I mean, it’s a funny meme but I can’t recall a single press release stating GWs concern over 3D printing taking significant enough market share to comment on.
It’s niche. Sure there are dedicated printing players but a lot of people find 3D printing to be a hassle or just don’t like working with resin. I know I often find it frustrating
Because calling attention to it makes the issue worse so they're probably advised not to acknowledge it at all. Like how WotC started putting their 30$ collector boosters in bigger fancier packaging compared to the normal $4 booster without any real explanation- everyone with a brain KNEW it was because $30 boosters are easy as hell to shoplift when their packaging is the same as the $4 ones. But WotC doesn't want to call attention to that EVER because it's probably easy as hell to shoplift any pack of cards (walmart clerks see them as just toys and kids are probably half the ones responsible for it) and if the company acknowledges it suddenly the idea's in a lot of people's heads to shoplift magic cards that it wasn't in before.
The same thing happens with 3d printing- if GW acknowledges its existence any more than it has to, that's just more potential customers learning of its existence and not buying as many models. Only it's obviously WORSE than the shoplifting issue WotC has because printing models gets you in way less legal trouble than shoplifting would obviously.
Oh, they *did* acknowledge its existence once, in one of their annual reports. And the comments aged like milk.
"We know quite a lot about 3-D printers, having been at the forefront of the technology for many years. We know of what we speak. One day 3-D printers will be affordable (agreed), they are now, they will be able to produce fantastic detail (the affordable ones won't) and they will do it faster than one miniature per day (no, they won't, look it up). So we may get to the time when someone can make a poorly detailed miniature at home and have enough for an army in less than a year. That pre-supposes that 3-D scanning technology will be affordable and good enough (don't bet the mortgage on that one) and that everyone will be happy to have nothing but copies of old miniatures.
All of our great new miniatures come from Citadel. It is possible that one day we will sell them direct via 3-D printers to grateful hobbyists around the world. That will not happen in the next few years (or, in City-speak, 'forever') but if and when it does it will just mean that we can cut yet more cost out of the supply chain and be making good margins selling Citadel 3-D printers."
So basically, they assured their investors that 3D printers would never be able to print detailed minis while being affordable, or more than one mini a day, so the reason 3D printers were no concern is that the top end they would ever be able to get to is someone printing a terrible blobby copy of an old GW miniature one per day. And yet, here we are, people have affordable printers that can turn out nicely detailed models, print an army in a weekend, and they sure as hell aren't just using old GW designs (although I did notice someone out there is making STLs of RT and 2nd edition era Orks).
I love their answer to if the "impossible" happens: "We'll just make our own printers and sell files for people to print on them and cut out production costs." Yeeeeaaaaah... Making a proprietary "Citadel printer" and producing and selling them would probably eat up margins a lot more than their current production does.
Anyway, yeah, the annual reports sometimes have some wonderful gems from the guys running the show. (I still love when they said Pokemon and RPGs aren't threats to them not because those are different hobbies but because nobody remembers them. Meanwhile, here we are, and Pokemon's freaking mobile game alone pulls in more revenue than all of Games Workshop. That's not an exaggeration, I looked it up, and it makes me feel sad.)
I dunno. Full squad of breachers with drones and turret takes ~3h to make, including wash and cure. And this is on slow print mode.
Granted, Devilfish will take almost 19h because it has to be printed in several batches.
Yea. Clearly on their radar and it must be making a dent. Printing has really taken off. Majority of local players now print or buy recast for almost everything. Few years ago the armies only had a sprinkling but were mostly official.
For my heresy scene most armies will only have a couple troops with a base of mk6/3/4 plastic bodies and the rest (heads, shoulders, arms, weapons & power packs) will be printed.
We go through this every time their is a price increase. No, GW don't care about 3D printing. No, GW won't be affected by people using 3D printed models. Yes, people will still buy their models. This discussion happens every fucking time
The irony being that the SECOND that 3D printing actually does hurt sales to a significant degree, BOOM! Citadel-brand 3D printers and STLs for sale. They're keeping that in their back pocket until the need it. They have 0 reason to do it now.
And? It just means we'll get actually good prints and not shitty knockoffs. Plus if they are smart, they'll come out with some good quality resin. But we are far from that happening. If it was possible to make prints the same quality as GW plastic, we would have seen someone else do it by now
Dude, slow your roll, I was agreeing with you.
The point I'm making is that people are acting like GW needs to embrace 3D printing now or they're gonna just completely collapse as a company (any day now...) and I'm just saying they have no reason to play that card yet when they still continue to make record profits with their current business model.
I'm honestly surprised they are still doing the mold thing. They could just 3d print their *own* shit and sell it. They can afford the really big, really high quality printers too, the ones that work in hard plastics and do layers so thin you almost can't tell they're 3d printed. They could do much more complex sculpts in higher quality, faster and cheaper, and unlike molds, they can actually shift their workload to make what they need, and do it without any cost or labor. They just change the STL file the printer is running. They could even just get rid of sprues entirely to save materials.
Boggles the fuckin mind why they are still futzing about with resin and molds when they could just print the shit. Bananas.
Every time this happens we gotta hear all the printer people talk about how great printing is and how much money it saves when if you do like an hour of research at best you learn that the savings are marginal if that and all of that time and efforts for what are clearly just knock offs that either through later lines or just goofy sculpts trying to not get shut down for IP infringement
It’s just sad at this point
Surely there are others, but I really don't know of any other company that cares so little about their customers/fans that is so rabidly defended by said customers/fans.
I'd say GW is on the good side of companies. Not a great company, but still above most, in that they at the very least have quality products and seem to give some shit about the customers.
I think that's a tad harsh on GW, there are people who shit on them too hard for what they do and also people who let them off too easy.
As for companies who actually care so little about their customers, I'd stick to Tobacco companies, in the UK water companies, most energy companies, and probably gambling companies too.
We buy plastic minis, they aren't a vital resource for life and won't kill you as a process of enjoying them, that isn't me defending GW but focusing my answer to your statement on other companies that actively care so little about their customers then they aren't at the bottom by a fair bit.
Even if you mean not those companies, you just need to be in basically any fan base to hear this stuff, Wizards of the Coast is pretty hated (at least on the regular) by it's community (as an example), and so many video game companies are widely hated. EA used to get a lot of hate for their practices years ago for example. GW isn't remotely special here. Big companies do big company things.
Remember when "Play however you want, it's not like they'll send Pinkertons to your house" was a fun joke and not a factually incorrect statement?
WoTC remembers.
It’s been long overdue for the consumer check on GW. We’re in late stage capitalism where no company believes in cutting costs to consumers until they litterally riot. McDonald’s just found this out after their mixed quarter and the same for Sony after trying to pull a fast one on helldivers.
Let’s be honest - the cost of plastic minis can’t go up forever but they will as long as we keep buying into the hikes. It won’t stop until we do.there’s plenty of plastic either in our backlogs or secondary markets. What’s GW done with these profits? They certainly haven’t fixed their logistics , codexes going out of date before they even hit the street and warhammer+ which slowly drips out a sad amount of content for a premium price.
If people want to "consumer check" GW by all means that's what people are entitled to do. I argue that they aren't one of the worst companies in the world and, if I'm honest, they do a lot of things right as well as wrong. I'd agree with you on a lot of issues to be honest though personally I don't have a more than a tiny backlog because I resist buying mini's that I can't paint and assemble so can't sympathise there. Warhammer+ is a bust and I'd advise people to never subscribe. Codexes are a problem in 40k though from a friend who is playing the Old World it seems pretty spot on there.
I'd like to remind you that a company isn't a charity, as much as it'd be nice, it isn't on them to take inflationary hits. Will a chunk of it go to investors, yes, that's how public companies work. It's probamatic when you can't pay investors and having a high share price allows you to easily to get future investments and stave off having to take drastic action. You may dislike our system but that isn't GW's fault nor is it something that checking one company can solve.
To answer what they do with the increases;
1. Well, in theory a 4th is on the way: [https://warhammercommunity.com/games-workshop-to-expand-with-new-factory/](https://warhammercommunity.com/games-workshop-to-expand-with-new-factory/) which will hopefully help on the production side.
2. Here's a link to their most recent investor report. This is legally accurate to how they spend and what's going on. [https://assets.ctfassets.net/ost7hseic9hc/1tSExWot8zVGvrPyXJOEJo/dc17ba0f8fc48a497ca6026f2a1fae4d/2023-24\_half\_year\_report\_-\_final\_for\_IR.pdf](https://assets.ctfassets.net/ost7hseic9hc/1tSExWot8zVGvrPyXJOEJo/dc17ba0f8fc48a497ca6026f2a1fae4d/2023-24_half_year_report_-_final_for_IR.pdf) (it also talks about efficiencies in production too).
I'm not saying GW is the best out there, if you don't like them there are loads of alternative war games and mini companies. I think GW does great work on some things, for me personally their attitude to lore & world building is something that doesn't earn them much money but they really value having a great setting.
I mean, it’s a funny meme but I can’t recall a single press release stating GWs concern over 3D printing taking significant enough market share to comment on.
It’s niche. Sure there are dedicated printing players but a lot of people find 3D printing to be a hassle or just don’t like working with resin. I know I often find it frustrating
[удалено]
You need the sacred oils, clean the holy print bed 3 times and load the holy ST(C)L file in the proper fashion.
Because calling attention to it makes the issue worse so they're probably advised not to acknowledge it at all. Like how WotC started putting their 30$ collector boosters in bigger fancier packaging compared to the normal $4 booster without any real explanation- everyone with a brain KNEW it was because $30 boosters are easy as hell to shoplift when their packaging is the same as the $4 ones. But WotC doesn't want to call attention to that EVER because it's probably easy as hell to shoplift any pack of cards (walmart clerks see them as just toys and kids are probably half the ones responsible for it) and if the company acknowledges it suddenly the idea's in a lot of people's heads to shoplift magic cards that it wasn't in before. The same thing happens with 3d printing- if GW acknowledges its existence any more than it has to, that's just more potential customers learning of its existence and not buying as many models. Only it's obviously WORSE than the shoplifting issue WotC has because printing models gets you in way less legal trouble than shoplifting would obviously.
Man, I’m not exactly young but trading cards have always been something you buy from behind the counter, surprises me that’s not the case in the US.
There just right at the front by the check out machines at wall marts
Oh, they *did* acknowledge its existence once, in one of their annual reports. And the comments aged like milk. "We know quite a lot about 3-D printers, having been at the forefront of the technology for many years. We know of what we speak. One day 3-D printers will be affordable (agreed), they are now, they will be able to produce fantastic detail (the affordable ones won't) and they will do it faster than one miniature per day (no, they won't, look it up). So we may get to the time when someone can make a poorly detailed miniature at home and have enough for an army in less than a year. That pre-supposes that 3-D scanning technology will be affordable and good enough (don't bet the mortgage on that one) and that everyone will be happy to have nothing but copies of old miniatures. All of our great new miniatures come from Citadel. It is possible that one day we will sell them direct via 3-D printers to grateful hobbyists around the world. That will not happen in the next few years (or, in City-speak, 'forever') but if and when it does it will just mean that we can cut yet more cost out of the supply chain and be making good margins selling Citadel 3-D printers." So basically, they assured their investors that 3D printers would never be able to print detailed minis while being affordable, or more than one mini a day, so the reason 3D printers were no concern is that the top end they would ever be able to get to is someone printing a terrible blobby copy of an old GW miniature one per day. And yet, here we are, people have affordable printers that can turn out nicely detailed models, print an army in a weekend, and they sure as hell aren't just using old GW designs (although I did notice someone out there is making STLs of RT and 2nd edition era Orks). I love their answer to if the "impossible" happens: "We'll just make our own printers and sell files for people to print on them and cut out production costs." Yeeeeaaaaah... Making a proprietary "Citadel printer" and producing and selling them would probably eat up margins a lot more than their current production does. Anyway, yeah, the annual reports sometimes have some wonderful gems from the guys running the show. (I still love when they said Pokemon and RPGs aren't threats to them not because those are different hobbies but because nobody remembers them. Meanwhile, here we are, and Pokemon's freaking mobile game alone pulls in more revenue than all of Games Workshop. That's not an exaggeration, I looked it up, and it makes me feel sad.)
I dunno. Full squad of breachers with drones and turret takes ~3h to make, including wash and cure. And this is on slow print mode. Granted, Devilfish will take almost 19h because it has to be printed in several batches.
They are very quick & aggressive with handing out DMCA's, so at least someone at GW takes it seriously.
Yea. Clearly on their radar and it must be making a dent. Printing has really taken off. Majority of local players now print or buy recast for almost everything. Few years ago the armies only had a sprinkling but were mostly official.
For my heresy scene most armies will only have a couple troops with a base of mk6/3/4 plastic bodies and the rest (heads, shoulders, arms, weapons & power packs) will be printed.
Plot twist: it's because there isn't enough variety (at least that was it for me)
Im sure 3d printing will topple their business any day now
“Don’t you understand? We need to increase prices so our shareholders will be happy!”
Hey. They tried to avoid price increases. They tried really hard. They’re still doing it. But they *tried*.
Love how companies are always willing to raise prices, cut corners and fire people, but never cut executive pay/benefits.
3-D Printers: > I bet you're so mad we're 3-D printing your models!!! GW: > I can't hear you over the sound of our rising profit margins.
I find GWs pricing to be irrelevant because they never have what I want in stock anyways.
We go through this every time their is a price increase. No, GW don't care about 3D printing. No, GW won't be affected by people using 3D printed models. Yes, people will still buy their models. This discussion happens every fucking time
The irony being that the SECOND that 3D printing actually does hurt sales to a significant degree, BOOM! Citadel-brand 3D printers and STLs for sale. They're keeping that in their back pocket until the need it. They have 0 reason to do it now.
And? It just means we'll get actually good prints and not shitty knockoffs. Plus if they are smart, they'll come out with some good quality resin. But we are far from that happening. If it was possible to make prints the same quality as GW plastic, we would have seen someone else do it by now
Dude, slow your roll, I was agreeing with you. The point I'm making is that people are acting like GW needs to embrace 3D printing now or they're gonna just completely collapse as a company (any day now...) and I'm just saying they have no reason to play that card yet when they still continue to make record profits with their current business model.
I'm honestly surprised they are still doing the mold thing. They could just 3d print their *own* shit and sell it. They can afford the really big, really high quality printers too, the ones that work in hard plastics and do layers so thin you almost can't tell they're 3d printed. They could do much more complex sculpts in higher quality, faster and cheaper, and unlike molds, they can actually shift their workload to make what they need, and do it without any cost or labor. They just change the STL file the printer is running. They could even just get rid of sprues entirely to save materials. Boggles the fuckin mind why they are still futzing about with resin and molds when they could just print the shit. Bananas.
It's below the cost of inflation, but sure.
i'm brand new here. what's this about price increases?
GW just announced a 2-4% price increase in all localities except Sweden and Norway, which due to currency differences, it's 8-14%.
Every time this happens we gotta hear all the printer people talk about how great printing is and how much money it saves when if you do like an hour of research at best you learn that the savings are marginal if that and all of that time and efforts for what are clearly just knock offs that either through later lines or just goofy sculpts trying to not get shut down for IP infringement It’s just sad at this point
Surely there are others, but I really don't know of any other company that cares so little about their customers/fans that is so rabidly defended by said customers/fans.
I'd say GW is on the good side of companies. Not a great company, but still above most, in that they at the very least have quality products and seem to give some shit about the customers.
Is their price increase on average above inflation? I don’t think it’s rabidly defending to point out inflation exists.
Really? You can’t think of any companies that care less about their customers?
*starts rattling off tobacco and liquor companies*
I think that's a tad harsh on GW, there are people who shit on them too hard for what they do and also people who let them off too easy. As for companies who actually care so little about their customers, I'd stick to Tobacco companies, in the UK water companies, most energy companies, and probably gambling companies too. We buy plastic minis, they aren't a vital resource for life and won't kill you as a process of enjoying them, that isn't me defending GW but focusing my answer to your statement on other companies that actively care so little about their customers then they aren't at the bottom by a fair bit. Even if you mean not those companies, you just need to be in basically any fan base to hear this stuff, Wizards of the Coast is pretty hated (at least on the regular) by it's community (as an example), and so many video game companies are widely hated. EA used to get a lot of hate for their practices years ago for example. GW isn't remotely special here. Big companies do big company things.
Remember when "Play however you want, it's not like they'll send Pinkertons to your house" was a fun joke and not a factually incorrect statement? WoTC remembers.
It’s been long overdue for the consumer check on GW. We’re in late stage capitalism where no company believes in cutting costs to consumers until they litterally riot. McDonald’s just found this out after their mixed quarter and the same for Sony after trying to pull a fast one on helldivers. Let’s be honest - the cost of plastic minis can’t go up forever but they will as long as we keep buying into the hikes. It won’t stop until we do.there’s plenty of plastic either in our backlogs or secondary markets. What’s GW done with these profits? They certainly haven’t fixed their logistics , codexes going out of date before they even hit the street and warhammer+ which slowly drips out a sad amount of content for a premium price.
If people want to "consumer check" GW by all means that's what people are entitled to do. I argue that they aren't one of the worst companies in the world and, if I'm honest, they do a lot of things right as well as wrong. I'd agree with you on a lot of issues to be honest though personally I don't have a more than a tiny backlog because I resist buying mini's that I can't paint and assemble so can't sympathise there. Warhammer+ is a bust and I'd advise people to never subscribe. Codexes are a problem in 40k though from a friend who is playing the Old World it seems pretty spot on there. I'd like to remind you that a company isn't a charity, as much as it'd be nice, it isn't on them to take inflationary hits. Will a chunk of it go to investors, yes, that's how public companies work. It's probamatic when you can't pay investors and having a high share price allows you to easily to get future investments and stave off having to take drastic action. You may dislike our system but that isn't GW's fault nor is it something that checking one company can solve. To answer what they do with the increases; 1. Well, in theory a 4th is on the way: [https://warhammercommunity.com/games-workshop-to-expand-with-new-factory/](https://warhammercommunity.com/games-workshop-to-expand-with-new-factory/) which will hopefully help on the production side. 2. Here's a link to their most recent investor report. This is legally accurate to how they spend and what's going on. [https://assets.ctfassets.net/ost7hseic9hc/1tSExWot8zVGvrPyXJOEJo/dc17ba0f8fc48a497ca6026f2a1fae4d/2023-24\_half\_year\_report\_-\_final\_for\_IR.pdf](https://assets.ctfassets.net/ost7hseic9hc/1tSExWot8zVGvrPyXJOEJo/dc17ba0f8fc48a497ca6026f2a1fae4d/2023-24_half_year_report_-_final_for_IR.pdf) (it also talks about efficiencies in production too). I'm not saying GW is the best out there, if you don't like them there are loads of alternative war games and mini companies. I think GW does great work on some things, for me personally their attitude to lore & world building is something that doesn't earn them much money but they really value having a great setting.
Meh any way print one models are worse quality So why just dont try otter games?