It’s easy to forget that behind every miniature, there are a dozen people who made it happen. Lion El’Johnson, the last big Warhammer reveal that caught my attention as a reformed member of the Fallen, was likely designed by many hands. A concept artist, maybe multiple, to start things off. Then 3D designers, and a sculptor too. I don’t know if Games Workshop has moved to digital sculpting rather than the old-fashioned method of creating a 300-percent-scale model for design purposes, but both methods require staff. Then you’ve got the people who make the moulds, pour the plastic, write the marketing copy, write the lore, and write the tie-in novel that sold out in minutes.
In modern Games Workshop, only one of these people gets credited: the author. I became aware of the problem while reading Polygon’s review of the new Leviathan starter set, the entirety of which – miniatures, lore, rules, and all – is credited to “The Warhammer Design Studio”. There are dozens, if not hundreds, of people who will have worked on bringing this set to life, and they’re being disrespected with a catch-all credit that gives them nothing for all their hard work. It’s like going to the cinema, and instead of scrolling through a few minutes of names at the end, the film just credits all the corporations that collaborated on it. Marvel Studios, Walt Disney Pictures, Wētā FX, Abbey Road Studios, etc. No actors, no director, no props designers or runners, just the companies these people work for.
This goes further than Games Workshop’s models, though. Take the Warhammer Community website as another example. Not only are the article writers not credited anywhere any more, neither are in-house interviewees. Polygon points out that the designer of Vashtorr the Arkifane is referred to only as “Steve” in a Warhammer Community article about his work on the model. That’s one of my favourite Warhammer models of recent years – especially those biomechanical wings, yes please – and it’s nigh impossible to find more of its designers work.
This extends further still, with the Warhammer YouTube channel pivoting in recent months. It’s hard to pinpoint the exact time of the change, but around the start of 2023 it became clear that presenters weren’t allowed to show their faces on the channel, only their hands holding brushes. They’re also not credited on-screen or in the description. Who knows who is presenting these tutorials, or who is behind the camera? However, it’s this particular shift to impersonality that reveals some answers.
There has been an exodus of Warhammer’s YouTube staff in recent years, starting with Duncan ‘Two Thin Coats’ Rhodes, who helped put the channel on the map with meme-able content and quality guides. He left the company in late 2019, forming his own crowd-funded (think a Patreon alternative) painting academy. He provides tutorials on Games Workshop miniatures and those from other companies, his new role clearly allowing him a sense of freedom, and now has his own range of paints, which raised over a million pounds on their initial Kickstarter and directly rival Games Workshop products. Rhodes had been at GW for a decade before this.
21-year Workshop veteran Chris ‘Peachy’ Peach parted ways with the company in September 2022 after five years with the YouTube team, joining independent content creators The Painting Phase, another Patreon-funded venture. This is a man I remember reading about in White Dwarf as a kid, inspiring me to sign my friends up to our own version of A Tale Of Four Warlords thanks to his Eldar conversions (I think, we’re talking over a decade ago here).
He was followed this year by co-host Louise Sugden, who had started her Games Workshop career in the design studio, illustrating maps, goblins, and planets. She moved to the marketing team for the launch of Warhammer Plus, and regularly featured in videos both there and on YouTube. Now, she has started her own Patreon-backed YouTube channel, Rogue Hobbies, saying in a video that the “there was way more than the dumb ‘only hands’ thing happening beneath the surface”, referencing the shift to faceless videos.
Games Workshop is stripping credit away from all of its creatives, and is likely doing so as a result of so many key staff members leaving to rival companies, or creating their own rival companies in the process. Not only are Games Workshop’s videos now completely impersonal and incredibly dry, the people who have worked hard to make them aren’t getting credit for doing so.
However, if staff are leaving en masse to create their own freelance projects – an incredibly risky business with no stability whatsoever – that suggests that the compensation isn’t incredibly high. But instead of offering incentives for its staff to stay with the company, Games Workshop is closing up shop and denying its current staff from opportunities. It’s also extending this far further than just its YouTube channel, to its designers and writers, too.
Some people suggest that staff may have called for the change, citing writer Matt Ward’s abuse from customers after a series of Codices that were perceived as bad. This argument doesn’t hold water, as online abuse comes hand in hand with many jobs such as this – mine included – and that’s no reason to remove all credit for your staff. Removing links to their social media? Sure. Credits? Not a chance.
Why would staff be happy with this change, why wouldn’t they complain, campaign, or leave? Louise Sugden’s video has the answer to this, too. “I stayed for a really long time, maybe way longer than I should have. And I think I stuck around for so long because I really loved Games Workshop,” she says, adding that she “desperately wanted to be a part of that system.” Games Workshop is the industry leader, for many people it’s an honour to work there, even uncredited. It’s the company that, for the vast majority of us, started our love of the hobby, and there’s a nostalgia attached to it that other companies we discovered later in our lives don’t have.
Games Workshop is abusing its status and disrespecting its staff. Whether it’s the OnlyHands YouTube style, removing bylines on Warhammer Community articles, or stamping Leviathan boxes with basic “design studio” credits, Games Workshop’s staff deserve better.