Is 3D Printing an Existential Threat to Warhammer?

I’ve seen many videos pop up recently regarding another crackdown by Warhammer on YouTube. This time round they seem to be targeting YouTubers that have a focus on miniature wargaming (though not exclusively Warhammer) and 3D printing.

Here’s Discourse’s rundown (if you’re not too annoyed by her usual negative/ click baity style).

Seems to me that Warhammer are running scared from the looming threat of 3D printing. At least that’s what it looks like, and I suppose 3D printing could be an existential threat to a miniatures company. But is it? And are they?

I never jumped on the Warhammer+ bandwagon (thought I was briefly tempted). But it seemed to me at the time, even with 3D printing back then not being what it is now, that 3D printing was what Warhammer+ was for. I mean it’s not really for anything else that’s for sure! Had Warhammer+ debuted with all old rulebooks, army books, white dwarf issues and some black library novels either in text or audio format, I might have felt differently (and almost certainly thrown my money at them). Instead what was offered was a rather lacklustre streaming service for content freely available on YouTube.

I’m sure it wouldn’t be difficult for Warhammer to provide some STL files on Warhammer+ for people to print at home. Possibly starting with 3D scans of old and out of production minis, saving them doing those odd ‘made to order’ runs. If a plastic kit goes out of production, but someone still feels nostalgic for it (I still love the old Zombies), why not provide 3D files?

It also wouldn’t be difficult for Warhammer to run those pesky bits sellers (pesky from the POV of Warhammer that is) out of business by providing many sort after bits for printing. Why would someone buy a single bit for an inflated price, if they could print infinite of that same bit for the same price, even a slightly higher price, or just for the cost of their Warhammer+ subscription. Why not provide such a service in your friendly local Warhammer store, for folks without printers to get that bit fast, rather than wait for postage?

I can only assume over the next few years 3D printing is only going to get better in terms of quality, it’s going to get easier to do, and cheaper (if current trends are anything to go by). 3D printing is certainly not a fad, is not going to fizzle out, and it will reshape the wargaming hobby. So if Warhammer don’t embrace it, will it spell the end of them altogether?

Maybe…

Warhammer models do currently come on lovely plastic sprues in potentially the best material to make models out of. I’m not saying here that Warhammer’s formulation of plastic is necessarily the best, but there is something extremely satisfying about clipping bits off of a sprue and gluing guys together with plastic cement. Less so gluing resin bits together using super glue, which is always fraught with danger, fingers stuck to bits, and bits refusing to stick to other bits. I believe you can use plastic cement on ABS prints… but I’m no expert. The alternative obviously is printing your guys already assembled, so all you have is minor cleanup to do, however modelling isn’t always a necessary evil, some people do actually enjoy building models (and even painting them).

Maybe Warhammer’s current problem, is that in their previous attempts to run bits sellers out of business, by making all the bits on their sprues useless, oftentimes means assembling one of their kits can feel like assembling something you’ve printed. Gluing a guys arm and one third of a torso to his right thigh, instead of legs, torsos and arms all being separate parts. Their kits have certainly decreased in fun factor. It’s no longer like assembling wargamers’ Lego and a lot more like following instructions on a line in a factory. You rarely get to make decisions about poses, and when you do it’s option A or B, it’s nothing like the freedom you used to have.

Maybe the coming miniature apocalypse is one of the main reasons we see Warhammer diversifying their business so much more than we have seen in a long time, focusing a lot more on animation and video game licenses, not to forget the much prophesied Henry Cavill show. Maybe these new legs on the Warhammer stool are there to prop up what (in a worst case scenario) would be a failing miniature business. Although as far as I understand the financial reports suggest that anything like that could be a long way off.

But let’s jump 20 years into the future…

We’ve all got flying cars, personal robot assistants and live in a global socialist utopia. The climate crisis has been solved, there’s no more war, and we even cured cancer.

What’s Warhammer up to now we’ve all got access to replicators?

The IP will be king. Which is probably why Warhammer have tested the boundaries of what is and isn’t ‘theirs’ for years, and plays into the current draconian measures on YouTube. But Warhammer also have another existential problem in that direction, and that is the watering down of the IP to fit a mass audience. This is capitalism’s fault since the lines on the graph must continually go up forever and ever amen. This all falters when your poster children, the Space Marines are more evil than the Starship Troopers. Evil to the point that the Imperium of Man as a faction within Warhammer 40k does attract real life Nazis to take part in the Warhammer hobby. So Primaris Space Marines at least aesthetically, take on a more neutral modern military look, and look less like a psychotic monk in a tin can. But in my opinion this is just riding a line, and the parody that Space Marines used to be has been lost in favour of a homogeneous approach. They are no longer a comment on something, but to be fair that could be too much to expect of a faction in a globe spanning Wargame. Springtime for the Emperor or Imperium History X, is maybe too much to ask.

Miniature sales drop with the rise of 3D printing, so you water down the IP to reach a bigger audience to sustain those sales, but then you lose the core of what made your IP interesting to begin with.

In conclusion…

It seems obvious that what you do is supply 3D printable minis through the Warhammer+ service. Maybe you add a more expensive tier for that privilege. would many Warhammer enthusiasts complain about a subscription service that allows them to print their entire army for the low monthly price of a box of Intercessors? Probably not. You can always charge extra for colour prints, and still sell expensive paint.

On a side note… does art itself die in a utopia? All the best art at least seems to emerge from human suffering, so when that no longer exists what happens to art itself? Is that why in Star Trek they’re always referencing the 20th century and before?