Why Games Workshop Don't Credit Artists (and it's NOT why you think)
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 19 ก.ย. 2022
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naturally GW are terrified of having their stuff stolen - they worked very hard to steal that stuff in the first place.
British...
James Acaster: "we're still lookin at em!"
Like the British museum, but plastic...
Right!? I am honestly so shocked at the amount of stuff they've actually stolen, I don't think they've ever had an original idea!
Thing is in the 80s everyone was stealing from everyone in the UK and everyone kinda just ran with it, like alot of comics rpgs and table top games shamlessly borrowed from eachother.
I have been saying for more than a decade that GW's treatment of it's staff is far far worse than how it treats it's customers. As a rule, if a company treats it's customers like crap, they also treat their employees the same way.
One of the things I love about Reaper Miniatures, and Northstar Military Figures is that they promote the sculptors they work with. This is good for everyone! For example, if you hire Bobby Jackson to sculpt something I will buy it.
GW fears nothing more than employee recognition
@@BonusHole I would say more like the nids. The hive mind being the shareholders. Not even the imperium is as cold to it's subjects as GW are with the staff.
@@BonusHole GW are the Drukhari - they feed off their captive's/employees pain
I suffered from the same working for marvel
GW: You want to be an artist for our company Bill?
Bill the Artist: Yeah I love 40k
GW: Good you will not be called Bill no more! Say with me, We are Games Workshop. Lower your emotions and surrender your individuality. We will add your art and sculpture distinctiveness to our own.
And then they agree and get paid for it.
@@Monly it's standard UK copyright law, has been since 1988, GW owns the art they pay you for by default if you are under contract to produce it
Not only are Magic the Gathering players not accustomed to artists getting thrown under the bus, there are official set mechanics tied to card artists (in a joke set, but an official product all the same) and the center of at least a couple of interesting fan formats. The GW design studio cards are probably going to have to be banned from interacting with these mechanics / formats because it's too broad of a credit
Watch the cards come out super broken just like new codex’s. Pay 1 mana to tap and get 3 mana plus destroy all opponents land cards
My fave GW employee that they actually credit is Gorthor Brown. After the departure of blessed Duncan Rhodes she took the mantle and became the premiere paint guide.
The Perry Brothers were always fabulous 👌
Gorthor Brown seems to be a paint name? Though I checked some new Warhammer paint tutorials and they seem to be employing women now, where it used to be just Duncan and Peachy. A welcome development, let's give them that :)
Ok so if that's the name they're giving you, they aren't crediting her. Gorthor Brown is a type of paint they sell. And if it's the painter I think you're talking about, they NEVER tell us her name on the Facebook tutorials they post
@@kamerionsmith4551 that's the joke
I really started to notice this when I subscribed the Loot Studio and noticed that on every monthly release video they would take the time to credit each sculpture's artist by name. There is no reason for not crediting artists. I mean, there are gross capitalist reasons, but no good reasons.
Not even capitalist reasons. It's more about ego.
@@thedabblingwarlock is this a women or man?
Because this totally wouldn't happen under a socialist government...
Why would GW stop crediting their artists entirely instead of just inserting into their contracts a specific clause stating that all content created by that artist is copyrighted by GW? That seems like the much easier option, and still allows their artists to gain recognition. It's not a bad thing for GW to have famous artists creating their artwork - that's just smart brand-awareness strategy!
It's hard to overstate the number that Chapterhouse did on the psychology of Games Workshop. It still has massive reverberations even to this day. Absolutely everything changes, and the core beliefs of plenty of GW's higher ups were completely shattered. I think it's likely that GW do have such clauses (and did before Chapterhouse), but that it nevertheless leaves them vulnerable to questioning in a courtroom. The obfuscation insulates the brand from questions of who made what.
@@DiscourseMinis Additionally, you have to consider, someone might start a kickstarter or indie gogo based off their work for GW to work on a new IP, creating competition.
That being said, yeah, I agree. The Chapterhouse case seems to be when everything changed.
@@DarkKnightCuron once there was peace on the tabletop. until the chapterhouse nation attacked.
You are correct. It IS dumb. Plenty of other corporations have already been doing exactly this for years. It's why the estates of Siegal and Schuster worked so hard in court to get acknowledged as the creators of Superman (the men themselves, not the estates obviously).
But then again, nobody ever said corporations were staffed by competent people who make rational decisions. Quite the opposite is true, in fact. Capitalists are frequently very bad at capitalism, as it turns out. It's why they cheat so much.
@@DiscourseMinis Yeah, keeping everything in the dark also makes it harder for anyone to bring things to court. If something isn't public knowledge, or even is very hard to learn, it cannot easily be used against them.
They had copyright problems in the late 90's whith the chaos god Malal, which is why he dissapeared and came back about 25 years later as Malice.
For the sculpts of minis, Darren Latham (who had to pull the 'masterclass' videos from his YT channel, because WH+ was coming) regularly posts about sculpts he did for GW on his instagram - he also often posts the artwork that inspired the sculpt and the name of the artist who created it.
Sharing this. Thanks for putting in the investigative work. Truly a boon to the community.
thank you!!
It really makes you wonder what kind of creative types would be so desperate for a job they would work for a company that won't actually help them build their career? If your career is based on your portfolio and all your work is uncredited, where are you supposed to go with that?
It's an incredibly competitive market. Most don't have the luxury of turning down jobs
@@DiscourseMinis But then they'll be stuck working twice as hard at their craft. First for their job and then second to produce independent work for their future portfolio since they probably can't use any of their GW work. Otherwise if they ever lose their job they won't have much to show in future interviews.
If you're working as a full time employee rather than on commission your career wouldn't usually be based on your portfolio - you can still point to the fact you worked for GW for X years as an artist to any prospective new employers. Even if you were freelancing, the fact a company employed you full time as an artist is still somewhat impressive to prospective clients (possibly moreso; it does after all give you plausible deniability), it just means you'd need different portfolio pieces to show them, which isn't necessarily a bad thing given GW's style doesn't exactly have wide appeal.
My guess before watching the video is And as a gamer who remembers the early 2000s/ 2010s like it was 2021....
1) GW don't want future competition (you know warlord games and mantic)..
2) GW crediting everything under the brand, strengthens the parasocial relationship they want to exploit in their customer's.
3) likely a fallout of copyright issues because of the chapterhouse lawsuit (they started to change all the factions names around the same time because of copy right for example).
Let's see how close I am...
Donald duck.... I DIDN'T NEED TO SEE THAT
we all needed to see that
I am looking so much forwards to the chapter House video
Thank you so much for diving into this
Your point on GW controlling creativies reminds me of Northern Exile talking about "never write for GW" because it's basically impossible to get in if you know someone and you will get paid worse than just publishing a non-gw sci-fi book
Was wanting to write for them and told my work was good, but they wanted to not have so much detail because they wanted the readers to imagine their own world. That's what Gav Thorpe told me at least way back when when they actually had a functional fantasy book section at Black Library. That and all my characters would be theirs. Yea no thanks to that. So now I do my own art and my own stories. I'm not making GW level money, but at least my art is my art and not watered down generic characters.
@@sieglindeeilserv8799 I would happily write a short story on my homebrew chapter but yeah, it would never fly with them, me thinks
@@sieglindeeilserv8799 integrity: sometimes frustrating, always worth it.
Isn't GW level money just minimum wage?
@@bencoulbrook1290 no idea the exact number for a writer. For the store, it’s like a fraction above minimum
Remember “GW is bearing the brunt of the cost of living increase” - posts record profits
I found it super interesting to see the avatar of khaine sculpts over time.
Sculptors named individually until recently!
Fantastic work Discourse!
Thank you for all your efforts in putting this together.
They also don't credit artists on Warhammer+ I found it very strange as I like to look up voice actors and see their body of work.
One of your best videos for sure, love this digging-around research
This is honestly fascinating! If a day does come that you put out a published history, that will be a great day indeed!
Hey Discourse! Great video, can't wait for the Chapterhouse deep dive! Quick question, do you happen to know how many of the 90 miniatures GW dropped from the suit got redesigned after that? Or if the originals continued to be sold after that? Love your work, have a great week!
Great work! Please keep it up.
But why wouldn’t GW just make sure their contracts included transfer of copyright?
They likely do (I've heard very unkind things about what Games Workshop ask freelance creatives to sign away), but this further insulates the company.
I'm at 15 minutes in and this video feels like a mystery detective show. I'm hooked. I NEED to know the answer!
* 1 minute later*
omfg what a plot twist
Another example that can be used against GW is the Superman trial with DC, the creators were freelancers but they won the rights back for Superman and the Schuster family gets paid forever now
Really good video, very good investigation, and you made some really good points in there.
Thanks Praetor!!
You went deep in this one... awesome analysis...
... my mind is totally blown...
This is easily your best video. So awesome seeing you continue to do great work.
Not to mention the fact that you're right about how badly GW is treating creatives.
Thank you so much Paladin! I REALLY appreciate that, it means a lot
@@DiscourseMinis I'd been playing 40k for 20 years when the decision came down and thought I knew everything about everything. I've worked with GW employees, and ex-GW employees who started companies, and think of myself as fairly knowledgeable.
Your insights into this case were like a whole new level... even for someone like me...
@@DiscourseMinisso as a New World attorney, I'm much less knowledgeable about UK procedural law. Is there no business record or statement against interest exception in UK hearsay law? I feel as a State's based litigator, the discovery process and hearsay exceptions would end-run around this silliness?
Especially given that the business practice had already been uncovered in a prior suit. Federal judges are a cognitively miserly lot, who punish litigants for thinly veiled shenaniganry.
Great bit of reasoning here, I think you nailed it. The proof positive would be to look at a contract for a Sculptor and see if they demand the copyright of the product.
I love that Magic cards have the illustrator on them. Anson Maddocks was my jam back in the 90s (especially his awesome Vampire: the Masquerade cards (back when it was called Jyhad)) and I still remember his name to this very day. I know that creatives getting 'paid in exposure' is kind of cliche, but to remember a name and pieces of art 25 years later is pretty powerful. Even though I've rid myself of almost all of my old cards, I kept a small number of them just for the art.
Super nice guy in person too. I and a few friends got to hang out with him and Mark Tedin when they were touring after the Jyhad release and since we had several game stores in town we ended up hanging with them for the time they were in the different shops over the course of 2 or 3 days and they couldn't have been nicer. They both drew pictures on my card boxes and wouldn't take payment.
Exposure is nothing to sneeze at, & frankly certain folks are giving young creators bad advice that it doesn't matter at all. Especially in an age where it is absolutely viable to go independent with your own youtube channel, kickstarter, etc.
The problem is folks dealing in absolutes... Yes, being paid in exposure is a chump deal, you can't eat on name recognition alone. But you also can't go independent or ask for higher commission rates unless people know who the hell you are.
Is the chapterhouse video out yet?
Another really great take and video from Discourse! Holding corporations accountable for their scummy business practices, hurrah!
thank youuu
It's not like Wizards actually fairly pay their artists. A little bit of recognition is the least they can give the artists.
Excellent and engaging breakdown of the issue, Discourse! Thanks for the historical knowledge-bomb.
So do chapter house not exist anymore?
Well done on your extensive research.
Great job. Well reasoned.
I wanted to let you know that I found your videos because of the OGL drama, but I stuck around because I enjoy your takes on the industry. I don't even play wargames! I did have a question, though: did the video on the ChapterHouse trial ever get finished? Because that sounds fascinating and I'd love to hear you explain it.
hey that's awesome thank you!! It didn't, it ended up being divided into a bunch of different videos (like this one! :D)
Looking forward to the 'trial' video.
Really great video. I think your explanation is very compelling.
Scummy policy… oh well that’s James for you
Thanks Fafnir!
Heeeyyyy 😭
Is very sad. A lot of great artists thrown into anonymity for the sake of a greedy company.
I heard that Satan won't let GW Executive Staff into Hell, straight up banned em. Doesn't want em around Hell.
Wasn't there also the major thing popping up there from the comics world that might have added to the mix as well with artists being able to "reclaim" copyright even by employees with things.
Is chapter house 40k ken penders?
Very well done - i think it also plays into their hands to hide the names and most likely have those people work under heavy NDAs as they are most likely working with 3D Sculpting and "cutting" Plugins as well as an AI or machine learning tech to create them - which are probably all GW-inhouse-specific.
That is WILD but absolutely makes the most sense.
Man, Chapterhouse just keeps coming back around.
We all knew Chapterhouse was a big deal when it happened. But I don't think we realized how big a deal it was.
Any chance you could get an interview with the Chapterhouse guys when you do the deep dive on it?
Glad you talked about Kev Adams, his work got me interested in the hobby to begin with
22:08 - Thanks, this makes perfect sense.
Did the title of this video change? I swear it was something about the no credit policy a couple of days ago.
I did not expect to see Lemmy in a discourse video about GW.
I believe apart from ward the only time a creator has had any serious flak, though it was far less severe, was the space wolf terminators/ praetor release a few years ago where I believe it was gw/fw that came out and said “but it was this guy, he’s new!”
I'm going to assume you knew this Discourse, but didn't mention it deliberately; Rik Priestley WAS NOT A GW DESIGNER. He, along with. I believe, Richard Halliwell, were the FOUNDERS. WE can trace the descent into darkness from their leaving. For reasons we can probably guess.
Steve Jackson, Ian Livingstone and John Peake founded GW in 1975. Priestley didn't join until 1982.
@@markwatson8714 Yup. you're right. My bad. I think the principles sound though. when the people who make a company a success leave, it's a big red flag. But thanks for correcting me,
@@FelixstoweFoamForge I don't know it was the designers though; I mean Cavatore butchered Fantasy as far as I'm concerned but I don't think Chambers did too badly with 40K (at least initially, I pretty much stopped paying attention to it in 2001) after they kicked Priestley upstairs. For me the red flag was much earlier in '91 when Livingstone and Jackson sold the company and Ansell and Kirby took over; that's pretty much the point GW's corporate culture shifted from being a 'for gamers by gamers' thing to 'profit at any and all costs'. Though Ansell and Kirby were both businessmen primarily, Livingstone and Jackson on the other hand were your archetypical omnigamers.
Though to be fair to GW, while I agree with Priestley's criticisms when he left, I still reckon him leaving was more to do with the fact he couldn't stand being the guy who managed designers rather than actually got to design.
I feel a bit reckless right now, so here is a crazy thought. How about just _asking_ the artists if they want their names to be mentioned or not?
Good stuff
Thanks!
hey Vj thanks so much for the superchat!!!! I really appreciate that!! Glad that you enjoyed the content
I quite that hearsay and conjecture are kinds of evidence all the time. 😂 Thank you, Discourse.
ME TOO :D
The lack of credit is part of why I no longer bother with White Dwarf. When creators were credited properly the mag used to include articles about the hows and whys of a model's design or the inspiration behind a pic. Those became less of a thing afterwards so less reason to keep going.
Ok this does explain art shift and how all the best art is previous edtions.
Coxes eldar 2nd and 3rd, both different styles both amazing.
0:29 with the (only) exception of the Great: *NEIL* _"Skinny Elbows"_ *ROBERTS* *
(* Exclusive Top-Tier Artist for *_ALL_*_ The HORUS HERESY _*_Black Library_*_ Artwork_ & subsequent '' Prints etc.)
Is this a bad time to say that Jess Godwin has been credited a lot of times for his art and the sculpts in recent times for his work with the Primaris Marines, several of the newest Ad Mech models and the Leagues of Votann army?
No, I'm glad to hear it. Majority of creatives don't get credit.
@@DiscourseMinis but doesnt that throw a wrench in your theory? or would you say godwin is just very unlikely to leave GW/take his creations along?
He's in charge of miniature design. Employed direct by GW. All ranges come under his scrutiny at some point.
While being a nerd star who has been around the 80s many see him as Mr Citadel himself.
He is a company man and these interviews are put together as promotion material and are nothing to do with GW being nice and crediting the artist.
P.S I love me some old skool Jes Goodwin sculpts.
@@WeyounLP In the biz, this is called 'the exception that proves the rule.' At last from my perspective.
A good investigation. Add the story of malice to the equation and you will have a history of events that suggests that the chapter house incident was the straw that broke the camel's back.
it is also about branding and positioning thing they want you to think of the studio i.e. brand that made it not the people. same thing happen to video games.
As an MtG player, I was disappointed with the reused art from Ganes Workshop that wasn't accredited.
I have the First release of Genevieve and ita was done way before those Naming cut. Moreover Black library authors are cited and well promoted
Haven't got past harassment one yet. But I am guessing it will be so that people can't look up other work that artist has done, take Adrian Smith for example. Prolific space wolf and chaos artist, but he has done art for hate and zombiecide amongst a lot of others. GW do not want you to know about other companies out there.
Great video and I do agree that GW should credit their artists. Games Workshop could probably create a legal mark something like a (®or ™) to be able to credit their arts and design's teams specifically. For example, on the GW /MTG cards they could credit the artists by writing, Art by: Allan Smitee GWDT, as (Games Workshop Design Team).
Operative words: "Negotiate better pay." And I assume that GW wouldn't really want that now, would they ;). Thanks as always! Didn't know this!
Nice video! Other than that donald duck pic
I'm pretty sure eighth edition fantasy was already pretty much finished by the time that daemons book came out, to be fair. It was just an eighth edition book released during seventh
In the words of Vicini, “you’re trying to kidnap what I have rightfully stolen.”
Chapterhouse. That's why we can't have nice things. Admittedly I'm biased because I'm a fan of Tyranids and we lost a bunch of great units in the fallout of this trial. I'm also interested in game and miniature design - I love works of Jes Goodwin and Roberto Cirillo and I would love to know who designed the later waves of Tyranid sculpts. I also would like to know who wrote the latest Tyranid Codex and if Robin Cruddace actually learned something since the atrocious 5th edition codex.
Great video! 💪🍻
This is something that many start-up companies do, oddly enough, to their interns. My wife is an artist, who worked at Riot Games as an intern in 2009, she helped refine Katirina, and created the concept for the character of Nidalee as well as Zyra, but she still doesn't get credit for the work she did, and she never will, because that would mean admitting that the company was using unpaid interns to create their game.
How could you not know about Matt "When the Ultamarines arent in the scene the audience should be thinking 'Where are the Ultramarines?'" Ward?
How could you not love Matt "When the other chapters of space marines see an Ultramarine, they think 'I wish that were me'" Ward?
Matt "I am featured in a Stringstorm parody song" Ward
Well done Discourse, very well done! You followed the breadcrumbs to the inevitable conclusion!
...
...
...
That said, I still support any call to action to start a witch hunt against Matt Ward!
Must be more recent, twenty years ago I knew who all the artists/sculptors/writers were from reading White Dwarf.
For one thing, you can recognize the style of the real OGs
Think Felix Paniagua, deserves a mention, he worked for gw 2003-2005 and set up Avatars of War, I miss seeing credits for miniature sculpts
I mean, the thing is this strategy to handle Games Workshop in the court room is a matter of public record now. And just because they're not publicly crediting the artists doesn't mean there aren't still internal records of who created what. Part of any court case is a process of discovery, where certain documents can be requested. Anyone Games Workshop takes to court now knows about the Chapter House strategy. They can just request the records and find out who created what and under what contract terms. Not crediting their artists doesn't actually solve this problem. Changing the terms of the free lancer contracts does. Of course, changing the terms of the contracts with freelancers only affects work in the future, it does not change the past. And those works are still credited. So, Games Workshop kind of accomplishes nothing with this strategy? I mean, it makes it harder for people to guess which things to copy so they can pull the Chapter House strategy, but it doesn't stop them from using it. And the fact that they employed this strategy, suggests that they didn't change the terms of their freelancer contracts. And I can guess why. Buying the copyrights from freelancers costs more, and GW doesn't want to pay to obtain the copyright, so they'll just make it harder for you as an outsider to figure out what work was done by freelancers before they take you to court. But you can still figure it out once they do.
this kind of credit dodging should be made illegal
In music, if you comission someone to record a part for you or do some arranging, you pay them and then YOU own that. Session nusicians way back in the day didnt get much recognition (Look up 'Standing in the shadows of motown') but you are being paid to do a job, you are working for someone else.
Freelancers own everything they make, unless explicitly agreed in a contract otherwise.
I'm guessing the group known as their creatives doesn't include the people who decided to make their new models monopose?
Lol I was in the studio in 2012. It was copyright and provenance to do with the chapterhouse law suit. We had to remove all non GW products from our desks as well.
We kept credits in White Dwarf so we could build a more personal relationship with our audience and also say thank you to contributors who did not get paid and produced content in their own time.
Also those staff didn’t leave. It was much more sinister.
I used to know a GW artist. It was actually in his contract that they own all rights to work done by the artist working for them. They also owned anything created by them like a year and a half after employment as well.
This was like 20 years ago, but I've always assumed that's how they get away with it when they decided to enact it.
Although he did tell me that alot of them back then would do things like hiding signatures within things like fire or barbed wire, so it could be extracted if needs be.
How the hell do they enforce the year and a half part?
@@markgrehan3726 I wasn't sure about that one. But it was in there. Presumably it was a just in case type thing. I dunno, GW contracts and all that, surprised it wasn't signed in blood, lol.
@Singlespeedpunk no, but they enforce it buy spamming you with court cases you'll never be able to afford and so have to bow out from.
It doesn't have to be an actual thing that is legal or not. They can just put In the paperwork enough for you to have to contest it. This is how GW bullies companies, I have little doubt that they'd use the same tactic for even smaller entities.
This is why when people do contest GW they generally "win", but end up bankrupt afterwards.
well there was the issue when darren latham of the 'Eavy metal team/sculpture was putting up "master classes" teaching ppl the painting method of eavy metal and GW asked him to take them down. he let ppl know so ppl could save them to use in the future. he also does small vids on his personal instagram. this could be another reason why the lord of "2 thin coats" laso left and started his own channel and made his own paint line. 15:30ish yeah the reason why they have taken away naming them is so they cant add it to their portfolio if they ever leave the company. they can say "i made that awesome painting" when you cant sign on it
As someone whop does creative contract work, I'm baffled that a company as big as games work shop didn't know to put a clause transferring the ownership of copy right to them. It's in like every contract I've ever seen and allows me to maintain credit without ownership. It takes less than a paragraph in a contract
Some artists are given recognition, at least yo some degree, though most of what you're talking about is a recent thing. Clint Langley and John Blanche stand out, though they do seem part of a rare crowd. I'm curious what the facts of it all are within GW...
GW doesn't want famous artists, famous artists cost more.
I..I’m scared, however very interested
It's gonna be about money isn't it?
kind of
I'd like to formally request a video which is just listing games workshop's artists
They learnt their edition with Hashut dwarves and The fifth God of Chaos Malal
Personally as an IT person, I think this should depend on the contract.
If you as an artist get a monthly pay as one of many company employees, I think you're naturally selling your art for the paycheck... not licensing it or anything... but losing ownership of the IP (depending on contract).
Of course, you should have a way to show what public projects you've worked on for CV purposes... but the art you made is now owned by your employer.
However, if you're an independent contractor who allows the use of your art (you keep ownership of IP), then you should be fully credited.
sigh. .. remember the 90' and early 2,000's .. when both artists and sculptors were recognized... they produced their best sculpts - i.e juan diaz - deamonettes
Crediting artists and creatives is really the exception, not the rule. Think of all the art and copy you pass just walking down the street (advertising, store designs, all kinds of stuff). A tiny minority of it is credited.
Or maybe closer to WH models and stuff, how many Lego kids or Star Wars collectables etc credit the designers?
Needy Cat Games is a cute company name. 🐈
At least they credit Black Library authors.
Writing books, is different as most if not all writers have agents, so the agent will protect their client and GW can not abuse them as much
John Avon still Alive!!!
Very interesting analysis. Surely they could have just explicitly added notes to the freelancers contracts rather than applying a blanket approach of not crediting anymore artists
Probably is a large part of the reason but it's easy for GW to have emplyment contracts that state what the copyright and ownership statuses are to works produced for GW.
I agree they definitly should credit the artists its only fair and the artists need to fight for this. Like the credits in movies or at the end of video games.
But even if the artist doesn't hold the copyright I'm fairly sure they can still keep a private personal portifolio that they can show behind closed doors to potential new emplyoers. That's how it works in VFX.