Intellectual property guidelines updated

[Joe]

Speaking from personal experience - not every company will tolerate the "made for etc". I know Warlord are quite tetchy about it with Bolt Action given it's their own system, and Gripping Beast / Studio Tomahawk can be equally tetchy about SAGA given the former hold the license for producing "SAGA" miniatures exclusively. "Can be used with" is more common, as it doesn't necessarily earn you a slap half the time. And these are both privately owned companies.

 

At the end of the day, no company wants you using another companies miniatures for their games - be they public or privately owned. It's just bad business. Some have simply accepted that they don't have the brand space / market for it to be regarded as an acceptable demand.

[Raktra]

PP barely even accept conversions using their own parts never mind outside productions.

[Bung]

Speaking from personal experience - not every company will tolerate the "made for etc". I know Warlord are quite tetchy about it with Bolt Action given it's their own system, and Gripping Beast / Studio Tomahawk can be equally tetchy about SAGA given the former hold the license for producing "SAGA" miniatures exclusively. "Can be used with" is more common, as it doesn't necessarily earn you a slap half the time. And these are both privately owned companies.

 

At the end of the day, no company wants you using another companies miniatures for their games - be they public or privately owned. It's just bad business. Some have simply accepted that they don't have the brand space / market for it to be regarded as an acceptable demand.

 

I was talking about bits like shoulderpads or Space Marine legs not whole miniatures.

There is nothing a company like GW or any other one producing miniatures could do against someone providing miniature parts to be used with any of their miniatures.

 

Sure they wont want someone playing at their premisses, tourney etc, with miniatures from other companies. But they can only do something where they have some rights being their game stores or their organised events.

 

Most independant FLGS wont care. i even know a GW store that wouldnt care as lang as aanyone would be willing to play at the store to attract more customers (a better independent FLGS is just right around the corner).

[Redcomet]

Unpopular opinion here - I think Alfa was looking for an easy out and he got it with this. The later episodes (in muh opinion) were very forced and you could tell he was slowing down.

 

Alfa saves face with this for his next projects and manages to keep all of his old fans in the process.

 

 

There will be little financial backlash from the community that cares (let’s be honest, a good 80% of us 3D print, recast, or use patreons instead of buying GW), GW will remain aloof and intractable as they always have been, and in 2 years, fans will be making more fan crap on their favorite medium of choice.

 

I hate sounding apathetic or cynical about it all, and guys usually id be barking up and down about GW pulling this, but it really doesn’t matter :shrug:

The community that cares is a small percentage of Gw customers. Most people aren’t on twitter, reddit or forums, so don’t get caught up in nerd rage. The people who claim to be the “community”, are a small lot of people in the grand scheme of things.

[Kastor Krieg]

PP barely even accept conversions using their own parts never mind outside productions.

They are somewhat of a jerk company though.

[Raktra]

 

 

PP barely even accept conversions using their own parts never mind outside productions.

They are somewhat of a jerk company though.

Oh trust me, I know. Bastards fired all of us Press Gangers without notice.

[techsoldaten]

I mean, one possible angle GW could do instead of going against the grain is actually harness the power of these companies that print stuff. Not sure how the legal side works with it but wouldn't it be easy for GW to have a look at these companies, go through their products and what they produce and the final quality of them, then select some companies to reach out to with a simple offer:

 

"Hey, that's kind of cool and we notice you are doing something that people want but we can't offer because making a mould for that would be far to expensive. Tell you what, what if we give you a special license for thus; you get to use our special IP designs to create things we don't like shoulder pads with special icons on them, you get to sell them with the actual name they are for however we get a cut of the profit. Also if we get reports of dipping quality we come knocking and the license will be in dispute for faulty quality"

 

BOOM, suddenly you have made a positive move within the community. You also don't stop them making their own things, you just work with them. Those companies get the benefit of using GW IP, GW are getting a cut with no investment needed and people get product they want. GW can even take a back-seat on certain things like shoulder pad stuff, instead reaching out to these 3D printing companies to help cover these far more niche markets.

 

I feel like I am repeating myself...like serious deja vu...including seeing commisar Necros avatar in that position...the warp is a strange and fickle means of communication.

 

The problem with that approach is third party printers compete with their core line of business. The moment players figure out they can get their models for 20% of the price of NOS, the bottom falls out.

 

3D printing has come a long way, consumer-grade resin printers capable of high quality prints are cheap, easy to use and readily available. GW is aware of this fact, they've discussed it in annual reports. Heck, even the high-end, industrial grade printers are becoming more affordable, with a little tooling they could be put to work printing entire armies in one go.

 

The hard part, of course, is creating the 3D models. It's not hard to download a model that already exists, customizing / posing / personalizing that piece is another matter. Resin is fragile and doesn't like being clipped / sanded / drilled the way you can with styrene. Plus that takes time, the whole point of 3D printing is to accelerate the production of pieces.

 

My take is GW will incrementally embrace 3D printing, probably starting on the software side. The opportunity is probably with a web application that lets you easily create characters with the appropriate iconography / weapons options, posed to taste. Success there could lead a lot of directions.

 

But who knows. The state of the world has me feeling no assumption is safe.

[Rik Lightstar]

At the moment the biggest issues with domestic 3d printing are actually pretty big ones when it comes to printing an army.

 

1) Space, 3d printers need a space they can be set up in and while they're not huge they still need worktop space for all of the time they're running. So unless you live alone, have space in your garage/shed or have a dedicated hobby room this can be an issue for printing in any kind of volume.

 

2) Ventilation, follows directly on from space really, most of the resins have a pretty strong smell, if you're doing the printing within your home and there's other people living there then they probably won't appreciate the constant "aroma" of a resin printer.

 

3) Noise, they're not loud, but they're a long way from silent and you're probably not going to want it running overnight very often.

 

4) Time, the thing that really compounds all of these is how long a print takes. For a 5 man squad of Marines with weapon options, separate heads and arms and all the other things you'll want from a "kit" then I'm probably looking at running the printer twice at around 2-4 hours for each. A vehicle is often going to be three to five print cycles each more like 4-6 hours.

 

In the ideal situation of having it at home in my garage and able to run over night, I could start a print in the morning before I go to work, another when I get home, and one before bed. So a 5 man squad with a transport would take me 2 week days to produce. You might get an extra print out of your weekend days.

 

But this assumes there are no other commitments in your life and no failed prints and doesn't account for any clean up time, maintenance, time setting up your prints on your slicer of choice.

 

My 3d printer is a fantastic bit of supplementary hobby kit, and let's me get things like shoulder pads for all my guys or some variety in the weapons to make things stand out. But unless I had a couple of them then I'd not even bother trying to print an entire army.

 

My time has a value to me too, and there's a point where I decide that getting a full squad of 10 guys delivered next day for (approximately) £35 is worth more to me than losing a bunch of my free time.

 

Rik

[Commisar Necros]

454 has a good idea there I think, GW licensees the holy heck out of their IP for video games, why not make the people making 3rd party miniatures partners. GW can get some money from a license, the makers can lose the threat of GW lawsuits and get more options, and we will probably get more and hopefully cheaper miniatures as more companies make them. Bung is right in that the companies need something, and licenses are cheaper than lawyers. GW should make money while they can with miniatures. I have a mars 2 pro, so my experience may be a little different than Rik's, but ones it was dialed in it only took about 5 hours to print a 10 man assault intercessor squad and 9 for a styges destroyer. A huge caveat to this, that was a single piece. It took 20 hours and 4 prints to make a lightning fighter, its hard to get an average. Its feasible to print a whole army over a couple weekends is the main point and it wont be long til its cheap and easy enough for anyone who likes converting to get one of these. I defiantly hear the argument though about how brittle and final it is. You cant even easily drill a hole in it for pinning without it cracking, let alone try and convert it. I love hacking these plastic guys apart and GW's plastic is amazing for that. I just want a compromise so we can all play without side eye and model checks for anything but WYSIWYG.

[Gederas]

Unpopular opinion here - I think Alfa was looking for an easy out and he got it with this. The later episodes (in muh opinion) were very forced and you could tell he was slowing down.

 

Alfa saves face with this for his next projects and manages to keep all of his old fans in the process.

Honestly... I feel this might be actually correct. Alfabusa was taking far, far longer than it takes for one to make an episode, even with animations like that. Like, yeah. If he was making videos like Astartes, then the time makes sense.

 

But the simple animations in TTS do not take long to make. I made similar when I was in college for video game development/design, and something like one of Alfabusa's 30-minute episodes would have took me about three hours to animate. The hard part would be the audio, but even then.... One of his long episodes would take me, someone who's not skilled in that at all, probably three days max?

Edited August 15, 2021 by Gederas

[phandaal]

Midwinter Minis got his YouTube channel copyright struck by GW for his review of Warhammer+.

 

Meanwhile, GW is hiring more people for their copyright claims team.

 

Seems like there's might actually be something to people's concerns after all.

[Focslain]

Midwinter Minis got his YouTube channel copyright struck by GW for his review of Warhammer+.

 

Meanwhile, GW is hiring more people for their copyright claims team.

 

Seems like there's might actually be something to people's concerns after all.

 

He might have shown more of the shows then permitted. Generally reviews on youtube only use trailer or PV footage. Stuff that the studio has already posted so the creator can claim Fair Use. 

 

Also with GW being new to this they might be over-zealous. Best for him to dispute the strike via Fair Use as it is a review, worst case he have to edit out the extra footage and just loop what he is allowed with his vocal track. I'd have to see the vid to make a better assessment. 

[Joe]

Midwinter's copyright strike is an odd one - it came near enough instantly after the video was published, which would indicate an automated process (i.e. a strike bot). To top it off, had it actually been a full fledged copyright strike and not a Content ID claim his video would have been de-listed / deleted as well, per Youtube's own guidance on the subject. Given the platform has had serious issues with strike bots for years now (including bots claiming Youtube's own, free-to-use background music) I wouldn't be surprised if that was the cause.

 

That said, the Infringement position is a pretty standard affair - and one people should have seen coming a long time ago. Comparable positions exist at other major companies (i.e. Hasbro, Disney, etc), and it was only a matter of time before Games Workshop started chasing down recasting and perceived infringement a bit more directly. My only minor quibble with that position is, at a guess, it's a role that could be performed from home, whereas they seem dead set on making it office-based.

 

Regardless, GW will hit a wall eventually and we'll see a bounce back. There's only so far they can march on this road before they encounter the same issues that far larger companies have.

[phandaal]

My only minor quibble with that position is, at a guess, it's a role that could be performed from home, whereas they seem dead set on making it office-based.

 

 

Ha, lots of roles like that nowadays. Companies are having a hard time time understanding how the last 18 months has proven the work-from-home model.

[Joe]

 

Ha, lots of roles like that nowadays. Companies are having a hard time time understanding how the last 18 months has proven the work-from-home model.

 

It's definitely an odd one, as they've advertised quite a few work-from-home positions as well over the last year - and are still posting them up semi-frequently at the moment. I assume there's more to the position that'd require close proximity to Lenton Road.

[Marshal Rohr]

Midwinter Minis got his YouTube channel copyright struck by GW for his review of Warhammer+.

 

Meanwhile, GW is hiring more people for their copyright claims team.

 

Seems like there's might actually be something to people's concerns after all.

He kinda picked that fight with his public breakup then ‘how to get recasts’ video

[Kastor Krieg]

 

Midwinter Minis got his YouTube channel copyright struck by GW for his review of Warhammer+.

 

Meanwhile, GW is hiring more people for their copyright claims team.

 

Seems like there's might actually be something to people's concerns after all.

He kinda picked that fight with his public breakup then ‘how to get recasts’ video

And that somehow removes his rights? Like "fair use", for example?

[Marshal Rohr]

He’s welcome to file a lawsuit and have his rights enforced. Edited September 3, 2021 by Marshal Rohr

[Dark Shepherd]

Not saying its necessarily happening here but wouldnt put it past some people to wilffully or otherwise feign ignorance over bots v human copyright claims, or even deliberately put stuff up knowing it will be taken down, so they can attract sympathy (and views and subscribers)

[Redcomet]

Midwinter Minis got his YouTube channel copyright struck by GW for his review of Warhammer+.

 

Meanwhile, GW is hiring more people for their copyright claims team.

 

Seems like there's might actually be something to people's concerns after all.

90% chance that it is YouTubes automated systems that has flagged him. I highly doubt GW has staff that go through every single YouTube channel and video

[Redcomet]

Not saying its necessarily happening here but wouldnt put it past some people to wilffully or otherwise feign ignorance over bots v human copyright claims, or even deliberately put stuff up knowing it will be taken down, so they can attract sympathy (and views and subscribers)

Negativity and drama are huge revenue makers on YouTube, so I am leaning in this direction. And videos get flagged for the oddest reason by YouTube, so suddenly complaining like GW is the Worst Company in the World just seems dumb to me.

[RWJP]

I'm not a fan of linking to Grimdank normally, but Guy posted an update there earlier which seems to imply this was actually a manual claim by GW, not an automated claim.

Here's the link: https://www.reddit.com/r/Grimdank/comments/ph22jz/hello_guy_here_it_wasnt_automatically_flagged_by/

For those who prefer not to visit, here's the image he posted:

 

The interesting thing to note is that the section that was identified is the section where he is talking about the Battlereports, and actually generally praising their quality.

[Noserenda]

Ooof manually abusing the system s a much, much worse look for GW, especially on someone who's review was fairly positive i think. (His main concerns being lack of content right now)

[Matcap86]

Another update. Midwinter mini's has been contacted by GW that it was an erroneous flag and it's been cleared.

[Dark Shepherd]

This is one bumpy ride through the warp