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 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 Flinty wrote:
... it sounds like the kind of thing that both sides in the contract are satisfied with what they are getting...

GW maintains control and he doesn't get crushed under GW's boot. How wonderful for him.

And he has a job and apparently gets to continue doing what he loves. I think we have fundamentally different world views...

 Flinty wrote:
And he has a job and apparently gets to continue doing what he loves. I think we have fundamentally different world views...

Did you see how much money he was making on Patreon? If I were getting that much I wouldn't need another job.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
For whatever money he can scrape out?

Based upon the minimum Patreon contribution ($2) and after taking out the 40% cut that Patreon has, guy was raking in $11k a month.

GW didn't make a better offer. They made an offer he couldn't refuse.

And what would that offer be then?


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 Galas wrote:
But you can't expect no-name internet trolls that believe everything in the world works by pure ideas and ideals and have never been in a position like that to understand that in adult life you have to compromise.

I sort of enjoy that part of the internet is so confident that they can just say anything and not support it with facts and then watch them pretend they aren't themselves a troll.

 Daedalus81 wrote:
I sort of enjoy that part of the internet is so confident that they can just say anything and not support it with facts and then watch them pretend they aren't themselves a troll.

I can't find myself enjoying that for the unguessable amount of generalized damage that sort of confidence has caused, though enjoying it is probably better for one's personal mental health.

Yeah, I feel like I have to lower my expectations today. Which is interesting, given how many of these individuals I already have on ignore.

My reaction: 'Neat. Good for them.'

Other reactions: 'How dare this person's work and enthusiasm pay off! I hope they're ruined!'

Me:

 CEO Kasen wrote:

 Daedalus81 wrote:
I sort of enjoy that part of the internet is so confident that they can just say anything and not support it with facts and then watch them pretend they aren't themselves a troll.

I can't find myself enjoying that for the unguessable amount of generalized damage that sort of confidence has caused, though enjoying it is probably better for one's personal mental health.

^I'm in the same boat these days.

 Daedalus81 wrote:
And what would that offer be then?

Oh come on Daedalus. Don't be intentionally naive about this.

 BaconCatBug wrote:
My guess is it will become a glorified advert for the new wave of Primaris Marines. Seriously, feth this guy. I can only hope the whole thing crashes and burns at this point.

Why does everyone rave about the orginal project. It was bland and boring, the technology looked way too clean and the "story" made no sense. It was shiny. But beyond that it had no substance.

Good for the artist I guess, but a big yawn from me on it going official. 40K lore is silly and taken far too seriously.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 Daedalus81 wrote:
And what would that offer be then?

Oh come on Daedalus. Don't be intentionally naive about this.

I get that it's fun being cynical and all, but an animator with this guy's skill commands a high wage. And he's not JUST an animator. He's the equivalent of a "full stack developer" - someone that can run all facets project from the ground up.

It is quite likely there was no business in his area that could employ him frequently as lots of this kind of work gets farmed out to cheap-o churn and burn companies. Unless he's completely unaware of his skills and unable to negotiate it is highly unlikely that he isn't being paid a competitive salary with benefits like stock options. Getting an opportunity to move away from contract work and have a steady gig is not a terrible thing. Did he get compensated for his prior work as well?

That said I doubt Patreons fees are as high as 40% so he probably made more, but there's a whole byzantine free structure so getting the accurate payout would be hard to discern. We're also looking at the height of his subs. When I joined it was something like 2K back in 2018.

Undoubtedly Patreon would be the highest wages to earn as popularity grew, but even he was aware of the potential pitfall:

Hey guys,
I feel foolish writing this a day after opening the Patreon account but after some input from others I'm becoming a little concerned that it might appear to GW that I'm earning a profit off of their IP/brand. Initially I thought it should be okay as other content creators seem to receive support for videos that focus on a certain IP/brand's products but now I'm not sure.

What do you guys think? I really appreciate your offers of support but I don't want to do anything that might be seen as shady. Perhaps I should write to GW and see what they say? They do seem friendlier these days but who knows how that will go...

GW's policy:
https://www.games-workshop.com/en-US/Intellectual-Property-Policy

So on one hand his ceiling was quite high, but the legality is dubious. On the other he gets to work for, and get support from, the company that got him where he is while drawing a regular paycheck at what should be a market rate.

Based on the responses I think we would have seen less salt if GW just sent a C&D and we never saw Astartes again.

 Togusa wrote:

 BaconCatBug wrote:
My guess is it will become a glorified advert for the new wave of Primaris Marines. Seriously, feth this guy. I can only hope the whole thing crashes and burns at this point.

Why does everyone rave about the orginal project. It was bland and boring, the technology looked way too clean and the "story" made no sense. It was shiny. But beyond that it had no substance.

Is there a reason we can't rave over a badass action sequence? It might not be Milton, but it wasn't Ultramarines either.

 Togusa wrote:
Why does everyone rave about the orginal project. It was bland and boring, the technology looked way too clean and the "story" made no sense. It was shiny. But beyond that it had no substance.

So, action sequences are not welcome in 40K storytelling?

40K lore is silly and taken far too seriously.

You could say that about any universe people enjoy. Just...let people enjoy things.

 Daedalus81 wrote:

Based on the responses I think we would have seen less salt if GW just sent a C&D and we never saw Astartes again.

While some of the salt here is definitely surprising, I think Astartes had enough fans that you would have seen a loooot more salt if the creator had to announce he got a C&D.

And dismissing misgivings as just 'salt' is kinda insulting.

Voss wrote:
Yeah, I feel like I have to lower my expectations today. Which is interesting, given how many of these individuals I already have on ignore.

My reaction: 'Neat. Good for them.'

Other reactions: 'How dare this person's work and enthusiasm pay off! I hope they're ruined!'

Me:

No lowered expectations here. Hate is easy. The black knights look for any and every opportunity to criticise and knock down. People are far too invested in the notion of gw as the irredeemable evil empire that they must lash out against at every opportunity, real or invented, and anyone not apoplectic with rage against them all the time are traitors and collaborators. Considering that, working with them is somehow worse.


Plus, this steps on the toes of 'my favourite, to now unknown band suddenly got popular. How dare they?!' It smacks s little of 'true' fans who look down on every one else.

My take? Fair play to the guy. Bar the ending, astartes was great. Can't wait to see what they bring to the table next.this is official recognition. Great for a cv. It'll open doors and create opportunities. Again, can't blame him for going this route.

 CEO Kasen wrote:

 Daedalus81 wrote:

Based on the responses I think we would have seen less salt if GW just sent a C&D and we never saw Astartes again.

While some of the salt here is definitely surprising, I think Astartes had enough fans that you would have seen a loooot more salt if the creator had to announce he got a C&D.

Yes, but it would be righteous salt, and instantly weaponised and turned against gw because they're the enemy. And 'the hobby' is taking any shot against gw. Id argue the black knights would, at least on some level, actually be morbidly cheerful about this outcome because its another outlet to have a go and feeds into their narrative that gw is the enemy.

Whether predomenantly coercion or incentive was involved in this development we'll likely never know unless either party is willing to disclose the terms of their agreement with the broader public.

The fact that noticeable changes where made to the audio and the original videos have been removed from the creator's youtube account does shed some light on the aforementioned subject, in my opinion. I do not, however, disaprove of official recogniation of such an awesome fan project, certainly that very fact will have placed some role in the creator's decision.

I do worry that the future works will be far less likely to involve original or personalized content, with the project's aeshetics being all but certain to move closer to offical art en models, a development we've been observing in other pieces of Warhammer media for a while now.

Those of you talking about the money he made on patreon etc etc etc...

He would surely be the lead writer, director and producer for any specific astartes productions.

Have you seen the amount of reactions on youtube to astartes from people who do not have a single clue what GW is?

He may have taken a gamble in the short term (losing out on some earnings) to potential reap the reward in the future if the next production, or a series of longer productions ever take off and gets picked up by say... Netflix? He also has the added bonus of a very rich setting, like star wars, there are so many stories to tell the possibilities are endless for the number of productions they could squeeze out of it.

Then finally, you do not know the incentives in terms of work flow and equipment he now has access to, he may be able to complete projects 4x as fast now, which is a great thing for growth, and potential earnings.

 Daedalus81 wrote:

 tauist wrote:
Wasnt particularly impressed by Astartes tbh. Helsreach is the only "proper" 40K video I've seen yet. I hope The Angels Of Death will be of comparable quality, as in, an actual flocking story instead of just dialogueless bolter pron for 12-yr olds.

That new T'au feature, Exodite was it? dunno about that either.. The Iron Warriors one looks visually good but I have no idea what the storytelling's going to be like

Anyways, I still have to acknowledge GW is doing the right thing by making these fanfic projects official.. They'll undoubtedly turn out to be better than what they could release themselves, so at least something.. Must feel good for the authors too to get recognition like that.

Astartes isn't really bolter porn for me. It's visceral and visual storytelling that gets the point across very well.

I dont agree in the slightest but lets just leave it at that. If you fancy it good for you!

Caradman Sturnn wrote:

The fact that noticeable changes where made to the audio and the original videos have been removed from the creator's youtube account does shed some light on the aforementioned subject, in my opinion. I do not, howeever, disaprove of official recogniation of such an awesome fan project, certainly that very fact will have placed some role in the creator's decision.

As others have said, there may have been copyright issues with the music he originally used. GW are in a position to buy music to order, and seem to have some form of existing library.

Who are we to say it was definitely big bad evil naughty wicked GW that chose the new music?

Likewise, creators tinker with their stuff all the time. This could well be GW asking for specific edits. Or it could be the chap using the opportunity of a new home for his works to do a bit of tinkering. Maybe he has The Lucas Touch, and as a result he’ll be forever tinkering with it. Maybe we’re seeing a Han Shot First type reaction.

And I can’t help but wonder if we’re seeing a bit of jealousy. Dude goes it alone, makes a decent crust via Patreon, then goes all official and professional.

We know nothing of the arrangement, which has apparently been a Carte Blanche to go all Daily Mail with the bad light brush. But as ever, we see incomplete considerations.

First, the Patreon money. $11,000US at the time of writing works out to around $15214NZ. That’s an annual, pre-tax annual amount of $182,568NZ. A significant sum for sure - but not exactly a high end salary for the industry.

What’s his tax setup with that? Cursory Google search suggests his take home each month is around $10,798.19.

Now, let’s convert $NZ to GBP, see what sort of salary GW might need to offer for him to be making the same money.

A straight conversion, assuming he’d be paying tax in NZ? £94,603.

That’s really not outside of the realm of possibility. We know skilled 3D Animator can make good money. That good? Glass door suggests perhaps not. But then....what else does he enjoy as a formal employee of GW? What’s their current package? Does he have a custom one, negotiated via an agent/suitable professional representative?

Consider a rough outline of my employer’s benefits package. 12% of wage pension contribution (costs me nothing), and they’ll match me up to 3%. Spousal Pension contribution. Full private medical cover. Various other little perks I don’t necessarily use, but don’t cost me anything and may prove incredibly handy when the time is right.

In short? Salty are gonna be salty, because well I’m not entirely sure but they remain entitled to their opinion. But they’re hardly presenting the full picture, but seem intent on claiming they’ve got the full picture.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:

Caradman Sturnn wrote:

The fact that noticeable changes where made to the audio and the original videos have been removed from the creator's youtube account does shed some light on the aforementioned subject, in my opinion. I do not, howeever, disaprove of official recogniation of such an awesome fan project, certainly that very fact will have placed some role in the creator's decision.

As others have said, there may have been copyright issues with the music he originally used. GW are in a position to buy music to order, and seem to have some form of existing library.

Who are we to say it was definitely big bad evil naughty wicked GW that chose the new music?

Likewise, creators tinker with their stuff all the time. This could well be GW asking for specific edits. Or it could be the chap using the opportunity of a new home for his works to do a bit of tinkering. Maybe he has The Lucas Touch, and as a result he’ll be forever tinkering with it. Maybe we’re seeing a Han Shot First type reaction.

Hi, those are worthy considerations, in fact the implication of my original statemant was not that at all GW forced a change the music used. However I will still contend that changes made to the audio resulted in inferior quality, which is also shared by other on these very forums.

I most certainly do not believe it was some GW employee or freelancer who re-scored the supercut, let that be clear. The fact that the changes are not commentend upon by the creator in his statement is interesting in my view, but certainly not indicative of malevolent intent by either party.

So yeah, I do agree as in my earlier post that we do not know who took initative on what and for which reasons. Only that it would have been perfectly acceptable for me had Astartes remained an independant project.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 Flinty wrote:
And he has a job and apparently gets to continue doing what he loves. I think we have fundamentally different world views...

Did you see how much money he was making on Patreon? If I were getting that much I wouldn't need another job.

TLDR; Don't hate the player, hate the game.

 Daedalus81 wrote:

 Togusa wrote:
Why does everyone rave about the orginal project. It was bland and boring, the technology looked way too clean and the "story" made no sense. It was shiny. But beyond that it had no substance.

So, action sequences are not welcome in 40K storytelling?

40K lore is silly and taken far too seriously.

You could say that about any universe people enjoy. Just...let people enjoy things.

I never said you couldn't enjoy it.

I said I didn't enjoy it and I wondered why lots of folks did.

Well the entire thing is imo two fold.

First, he racked in CONSIDERABLE dough for several months (since 1st of Nov IIRC) without any update. Not even a "I'm alive, working on stuff", only to basically tell his Patreons that their money was wasted. Since whatever he was producing, its not likely that we will see the result of that. Depending on how long he was in talks with GW, he was intransparent of the possibility that he is or will no longer work for the received payout.
I supported him for a LONG time since EP2 with quite a bit of cash each month because I wanted him to keep producing. It's pretty much factual that he took the money and stopped delivering. So that is one big source of salt for me.

But OTOH, I'm happy for the guy and would expect great things when he actually gets a Team to work with, upping the amount of content he can produce! That would be absolutey terrific.

But then you see the edits made by/for GW and the removal of the original.. and it feels lessened.

So we have pros of having the guy get a job, get recognition and have any legal doubts cleared - and we have cons of shady behaviour with his patreon and, what worries me more tbh, GW interfering with his work, lessening what would otherwise be his vision and his vision alone.

I canceled my Patreon after the announcement with a well wish and a congratulations - and I dont expect Astartes to stay as great and awesome as it was, but become washed down by corporate goals and meddling. Which saddens me greatly. But time may prove me wrong. I sure hope it does.

I really have to wonder what the whole contingent of people who sees "company does something with the property that they own that I don't like" as the greatest cultural issue of our age would like to have as the solution. I only ever seen anger.

It's obvious that the answer isn't "I want artists to get paid a living wage by me for the art they produce" because at this point the only solution for artists to get paid at all is to go wide - use systems like Patreon to have people pay them very small amounts, but to have enough mass appeal that the artist gets paid a decent wage.

but the only reason Patreon and the other similar sites work is because of the fact that you're paying for a "membership". There's no piece of art you're purchasing, because of how internet sharing works that kind of micro-pay macro-people strategy doesn't work.

The other classic option then for artists is "work directly for the corprorate oligarchs who own all ideas." Mad people on the internet obviously hate that, because the corporate oligarchs spend bazillions on market research and will change the product to achieve up to the minute maximum appeal to the greatest number of demographics possible to maximize profit.

So what's your solution? I feel like this is a completely different crowd, some might say the exact opposite crowd, from the folks who are typically anti the idea of ideas and concepts being private property.

Is the solution "private property is absolute, except for art, that belongs collectively to everyone and you just don't get to make money doing it?" Or do we have like an annual vote about whether or not you care about a particular piece of art media, and if a large enough majority of people vote "yes" then it collectively belongs to everyone and it must be maintained in current form for perpetuity by the people who currently own it?

TBH I was taking a jab at the reaction of BCB.

I'm glad for the guy, really. And I can't wait to see what he does.


I was not saying GW was bad or anything. I mean, as a company, if somebody was racking up more than 10k a month doing stuff with my IP I would have done the same: Give him the offer of working for us if hes worth it, or just stop doing it. Of course I doubt we'll know exactly what happened or what offer GW gave him. But to me that seems the most plausible (In a non villanous way) of how something like this unfold.

I can't picture an alternative were GW offers him to job with them, he refuses because hes making good money from patreon, and GW is like "ok continue with what you were doing, no problem bro"

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
And dismissing misgivings as just 'salt' is kinda insulting.

I feel like there is a difference between knowing the facts of something and being upset and selectively choosing to make up facts and being upset. I'm not intending to be insulting, but I apologize for coming across that way. I just really disagree with the approach taken and it isn't because it is GW - this is the stance I would take on any subject


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It isn't an easy question. Patent laws are pretty ridiculous for the most part, but they do serve a purpose to protect artists with new ideas. To put it into a reverse context - say you made something and then a large corporation comes in an makes something better / more accessible / cheaper - you would want some form of protection.

Patreon is a great platform and I don't know whether or not GW could truly tag him for profiteering.

I think this is great for him to, presumably, get a steady paycheck, not worry about IP violations, and get access to more resources and support.

The only cause for worry is that like most creative pursuits, when you have a financier dictating the product and direction of the work there is a risk the work loses its integrity and impact. Doesn't always happen but it can. In short, it's about whether he maintains exclusive artistic vision/direction in what gets produced or whether that gets meddled with.

 Daedalus81 wrote:
I feel like there is a difference between knowing the facts of something and being upset and selectively choosing to make up facts and being upset. I'm not intending to be insulting, but I apologize for coming across that way. I just really disagree with the approach taken and it isn't because it is GW - this is the stance I would take on any subject

I, on the other hand, am far too cynical to see this as anything other than GW attempting to stop their 'competitors' in the animation space.

GW's just about to launch their own suite of animations and suddenly all the big 'freelance' animators doing 40k stuff on YouTube all join up at once? That's not a coincidence.

The silver lining is that GW even 6 years ago would have just killed them. Even a Tau-esque 'Join us... or die!' approach is preferable to that. That's why I suspect that the 'offer he couldn't refuse' story is the most likely. Not because I have any 'proof', but because an entity like GW doesn't just do this out of the kindness of their corporate hearts. They did this to maintain control, and if in doing so they can avoid destroying 4 people, then that's all the better* for those people and the people who like their stuff.


*And lets more people bleat about how GW has "changed" because they have a Facebook page.

I'm really stoked for the Exodite project. Tau!

And for those wondering why a Tau story is being called "The Exodite":

https://www.warhammer-community.com/2021/03/11/trailer-breakdown-the-best-moments-from-the-exodite-reveal/

"But we couldn’t wrap things up without a reference to that title. The project is called The Exodite, after all, so what about the titular Aeldari? For now, you’ll just have to wait and see, but suffice to say that The Exodite will offer your most vivid look yet at an especially enigmatic branch of the Aeldari family tree. "

"Hihi, they've put branch and tree in the same sentence talking about exodites."