GW's IP and buying other peoples work

[Valkyrion]

Apologies for the clunky title, but the recent underwhelming to dang awful HH upgrades got me to thinking - why don't GW buy these; https://www.shapeways.com/product/RWCL4ACES/nl-heads-skull-beakies?optionId=215157377&li=shops from the guys who make them? I don't mean just buy the heads, but buy the rights to the heads. 

 

They are better than what GW have produced and the work has already been completed. 

There's loads of examples of 3d printed works out there, so why don't GW commission or outright buy better designed ideas that they can better build - 3d printed plastic is fine and all, but in my experience it's not as good as GW plastic or FW resin.

 

I'm coming from a place of complete ignorance, so I'm not trying to stoke any fires or whatever, I'm just genuinely curious - people out there have already made the stuff that GW is laboriously churning out, so why not just buy them outright thereby presumably saving time, effort and money doing their own designing?

[Mechanicus Tech-Support]

Well it could be that GW sees all this as them stealing their IP (court rulings aside) and making a product with it, so why would they buy from thieves? 

Not that I agree with the above statement but its an idea.

[Slave to Darkness]

GW admitting someone sculpts better than them when they claim to make the best minis on the planet?? 

[The Yncarne]

If you find third party work superior, why not just buy while you can? 

[Slave to Darkness]

28 minutes ago, The Yncarne said:

If you find third party work superior, why not just buy while you can? 

Some people only get to game in a GW store, gotta be official and all that.

[Valkyrion]

38 minutes ago, The Yncarne said:

If you find third party work superior, why not just buy while you can? 

 

I find the designs superior, but I'm not a big fan of 3d plastic and would much rather have GW plastic or FW resin.

 

 

 

[The Yncarne]

1 hour ago, Valkyrion said:

 

I find the designs superior, but I'm not a big fan of 3d plastic and would much rather have GW plastic or FW resin.

 

 

 

in my experience with third party prints like the link you provided, there’s no difference once painted.

[MARK0SIAN]

If they know they wanted upgrades for certain things like all the heresy legions it’s probably not a good plan for GW to just wait and see what the market comes up with then buy the rights to that. You can’t make any serious long term plan for release windows if you’re at the whim of when, or even IF, some random fan makes a design you like. 
 

This would also encourage people to make and design their own bits rather than buy GWs ones which is definitely not what they want.

Edited October 27, 2022 by MARK0SIAN

[phandaal]

GW got hit during the Chapterhouse lawsuit because of something like what you are suggesting. This is lesser-known than the "no model means no copyright, generic name means no copyright" thing that caused GW to really go berserk after the case.

 

It turned out that GW actually never got the rights to some of their design elements from the people who created them. They were created by freelancers, GW had not properly claimed ownership of the work product, and Chapterhouse figured that out. Obviously that was bad news for GW.

 

So they probably could go out and buy the rights to a 3rd party design, but no doubt anyone who suggests using anything not created in-house is now burned at the stake at GW HQ.

[Mechanicus Tech-Support]

30 minutes ago, phandaal said:

GW got hit during the Chapterhouse lawsuit because of something like what you are suggesting. This is lesser-known than the "no model means no copyright, generic name means no copyright" thing that caused GW to really go berserk after the case.

 

It turned out that GW actually never got the rights to some of their design elements from the people who created them. They were created by freelancers, GW had not properly claimed ownership of the work product, and Chapterhouse figured that out. Obviously that was bad news for GW.

 

So they probably could go out and buy the rights to a 3rd party design, but no doubt anyone who suggests using anything not created in-house is now burned at the stake at GW HQ.

Rip Malal 

[Robbienw]

Some of the helmet sets have actually been really good.  The Dark Angels helmets in particular are superb.

[Rik Lightstar]

At least in part I suspect that their attitude includes a thought process along the lines of "if we encourage people by buying a design from them then we're encouraging others to make designs too and increase the third party market". 

 

Also, as Mechanicus Tech Support mentioned they probably also believe that the ideas are "stolen" from them. 

 

Rik

[Noserenda]

Arrogance mostly, and i suspect the legal issues Phandaal mentioned. I definitely got the impression from some in the company waaaaay back before the Chapterhouse thing when it was a fairly small but growing industry that it was seen as inferior "knock offs" even when it was filling holes in their ranges like Pre heresy gear. 

Obviously some of that attitude changed, at least regarding formerly obscure time periods :D 

[tychobi]

I suspect their process would not jive with such a move.  At the moment I understand the process is art-models-fluff-rules.  Models that fall outside of this process might have trouble sliding into the system.  Pity.  They would be much better served growth wise to support the fan made community but GW is publicly traded and the lawyers have the final say. 

[Domhnall]

I think one of the simplest answers to this is, they don't need to.

 

Taking this example, they now have their own Night Lord helmets, so no need to licence out to somebody else. Who makes the best helmet designs is entirely subjective (for the record, I do really quite like the ones you linked), so doesn't really come into it. 

 

There is also the issue of a whole new legal bag of grots that opens when you start licencing out for designs, or just straight up buying the rights. It's also probably cheaper just to design your own in house as you're paying for the designers wages anyway, especially for how much money these upgrade kits (for example) are actually going to make.* Probably the best thing that would happen is that GW would offer you a job to work for them, but even that may be a long shot (they did do that for some of the animators, but that's a different topic not for here).

 

Again for the record, I have bought 3rd party figures because I liked them better than the official GW ones (my recent Striking Scorpion in gallery is one of them), so I'm not defending GW or trying to say people shouldn't have the choice to buy 3rd party. 

 

* - It would be interesting to hear from 3rd party producers, on how much their kits/figures actually make them as a set; for example, how much would that helmet set make in a given year.

[gideon stargreave]

It's an interesting topic. To be honest, I didn't know that GW don't allow 3rd party upgrades on site. Do they come round and check your shoulder pads? I mean, 3rd party tau look like 3rd party tau or whatever, but 3rd party heads? I've got 3 decades worth of minis and my collection, chopped up in various ways, and I doubt there's a single employee who could recognise them all. That said, I'm an old grognard who remmebers when white dwarf would showcase conversions made with 3rd party bits

[Domhnall]

55 minutes ago, gideon stargreave said:

It's an interesting topic. To be honest, I didn't know that GW don't allow 3rd party upgrades on site. Do they come round and check your shoulder pads? I mean, 3rd party tau look like 3rd party tau or whatever, but 3rd party heads? I've got 3 decades worth of minis and my collection, chopped up in various ways, and I doubt there's a single employee who could recognise them all. That said, I'm an old grognard who remmebers when white dwarf would showcase conversions made with 3rd party bits

 

Yeah, it's an interesting topic that has been spoken of before, and generally ends up locking the thread with multiple deleted posts and members a tad irritated with each other... 

So probably best we don't open that particular box of frogs just now. 

[Pacific81]

From memory there were some rather surreptitious attempts by GW to claim ownership of artwork that was produced by freelancers back in the 80s and early 90s, back when they used to commission art pieces.

 

I think it was one of those things that shouldn't have been a problem but theb wasn't handled very cleverly and ended up putting people's backs up. Possibly related to Gary Chalk(?), but might be why the likes of Les Edwards still have 'GW' art for sale via their own stores.

 

Not an issue now I assume as I couldn't tell you a single artist that works for them, everything is GW design studio, and I can't remember the last time I saw an artist's signature on a piece. I guess they probably all sign agreements to that effect.

[Mechanicus Tech-Support]

5 hours ago, gideon stargreave said:

It's an interesting topic. To be honest, I didn't know that GW don't allow 3rd party upgrades on site. Do they come round and check your shoulder pads? I mean, 3rd party tau look like 3rd party tau or whatever, but 3rd party heads? I've got 3 decades worth of minis and my collection, chopped up in various ways, and I doubt there's a single employee who could recognise them all. That said, I'm an old grognard who remmebers when white dwarf would showcase conversions made with 3rd party bits

I would think it would depend on your store, I know my local gw allows about a 65/35 split between gw and custom bits (usually pads, helmets etc), but this was a GW that was letting and supporting an older customer run a mordhiem campaign like 6 years ago. So I guess ymmv 

[phandaal]

33 minutes ago, Pacific81 said:

Not an issue now I assume as I couldn't tell you a single artist that works for them, everything is GW design studio, and I can't remember the last time I saw an artist's signature on a piece. I guess they probably all sign agreements to that effect.

 

Some people have speculated that their past ownership issues may be why we never see artists or writers credited outside of Black Library books, more than any desire to protect their artists from community negativity.

[Pacific81]

Yes I would say almost certainly.

 

[WrathOfTheLion]

1 hour ago, Mechanicus Tech-Support said:

I would think it would depend on your store, I know my local gw allows about a 65/35 split between gw and custom bits (usually pads, helmets etc), but this was a GW that was letting and supporting an older customer run a mordhiem campaign like 6 years ago. So I guess ymmv 

It's going to depend on how obvious it looks, and how careless they are. They can scoot under the radar pretty easily, but it's when it gets to publications, that is where they might get in trouble. Images on social media accounts, etc.

[Marshal Mittens]

Red Warden Miniatures makes great stuff.

 

Archie over at Archies Forge in the UK has a license to print a lot of the stuff, and I personally like it a lot more than the shapeways quality. 

 

But yes, GW should higher Red Warden Miniatures to design them stuff. 

[WARMASTER_]

On 10/27/2022 at 5:44 PM, Valkyrion said:

Apologies for the clunky title, but the recent underwhelming to dang awful HH upgrades got me to thinking - why don't GW buy these; https://www.shapeways.com/product/RWCL4ACES/nl-heads-skull-beakies?optionId=215157377&li=shops from the guys who make them? I don't mean just buy the heads, but buy the rights to the heads. 

 

They are better than what GW have produced and the work has already been completed. 

There's loads of examples of 3d printed works out there, so why don't GW commission or outright buy better designed ideas that they can better build - 3d printed plastic is fine and all, but in my experience it's not as good as GW plastic or FW resin.

 

I'm coming from a place of complete ignorance, so I'm not trying to stoke any fires or whatever, I'm just genuinely curious - people out there have already made the stuff that GW is laboriously churning out, so why not just buy them outright thereby presumably saving time, effort and money doing their own designing?

Not only is it because they’d be buying what they rightly see as theft I also honestly just think it’s because these are low poly count copies, and while you might prefer the design they’re nowhere near the quality it terms of detail compared to the GW ones 

 

Thats not a knock on your taste by the way I'm just saying in terms of model quality not looks/style 

[sarabando]

3 hours ago, WARMASTER_ said:

Not only is it because they’d be buying what they rightly see as theft I also honestly just think it’s because these are low poly count copies, and while you might prefer the design they’re nowhere near the quality it terms of detail compared to the GW ones 

 

Thats not a knock on your taste by the way I'm just saying in terms of model quality not looks/style 

its not theft in any way shape or form. GW doesnt own the shape of a helmet this has been proven in court, its why they have started naming things so ...uniquely. And bashing Redwarden minis as low detail is laughable they are rightly regarded as one of the best quality 3d parts providers in the community. I have several of their pieces and even on my 1st generation printer you would be hard pushed to ID them unless getting very close.