and missing rules sections from codexes.

GW don't need to copyright strike youtube videos to still have them removed. If W+ is popular enough, they can simple pull traffic away from other services like youtube by being big enough. Add in having enough money to grab one or two of the more popular youtubers (like they did with animations) and having free hobby content will sort of start to fizzle out. GW already know that a good proportion of their customer base are of the mindset of 'official or nothing'.

I might sign up for the first year, at the very least I'd get most of the money back for flogging the model. Five quid a month isn't terrible value, I was honestly expecting it to be €20 a month. I'm just hesitant as I don't' think this is very healthy for the hobby overall and content wise, they seem to have been very careful about what they are putting out to start with.

A years worth of 2020s white dwarf seems like good value- I'd never need to buy white dwarf again. There is nothing in white dwarf that needs to be use the month it comes out any more, its not how anyone gets their release news any more. The handful of hobby articles a year I'm interested in hasn't been worth the cost of the magazine so I stopped buying it a couple of years ago now. But I don't expect them to suddenly throw up say the entire collection of white dwarf content and rules for Mordheim again- I dont seem them advertising games or editions that are long OOP. Gathering storm makes sense as the lore in there matches up to the current 40k run. I do see them clamping down even harder on things like white dwarf PDFs being shared online. If they did share say all of Mordheim, I can see them c&d'ing all the fan pages that host the rules right now. Which is why I think its bad for the hobby. Fan sites kept games alive and make them accessible to people even now. Yes, its gw right to host their own content, but I think that comes at a cost of having a healthy community driven hobby.

The animations are a disappointment. Split in to 10 min segments. I honestly thought they would be quality 30-60 mins at a time. Seems like they have just slapped a price tag on the fan made animations from youtube. I'm not really interested in sitting down once a week to watch 10 mins of content. I assume that you can probably binge it once the show has finished its overall run, but most of it will be spoiled by then from people posting about it online. I dont' watch a lot of TV anyway and when I do, I like to actually sit down and watch it, 10mins of content is just youtube sized content with a price tag.

The loremaster videos can put the youtube ones out of business, by claiming to be done by 'experts' ie the people that write the lore in the first place, it doesn't take much for them to tweak it so youtube lore videos are 'wrong' or for them to add new things that outside creators have no way of including in their videos.

On the surface if feels like its a good deal- £5 a month from GW is astonishing after all. But I do think that if you look at it a little deeper, it feels very half arsed knowing that people will pay for it as its 'official'. I've already seen the arguments saying that people shouldn't get any of this for free, yet we've had most of this for free on youtube for a long time.

Wasn't super interested in the animations, but the overall package seems pretty good and like the mini, plus the price is pretty decent (for now).

One thing though (maybe this has been mentioned, but I haven't seen anything about it) is the accessibility of the content, seems like it is going to be through a specific app but not really interested in watching on a phone or tablet. Has there been any talk of apps for other devices like AppleTV etc.?

I think they said they’re still deciding, but have a top notch app developer (who they didn’t specifically name) working on it,

"Top notch app developer" by GW standards? Ruh roh.

Apparently whoever it is has worked on other streaming services.

 Daedalus81 wrote:
I know people like to think GW is an evil mega-corp, but it won't happen.

Nintendo DMCAs things at random on YT still, big companies can act completely irrationally.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 Starfarer wrote:
Most well-produced batreps put lots of content behind paywalls.

And a lot don't... so... what, exactly?

My point is that GW isn't offering anything that hasn't been done before - for free - with batreps/painting/lore videos. You want me to spend money on your subscription, there has to be something worth spending the money on.

I have a Rooster Teeth subscription. It's not the cheapest thing in the world, and the perks you get aside from their content are pretty sparse. Nevertheless, I can easily get 1 hour plus of new entertaining content from that subscription every single day and I only watch a fraction of their output. I can't imagine what W+ is going to have to justify that cost, especially given so much of what they're offering is available for free everywhere else.

If you have a Rooster Teeth subscription, then you lost all credibility here as criticizer. Most of their videos are stupid gak you find for free on youtube, with a worse video player. And their good animations can be counted on the fingers of one hand.

Warhammer + just needs to do like all paid content like Miniwargaming do : just release one or two videos per day. If it's painting guide / battlereports / lore videos, it's easily done with a dedicated team. GW definitely has the ressources to do this.

They don't need to copyright other youtubers' battlereports. They'll just do it with professionnal means.

Also, being able to consult old books online ? Yeah, worth it.

Can always subscribe once they put more content and cancel when you don't want it anymore. Like with Miniwargaming when they release their campaign videos.

I'd say GW of today has a slightly better grasp of the internet than Nintendo seems to show (or has shown in the recent past).

Also all this talk of GW sending takedowns to painters and battlereports is pure daftness. At worst it will be what was said above, that GW will hoover up so many subscribers that the others don't stand a chance; at best we might see some move into the GW system (which for the content providers might be better for them in shifting to a regular paid wage for the content they produce).


In the end it is what it is and I doubt GW is going to suddenly try and dominate the market, they don't need to. They've spent too many decades and too much marketing marketing the hobby not the brand. They can't shut down the hobby and honestly they don't benefit from it anyway. Loads of other channels making this content is a good thing for GW. Even if they don't get your money for their side gig all those painters and gamers are encouraging you to pay money for GW's main gig - models. The whole Warhammer + can fail and it won't hurt GW in the least in terms of their core product.

GW doesn't have to be aggressive with Warhammer+ as a service.

 Overread wrote:


GW doesn't have to be aggressive with Warhammer+ as a service.

Exactly. They just need to be there.

Like Warhammer Community relentless articles taking over most of the previous rumor websites, because they simply can't beat their stream of official information.

We now take most of our Warhammer news from the Warhammer Community website, let's face it.


GW can definitely make it work, but I expect to be having a few quacks at the start. May be best to wait and see once more content is there, and you can always watch what was done previously later. At least, I hope we will be able to.

Yes, sure, but will they resist the allure of walled garden? They could do what they did to their miniature business- convince people that Warhammer+ is THE hobby, just like they convinced people GW is THE hobby. It's so tempting to be able to control all the communication channels to the consumers.

Will they do it? I don't know, we'll see. But I am sure someone in the management thought about it at least for a while.

 Overread wrote:
They've spent too many decades and too much marketing marketing the hobby not the brand. They can't shut down the hobby and honestly they don't benefit from it anyway [...]
GW doesn't have to be aggressive with Warhammer+ as a service.

they didn't need to do lot of stuff that they actually did, but we don't know what their strategy is

and they have marketed "the brand" as being "the hobby", and for enough people when they say to get into or quit "the hobby" the mean GW stuff


could be that they want to take it slow to see were it goes, or take it fast and act against content outside their service
yet the long term goal is that there is no hobby outside GW and although they can't shut it down, their marketing towards that goal is very successful

Cronch wrote:
Yes, sure, but will they resist the allure of walled garden? They could do what they did to their miniature business- convince people that Warhammer+ is THE hobby, just like they convinced people GW is THE hobby.

When GW talks about "The Hobby", it's always about GW products. Duh.

Just like Mantic Games would rather talk about their own miniatures and games on their official channels - because that's exactly their point.

Youtube channels doing videos about a variety of miniature wargames will simply do what they did before : embrace the hobby in general, and not just with products from one company.


Warhammer + isn't a brain washing machine. It's just online videos and products about GW's stuff. I certainly don't expect their video makers to suddenly talk about what happens in Pannithor with the Mantic Games KOW august campaign...

I mean, seriously, it's called Warhammer +.

Sarouan wrote:

 Overread wrote:


GW doesn't have to be aggressive with Warhammer+ as a service.

Exactly. They just need to be there.

Like Warhammer Community relentless articles taking over most of the previous rumor websites, because they simply can't beat their stream of official information.

We now take most of our Warhammer news from the Warhammer Community website, let's face it.


GW can definitely make it work, but I expect to be having a few quacks at the start. May be best to wait and see once more content is there, and you can always watch what was done previously later. At least, I hope we will be able to.

In fairness prior to GW making the community page and actually using the internet, GW didn't really do online news at all. They did the release day and they did it through White Dwarf, but there was a surprisingly long period in the Kirby era where GW refused to really use the internet much at all as a marketing and communication tool. Which was surprising considering its basically a geek hobby with most staff being geeks of some description and with most of their competition (and indeed most brands) going nuts on using the net at that stage.


But yeah these days most of the news sites are just regurgitating what GW says. They remain viable because of collective news in bringing out news on other games and other events and such - and then there's one or two who just remain viable by posting click-bait titles and shoving ads into every corner they can.



GW doesn't need to "police the internet". As I said a Battle Report on a Warhammer game benefits GW. GW doesn't need to shut down those channels or force them into Warhammer+. Those Battle Reports are doing GW's marketing for them for FREE. GW won't want to shut that down.
The only ones they've taken a stance toward are those producing original works - eg films/animations - using the GW Brand and even without Warhammer+ GW would be in the right to shut those down.


The only grey area would be if GW tried to shut down patreons and paid for Battle Reports, but even then I don't think its worth it for them. At best they might pluck the best for their own Warhammer + but shutting them down isn't a net gain. It's marketing GW stuff, its marketing it at a higher level than the free and its promoting the GW brand all for GW at 0 cost to GW and honestly 0 lost revenue to GW

Billicus wrote:
"Top notch app developer" by GW standards? Ruh roh.

"We have top men working on it right now " ,"Who ?", "top men..."

 Overread wrote:


In fairness prior to GW making the community page and actually using the internet, GW didn't really do online news at all. They did the release day and they did it through White Dwarf, but there was a surprisingly long period in the Kirby era where GW refused to really use the internet much at all as a marketing and communication tool. Which was surprising considering its basically a geek hobby with most staff being geeks of some description and with most of their competition (and indeed most brands) going nuts on using the net at that stage.


But yeah these days most of the news sites are just regurgitating what GW says. They remain viable because of collective news in bringing out news on other games and other events and such - and then there's one or two who just remain viable by posting click-bait titles and shoving ads into every corner they can.

GW doesn't need to "police the internet". As I said a Battle Report on a Warhammer game benefits GW. GW doesn't need to shut down those channels or force them into Warhammer+. Those Battle Reports are doing GW's marketing for them for FREE. GW won't want to shut that down.
The only ones they've taken a stance toward are those producing original works - eg films/animations - using the GW Brand and even without Warhammer+ GW would be in the right to shut those down.


The only grey area would be if GW tried to shut down patreons and paid for Battle Reports, but even then I don't think its worth it for them. At best they might pluck the best for their own Warhammer + but shutting them down isn't a net gain. It's marketing GW stuff, its marketing it at a higher level than the free and its promoting the GW brand all for GW at 0 cost to GW and honestly 0 lost revenue to GW

Absolutely. That's why GW just needs to be there. Before they did the Warhammer Community stuff, there was no real place to find official information on a daily basis, so plenty of sites were made for that. Once GW did that move, the need for others sites simply plummeted. Only a few stayed, the others dropped the ball because it was simply not worth it anymore.

As for independant teams doing paid battlereports, it only applies to those who do GW games only. Even so, most of them have a good fanbase now. They may lose a few subscribers here and there, but I think it's perfectly possible to stay subscribed to them and stick with Warhammer + as well. And I also think GW has really no need nor envy to try to take them down with copyright claims. Purpose of Warhammer + is...giving more Warhammer, in the end. Even if you play the same armies, every battlereport is different after all.

Like HBMC keeps his Rooster Teeth subscription and just spend one hour or so per day. You don't especially need to keep watching on just one channel the whole day (even if you still can, I guess ).

Let's hope so, even if I can't stand warhammertubers as a general, I'd hate for people to lose income because a corp decided to muscle in on their turf with "official" product.

"top notch" means "missing features compared to all competitors and sometimes occasionally works" in GW tongue.

At £4-5 a month for this market segment Warhammer+ is very easy to keep along with any other subscriptions. A to rate painter is going to keep their fans; heck who knows Warhammer+ could even increase revenue for some of them in terms of introducing more causal people to the whole idea of paid for streamed services for their hobby.


Another thing to consider is that I wonder what might happen to White Dwarf. For a long time its been very beginner level, Warhammer + has the potential to be the advanced level content that many have wanted for a long time. Or at least the more in depth and detailed (eg their battle reports are rather bland these days I find - quick summaries not in depth talks or blow by blow accounts).

I do wonder if in a few years GW might even shift entirly to digital - WD getting smaller or more selective focused with more content appearing on Warhammer +. It might even one day shift ot a fully digital magazine - not something I want to happen ,but at the same time I'm already considering switching subscriptions (so even if I don't want it I'm encouraging it to start with).

Cronch wrote:
Yes, sure, but will they resist the allure of walled garden? They could do what they did to their miniature business- convince people that Warhammer+ is THE hobby, just like they convinced people GW is THE hobby. It's so tempting to be able to control all the communication channels to the consumers.

Will they do it? I don't know, we'll see. But I am sure someone in the management thought about it at least for a while.

I mean the only way to make "the hobby" by synomous with "the game" is to supply everything you need at one place. and frankly if GW can do that more power to em

Cronch wrote:
Let's hope so, even if I can't stand warhammertubers as a general, I'd hate for people to lose income because a corp decided to muscle in on their turf with "official" product.

Well, content is one thing but personnality and style of the people who make the videos also matters about whether or not you support them. Subscribers do so to support their favorite persons. If they keep releasing content they enjoy to watch, why would they stop their support ?

I'm mostly talking about patreons and other ways to give money directly to them, not youtube's way of "paying" with ads (Miniwargaming themselves said what they gained from it is negligible in comparison to their paying access on their site, and their youtube channel is only there as a way to reach for more subscribers).

What can happen is that people stop doing certain videos if Warhammer + give better access to the same content. I'm thinking about reviews of GW rulebooks here - I can totally see Warhammer + giving premium access to previews to their subscribers, something that no reviewer youtuber will be able to beat since they can only have the books GW give them at the time GW wants them to have.

I think it’s more going to make it more difficult for newcomers to the painting tutorial business.

The peeps I follow? I’ll still follow them, because I follow them for a reason. Certainly whenever I’m looking at doing a centrepiece, I’ll watch a handful to see if there are any schemes or techniques I want to use.

Warhammer+? Upside for me is it will of course be done using GW’s paints. Those I can get 5 days a week by just walking up town and grabbing whichever I might be missing. There’s nowt wrong with other paint lines, it’s just a matter of convenience for me.

They also seem to have their camera angles down. Being able to see how they hold and use the brush has genuinely improved my painting. Not all online painters have such clarity. Whilst not a “I’ll never watch another of your videos” type deal breaker, it’s still a reason for me to watch both offerings.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
I think they said they’re still deciding, but have a top notch app developer (who they didn’t specifically name) working on it,

Having built more than one large VOD service and consulted on multiple international ones, if they are "still deciding" on anything to do with platforms they won't be there at launch in August.

TBH anyone can go to IBC in Amsterdam every year and go through the literal hall of developers for VOD services to hire a company who might be described as GW have done, but they are wildly variable in quality, and ultimately it is very dependent on the client giving clear instructions and being willing to pay development costs if you want to do certain things.

If they're looking for a multi-DRM solution then just the CDN integration to deliver 4K content is... extremely difficult, and it's not an off the shelf situation (despite what many of those services promise at the booth!).

All of these things are doable, but I would have a lot more confidence in it if it hadn't been for the disaster that is the 40k app, which showed GW have absolutely no idea what they're doing procurement wise in this area.

I understood every word of that post.

 The Phazer wrote:
All of these things are doable, but I would have a lot more confidence in it if it hadn't been for the disaster that is the 40k app, which showed GW have absolutely no idea what they're doing procurement wise in this area.

The 40k & AoS Apps are developed in-house by GW, and they're still recruiting staff to work on them.

 Argive wrote:
The WD back catalogue is interesting.
But if they going to add issues at they are released and g OOP whose going to bother buying the physical copies...

I wonder if this will mean the AOS app is now also going behind a pay wall

they say from 2020 back for the WD archive, so It looks like stff will be added after a 6 months (give or take), enough of an incentive for those that read WD to carry on

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
I understood every word of that post.

tl;dr it takes too long to build these things for GW to still be deciding what devices they're on at this point, so they were fibbing a bit. They know at least the maximum possible availability for launch today.

And that they're working with a third party provider doesn't mean much, because it's a big market and there are good and bad providers, and even if you get a good provider you've got to know what you're asking them to do.

Commisar Marbh wrote:
People complaining about the price spend probably more than that on soda, coffee or snacks a day, much less a month.

It's about the price of a tactical marine at current prices.

If it's not for you, cool. But some folks are interested.

And... what? Should people not interested not be allowed to discuss it? On a discussion forum?

Sarouan wrote:
If you have a Rooster Teeth subscription, then you lost all credibility here as criticizer. Most of their videos are stupid gak you find for free on youtube, with a worse video player. And their good animations can be counted on the fingers of one hand.

And most of what GW is doing with W+ is available for free on YouTube... so... ?

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 Starfarer wrote:
Except they are doing things that haven't been done before. They are producing animated shows well beyond the handful of fan productions that amount to about a movie trailer's length of content.

I'm not confident that a few short animations trickled out over Emperor-knows how long is enough to sustain the service. Disney+ got by for a year with almost nothing to show for it based on good will and the promise of lots to come. Warhammer+ ain't Disney+.

 Starfarer wrote:
They are digitizing their printed media.

Their old printed material. That's good from an archival perspective at least, but being able to access old rule books (likely only through the D+ app) is hardly an incentive to pay per month.

 Starfarer wrote:
They are offering in depth lore videos direct from the creators.

Which will offer what, exactly? Are they going to add to, expand or change the lore? Unlikely, so again, other than perhaps higher production values and music that would get a regular YouTuber a copyright strike, what's on offer here?

 Starfarer wrote:
If the value isn't there for you, so be it. But to act like it's objectively poor value because you like fan versions of some content better isn't a great argument imo.

That's a misrepresentation. I'm not disliking it because I like fan versions more. I dislike it because it's GW (once again) attempting to be the hobby, rather than just being part of the hobby.

You're putting out a lot of hypotheticals that assume the worst possible response from GW, i.e. copyright strikes when there's no indication that will occur. Also just because you aren't yet aware of if the lore videos will be good doesn't mean they will be bad.

Anyway, we were talking about GW putting out content that hadn't been provided before, which they are. Again I said if the value isn't there for you so be it.

You go straight to FUD and move the goalposts of the discussion when I provide examples.

GW isn't trying to be the hobby. There no indication that they plan to take over all 40k related content online. There's no basis for that assumption other than FUD and grasping at straws to paint GW in a bad light because they are offering something new you don't want to pay for.

That said, I wasted enough time debating this when it's clear this is turning into yet another "bash GW for hypothetical wrongs" thread. I really don't care who likes the service or not. I frankly wouldn't buy it were it not for the Assassin model. That's enough to justify a year purchase and then I'll evaluate the first years content to see if I continue to subscribe going forward.

One thing that's kinda of hilarious to me, though, is there's likely going to be a lot of people paying $60+ for those exclusive models on ebay rather than just paying for the damn sub. Lot of subscribers are going to be able to fund their annual subscriptions just buy selling off the exclusive models they don't want, or just buy extras to sell for profit.