naturally GW are terrified of having their stuff stolen - they worked very hard to steal that stuff in the first place.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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!

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.

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?

I found it super interesting to see the avatar of khaine sculpts over time. Sculptors named individually until recently!

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

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

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.

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

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.

But why wouldn’t GW just make sure their contracts included transfer of copyright?

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 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!

Sharing this. Thanks for putting in the investigative work. Truly a boon to the community.

I'm at 15 minutes in and this video feels like a mystery detective show. I'm hooked. I NEED to know the answer!

It's not like Wizards actually fairly pay their artists. A little bit of recognition is the least they can give the artists.

Is the chapterhouse video out yet?

Fantastic work Discourse! Thank you for all your efforts in putting this together.

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.

Is very sad. A lot of great artists thrown into anonymity for the sake of a greedy company.

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.)

I am looking so much forwards to the chapter House video Thank you so much for diving into this

As an MtG player, I was disappointed with the reused art from Ganes Workshop that wasn't accredited.

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.

So do chapter house not exist anymore?

This is honestly fascinating! If a day does come that you put out a published history, that will be a great day indeed!

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

In the words of Vicini, “you’re trying to kidnap what I have rightfully stolen.”

Really great video. I think your explanation is very compelling. Scummy policy… oh well that’s James for you

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.

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.

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

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.

Did the title of this video change? I swear it was something about the no credit policy a couple of days ago.

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.

One of your best videos for sure, love this digging-around research

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.

Another really great take and video from Discourse! Holding corporations accountable for their scummy business practices, hurrah!

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?

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?

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.

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.

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.

They learnt their edition with Hashut dwarves and The fifth God of Chaos Malal

Is chapter house 40k ken penders?

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

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

Really good video, very good investigation, and you made some really good points in there.

I did not expect to see Lemmy in a discourse video about GW.

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.

Great work! Please keep it up.

Excellent and engaging breakdown of the issue, Discourse! Thanks for the historical knowledge-bomb.

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.

As an artist and writer I agree with everything you've said here. Its scummy of GW not to credit creatives...but the funny thing is credit or no credit the copyright for work done by freelancers is still owned by those freelancers. However I'd bet GW has changed their contracts with freelancers after the Chapter House saga to acquire all exclusive rights for eternity for any work a freelancer dose. I'd like to hope freelancers are charging GW a very high price if they are handing over all the rights of their work - as they should be.

I quite that hearsay and conjecture are kinds of evidence all the time. 😂 Thank you, Discourse.

Did you see the NEW Black Templar bundle, It has Your name all over it ! the Box say's"Buy me Discourse, BUY Meeeee....."

It's standard practice that GW would have creatives sign away rights of ownership and there would be no problems in crediting the artist in those instances, but the problems comes when new derivative designs can be traced back to old designs GW never legally secured and locked down the rights to, which is true for a lot of GW stuff. It comes down to GW being rather clueless about these types of things for many of the early years and didn't get artists to sign contracts and some stuff... a lot of stuff were ripped-off from other companies. For example it's obvious to anyone with eyes to see where the Tyranids came from, if Disney decided to sue GW for copying Aliens' Xenomorphs GW would be in deep doodoo.

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!”

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?

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

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.

That is WILD but absolutely makes the most sense.

Looking forward to the 'trial' video.

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.

Well done on your extensive research.

Great job. Well reasoned.

Just spent too much money on some Punga Underworld, but I have been ill after being at Back Breaker on Saturday, so I was feeling that a new team would make me feel better

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!

Cripes, I was unaware of this. This is even worse. It's like how the creators of Superman were poor and starving while DC was making millions on licensing for movies. I'm guessing that they are continuing to use freelancers who continue to own the copyright to the work rather than paying to purchase the rights from the designer? Otherwise, why not credit your internal staff and freelancers who have received a fair compensation for their copyright?

That doesn't make much sense either, as the defendant of said lawsuit can ask for that exact info in discovery, which Games Workshop has to provide or default. Also hearsay in the colloquial is NOT hearsay under the law, it is kind of like the word Theory in science has a different meaning then it does in the colloquial, and is very often allowed. Photos, tape recordings, video evidence is all hearsay under the law. So is a witness saying they heard the defendant say, "I'm going to kill X", that too is hearsay under the law.

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?

this kind of credit dodging should be made illegal

I don't think hiding behind the design studio would work as well as they think it would. It just makes extra steps in discovery. A lot of companies seem to start plateauing or declining because their marketing department started dominating. Games Workshop feels like it is being dominated by its legal department and nobody in their legal department plays miniatures.

I'd like to formally request a video which is just listing games workshop's artists

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

22:08 - Thanks, this makes perfect sense.

All they had to do was do the correct "work for hire" contract to start with... See "Weis + Hickman vs TSR/WOTC/HASBRO"

We have seen gw collab with magic and marvel, imagine they kept their cult designers and were doing supreme x priestley, or palace x blanche merch, they could charge £100 a t shirt lol

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

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...

Glad you talked about Kev Adams, his work got me interested in the hobby to begin with

RIP Darren Latham's painting youtube channel :-(

3:59 Please, Matt Ward needs no introduction. He's one half of the most common guest duo on Adeptus Podcastus.

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.

Thing is, obfuscating the artists doesn't provide any kind of real courtroom protection to GW. Any lawyer worth anything will subpoena the company directly for the artist or artists involved and that information MUST be provided. Failure to provide it will either be contempt or open GW to other lawsuit issues. Those artist will then be subpoenaed and will then be asked what inspired them to sculpt their models. If they say that they did it on their own they will be ASKED if the GW counsel had instructed them to answer as such or if the GW counsel had instructed them to lie to the court. Any lawyer worth anything can disassemble the obfuscation and then use that obfuscation against GW to show intent to hide stolen ideas for anti-competitive practice. Really, GW must have the WORST lawyers. Or nearly.

GW doesn't want famous artists, famous artists cost more.

Didn’t Rick P. Leave GW because they wouldn’t allow his creativity to enhance/make changes to 40k? (I think).

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.

24:16 "It's just the decent, ethical thing to do." Are we still talking about Games Workshop here or did KZfaq queue up another video while I was laughing hysterically into my paintwater?

Who'd of thought that the IP owners of an essentially nihilistic, miserablist dystopia would be such dreadful people?

Niel Roberts gets credited for his work on the Heresy novels.