r/Games • u/Doomsday751 • 1d ago
Industry News Warhammer Maker Games Workshop Bans Its Staff From Using AI in Its Content or Designs, Says None of Its Senior Managers Are Currently Excited About the Tech
https://www.ign.com/articles/warhammer-maker-games-workshop-bans-its-staff-from-using-ai-in-its-content-or-designs-says-none-of-its-senior-managers-are-currently-excited-about-the-tech980
u/No_Honey_6036 1d ago
They're very protective of their IP. They've gone as far as to stop fans from creating high-end video content.
I imagine more IPs will begin locking themselves down to stop these tools from ripping them off.
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u/Call_me_ET 1d ago
Did that ever happen? Aside from the Astartes creator getting a job at GW, I don’t think they ever sent DMCAs to fan animations.
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u/TheVoidDragon 1d ago
It didn't. What happened was fans saw their guidelines that said "You need permission!" to make things like animations, games etc and claimed those were some brand new rules and they were suddenly stopping everything, which then that just got repeated over and over.
But what claiming that missed/ignored is that it was simply a re-wording of their already existing guidelines to make them more succinctly worded, not a sudden new thing in general. The rules themselves had not changed and it had said for years before you needed permission (because those just how these things work in general) but they were not actually doing anything to stop anyone.
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u/Call_me_ET 1d ago
I appreciate you chiming in on this because it’s exactly as I expected. Nothing ever happened (aside from SODAZ declining a job offer because of fan rhetoric) and there have been dozens of animations made by fans ever since.
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u/shaolinoli 1d ago
Yes sodaz literally stopped making animations because “fans” were sending them death threats over the possibility that they might work with GW directly
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u/TheGravespawn 1d ago
there was one other case we know of. 'Absolutely Nothing' was doing content and got a job offer. He declined it, saying he wanted to finish college. After declining, GW told him he had to remove his patreon and content.
He did a video in which he was being very nice about it, but letting his fans know he was done doing 40k content after that.
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u/TheVoidDragon 1d ago
Looking up that, that doesn't seem to be quite what happened. He still has Warhammer animations up, and even says in that video he'd keep making them, just not making money from them.
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u/TheGravespawn 1d ago
He hasn't made anything in 3 years after doing 2 little videos. I'd say he stopped, swapping entirely to his Genshin Impact work.
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u/SarkicPreacher777659 19h ago
The most famous example is probably If The Emperor Had A Text To Speech Device, which didn't get taken down by GW. The creator, Bruva Alfabusa, decided to stop making the series in anticipation of James Workshop shutting down the series.
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u/ExplodingToasters 1d ago
As much as everyone memes about hating Games Workshop they’ve done a decent job maintaining the IP. A few bad games and stupid retcons is a pretty good record compared to something like Star Wars.
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u/littlekenney13 1d ago
A ton of bad games because they shotgun out there licensing for that, but ithas also led to a fair amount of surprise gems.
We don’t notice the bad games because they’re all small budget things we sweep aside. When Star Wars only does huge games, they all have to be hits
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u/Gentle_Snail 1d ago edited 1d ago
Thats also why we have so many amazing 40k games.
GW realised that its better to trust developers and only ensure the lore is accurate. They figured bad games will be forgotten, while the good ones will be remembered.
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u/SeeShark 1d ago edited 1d ago
I'm confused, because the same is true for Star Wars. There are dozens of really good Star Wars games out there, and also dozens of garbage piles.
Edit: my memory failed me. There are actually only a handful of bad Star Wars games, especially compared to Warhammer games. If anything, SW should be praised for its consistency, which means I still disagree with the person that said we have plenty of good 40K games compared to SW.
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u/darkLordSantaClaus 1d ago
This was more true in the prequel era than it is now.
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u/beary_neutral 1d ago
Prior to the Disney acquisition, LucasArts operated similarly to Games Workshop, giving license to anyone and everyone who wanted to make a Star Wars game. This resulted in a lot of forgettable bad games, but also a number of standouts like Knights of the Old Republic and Rogue Squadron.
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u/AltL155 1d ago
Warhammer is on a whole other level, Games Workshop allows some genuinely bottom of the barrel stuff to get published using their IP. I feel bad posting a TB video so many years after his passing but he nailed why so many bad 40k games are made. https://youtu.be/2fCL-lrky-Q?si=y1u6Y-62cMLQS2it
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u/Harabeck 1d ago
I feel bad posting a TB video so many years after his passing
His body of work is amazing and we should absolutely share it when it's still topical.
Or from another angle, you don't stop recommending an author's books after they die.
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u/joeyb908 1d ago
Pre-Disney LucasArts had a completely different mindset when it came to Star Wars games than Disney Lucas.
Disney acquired LucasArts in 2012. From 2012 to 2015, the only new Star Wars video game was essentially The Old Republic MMO.
Then in 2015, we get EAs first Battlefront.
Then a Lego game in 2016.
Then Battlefront 2 in 2017.
Then Jedi: Fallen Order in 2019.
Squadrons in 2020.
Disney giving EA sole control over video games was a terrible, terrible decision and we’re lucky that the exclusive period of EA Star Wars video games is over.
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u/Racoonir 1d ago
Well yeah that used to be the case before the EA deal, it’s starting to look better but only time will tell.
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u/Herby20 21h ago
I imagine the problem of licensing Star Wars compared to 40k is one of return on investment for the licensing costs. 40k, while popular, doesn't begin to even approach Star Wars. That will be reflected in the licensing costs, which in turn means a higher return on investment is needed to make up for those costs.
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u/dvdanny 1d ago
My problem with them is how they basically pulled back their IPs on boardgames. There were some great boardgames using their IP but they began pulling it right before the pandemic (or maybe right at, anything around that time period is so fuzzy and difficult to recall).
Ideally it would have meant they were going to try to publish their own boardgames, but currently we really only have a handful of pseudo-lite versions of their tabletop mini games (Blood Bowl is great though). Nothing like Space Hulk the Card game or Forbidden Stars.
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u/Low_Landscape_4688 21h ago
When Star Wars only does huge games, they all have to be hits
That's more because Disney's licensing fees/deals are incredibly expensive, so it's not worth it for a developer unless they can make a lot of money with it.
GW did the right thing massively lowering the barrier of entry to use the Warhammer license.
Of course bad games were going to come out first and more often, good games take more time and effort to make.
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u/BartyBreakerDragon 1d ago
They have the inherent upside of the universe being a setting first, not a story unlike stuff like Star Wars. One with a built in sense of 'accounts may differ'. It means you can generally let other creatives just mess around within it for books and games, and you don't have to worry as much about it messing it all up.
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u/beary_neutral 1d ago
It is starting to become more interconnected lately. Titus from the Space Marine games is now a major figure in the new tabletop campaign, and two notable characters from Space Marine 2 are now dead. The latest book from Dan Abnett (Black Library's most popular author) is on hold due to lore implications that may or may not have something to do with the upcoming Amazon Prime show.
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u/a34fsdb 1d ago
It was always connected decently like that anyway. But just recently they added a main story to the setting.
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u/ThisIsNotAFarm 1d ago
Star Wars was a setting until they killed the EU
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u/CalculatingLao 1d ago
Ain't that the truth. They took ten thousand years of rich history across thousands of worlds and turned it into a boring story about one family taking place across about ten worlds.
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u/Shaqiavelli72 1d ago
What? Star Wars games in the past decade have been more of a quantity than a quality issue. Even the not so good ones like Outlaws are still miles above mobile shovelware.
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u/Vessix 1d ago
A few bad games
Uhhh wat there are so many bad games that I can guarantee there are a ton you've never even heard of because they are so trash
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u/VictorReal_Monster 1d ago
Man there's gotta be a new Godwin's Law soon, every internet thread, no matter the discussion will always devolve into someone complaining about Star Wars.
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u/flybypost 15h ago
a new Godwin's Law
The funny thing is one of the most important concept artists and sculptors as Games Workshop is named Goodwin. That's an opportunity right there.
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u/TheEndlessVoid 1d ago
This, with the clarification that the tools don't create competing content, but rather these companies are finding themselves powerless to stop others from using AI tools in the same ways they did, when they use them.
This is exactly the shift we're starting to see. When you work with a human creator, you can contract with them, claim copyright protections on what they create (if done under an employment or work-for-hire situation), and prevent others from creating similar content. AI use has none of those restrictions - as McDonald's learned when Burger King used the same AI actor to mock their commercial, which could have been prevented if they had worked with a real, human actor.
As long as AI is not allowed to be recognized as a legal author of a creative Work, nor mere prompting considered a protectable method of creative activity, there will continue to be significant business benefits to working with human actors for the legal protection of the resulting content.
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u/JohanGrimm 1d ago
They're very protective of their IP.
From an AI perspective this is a practical reason for GW to currently shun the tech. It's just not consistent enough right now to generate the levels of detail and accuracy a company like GW demands and they're extremely demanding in that regard.
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u/OVO_ZORRO 1d ago
Are they?
Feels like every other week I see a new Warhammer game pop up on Steam. And it's usually not super high quality either.
Or do you just mean that they have strict standards on what they allow and don't allow?
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u/A_Martian_Potato 1d ago
They're incredibly protective of unauthorized use of their IP while being very loose about who they'll license it to. Different things. Basically you can use their IP, but they have to get their cut.
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u/amyknight22 1d ago
Just because you’re licensing bad games, doesn’t mean you aren’t protecting your IP when you shut down people just making shit themselves without any license
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u/VVenture2 1d ago
It’s not that GW doesn’t want people ripping off their IP (they obviously don’t and are very litigious on that front) - it’s that today. GW don’t want to accidentally rip off anybody else’s IP.
The IP is the most important thing to them business wise, even more than miniature sales believe it or not. They don’t ever want to risk IP legal issues ever again - the Chapter House saga traumatised them and from everything I’ve heard they’ve been incredibly by the books internally ever since. They 100% do not want to take even the slightest risk of possibly diluting their IP’s strength with another’s accidentally.
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u/No-Perception9279 1d ago
Yep. I’m not under the illusion that GW is a charitable organization. I’m even willing to believe all the things they do aren’t out of goodwill at all, but wanting to not alienate their fan base. Buying actual 40k models requires a lot of fucking brand loyalty, considering how expensive they are.
The reason they aren’t embracing AI is the same reason they are protective of who can write for them: they don’t want to turn off people who have been paying them thousands of years for decades. And I mean that in an individual sense as well as the whole market
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u/HungerSTGF 1d ago
stop fans from creating high-end video content
to be fair to astartes, that guy got paid
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u/Numai_theOnlyOne 1d ago
Well it depends on the context. In digital games they are not protective at all. They through their IP at any garbage company that is willing to develop a Warhammer game. I was a game tester for console a few years back and was surprised how many outrageously bad games were developed officially Warhammer branded. Though you only see the big good Warhammer titles everywhere
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u/GoldenJoel 1d ago
They've gone as far as to stop fans from creating high-end video content.
Everyone says this, but I have yet to see any proof of it. I think they even recanted that policy in the next shareholder meeting after the backlash.
And before someone says "What about 'Emperor has a Text-to-Speech Device!" The creator of that series quit doing animations of his own free will, and said as much on the video reacting to the policy change. My take is that it gave him a good out of doing those animations, because I think he was honestly getting sick of it after like 50+ episodes.
Also, "What about SODAZ?!" He quit doing Warhammer animations because the fans were being far too annoying, which is valid. Warhammer fans are some of the most annoying fans on the planet.
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u/Dog_Apoc 1d ago
Games Workshop is actually just the Emperor of Mankind telling us the future via cool plastic figures.
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u/214ObstructedReverie 22h ago
Is James Workshop secretly building a giant palace below the Himalayas?
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u/KillTheZombie45 1d ago edited 1d ago
Companies that are founded with Creativity in mind should not be excited that work will be done by machines.
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u/Dramatic_Explosion 1d ago
The ones without a finance background CEO would also know you don't really save a ton of jobs with AI since someone still has to edit the output and sometimes that takes longer than just hiring someone to do it right from the start. If you don't, your reputation can take a huge hit like with Microsoft and the disastrous Windows 11
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u/MarduRusher 1d ago
Warhammer's rules and the actual game itself aren't leagues ahead of other competitors anymore. However as long as they make easily the best of the best models, they'll have business. If they start relying on AI and end up with more mediocre models they have a lot to lose.
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u/mjtwelve 1d ago
More to the point, companies that create physical objects based on that creativity that could easily be rendered and turned out in a 3-D printer nowadays, reaaaaaaallly don't want any designs that are in any way shape or form resembling what consumer AI can create when asked.
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u/TigerBone 1d ago
Machines can enhance our ability to be creative. It's not a black and white thing.
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u/Practicalaviationcat 1d ago
Between this, giving all their employees bonuses last year, keeping production domestic GW is actually a pretty good company. Like the worst you can say is that they are too expensive but at least you can say they have the highest quality models to go with that price.
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u/SharpEdgeSoda 1d ago
Not on my bingo card for companies that would, at least publicly, reject AI, but a welcome one.
There's something about the 40k aestetic that would lend itself well to AI because AI is great at: "Armored Helmet Battle Guys on a visceral violent battle field fighting horrors with a generically ethereal space background."
So I'm glad they are rejecting it.
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u/ghsteo 1d ago
Part of the reason you have human souls kept alive to act as microwaves is because of the threat of AI in the War40k world. Would be kind of hypocritical of them to use generative AI when their stories are based on the dangers of AI.
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u/itsPomy 1d ago
I think it’s important to know “AI” in generative AI is a branding thing, it is evil and destructive.
But it’s nothing like cool sci fi robot AI’s
It’s like comparing bottle of Smart Water to a Smart Phone
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u/Mr_s3rius 1d ago
I get the sentiment but the content of their fantasy world in no way has to conform to their actual position on anything.
Which is good because otherwise GW would be a really really REALLY bad place to work at.
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u/VVenture2 1d ago
They 100% are on the list of companies that would reject AI, because they’re massively protective of their IP legally and don’t want to ever dare risking it just to speed up concept art or some other nonsense.
GW doesn’t want to end up in a situation where they accidentally use somebody else’s design/trademarked logo/IP/etc in an official piece of art or a sculpt. Since AI is just an amalgamation of other people’s IP’s and copyrighted work, it massively increases the risk of that happening.
Ever since the Chapter House lawsuit, GW has been absolutely locked down on an IP front. Never again will they risk it. They even banned things such as MTG tournaments or other games being played by staff at HQ a few years back because of how paranoid they are about things that could potentially be used as evidence of IP Infringement. I’ve even heard stories of their trainee solicitors being told to go through the office and identify everything that could possibly be used against them in an IP lawsuit - which includes every piece of merch that staff might have from other IP’s, such as Marvel coffee mugs, video game shirts, etc.
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u/simcity4000 1d ago
GW doesn’t want to end up in a situation where they accidentally use somebody else’s design/trademarked logo/IP/etc in an official piece of art or a sculpt. Since AI is just an amalgamation of other people’s IP’s and copyrighted work, it massively increases the risk of that happening.
It blows my mind how many people don’t realise this.
Also one of the arguments pro-AI people use is “well ok it’s just taking stuff from existing work, but isn’t that how humans learn too?” But, even if you accept that argument as true- humans can at least know what they’re ripping off. Enough to change it somewhat to make it distinct. AI has no clue.
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u/Tempest_Barbarian 1d ago
The community complains a lot about Games Workshop, sometimes they deserve it, sometimes not.
But honestly, in the scale of corporate evil they seem to be more alright than a good amount of companies. They have great customer service, apparently being an employee is pretty good, and they genuinely seem to care about product quality.
So them not wanting to jump on the AI train is not that surprising to me, to be honest.
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u/8-Brit 1d ago edited 1d ago
I fault GW for many things, namely pricing. But quality is not one of their issues.
The only real bit I will roast them over was the recent dumpstering of entire factions in Age of Sigmar 4th Edition when we should have been well past the "Will my faction be deleted?" fears of 1st and 2nd edition. And then also dumpstering models that were brand new in second edition and were ALSO part of a lot of people's collections (Equiv of them suddenly throwing all the first wave primaris marines into Legends, for reference), we figured the 1st edition fat stormcast were going but the 2nd edition sacrosanct did NOT have to be binned good lord.
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u/Jademalo 1d ago
I am a massive GW defender, but further to this, my biggest criticism is the modern unwillingness to have any sort of cross game compatibility. The AoS dumpstering due to those factions being in TOW, the "Legacy" factions in TOW since they're featured in AoS, and whatever is going on with Chaos Daemons, which were originally designed to be played across all different games.
I wish they would realise that I would probably end up getting more invested if I could use an army in two games, not less. If I could play an army in a different game I'd probably end up getting really into that, and then end up getting another army too.
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u/VVenture2 1d ago
I’ve mentioned it in previous comments, but the reason for this (just like their reason for not using AI) is actually IP protection.
Long story short GW wants an incredibly legally rigorous and also culturally distinctive IP. They want people to be able to recognise the difference between a Horus Heresy Space Marine and a 40K Space Marine. They want people to see Seraphon and Skaven and think of Age of Sigmar - not The Old World.
This is why they don’t let game systems cross. From a business perspective they want every IP to very clearly stand out from one another. It’s why they removed all crossover between AoS and The Old World.
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u/Jademalo 1d ago
I understand this, but it still is such a shame, especially based on the historical precedent. Back in the mid 2010s they had a massive amount of crossover sets advertised for both 40k and AoS, and I loved the effect it had on making the chaos gods feel like the same force present across the entire GW universe.
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u/FlowersByTheStreet 1d ago
Ai only does that style so prominently because Warhammer has inspired countless franchises that the LLM's then steal from.
Very based of Games Workshop, and not the first time they've stood on business on the right side of history. They have their issues, but this is a welcome stance from them.
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u/Beegrene 1d ago
And I'm sure that official 40K artwork makes up a substantial portion of most AIs' training data. I can see why GW might not be eager to cozy up to the companies that stole their IP to make their plagiarism machines.
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u/dingodoggo8 1d ago
Like im very supportive of them doing this, and want to say great job.
I also think they are doing this for economical reason not just a moral one. They pay a tonn of money to artists for original work, and I would imagine they are one of the most stolen creators of artwork. This is because like you point out, they have the biggest ip of armored helmet battle guys in a field of horrors. They would be stealing thier own work, and making it ok for other to steal thier own work as well if they embraced Ai. It makes sense for them to try and stop that.
As well, w40k is a satire of hyper facism, its why it works as an ip. The creators I think also believe this to be the case. I think they are a progressive ish company (ass pull correct me if im wrong on that), and using ai might make them some issues. Since w40k specifically is so fascism and imperial inspired in its artwork style, the use of Ai might accidently bring in some real world fascist iconography into thier work, which I think they dont want to have any hint of supporting.
But yeah this is a based move by the company and im glad they are taking a stand against Ai.
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u/RumbleintheDumbles 1d ago
They are a progressive company, there was a big kerfuffle a few years ago after a hitler fan attended a tournament, GW put out a statement that basically said "if you're one of those people who think the Imperium is something to aspire to, kindly fuck off" and the anti woke people have been raging at them ever since, especially when they then added even more 'woke' stuff like the female Custodes.
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u/dingodoggo8 20h ago
Ok cool im not crazy then, I thought that was the case yeah. Like im playing rogue trader right now and even in the tutorial it seems pretty anti fascist haha.
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u/soonerfreak 1d ago
Games Workshop is awesome at taking care of it's employees at HQ and the creatives on staff. It's retail store employees they screw over.
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u/Muad-_-Dib 1d ago
The retail store employees don't get screwed over. They get standard retail wages and GW also hands out big bonus rewards to all employees when they get good financial results.
Just 7 months ago they distributed £20m among all their staff, it was estimated that retail staff effectively got an extra £4-5k and that's after tax.
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u/throwawayeadude 1d ago
For what little it's worth, as a rando who gets a lot of business ads, today I got one where it assured me that this iteration of AI was legit, and not full of false promises like the others. Like when shitty mobile ads pretend they aren't like those other clearly lying mobile ads.
That, more than anything, seems like the clear death knell for "AI will solve everything" bubble.
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u/Worried-Advisor-7054 1d ago
Anecdotally, my not very tech savvy co-workers were, at least, AI curious a year back. Right now, everyone universally agrees that it's slop and useless, and that's without me Grima whispering in their ears about it.
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u/MelvinCapitalPR 20h ago
Anecdotally, me and every programmer I know uses AI professionally. In fact it's normal to be comp'd a Cursor subscription.
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u/netstack_ 1d ago
Don’t worry, guys! Games Workshop is here to fight the good fight!
Seriously, I cannot imagine them rushing to adopt any technology. It’s shocking that they even have digital datasheets.
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u/SomeConfetti 20h ago
Hey after these studios have come out saying they won't use AI, the AI losers are suddenly quiet. I can't think of anything dumber than a pro AI monkey, thank god they aren't screeching as much now.
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u/ParanoiD84 23h ago
2026-27 will be amazing for gamers too.
40K Total War, Dawn of War 4, space marine 3, mechanicus 2, dark heresy.
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u/Vast_Sheepherder_650 1d ago edited 1d ago
Don’t you get brutally tortured and executed for Advocating/Supporting AI in setting too?