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.

Update: Official statement by the entire team can be found, among others, here:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Warhammer40k/comments/wxmclo/official_notice_from_the_battlescribe_data_team/

First, I think a common misconception in the community needs to be cleared up.
The data most of you love (to loath) is separated from battlescribe the App.
This is for legal reasons, as the Battlescribe app is system agnostic. It can handle all kind of systems, not just 40k, but is absolutely dependant on the data provided by teams of volunteers, of which the largest, naturally, is the 40k data team.
No data author has ever received, nor will receive, a single penny for their work. We're all volunteers. I, myself, work with the data for I think 7 years now, having maintained AdMech, Dark Angels, Custodes and for a short period Imperial Knights.
The entire money you generate by viewing ads or subscriptions goes to the *cough* developer of the battlescribe app.

So far, so good, right?
Well no. The developer of said app simply.. disappeared around 2 years ago. Being part the largest and most important of his customer base, we had close ties with him to ensure that Battlescribe is able to handle the requirements that 40k generates.
Remember the Gathering Storm where you could basically take every unit in every catalogue? We do. The trauma is real to this day That also lead to the way you currently can mesh armies in the same detachments as subdetachments, the introduction of categories into battlescribe etc. etc.
He literally just disappeared from one day to the other. We know as much as everyone as to the how and why... we know him to be at least alive before because he streamed on youtube. We also knew that he was alive and kicking because you can check on the battlescribe company - and see the withdrawn funds from it over the years. Spoilers - he withdrew 120k GBP. None of our hollers, questions, requests and, at times, critical bug reports were ever replied to and are still present to this day. We trod on, making the data work with what tools we had... and I gotta say, at some points the work some of my fellow authors did was nothing short of a miracle. So he essentially was freeriding on us volunteers.

That was the situation until today.
Today, as many of you probably had heard, Apple removed the Battlescribe app from the store, unable to install it.
And lo and behold, suddenly he starts tweeting! As soon as his revenue has been threatened, he reappeared, talking about "researching new technologies". For 2 years and more, without a single word to his most active coworkers (or any other data author as I know of). This is a true slap to the face.
To add insult to injury, some of you may remember that Battlescribe in earlier days was available for a one time purchase before it was switched to subscription based to.. maintain and develop the app. Which has definitely not happenend for the past 2 years, which is the reason, I strongly suspect, that Apple has removed the Abandonware Battlescribe and not as claimed because of an expired credit card.
We'll see if his claims of being back mean more than incrementing the revision and pushing the "new" version of the app, but scepticism is warranted imo.

This is all entirely my opinion, but I am confident that many of my fellow data authors that brought you the data you use for a long, long time now are very angry at the current situation.
Please consider not subscribing to Battlescribe. You're not getting what you pay for. The subscription model, at this stage, is a sham.

Not all is lost however, and this is even less known, but because Battlescribe is closed source and none of us has access to the source code, development has begun almost 2 years now by us data authors and other volunteers to create an open source, system agnostic, multi plattform replacement for battlescribe. It is called Phalanx. It is a HUGE undertaking to emulate an app that has grown considerably over its lifespan, so progress is slow (again, entirely unpaid volunteers) and we're still quite a ways from releasing, but it is there.

Make of this information what you wish. Continue to use and support battlescribe, because we, the data authors, will continue to provide updated data for it and other apps that use our data. Because unlike certain other people, we do not abandon the community we are part of for so long.

Phalanx sounds like a worthy project.

Is Phalanx in any way downloadable and testable? It sounds interesting.

There is a point to the OP, that the creator shouldn't have just left with no warning. I think if they just sent a message of "hey I'm taking a year or two off", literally nobody would've cared because of God's work being done in the first place.

 vim_the_good wrote:
Is Phalanx in any way downloadable and testable? It sounds interesting.

Unfortunately not yet. Like mentioned, creating something like that from scratch is a lot of work.
The phalanx team is on the discord in our sig though. I'm not entirely up to date on the progress or if they are still looking for contributors...

To be fair, there are other tools out there in development, namely Rostizer - that one is in closed beta, but closed source as well. So with the past and current experience, Phalanx is where we put our support behind

@EviscerationPlague
Exactly. I remember defending the Developer in the first few months... multiple things could have happened. Close family member sick or even worse, dead. Depression. Other personal catastrophes. But we were just left without a word and cut off from one day to the other.
If we had KNOWN what was happening, not even with a timeframe, tempers wouldn't be as high as they are. As is, the only other time any signs of life other than YT streams were when the poor joke of DCMA was made in a release title.

If you're pissed off at the developer & want people to abandon his app? Then quit. Don't update anything.

That would punish the entire 40k community though (or at least the rather large part which does use BS), including those apps that work on the data we create.
We dont want to do that for obvious reasons...

 Thairne wrote:
That would punish the entire 40k community though (or at least the rather large part which does use BS), including those apps that work on the data we create.
We dont want to do that for obvious reasons...

Wishing no offense to you guys nor your hard work but you have enabled this person for several years.

As soon as he figured out that he could collect money from doing literally nothing and earn money from someone else's labour, why would he ever lift a finger?

I do not wish to sound harsh, I'm just telling it how it is.

 Thairne wrote:
That would punish the entire 40k community though (or at least the rather large part which does use BS), including those apps that work on the data we create.
We dont want to do that for obvious reasons...

Why not? Why should you be taken advantage of constantly? Don't get me wrong, I think what you do for the community is amazing, but people are always going to take the easy way out if you give them the opportunity to do so.

Phalanx sounds like a worthy project and the 40k community is going to migrate to other options as soon as battlescribe data for 40k is not being updated anymore, which is obviously also going to hurt the creator of battlescribe.

So screw the community. They take your work for granted anyway, make sure to look out for yourself because you and your colleagues do not deserve to be taken advantage of in that way.

I am very grateful for all the work you data developers do. I am sad to hear that you dont get a single penny. Its time to change that. I guess the only way to do that is to stop subscribing and tell the author. I didnt know that the battlescribe author disappeared for two years. If i would have known earlier i wouldnt have renewed my subsciription.

Looking how this has been handled I can´t wait to switch over to Phalanx once it´s available

The author made a statement yesterday - https://www.reddit.com/r/BattleScribe/comments/x2owc1/battlescribe_update/

Hopefully tournament organisers will start taking my pencil and paper list submissions now, where I draw each unit instead of writing it down.

Seriously though, sounds rough man. Wish you all the luck with Phalanx, and let us know if it needs supporting financially.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Just read the author's post, cheers for posting beast. That's rough too, but sounds like it's a good thing for everyone that the situation has come to a head.

EviscerationPlague wrote:
There is a point to the OP, that the creator shouldn't have just left with no warning. I think if they just sent a message of "hey I'm taking a year or two off", literally nobody would've cared because of God's work being done in the first place.

He streams games, the mods asked on his stream many times and he ignored them completely. Its not like he ghosted them bc some some IRL reason, he literally just said "F it, im not even talking to these people when they are in my face".

PS, this is nothing against what you said, just want to make sure people see and know how bad he really was.

 Zewrath wrote:

 Thairne wrote:
That would punish the entire 40k community though (or at least the rather large part which does use BS), including those apps that work on the data we create.
We dont want to do that for obvious reasons...

Wishing no offense to you guys nor your hard work but you have enabled this person for several years.

As soon as he figured out that he could collect money from doing literally nothing and earn money from someone else's labour, why would he ever lift a finger?

I do not wish to sound harsh, I'm just telling it how it is.

While that's true, it would make us the bad guys in the eyes of the uninformed masses. Plus, while data authoring is an aquired taste, it is not THAT hard to reverse engineer and pick up where we left of. The demand is there and if we dont do it, someone else will just pick up the slack.
In the end, nothing would change and we'd be persona non gratas. That's why the phalanx team works on it - to provide a REAL solution to the problem. As long as BS is the only real option, he has a monopoly.

Also, he, so far, has not contacted anyone directly.
Depression is a big larger fether, been there, done that, but honestly - just telling us THAT would've caused a lot of understanding. A single sentence or two... but ghosting and THEN coming out from hiding when your revenue stream is hurt and then playing the psychological illness card...
We're willing to work with him again if he reaches out. But so far, he hasn't.

So I may be misunderstanding the intent behind this. So I want to check the facts.

1. You are creating a "new battlescribe" for lack of a better term, and
2. you want to tell people to STOP giving their money to battlescribe?
3. BS is/would be your direct competitor?

Is that an accurate description of the facts?

I don't understand why you are taking an antagonistic view of this dev. This app is responsible for more people getting into 40k than most things GW has done in the last two editions. Why would you seek to supplant them?

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
This app is responsible for more people getting into 40k than most things GW has done in the last two editions. Why would you seek to supplant them?

The sub money (which I've been paying for several years now) was supposed to be used to update the app. The app has not been updated for the last 2 years. As a result, the app is being removed from the app store, and the app developer suddenly pops up, very upset.

This lack of development has hindered the ability of the people who develop the data modules (the thing that actually supports 40k/AoS) to support their chosen game community.

The indication from this pattern of behavior is that the developer is being disingenuous about their intentions to properly maintain the app.

The typical response to such behavior in a consumer-developer relation is denial of funding.

The suggestion by the OP is not unreasonable.

The app is useless to you without the data support.

 TwinPoleTheory wrote:

The sub money (which I've been paying for several years now) was supposed to be used to update the app.

no, the money was to get rid of ads and be able to save unit favorites

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
This app is responsible for more people getting into 40k than most things GW has done in the last two editions. Why would you seek to supplant them?

Oh, you're serious? You're proposing that it's not the lore, or the models, or the popularity of the system that gets people into 40k? No, it's the burning desire to use BattleScribe. I'd be surprised if BS is responsible for any players getting into 40k, given most people won't have heard of it until after they start playing the game. Who the hell decides to start playing a game because it has a clunky 3rd party army builder?

As for why they want to supplant them...did you read the OP at all? BS is basically abandonware at this point. Sure, maybe the dev will now start putting some work into updating it, but I won't hold my breath. Even if they do, having the app entirely reliant on a single person who we know can just disappear for long stretches, is not a good situation to be in. Having an app that is actively developed and updated by a team of people is a much more preferable situation. Maybe the new app will even fix some of the UI problems BS has.

Slipspace wrote:

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
This app is responsible for more people getting into 40k than most things GW has done in the last two editions. Why would you seek to supplant them?

Oh, you're serious? You're proposing that it's not the lore, or the models, or the popularity of the system that gets people into 40k? No, it's the burning desire to use BattleScribe. I'd be surprised if BS is responsible for any players getting into 40k, given most people won't have heard of it until after they start playing the game. Who the hell decides to start playing a game because it has a clunky 3rd party army builder?

Fezzik (for once) makes total sense.

Without Battlescribe, i never wouldve started playing the game. Building a list manually is just too unconvenient, sure the lore and models make the game interesting but if its a chore to build lists then there is no way i wouldve stuck with the game. Its even worse in 9th since the game got more complex, battlescribe is the best thing for 40k right now (along with wahapedia). without these, its GG for new players

Just because something got you into the hobby doesn't mean that it shouldn't be replaced. It's the army data writers making something new, similar to it.

I would never have gotten into 40k if not for Battlescribe, but it is very easy to tell that it needs updates, even just from my limited pov. If Phalanx is good, why should we stick with Battlescribe? If Battlescribe updates to be better, we can stick with Battlescribe. It's a tool. I feel no loyalty to an app that breaks every other week.

And, again, it's not like they're dropping Battlescribe until Phalanx is made. And even if they were, they're volunteers. I don't see an issue.

But the bs author has abandoned the project. Need for new one is real because as is sooner or later there's no bs. It's on life support to generate creator money without him doing anything.


Sooner or later bs stops work due to os update etc. Author should keep sure it doesn't happen but project been updated.

Money isn't going to somebody who is interested in helping community.

 TheBestBucketHead wrote:
Just because something got you into the hobby doesn't mean that it shouldn't be replaced. It's the army data writers making something new, similar to it.

I would never have gotten into 40k if not for Battlescribe, but it is very easy to tell that it needs updates, even just from my limited pov. If Phalanx is good, why should we stick with Battlescribe? If Battlescribe updates to be better, we can stick with Battlescribe. It's a tool. I feel no loyalty to an app that breaks every other week.

And, again, it's not like they're dropping Battlescribe until Phalanx is made. And even if they were, they're volunteers. I don't see an issue.

i'm not saying it shouldn't be replaced, just that without it (or an equivalent app), the game becomes much less accessible

And that's why there's project to replac it and by people who actually upkeep it

tneva82 wrote:
And that's why there's project to replac it and by people who actually upkeep it

which is fine and i hope it turns out great.

 VladimirHerzog wrote:
no, the money was to get rid of ads and be able to save unit favorites

I'm not sure I want to quibble about this, so I'll generally agree that the feature unlock is sub-gated and leave it at that.

The dataset is what supports 40k, not BattleScribe, which is the platform. If the platform is so unsupported as to make continued support of the dataset untenable isn't that effectively removing support for 40k? It's not like the app developer is going to update the dataset.

The app development and the dataset development unfortunately have to remain separate to prevent GW from getting litigious about revenue. This is of course something that GW could easily solve, but that's another topic.

 VladimirHerzog wrote:

Slipspace wrote:

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
This app is responsible for more people getting into 40k than most things GW has done in the last two editions. Why would you seek to supplant them?

Oh, you're serious? You're proposing that it's not the lore, or the models, or the popularity of the system that gets people into 40k? No, it's the burning desire to use BattleScribe. I'd be surprised if BS is responsible for any players getting into 40k, given most people won't have heard of it until after they start playing the game. Who the hell decides to start playing a game because it has a clunky 3rd party army builder?

Fezzik (for once) makes total sense.

Without Battlescribe, i never wouldve started playing the game. Building a list manually is just too unconvenient, sure the lore and models make the game interesting but if its a chore to build lists then there is no way i wouldve stuck with the game. Its even worse in 9th since the game got more complex, battlescribe is the best thing for 40k right now (along with wahapedia). without these, its GG for new players

LOL no, he doesn't. The implied argument that the data authors on battlescribe (who are the ones who keep the thing going, because nobody would use the app if the data wasn't up to date) somehow have a responsibility towards the community because battlescribe brings new players to the hobby is such horseshite.

As is the argument that they are antagonistic towards battlescribe and want to be a direct competitor....in a sense they are battlescribe, the app is utterly useless without the recent updates from these volunteers and the creator chashes in on their work big time.

feth the community, don't let yourself get exploited no matter how many people try to convince you that you have some sort of responsibility to allocate your precious time for free to update some data so everyone can play more easily. fething ridiculous.

 VladimirHerzog wrote:

Slipspace wrote:

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
This app is responsible for more people getting into 40k than most things GW has done in the last two editions. Why would you seek to supplant them?

Oh, you're serious? You're proposing that it's not the lore, or the models, or the popularity of the system that gets people into 40k? No, it's the burning desire to use BattleScribe. I'd be surprised if BS is responsible for any players getting into 40k, given most people won't have heard of it until after they start playing the game. Who the hell decides to start playing a game because it has a clunky 3rd party army builder?

Fezzik (for once) makes total sense.

Without Battlescribe, i never wouldve started playing the game. Building a list manually is just too unconvenient, sure the lore and models make the game interesting but if its a chore to build lists then there is no way i wouldve stuck with the game. Its even worse in 9th since the game got more complex, battlescribe is the best thing for 40k right now (along with wahapedia). without these, its GG for new players

Start

I get that you believe BS is indispensable to your GW experience, but I strongly disagree that BS is indispensable to the majority of players being able to master list building and play GW games. I certainly didn't get into GW games because of BS, I did not become proficient in GW games because of BS, and I have not stayed engaged in the GW games because of BS. No doubt that BS has been a tool to help automate and assist with error checking (most of the time, as it is not always been 100% accurate), but I and many others are perfectly capable of making lists and playing GW games without BS.

The reality is if BS disappeared today, the hobby would still be there tomorrow just as strong as it is today. I just cannot fathom that people’s engagement in a hobby that requires a significant resource investment (time, MONEY!, passion, etc.) would be balanced on the existence of a list building app. In fact, I would argue THE reason people get engaged and stay engaged is the combination of GW IP and the hobby community and conversely become disengaged when GW mishandles the IP and/or the lack of community.

Close

That said, we really do need to give credit to where credit is due when giving whatever credit we decided is owed to BS and that is the data teams. Sure give credit to the BS author for coming up with a platform that the community through consensus came to support it to the point BS became the almost defacto list building tool, but without the data teams, BS is worthless and it is the data teams that have kept that BS alive. It is also those same data teams that have been working to ensure a sustainable platform outside of GW’s control would exist and inspite of the developer's lack of committment to updating BS.

 Thairne wrote:

 Zewrath wrote:

 Thairne wrote:
That would punish the entire 40k community though (or at least the rather large part which does use BS), including those apps that work on the data we create.
We dont want to do that for obvious reasons...

Wishing no offense to you guys nor your hard work but you have enabled this person for several years.

As soon as he figured out that he could collect money from doing literally nothing and earn money from someone else's labour, why would he ever lift a finger?

I do not wish to sound harsh, I'm just telling it how it is.

While that's true, it would make us the bad guys in the eyes of the uninformed masses. Plus, while data authoring is an aquired taste, it is not THAT hard to reverse engineer and pick up where we left of. The demand is there and if we dont do it, someone else will just pick up the slack.
In the end, nothing would change and we'd be persona non gratas. That's why the phalanx team works on it - to provide a REAL solution to the problem. As long as BS is the only real option, he has a monopoly.

Also, he, so far, has not contacted anyone directly.
Depression is a big larger fether, been there, done that, but honestly - just telling us THAT would've caused a lot of understanding. A single sentence or two... but ghosting and THEN coming out from hiding when your revenue stream is hurt and then playing the psychological illness card...
We're willing to work with him again if he reaches out. But so far, he hasn't.

I am contesting the idea that someone would just pick up the slack if you stopped updating.....yes, in time someone is going to, but that takes time and people are ungrateful and impatient. If the 40k battlescribe data is not up to date for 1 month, people are going to abandon the app.

Also, you guys as perona non gratas?! Anyone who would be pissed at you is a certified donkey cave. You are doing this for free damn it, you don't owe anyone anyhthing here.

Edit: I say let the whole fething thing burn and focus on phalanx. I'd pay for this new app if I knew I'd support the team that has updated the battlescribe data for so long.

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
So I may be misunderstanding the intent behind this. So I want to check the facts.

1. You are creating a "new battlescribe" for lack of a better term, and
2. you want to tell people to STOP giving their money to battlescribe?
3. BS is/would be your direct competitor?

Is that an accurate description of the facts?

I don't understand why you are taking an antagonistic view of this dev.

You are indeed misunderstanding. The only reason there is a new app being made is that Battlescribe was abandoned by the dev who made also made no effort to communicate with the people who made the app useful in the first place.
The dev has been taking the money from the premium app service, hasn't updated the app for about 2 years, and then shows up just as Apple removes the app as abandonware promising to be making some big new changes and updates. The people keeping the app alive (you know the people that are giving you free rules) see none of this money. So the dev gets paid for the work of everyone else who in turn get nothing and also get whinged at if new rules aren't put on the app the second they get released.
Instead of keeping an abandoned app going for free, they've decided to make their own.

This app is responsible for more people getting into 40k than most things GW has done in the last two editions.

Utter nonsense. Literally the most incorrect statement you have ever made.

Why would you seek to supplant them?

Because the app is garbage. Battlescribe isn't some holy object that can never be improved upon or replicated, in fact it's a surprise to me that nobody has done anything sooner considering how bad the app is.