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See, what I've read is that they hired them, not threatened or abused them.

Most of the people took the job too, so either:

a) the pay was good enough
b) the job security was good enough
c) the benefits were good enough
d) the intrinsic rewards of doing what you love for a living was enough
e) the degree of control retained by the creator was sufficient
f) the animators are looking to build a career and thought that the job might increase their contacts and reputation within the industry more than fan art youtube videos

Or some combination of those six elements.

Now I'm not saying GW is perfect, no corporation is. I wish the content creators were able to talk about their arrangements so we knew whether they had it good or not. But not being able to disclose salary and the inner workings of a contract are very common business practices.

If the animators were having a bad experience, I'm guessing they'd leave; we know that one has, but interestingly enough, if I recall correctly, this creator wasn't getting communication from GW, which is bad, but in terms of actual abuse, the creator was getting far more of that from @$$ho3$ who call themselves "fans" because THEY were P!$$3D because the creator getting his dream job meant that they couldn't continue to get the work for free.

And yes, I know, many of these creators do have fans who financially support their work via patreon, but funny thing: since those guys were already paying, they're probably far less upset about a $70/ year subscription since they now get not only the creator of their choice for their money, but other creators as well.

Talk to people in the Gig economy. It is true there are a handful who love it. In my experience, they are the minority- almost every gig worker I've ever spoken to would much prefer a real job.

PenitentJake wrote:

 vipoid wrote:


Unless Warhammer+ has itself just been cancelled (fingers crossed)

This is the thing right here though; why hope for its demise and failure rather than simply choose not to buy it, or subscribe to it?

Because GW is already overcharging for models and vastly overcharging for rulebooks. Indeed, in addition to being stupidly expensive to begin with, the rulebooks are quickly outdated because of FAQs, new rules etc. or just whole new editions (this, I remind you, is something that other wargames give away for free as standard). Under the circumstances, then, it seems rather insulting to lock basic features (including animation that amounts to hype-trailers for their own game) behind a subscription service.

If you want to support it and lavish praise on GW for treating you like a wallet with eyes, go nuts.

For me, it represents yet another anti-consumer move by the company so I reserve my right to hope that it ends up biting them in the arse.

You're not wrong Jake. The creators they hired will no doubt be presented with a number of professional opportunities from this - and good for them!

I think the aspect of this that your comment doesn't address (and that I suspect is the source of many peoples frustration - certainly mine), is those creators that weren't hired.

Their content was still enjoyed by many. But as they created this new platform, GW also made it very clear (updating in black and white their existing policies) that they see other, current and future, fan-created content as a threat and unacceptable. Now obviously they are fully within their rights to do this, but when GW are poised to directly benefit financially by charging fans for this same (previously freely available) fan created content via WH+...

Well, you can see how it feels a bit cheeky.

It's absolutely how GW have affected the rest of the community creators that many people are sore about. Handled properly and encouraged, there is no reason why these creators couldn't be a net asset.

We don't really know where lines will be drawn either. WH+ is set to feature lore videos and content on painting too - so will anyone providing this type of content on YouTube be facing legal sanctions in future?

PenitentJake wrote:

Spoiler:

See, what I've read is that they hired them, not threatened or abused them.

Most of the people took the job too, so either:

a) the pay was good enough
b) the job security was good enough
c) the benefits were good enough
d) the intrinsic rewards of doing what you love for a living was enough
e) the degree of control retained by the creator was sufficient
f) the animators are looking to build a career and thought that the job might increase their contacts and reputation within the industry more than fan art youtube videos

Or some combination of those six elements.

Now I'm not saying GW is perfect, no corporation is. I wish the content creators were able to talk about their arrangements so we knew whether they had it good or not. But not being able to disclose salary and the inner workings of a contract are very common business practices.

If the animators were having a bad experience, I'm guessing they'd leave; we know that one has, but interestingly enough, if I recall correctly, this creator wasn't getting communication from GW, which is bad, but in terms of actual abuse, the creator was getting far more of that from @$$ho3$ who call themselves "fans" because THEY were P!$$3D because the creator getting his dream job meant that they couldn't continue to get the work for free.

And yes, I know, many of these creators do have fans who financially support their work via patreon, but funny thing: since those guys were already paying, they're probably far less upset about a $70/ year subscription since they now get not only the creator of their choice for their money, but other creators as well.

Talk to people in the Gig economy. It is true there are a handful who love it. In my experience, they are the minority- almost every gig worker I've ever spoken to would much prefer a real job.

We know GW doesn't pay well to creatives, that's an established fact. I really doubt most of the content creators big enough to get "approached" (call it an offer, a threat, whatever) will make anywhere near as much money working for GW as they did via freelance. And just to make sure the door is not opened, I say all of this as a statement irrespective of the legality of the freelance operations. That's not the point here (not preemptively accusing you of bringing up something irrelevant, Jake, just trying to get that out of the way.)

10 quid voucher if you sign up....getting worried GW?????

Thanks Straylight and Gene for the responses- good stuff in both of those posts that clarifies the argument a bit.

Hopefully if W+ gets enough traction, they'll be able to hire more folks, or establish forums where creators can pitch ideas and share samples, or enter contests.

Granted, that requires a lighter hand than GW seems to use sometimes; people aren't going to want to pitch ideas if they think those ideas may be taken and used without adequate compensation. But it is one potential avenue to adress some of these issues.

A job offer offered at the point of a gun - "take this or be shut down" - is not really a real, freely negotiated, arms-length job offer, whether somebody accepts or not. Especially when a condition of acceptance is not telling anyone the terms. And that's true no matter what you think about the underlying IP issues. Even if you think it's fine to make that sort of offer because of the laws involved, it doesn't mean we should assume that because people accepted, the deal must be good. GW had all these animators over a barrel.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Racerguy180 wrote:
10 quid voucher if you sign up....getting worried GW?????

There is literally no content, I'm honestly floored they're launching with this. It's almost a joke. Aside from old back issues of WD, there is like a few hours' worth of content here. It'd be like if Disney had launched its streaming service with a single show.

PenitentJake wrote:
Thanks Straylight and Gene for the responses- good stuff in both of those posts that clarifies the argument a bit.

Hopefully if W+ gets enough traction, they'll be able to hire more folks, or establish forums where creators can pitch ideas and share samples, or enter contests.

Granted, that requires a lighter hand than GW seems to use sometimes; people aren't going to want to pitch ideas if they think those ideas may be taken and used without adequate compensation. But it is one potential avenue to adress some of these issues.

GW will never again have forums, they don't want to see negative feed back.

Yeah, sorry- forum was a poor choice of words- I meant it in a general sense.

Like maybe they establish a formal process process for accepting submissions with guidelines and reviewers who provide feedback to the candidates that show potential, or they host these submissions and allow fans to vote for which projects get development and job offers.

@yuki

You are correct, it is a shotgun job offer- it isn't entirely benevolent, and I'm not claiming otherwise- on this point we are agreed.

What I meant though is that the creators who did take the jobs must have considered them worth taking. If they hadn't, they would have taken their projects down and went out to get other, better jobs- or in some cases, keep the better jobs they already had.

It sucks to abandon a passion project, but not so much that folks will endure huge financial hardships and a substandard working environment. I suppose it is possible someone has put so much time and effort into something that they truly love that they might endure it for long enough to complete the project and THEN move on to greener pastures. But I think even those folks might be rare.

It will be interesting to see if these folks decide to stick with GW for the long haul.

hobojebus 800476 11204736 wrote:

GW will never again have forums, they don't want to see negative feed back.

They could have them, but in order to do so they would have to hire a lot of moderators. And I mean a lot, considering how popular w40k and how many, potentially, people could want to post there. And those couldn't be some randoms from the street either, so no students working for the proverbial carrot , doing the moderation.

If the animators were having a bad experience, I'm guessing they'd leave; we know that one has, but interestingly enough, if I recall correctly, this creator wasn't getting communication from GW, which is bad, but in terms of actual abuse, the creator was getting far more of that from @$$ho3$ who call themselves "fans" because THEY were P!$$3D because the creator getting his dream job meant that they couldn't continue to get the work for free.

I think we should wait with the "dream job" description till they actually make something for warhammer+. And it doesn't turn in to we take your project in, hire you for 3-6 months. Implement what ever changes we wanted from you in to our production. And then if you don't like it you can take us to the local courts and then lets see who has more money, random app creator from eastern europe interested in carrot production or Bonduelle.

One of the main problems that WH+ has for me, besides the shotgun approach to content creators, the shutting down of things they cannot profit directly off and their general aggressive protective approach to their IP (they may be right in the words of the law, does not mean it is the right thing to do) is - they're selling us recycled content that we already paid for and/or did/can get for free.
They don't offer anything of value (to me).

White Dwarf backlog? Yeah, they're just squeezing an additional penny out of what they already sold us.
BatReps? Free. Everywhere on the net.
Lore vids? Same.
A "limited miniature" for 72$ that I have to wait for and pay up front? That's not a good offer, not in modern times. Earlier you could've just walked into a GW store and bought that limited thing. Now its locked behind a pay wall for triple the price.
The only thing that was of slight interest was the animations - and with the shotgun approach they lost all good will regarding that as well. Hammer and Bolter was mediocre as best - I mean just compare it to things like Hazbin Hotel/Helliuva Boss. Those things are free and while totally a different genre, they're leagues ahead.
The entire WH+ thing is useless and, while I admit the spite demon cackles madly in the back of my mind, I hope it fails and GW gets the slap they deserve for going to war on their own fans.

I don't think Astartes was offered a job at gunpoint.
Rather they shot them, then offered a job with an open hand.
Or to speak plainly, the content was getting removed regardless of whether they accepted the job offer or not.

The launch content for WH+ is even thinner than I thought it would be. I honestly expected to have at least one of every show.

Why don’t they just delay so it’s good at the point of release? It’s not like anyone is chomping at the bit to get at Warhammer+

The investors need to be shown that the company is growing, expending in to new places and winning new markets.

 Thairne wrote:
White Dwarf backlog? Yeah, they're just squeezing an additional penny out of what they already sold us.

This is actually something I'm very interested in. Sure, I bought the WD that showed off Nagash when the model was released during the End Times but I don't have that WD anymore, nor have I read a WD pre-2010.

BatReps? Free. Everywhere on the net.

Agreed.

Lore vids? Same.

Lore videos on YT might be free but vary hugely in quality to the point where I generally just stay away from them. Not including certain channels that will remain unnamed, the content varies from excellent and accurate to "I read the 4chan page and made a video =)". Lore videos straight from the source with no unconscious bias or muddled publications? I'm down for that.

A "limited miniature" for 72$ that I have to wait for and pay up front? That's not a good offer, not in modern times. Earlier you could've just walked into a GW store and bought that limited thing. Now its locked behind a pay wall for triple the price.

You mean the miniature that's included as part of the subscription cost or the optional miniature you are under no obligation to buy?

The Painting Masterclass stuff I'm interested in because too many YT tutorials either use non-GW paints (which doesn't help me personally) or do things like "now simply pick up your airbrush", at which point I find a new video to watch.
Overall, I'm going to wait and see with this.

The best "lore" videos I have found are from Arbitor Ian, who I believe is also a Dakka poster. Gives the context to the changes in the setting over time with different publications. I find that much more interesting than someone just doing a summary.

As to WH+, I didn't expect it to do very well because it seems half assed. Too many subscription services anyway. Seems like some high up with a bright idea to me.

Lot of folk being offended on behalf of people who've shown no indication of being badly treated themselves.

Dai wrote:
Lot of folk being offended on behalf of people who've shown no indication of being badly treated themselves.

I'm sure NDA's were part of the "deal".

Even if not, are you going to badmouth your new boss right away in the public?

True. Specially if you want to find employment in the same line of work in the future. If you say bad stuff about your prior company, the next one is not going to care, if you were right or wrong. They will care about the fact, that you seem to be a person who thinks that badmouthing their employer in public, is an okey thing to do.
Can end up blacklisting yourself doing stuff like that.

Dai wrote:
Lot of folk being offended on behalf of people who've shown no indication of being badly treated themselves.

I mean, there's a great deal of evidence regarding mistreatment of community creators outside the 'hired' group. We know little about the hired group, but we can have sensible concerns based on what we do know - a) Pay and conditions for creatives within GW (talked about at length recently by whistle-blowers whom we have no reason to doubt), b) the vigorous and forceful manner in which GW has always defended its IP.

I think it's ok to have concern for others in this situation, and to advocate for them where they may not be able to. These same creators have given freely to us in the hobby community, have they not?

 Gert wrote:

 Thairne wrote:
White Dwarf backlog? Yeah, they're just squeezing an additional penny out of what they already sold us.

This is actually something I'm very interested in. Sure, I bought the WD that showed off Nagash when the model was released during the End Times but I don't have that WD anymore, nor have I read a WD pre-2010.

What I was stoked about is it looks like these will be PDFs instead of E-pubs, meaning I'll actually be able to read them on a computer. I hope everything they add continues to be PDF- I hate E-Pubs more than my Sisters hate heretics.

 Gert wrote:

BatReps? Free. Everywhere on the net.

Agreed.

While true, there are a few things here that could salvage this for me. First, I've been looking for a series of Batreps that follows a Crusade from 25 PL all the way to 150 PL, emphasizing the story rather than the game play through the narration. The closest I've come is Scared Cast- he does have a handful of Crusade games up featuring his DE, but he did number them or organize them into a coherent playlist, so it's really hard to follow the narrative.

Second, they mentioned that SOME of their Batreps will be historical battles; I would love to see the Slaughter at Sanctuary 101, the Order of Our Martyred Lady's last stand at Armageddon, and I would give my left pinky finger for a huge Age of Apostasy battle with all six matrons of the SoB represented on the table. While the first two are true possibilities which could be represented with current models, the Age of Apostasy is a real long shot because it would require some extensive conversion work.

Essentially, I'm banking on GW's official WH+ batreps being higher quality than what's available on the net for free. I want to see them use the legendary tables that are kept as display pieces at Warhammer World. GW can do that; generally, youtubers can't.

 Gert wrote:

Lore vids? Same.

Lore videos on YT might be free but vary hugely in quality to the point where I generally just stay away from them. Not including certain channels that will remain unnamed, the content varies from excellent and accurate to "I read the 4chan page and made a video =)". Lore videos straight from the source with no unconscious bias or muddled publications? I'm down for that.

Agreed. WH+ has the capacity to provide more detail since they have access to the designers, fluff writers and BL Authors.

A "limited miniature" for 72$ that I have to wait for and pay up front? That's not a good offer, not in modern times. Earlier you could've just walked into a GW store and bought that limited thing. Now its locked behind a pay wall for triple the price.

The way I look at this is to deduct the estimated cost of the model from the cost of the sub. In CAD, I'm likely looking at $100 for the sub for a year. Most Assassins run $43 CAD, but the WH+ Vindicare is such a diorama show stopper that I'd put it on par with a more expensive character- somewhere around $60CAD. That takes my 1 year sub down to $40 CAD. My monthly cost is now less than two extra large coffees at Tim Hortons, and less than a single Starbucks equivalent.

And MANNN do I have plans for that Vindicare: I'm hoping I can separate the Assassin from the statue; I think that will be pretty easy, and it will allow me to use the piece as a whole to represent the Assassin, or use just the Assassin (because moving scenery on the table feels weird) and keep the statue for terrain. It makes an excellent alternative statue for a Battle Sanctum.

The harder conversion work involves incorporating the statue into a building in such a way that the building can be used with or without the statue present, essentially giving me two possible buildings to use on a battlefield. This will be harder than separating the assissin from the statue, I think... But I might have the skill to pull it off.

The final, hardest conversion involves scratch building pieces that can be added to the statue, so that I can field it with or without battle damage. Not sure I can meet the required skill threshold for this, but I am hopeful.

If I manage to get as much versatility from this piece as I plan, honestly, the model would be worth the full $100 cost of the sub on its own. If not, it still reduces the expense of the sub enough that this is a no-brainer for me.

 Gert wrote:

The Painting Masterclass stuff I'm interested in because too many YT tutorials either use non-GW paints (which doesn't help me personally) or do things like "now simply pick up your airbrush", at which point I find a new video to watch.
Overall, I'm going to wait and see with this.

I'm in the same boat. From their previous press, it sounds like they are going to have some vids that are for beginners and some that are for experts, so we'll see how it turns out.

Something that occured to me about the lore videos...even if they add something new, 30min after it airs you will have LoreWarhammerChannels on YT doing videos on that.

PenitentJake wrote:

While true, there are a few things here that could salvage this for me. First, I've been looking for a series of Batreps that follows a Crusade from 25 PL all the way to 150 PL, emphasizing the story rather than the game play through the narration. The closest I've come is Scared Cast- he does have a handful of Crusade games up featuring his DE, but he did number them or organize them into a coherent playlist, so it's really hard to follow the narrative.

Second, they mentioned that SOME of their Batreps will be historical battles; I would love to see the Slaughter at Sanctuary 101, the Order of Our Martyred Lady's last stand at Armageddon, and I would give my left pinky finger for a huge Age of Apostasy battle with all six matrons of the SoB represented on the table. While the first two are true possibilities which could be represented with current models, the Age of Apostasy is a real long shot because it would require some extensive conversion work.

Essentially, I'm banking on GW's official WH+ batreps being higher quality than what's available on the net for free. I want to see them use the legendary tables that are kept as display pieces at Warhammer World. GW can do that; generally, youtubers can't.

That is true and something I didn't think about at the time but did in another thread
Having used some of the fancy tables at WHW, seeing them used in a BatRep would be pretty neet.

Here is the main thing that bothers me:

Will WH+ be essential in order to get stuff for your dudes.

They sort of mentioned you will get priority for events (most people dont care) and exclusive minis.

How long until you will hjave to be the "chosen ones" in order to buy the overpriced rule book/codex for your dudes that becomes invalid within a week, 1 month before everyone else?

Like I dont really care if people want to pay for the app, animations or wot not. Your money do what you want.

But does this not seem like the next "gAme AS sErVicE" business model approach.

The executives of big corporations cant stop themselves from pursuing this concept. Short-term profit boost to detriment of the industry, their fanbase and long term sustainability of the actual business.

We all know how the WH fanbase is. They will buy it if GW decides its "requirered"

So, needless fear mongering for no reason time I guess.

 Argive wrote:
Here is the main thing that bothers me:

Will WH+ be essential in order to get stuff for your dudes.

They sort of mentioned you will get priority for events (most people dont care) and exclusive minis.

How long until you will hjave to be the "chosen ones" in order to buy the overpriced rule book/codex for your dudes that becomes invalid within a week, 1 month before everyone else?

Like I dont really care if people want to pay for the app, animations or wot not. Your money do what you want.

But does this not seem like the next "gAme AS sErVicE" business model approach.

The executives of big corporations cant stop themselves from pursuing this concept. Short-term profit boost to detriment of the industry, their fanbase and long term sustainability of the actual business.

We all know how the WH fanbase is. They will buy it if GW decides its "requirered"

Yeah, if it ever got to that level, I think it would be a bad thing for sure. A limited edition model per year? I think that's okay, probably- especially if a non-limited version of the same model is available- like we're seeing with the Vindicare; yes, a sexy new model does exist and you do have to subscribe to get it, and for a lot of folks, that's gonna suck. But if they want to play a Vindicare, the fact that the limited sculpt is locked behind the subscription, they aren't actually prevented from playing the model because they can always just grab the standard Vindicare.

It always used to bother me that some models were only available at events, for example. Personally, I would rather see a model locked behind a WH+ subscription than locked behind event attendance. It least the WH+ sub is accessible from everywhere in the world. But even those event only models tend to have generic versions readily available so that you aren't prevented from playing the unit if you don't go to the event- you're just prevented from using the exclusive model to represent that unit when you play.

As for your last point, I don't see WH+ as a short term profit boost. I think it's actually a very long-term effort to significantly grow the player base. It allows them to explore the tastes of the player base far more easily than trying to collate sales data from thousands of GW stores, local retailers + online sales. It's a single point of data collection. If 5x as many people watch the Kroot cartoon than the Blood Angels movie, expect your Kroot dex for tenth edition.

What would be worse is if being a subscriber gives you 24 hour access to pre order ltd edition products before everyone else. Imagine how many people wouldn’t have got a copy of indomitus if that was the case

Anyone want to stop making up random nonsense that has no basis in reality?
Seriously, be annoyed at things that are actually there.

 Gert wrote:
Anyone want to stop making up random nonsense that has no basis in reality?
Seriously, be annoyed at things that are actually there.

Fair point