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 Korinov wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:

 Korinov wrote:
Probably not a discussion for this thread, but that's usually what people tends to do: when someone does not give you what you want, you look for it elsewhere.

No, that's what entitled people do. A more reasonable person would say "GW's prices are too high, I'll spend my money on something else" instead of buying illegal recasts because they feel entitled to have GW's products.

Well, you may like it or not, but people are actually entitled to do what they please with their own money. And technically recasts are not only "something else", but something that many times has superior quality if compared with the original, official, ridiculously expensive product.

People are 'entitled' to do what they please with their own money. What does this mean in the discussion?

I'm not sure what your point is. I'm not saying that I agree with Peregrine on this, but I don't know what stance you are taking.

If a person is 'entitled' to do what they please with their own money, then presumably, they are entitled to purchase illegal recasts, or pay a criminal to steal product from GW, or pay someone to assassinate bean-counters at GW until the terrified clerks decide to lower prices to appease a bloodthirsty mob. I don't think that you are arguing that people are actually entitled to do ANYTHING they please with their own money, but maybe you are.

If the point you are making is that they are entitled to do whatever they want with their own money, but they should expect to suffer any legal consequences of doing so, then that seems to be a trivial point to be making.

I don't want to put words in Peregrine's mouth, but I think his label of 'entitled' is being applied because the poster is not only saying that he intends to pay money for illegally recast merchandise, but also is confident that he will suffer no repercussions from doing so, and does not feel any moral qualms about violating either IP law or the general concept of counterfeiting, nor does he feel any social shame about boasting about doing so. Presumably, many such buyers would be outraged if they personally were supplied with counterfeit goods under false pretenses, but feel entitled to make such purchases themselves.

I don't want to get into a big discussion on the validity of IP law or the specifics of those laws in various countries. I do, however, think that 'entitled' is not a particularly bad word to describe someone who actually states an intention to violate the law simply because he cannot acquire a luxury product he wants under the law.

I mean, I'm not portraying myself as some crusading do-gooder, but when I could not afford Forgeworld products I wanted, I saved up the money, bought them second hand (and NOT from some mysteriously discounted Chinese/Russian source), or I didn't buy them. If I were planning on giving money to someone who was illlegally recasting FW models and selling them illegally, I certainly wouldn't be hinting at it obviously on the internet. I might feel shame or concern for violating the law.

I think that doing otherwise is the mark of someone who feels entitled to the models, whether they have any legal right to a box of them or not. We're not talking about being unable to afford food, or medicine here. It's not some basic human right that isn't being met. Someone can't buy the toys they want with the money they have.


(I also understand a lot of the vitriol directed at GW in general, but every single bloke I have ever met from Forgeworld seems like a totally decent guy, and any penny I spend on recasts instead of originals feels like money that they didn't get in their paycheck. I can understand the whole Robin Hood mentality, but the guys at FW don't seem like rich barons to me.)

 Formosa wrote:
Ok so it's not ilegal, please stop calling people criminals then, and supporting ilegal activities is a massive grey area, you know that thing the whole world is, shades of grey, if your saying that by buying an item that supports ilegal activities makes us guilty of supporting crime, take all your sweatshop clothes back, stop eating McDonald's, stop shopping at walmart, hell just stop everything and go to prison on that white steed and live in that myopic black and white world of yours.

I hate to be insulting, but calling people guilty by association is plain wrong.

Allow me to (hopefully) shed some light on matters.

Peregrine is generally only capable of arguing in black or white, trying to discuss any nuanced subject with shades of any colour is largely pointless.

Peregrine has mentioned in other threads he owns recasts, so any morality based argument he is making is on decidedly shaky ground.

Peregrine likes a fight - he's managed to argue with me in threads where I was agreeing with him.

AnFéasógMór wrote:
Somebody who goes and buys 2 steaks at the store rather than one steak at Outback isn't lacking the self-control to save up to buy an outback steak, they're making a choice that they'd rather have two steaks from the grocery store.

But what does this analogy have to do with GW's prices? If buying multiple smaller things is the result of a genuine preference for smaller things (instead of the inability to save up for the big thing) then why is the existence of the big thing a problem? How is that evidence for "unfair" pricing?

Because my point was that you're being punished in terms of game play for buying all the smaller models, at the same monetary cost, instead of the one big, expensive model you don't want or need.

Except, again, this isn't how GW's prices work. You're focusing on one example of the big model being more powerful than the smaller models and ignoring the cases where the opposite is true. For example, a $140 Baneblade kit is weaker than its point cost in "normal" units, so in that case you're being "punished in terms of game play" for buying the bigger model instead of several smaller ones.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Azreal13 wrote:
Peregrine has mentioned in other threads he owns recasts, so any morality based argument he is making is on decidedly shaky ground.

Well, if you count a pile of miscast garbage (most of it from ebay scammers) that maybe someday I'll turn into wrecked tank terrain then yeah, I own recasts. And no, it doesn't undermine my argument because I'm not claiming that I buy recasts as some kind of protest against GW's prices. And that's really the core of my argument. I wouldn't judge people nearly as much if they openly admitted that they buy recasts because they're selfish and don't care about anything besides getting what they want as cheaply as possible. The people that really annoy me are the ones who claim some bizarre moral high ground where buying recasts is justified because GW's prices are immoral.

 Azreal13 wrote:
Assuming they don't work weekends, it took almost three days to dispatch and then it was sent 2nd class. Not exactly a premium service, and worse than many small EBay sellers and etailers I've used - and I've paid somewhere in the region of 3x the cost of the postage for it.

I've always been wary of FW shipping ever since I ordered a pair of Macharius' with the more expensive "express shipping" option. It took about 2 days for them to arrive from the UK to Oz, which is super fast. Of course, it took 'em over a month to actually dispatch the damned things.

 Peregrine wrote:

 Azreal13 wrote:
Peregrine has mentioned in other threads he owns recasts, so any morality based argument he is making is on decidedly shaky ground.

Well, if you count a pile of miscast garbage (most of it from ebay scammers) that maybe someday I'll turn into wrecked tank terrain then yeah, I own recasts. And no, it doesn't undermine my argument because I'm not claiming that I buy recasts as some kind of protest against GW's prices. And that's really the core of my argument. I wouldn't judge people nearly as much if they openly admitted that they buy recasts because they're selfish and don't care about anything besides getting what they want as cheaply as possible. The people that really annoy me are the ones who claim some bizarre moral high ground where buying recasts is justified because GW's prices are immoral.

Personally, I think the fact you're judging them at all for something that has no impact on you whatsoever is a fairly poor direction to be coming from in the first place, but meh.

Miscast garbage or not, if you haven't destroyed it, or sent it back to FW/GW as evidence, and reported every single seller who's supplied it to you to the proper authorities and made sure they were shut down, then it's irrelevant what you do with it, you're as guilty as anyone who bought stuff with prior knowledge once you're aware of what you have.

(I'm quite liking this facile, binary arguing thing, I might try it for a while.)

For the most part Im pretty much OK with most of the prices. What bothers me is that the shipping is expensive and less than stellar. What pisses me off is that Im charged the prices including VAT. Complete BS on their part.

 Korinov wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:

 primalexile wrote:
Just recently I found a different "source" I now have 3 armies comprised of all FW and it cost less than one of their armies. I would rather my money go to FW but they are insane to charge what they do.

And of course, what price whine thread would be complete without people proudly declaring how they're entitled to buy illegal recasts if GW doesn't give them what they want.

Probably not a discussion for this thread, but that's usually what people tends to do: when someone does not give you what you want, you look for it elsewhere.

We've already had someone in this thread say that 'if FW was cheaper, I'd totes by from them instead of recasters. Honest.' Now, maybe it's just that they're lying to themselves, and not us specifically, but recasts are always going to be cheaper than FW, and thus that person is always going to be recasts and never FW.

I think you should drop and give me 50 for posting silly threads...

 Azreal13 wrote:

 Formosa wrote:
Ok so it's not ilegal, please stop calling people criminals then, and supporting ilegal activities is a massive grey area, you know that thing the whole world is, shades of grey, if your saying that by buying an item that supports ilegal activities makes us guilty of supporting crime, take all your sweatshop clothes back, stop eating McDonald's, stop shopping at walmart, hell just stop everything and go to prison on that white steed and live in that myopic black and white world of yours.

I hate to be insulting, but calling people guilty by association is plain wrong.

Allow me to (hopefully) shed some light on matters.

Peregrine is generally only capable of arguing in black or white, trying to discuss any nuanced subject with shades of any colour is largely pointless.

Peregrine has mentioned in other threads he owns recasts, so any morality based argument he is making is on decidedly shaky ground.

Peregrine likes a fight - he's managed to argue with me in threads where I was agreeing with him.

Ah I see, thanks

If you cant afford it dont buy it. Or buy elsewhere or here's an idea, save up. Problem solved

Motograter wrote:
If you cant afford it dont buy it. Or buy elsewhere or here's an idea, save up. Problem solved

I don't think this is about whether people can afford it, it's about whether or not the models are worth the asking price.

Da Butcha wrote:People are 'entitled' to do what they please with their own money. What does this mean in the discussion?

I'm not sure what your point is. I'm not saying that I agree with Peregrine on this, but I don't know what stance you are taking.

If a person is 'entitled' to do what they please with their own money, then presumably, they are entitled to purchase illegal recasts, or pay a criminal to steal product from GW, or pay someone to assassinate bean-counters at GW until the terrified clerks decide to lower prices to appease a bloodthirsty mob. I don't think that you are arguing that people are actually entitled to do ANYTHING they please with their own money, but maybe you are.

If the point you are making is that they are entitled to do whatever they want with their own money, but they should expect to suffer any legal consequences of doing so, then that seems to be a trivial point to be making.

Of course. You're entitled to do what you want with your money. If by doing so you violate the law, you may expect to suffer consequent repercusions.

I don't want to put words in Peregrine's mouth, but I think his label of 'entitled' is being applied because the poster is not only saying that he intends to pay money for illegally recast merchandise, but also is confident that he will suffer no repercussions from doing so, and does not feel any moral qualms about violating either IP law or the general concept of counterfeiting, nor does he feel any social shame about boasting about doing so. Presumably, many such buyers would be outraged if they personally were supplied with counterfeit goods under false pretenses, but feel entitled to make such purchases themselves.

I don't want to get into a big discussion on the validity of IP law or the specifics of those laws in various countries. I do, however, think that 'entitled' is not a particularly bad word to describe someone who actually states an intention to violate the law simply because he cannot acquire a luxury product he wants under the law.

I mean, I'm not portraying myself as some crusading do-gooder, but when I could not afford Forgeworld products I wanted, I saved up the money, bought them second hand (and NOT from some mysteriously discounted Chinese/Russian source), or I didn't buy them. If I were planning on giving money to someone who was illlegally recasting FW models and selling them illegally, I certainly wouldn't be hinting at it obviously on the internet. I might feel shame or concern for violating the law.

I think that doing otherwise is the mark of someone who feels entitled to the models, whether they have any legal right to a box of them or not. We're not talking about being unable to afford food, or medicine here. It's not some basic human right that isn't being met. Someone can't buy the toys they want with the money they have.

It's up to each one's conscience.

Besides, I fail to see where the entitlement is. I don't think that's the issue here. It's more like people wanting a certain product, and resorting to an alternative (even if not exactly legal) supplier because they deem the official price too high. Counterfeiting has happened left and right throughout the whole human history, and this is not even counterfeiting, because recasters are very open about stating they're merely selling replicas, and that if someone is concerned about their products' quality, they should actually go and buy the official thing.

The funny part here, is that more than once the recasts end up being of higher quality than the original stuff they're supposed to be replicating.

(I also understand a lot of the vitriol directed at GW in general, but every single bloke I have ever met from Forgeworld seems like a totally decent guy, and any penny I spend on recasts instead of originals feels like money that they didn't get in their paycheck. I can understand the whole Robin Hood mentality, but the guys at FW don't seem like rich barons to me.)

I'm sure Apple and GW are also full of decent chaps who just try to make a living and do not share the administration board's point of view or attitude. Still I consider both companies to be obnoxious.

Bookwrack wrote:We've already had someone in this thread say that 'if FW was cheaper, I'd totes by from them instead of recasters. Honest.' Now, maybe it's just that they're lying to themselves, and not us specifically, but recasts are always going to be cheaper than FW, and thus that person is always going to be recasts and never FW.

I don't agree with the "recasts are always going to be cheaper than FW" line of thought.

As any other business (legit or not), recasters operate within a certain profit margin. They will usually sell things at half the official price (sometimes 1/3, sometimes even cheaper). This currently gives them a lot of space to maneuver since both GW and FW's prices are extremely high.

If GW and FW were to drop their prices to 50% (we all know it's not going to happen, and nowadays it would simply ruin them), recasters would be forced to drop their prices in such a dramatic way their profit margins would probably not be enough anymore for most of what they recast, and it would be likely they would be forced to reduce their catalogue a lot. I guess they would be able to keep their best sellers (afaiac, death korps of krieg, contemptors and a few more 30k things) and little else.

As an example, FW currently sells their contemptors' bodies (without arms) for around 45€. Meanwhile recasters charge around 20€. If FW dropped their prices by half... well I would be the first one to say "great product at pretty good price" (I wouldn't buy since I'm not interested in contemptors, either legal or recast). And it's unlikely recasters could cope with it, since 1) they would be forced to drop their prices below the 15€ tag in order to stay competitive so 2) their profit margins would be significantly reduced and 3) many more people would feel like buying the official product regardless of what recasters may offer.

In my experience, 99% of the people, even if they despise the company, will buy a product if they believe it's priced correctly. People turn to recasts because, let's be honest about this, 45€ for a contemptor body, plus 12€ more for each arm (making a total of almost 70€ for a contemptor mini) is ridiculous. You don't even have to go the recast route, alternative suppliers (a.k.a. Puppets War) offer two dreadnought-compatible arms for 14€, and even a complete dreadnought-sized battlewalker for 29€ (including both arms).

And before anyone starts making assumptions, I will state it outright: Forgeworld, Games Workshop and any other company in the world are entitled to charge as much as they want for their products. Prospective buyers are also entitled to consider such prices ridiculously overpriced, and seek alternatives wherever they may find them.

People are entitled to think the prices are ridiculous and look for alternatives, that entitlement doesn't stretch to being entitled to buy illegally recasted models. Buying them may be legal but you're still supporting illegal activity.

I'm curious, is it entitled and immoral for me to walk into my local $2 shop and buy a 'totally not Power Ranger' or a pink Pikachu?

 jonolikespie wrote:
I'm curious, is it entitled and immoral for me to walk into my local $2 shop and buy a 'totally not Power Ranger' or a pink Pikachu?

It's a bit different isn't it, because they haven't directly cast them to make a model which is literally exactly the same.

People we have already established that buying recasts isn't illegal, if you find it morally reprehensible, fine, but keep that unwanted and unneeded opinion to yourselves, this discussion has already been derailed (by me also) enough.

On topic.
Ok here's what I think on the fw price subject, is it worth the cost, answer is most of the time yes, some things (such as the contemptor) are quite massively over priced, others are either a steal or very reasonable,

Buying recasts may not be illegal but making them sure as hell IS and you are supporting scabs in the industry.

FW does seem a bit overpriced to me, they are very good sculpts but I don't imagine they cost anywhere near that much to make, they may sell in smaller quantities than other GW stuff but I imagine they still sell enough that the cost of the initial sculpt would be quite heavily diluted.

 Crazie German wrote:
Buying recasts may not be illegal but making them sure as hell IS and you are supporting scabs in the industry.

If you want to know what you're supporting when you buy from GW, have a read at weeble's upgoming review of the GW vs. Chapterhouse litigation.

Also, somebody please explain why buying recasts is inmoral and denotes some sort of "arrogant entitlement", but outsourcing production to countries like China in an effort to cut costs is perfectly understandable and acceptable. Perhaps if GW was unable to meet ends by keeping their production in Europe they shouldn't have felt "entitled" to outsource production to developing countries where workers rights and salaries are a joke, and just reduce business volume or either shut down.

 Crazie German wrote:
Buying recasts may not be illegal but making them sure as hell IS and you are supporting scabs in the industry.

"Scabs" that only have space to operate because of the original's flabby pricing.

Piracy, in whatever form, tends to only occur where there's enough headroom for the Pirates to operate and make money, the easiest way for a company to eliminate rip offs is to price their own product as keenly as possible. There would be certain examples, premium watches perhaps, where a price cut would actually be more harmful than whatever damage is done by fakes (if you can afford a real Rolex, you're not going to buy a fake, in all likelihood) and would actually damage the brand (unlike the delusion GW has that price cuts and sales would damage their brand - the value of the GW brand right now is questionable)

As I've said before, if the recast business is causing GW any pain (and it predates their current financial downturn, so the simple availability of recasts cannot be attributed to that) then it lies within their hands to attack it and significantly reduce, if not eliminate, it. Not, as is their usual bully-boy technique of sending in the lawyers, which is a futile exercise, but by focussing on making a desirable product at an attractive price, something they've been consistently struggling to do for several years now.

 ImAGeek wrote:

 jonolikespie wrote:
I'm curious, is it entitled and immoral for me to walk into my local $2 shop and buy a 'totally not Power Ranger' or a pink Pikachu?

It's a bit different isn't it, because they haven't directly cast them to make a model which is literally exactly the same.

Quite a few of them seem to be exactly that. A lot are marketed using actual trademarked names. This is an IP issue rather than it being illegal to physically recast. The models being made are infringing GWs copywrites* (many of which they don't own btw), but marketing a pink Pikachu as a 'Pokemon' is, as I understand it, a lot worse than copying the physical design elements of a model because half of trademark/copyright law is actually about protecting the consumer from buying something labeled as, for example, 'Pokemon' without it being official 'Pokemon' merchandise.

If recasters are open about them being recasts then that puts them on the lower level of 'illegal' and into the moraly grey area rather than 'immoral scabs'.

*Pretty sure it's copyright, might be trademark. Unfortunatly I only know the difference a little better than GW's head of IP

 Korinov wrote:

 Crazie German wrote:
Buying recasts may not be illegal but making them sure as hell IS and you are supporting scabs in the industry.

If you want to know what you're supporting when you buy from GW, have a read at weeble's upgoming review of the GW vs. Chapterhouse litigation.

Also, somebody please explain why buying recasts is inmoral and denotes some sort of "arrogant entitlement", but outsourcing production to countries like China in an effort to cut costs is perfectly understandable and acceptable. Perhaps if GW was unable to meet ends by keeping their production in Europe they shouldn't have felt "entitled" to outsource production to developing countries where workers rights and salaries are a joke, and just reduce business volume or either shut down.

GW manufacture all of their good in the UK.

You seem to be making facile points to keep a facile arguement going.

 notprop wrote:
GW manufacture all of their good in the UK.

You seem to be making facile points to keep a facile arguement going.

AFAIK, that is not true. White Dwarf is printed in China, or at least it was until yesterday.

In regards to miniatures, both GW and FW did outsource production to China in the past. In fact, when FW stopped doing that and went back to manufacture models only in the west, their overall quality went down significantly.

You seen to not have any idea of what you're talking about.

 Korinov wrote:

 notprop wrote:
GW manufacture all of their good in the UK.

You seem to be making facile points to keep a facile arguement going.

AFAIK, that is not true. White Dwarf is printed in China, or at least it was until yesterday.

In regards to miniatures, both GW and FW did outsource production to China in the past. In fact, when FW stopped doing that and went back to manufacture models only in the west, their overall quality went down significantly.

You seen to not have any idea of what you're talking about.

Models are produced in the UK, the hardcover books in China.

Side note, they use the UK not our of selfless desire to create jobs but because when they tried production in China recast apparently flooded the market.

 Formosa wrote:
if you find it morally reprehensible, fine, but keep that unwanted and unneeded opinion to yourselves

If there's one thing that I think is very much needed here, it's more people reminding you that it's morally reprehensible.

 Korinov wrote:

 notprop wrote:
GW manufacture all of their good in the UK.

You seem to be making facile points to keep a facile arguement going.

AFAIK, that is not true. White Dwarf is printed in China, or at least it was until yesterday.

In regards to miniatures, both GW and FW did outsource production to China in the past. In fact, when FW stopped doing that and went back to manufacture models only in the west, their overall quality went down significantly.

You seen to not have any idea of what you're talking about.

GW's printed material is printed in Cina, that's about standard for most companies due to the cost of printing.

FW did test out casting resin in China, I only have second-hand info about why they stopped but apparently is was due to low-quality, miscommunication and issues with management in China.

GW had a few sprues cast in China, mostly scenery like the Arcane Ruins set, but their actual miniatures were all produced in Lenton.

The only reason I know of personally about issues with China was with product being sent to Memphis from China being constantly damaged and having to be repacked in Memphis. Why do the same thing twice?

IIRC the pallets of the Arcane Ruins that were made in the GW China facility, apparently as a test, were crushed in shipping. Someone in China chose to change the type of cardboard the box sets were made from to a thinner card so the weight of the product on top crushed the boxes underneath. We had to order new boxes and repack everything in Memphis, which also meant shipping them out late to customers.

There were more quality issues about China, but it would take too long to go into detail about them all here.

Suffice to say, I don't think GW will ever let any manufacturing of miniatures out of their site ever again.

GW and it's affiliated products are just straight up overpriced and lackluster in quality and value.. nothing new.

 Vermis wrote:

 Formosa wrote:
if you find it morally reprehensible, fine, but keep that unwanted and unneeded opinion to yourselves

If there's one thing that I think is very much needed here, it's more people reminding you that it's morally reprehensible.

A bit naughty maybe, but reprehensible? If this is your idea of morally reprehensible, read the news more.

GW have lost a lot of goodwill in recent years and their model quality has dropped right off all while prices being screwed up. That's why there's less loyalty and more people feeling neutral about recasts being bought and used. If you give your money to GW you get a product full of air bubbles and they use the money to fund their legal bullying. What exactly does GW do to win over customers?

mechanicalhorizon wrote:GW's printed material is printed in Cina, that's about standard for most companies due to the cost of printing.

So we're accepting it's ok for companies to outsource printing process to developing countries where labor rights and salaries are a joke due to "cost" issues. Not morally reprehensible nor anything like that.

FW did test out casting resin in China, I only have second-hand info about why they stopped but apparently is was due to low-quality, miscommunication and issues with management in China.

According to things I've read, I'd say it was more than a simple test.

I don't know to what degree low-quality could have been an issue, since nowadays some recasters offer models of higher quality than the official FW products.

GW had a few sprues cast in China, mostly scenery like the Arcane Ruins set, but their actual miniatures were all produced in Lenton.

I've been told some of their bigger plastic kits - like the Stompa - have been cast in China as well, but I'm uncertain about the validity of such claims.

Didn't know about the Arcane Ruins set and all the issues GW had with it. Thanks for sharing the info.

Vermis wrote:

 Formosa wrote:
if you find it morally reprehensible, fine, but keep that unwanted and unneeded opinion to yourselves

If there's one thing that I think is very much needed here, it's more people reminding you that it's morally reprehensible.

To be honest, I don't see how buying recasts is more morally reprehensible than giving money to a company that is more than happy to employ legal bullying as a means to drive competition out of the market. Specially when said legal bullying has been built upon piles of lies.

Howard A Treesong wrote:GW have lost a lot of goodwill in recent years and their model quality has dropped right off all while prices being screwed up. That's why there's less loyalty and more people feeling neutral about recasts being bought and used. If you give your money to GW you get a product full of air bubbles and they use the money to fund their legal bullying. What exactly does GW do to win over customers?

This.