New Games Workshop NDA for influencers UPDATE 2: The document appears to be real.

[amysrevenge]

Just a small tidbit about non-compete clauses in general.  This is specific to Canada, but might apply in other places.

My wife signed a contract with a 6 month non-compete clause in it.  Her lawyer said that non-compete clauses like this are basically not legally binding or enforceable, but many large employers put them in their standard contracts anyway.  Rather than raise a stink and get lawyers even more involved she decided to sign anyway, and made the ethical decision to abide by the terms she committed to by signing, even though they were not legally binding.

[yukishiro1]

4 hours ago, Fairbanks said:

My guess is that GW Legal hired a new person and someone just told them to send a YouTuber an NDA, and they sent the New Employee NDA instead of the YouTuber NDA.

That would be pretty shockingly incompetent - you shouldn't be sending off non-competes without a senior manager signing off on it. But that contract isn't appropriate even for an employee. A 36 month non-compete is way too long for an ex-employee when the content of the non-compete is "you can't sell anything to any GW customer without written permission," not just "you can't use the confidential information for 36 months" or "you can't approach specific retailers you developed a relationship with during your employment," which would be more reasonable. There's also no generic "you can't work for a competitor" clause, which suggests it isn't intended for an employee - why would a contract for an employee prohibit selling anything to any GW customer, but not working for a competitor? 

I just spent a little time looking into non-compete clauses in the UK, and based on the recent 2019 decision (which actually made it easier to enforce non-competes, not harder), there is no way this non-compete would fly for an employee: https://www.supremecourt.uk/cases/docs/uksc-2017-0182-judgment.pdf

Basically, under UK law, non-competes are restraints on trade that violate public policy unless they are designed to protect legitimate business interests and extend no further that is reasonable necessary to protect those interests. A blanket 36 month prohibition on anyone selling anything to any GW customers is not reasonable, and as the decision notes, under UK law the contract cannot be reformed to change the term since that would not be a severance but an amendment, so if the term is unreasonable, the entire contract is unreasonable. Incidentally you will note the facts in that case, the employee was a top executive, the period was only 6 months, and the court went out of its way to say that because she was a top executive she could take care of herself and negotiate freely, but that that was not the case for normal employees.

To be clear, I'm not a UK lawyer, but reading that decision, it would shock me to see a UK court enforce this agreement. GW would probably have been fine if it had just stuck solely to a 36-month term for keeping confidential information confidential or benefitting from confidential information, but by putting everything on the 36 month timeline, including the non-compete, I don't see how this could possibly be enforceable. 

Incidentally, the UK government is also currently considering making non-competes per se unenforceable, or, alternatively, forcing employers to continue to pay compensation to someone as long as they're under a non-compete. See here for a story on it: https://www.hrmagazine.co.uk/content/comment/consultation-closed-what-s-next-for-non-compete-covenants

This same page claims that non-compete terms longer than 12 months are almost per-se unreasonable in employee contracts in the UK, for what it's worth.

Edited September 29, 2021 by yukishiro1

[Gaz Taylor]

14 hours ago, yukishiro1 said:

That would be pretty shockingly incompetent - you shouldn't be sending off non-competes without a senior manager signing off on it.

But things like this do happen. People are under pressure or just generally don’t read things and sign them. One of my old bosses wrote a clause in a SLA that if X thing happened, the department who caused it had to get cakes for everybody. He did it to see if anybody read things. He had a lot of cakes until his message got across 😁

But going back to the topic in hand, no matter what you think about the NDA, you still have a choice to sign it or not. As mentioned previously, if you feel you can not follow the terms, don’t sign it.

[RuneBrush]

15 minutes ago, Gaz Taylor said:

But going back to the topic in hand, no matter what you think about the NDA, you still have a choice to sign it or not. As mentioned previously, if you feel you can not follow the terms, don’t sign it.

Completely this.  Regardless of if it's this NDA or a different one, you're being asked to sign a document to receive some early release models/books.  It's completely voluntary, you can choose to go "no thank you" if you don't wish to agree to the terms.

[Neil Arthur Hotep]

1 hour ago, RuneBrush said:

Completely this.  Regardless of if it's this NDA or a different one, you're being asked to sign a document to receive some early release models/books.  It's completely voluntary, you can choose to go "no thank you" if you don't wish to agree to the terms.

It's not always so easy. As with most ethical question, the line where things go from OK to not OK is fuzzy.

You could imagine a case where you are presented with a completely legal contract, but it is so onerous that nobody who actually reads it should sign it. I think a company presenting such contracts to people in the hope that they make a mistake or make a decision that is objectively bad for them is still behaving unethically. The intent of the company in this case would not be to have a mutually beneficial relationship with that person, but to have a one-sided relationship in the company's favour. If the company was banking on people signing a bad contract due to those people's lack of legal knowledge or the power imbalance between the two, then the facts that everything in the contract is legal and that the person was not forced to sign it are not enough to ensure everything is ethically above board.

While the case is not as clear with the GW NDA, I think it pushes in this direction. The lawyers that I have seen give their opinion on it do call it out as being especially harsh to the point of being potentially unenforcable. This is definitely not a good thing: It amounts to a form of intimidation of whoever signs this NDA. The hope on the part of GW needs to be that people will self-regulate their behavour in the company's favour, even though they are not legally required, because they are afraid to risk opening themselves up to being sued. The average influencer does not have the legal knowledge and ressources to identify and fight unenforcable demands like these.

I definitely believe that just pointing out that people don't have to sign the NDA is not enough. If the deal people are asked to sign on for is so bad that the only way anybody should sign on to it is by mistake, that is an issue in itself.

[RuneBrush]

1 hour ago, Neil Arthur Hotep said:

It's not always so easy. As with most ethical question, the line where things go from OK to not OK is fuzzy.

You could imagine a case where you are presented with a completely legal contract, but it is so onerous that nobody who actually reads it should sign it. I think a company presenting such contracts to people in the hope that they make a mistake or make a decision that is objectively bad for them is still behaving unethically. The intent of the company in this case would not be to have a mutually beneficial relationship with that person, but to have a one-sided relationship in the company's favour. If the company was banking on people signing a bad contract due to those people's lack of legal knowledge or the power imbalance between the two, then the facts that everything in the contract is legal and that the person was not forced to sign it are not enough to ensure everything is ethically above board.

While the case is not as clear with the GW NDA, I think it pushes in this direction. The lawyers that I have seen give their opinion on it do call it out as being especially harsh to the point of being potentially unenforcable. This is definitely not a good thing: It amounts to a form of intimidation of whoever signs this NDA. The hope on the part of GW needs to be that people will self-regulate their behavour in the company's favour, even though they are not legally required, because they are afraid to risk opening themselves up to being sued. The average influencer does not have the legal knowledge and ressources to identify and fight unenforcable demands like these.

I definitely believe that just pointing out that people don't have to sign the NDA is not enough. If the deal people are asked to sign on for is so bad that the only way anybody should sign on to it is by mistake, that is an issue in itself.

My comment was only referring to signing an NDA for free toys.  The subject of unethical contracts with employers and employment law in general is a much bigger subject and probably not something that any of us are qualified to talk about (and debatably should occur outside the context of a hobby forum).

I can only speak for myself, but if I were presented with an NDA to sign in exchange for let's say a load of Chaos Dwarf pre-release models or a new Undead faction's battletome, I'd be contacting a solicitor to give it a once over before I signed it and explain to me any legal implications that could affect me.  Not discounting everything that's been said on this thread or the opinions of some experts who have looked at it - but I'd rather enlist my own expert as my circumstances may well be different to others.

[Gaz Taylor]

3 hours ago, RuneBrush said:

I can only speak for myself, but if I were presented with an NDA to sign in exchange for let's say a load of Chaos Dwarf pre-release models or a new Undead faction's battletome, I'd be contacting a solicitor to give it a once over before I signed it and explain to me any legal implications that could affect me.  Not discounting everything that's been said on this thread or the opinions of some experts who have looked at it - but I'd rather enlist my own expert as my circumstances may well be different to others.

I’d do the same, especially for a load of Chaos Dwarf models 😛

[Mattrulesok]

I'm seeing a lot of 'you don't have to sign it' but we're talking about people who are creating warhammer content, some of these people it's their livelihood. The difference in views and engagement between videos or content that goes up on pre-order day vs a video that goes up 1 week after the product hits shelves can be astronomical. So no, you don't 'have to' sign an NDA but you may be risking your channel and earnings by choosing not to. 

Edited September 30, 2021 by Mattrulesok

[Orbei]

"you don't have to sign it" misses the point, in my opinion. As does "I'm not getting free stuff so this doesn't impact me". Not quoting anyone here, but I've seen these viewpoints repeated. At a high level of course both are true, but you should consider the implication and intent of this. 

We know that this is different from the NDA which content creators have signed in the past. So why would they change the NDA, and what would the new NDA mean for the hobby moving forward? The new NDA prevents the content creator from giving an honest, critical opinion of GW's products. It also prevents them from doing business with GW's customers in an extremely broad sense, which can easily be interpreted to include things like Patreon. People who sign this document and receive product will be able to do a "man reads book'" video or promote the products in a purely positive light.

As a consumer, I value reviews. This applies to everything. Tech, gaming, etc. When I buy a video game I look at multiple review sources. Same with a PC component. I want this same experience with models. I want to get honest feedback on how they are to assemble, if the kits are good or have potential downsides such as monopose or limited weapon options (ork boyz). I'd like to see battle reports with the new rules in action and a critical take on those rules.

Content like this benefits the consumer. The implication here is that Games Workshop is actively trying to limit such content. This Would never fly in the tech industry... It reminds me of an incident involving Nvidea and a tech chanel last year, where they were going to stop sending them products because of their critical opinion. All of the largest channels called them out on it and they ended up apologizing for the entire incident. The problem here is that the balance of power is far more skewed towards GW than in the tech industry due to a lack of competition. Creators are far more reliant on GW and likely to go along with whatever deal they can. This ultimately hurts the consumer as it limits our information and ability to make informed purchases. 

GW doesn't send me anything for free but this still has an impact on my hobby, should it be the direction they are moving in.

[Neil Arthur Hotep]

3 hours ago, RuneBrush said:

My comment was only referring to signing an NDA for free toys.  The subject of unethical contracts with employers and employment law in general is a much bigger subject and probably not something that any of us are qualified to talk about (and debatably should occur outside the context of a hobby forum).

I mainly brought it up to point out that certain basic assumptions that often go unquestioned in these discussions online are actually up for debate. Assumptions like:

• If what a company does is legal, it is fine.
• If what a company does maximizes profit, it is fine.
• If what a company does is normal business practice, they are fine.
• A company can do literally anything they want with their (intellectual) properties.
• It is fine to demand whatever you want in a contract, as long as the other party has the option not to sign the it.

Even though we are not going to solve the discussion about what is and is not ethical for a company to do, I think it's valuable for people to try out different ideas about this issue and to try and formulate a defense of their own pre-conceived position.

I think this kind of thing is especially pertinent to discuss in the context of a hobby forum. I would hate to live in a world where the proper place to think and talk about how to interact with the corporate entities that shape our daily lives is in journals and books that get locked away in university libraries to collect dust

 

4 hours ago, RuneBrush said:

I can only speak for myself, but if I were presented with an NDA to sign in exchange for let's say a load of Chaos Dwarf pre-release models or a new Undead faction's battletome, I'd be contacting a solicitor to give it a once over before I signed it and explain to me any legal implications that could affect me.  Not discounting everything that's been said on this thread or the opinions of some experts who have looked at it - but I'd rather enlist my own expert as my circumstances may well be different to others.

In your example the reward (advance access to highly-anticipated new models) actually seems somewhat commensurate to the risk (sign an NDA that opens you up for legal action if you don't keep this stuff under wraps). Or, at least, the risk you take on with a standard NDA. Ideally, that's what things should look like: You take on some duties in exchange for a worthwhile favour from a company. The problem is more that the risk/reward seems very weighted in favour of GW in this case (depending on what people who sign this NDA actually get, which I assume is, like, a copy of Dominion a week early or something like that).

You are absolutely right of course that in this case it would be prudent to have a legal professional take a look at the contract before signing it. And you would definitely be careless if you didn't. But the fact that you would be careless doesn't justify another party exploiting your carelessness. Even if you leave your house door unlocked, nobody is justified stealing from you. That kind of thing.

Again, I don't want to say the case of the GW NDA is analogous to someone scamming or robbing a person. That's also clearly absurd. But it is worth asking yourself the question: "How ethical is what is happening here, really?" and not just defaulting to "GW can do what they want, you can just say no."

[Greybeard86]

2 minutes ago, Neil Arthur Hotep said:

I mainly brought it up to point out that certain basic assumptions that often go unquestioned in these discussions online are actually up for debate. Assumptions like:

• If what a company does is legal, it is fine.
• If what a company does maximizes profit, it is fine.
• If what a company does is normal business practice, they are fine.
• A company can do literally anything they want with their (intellectual) properties.
• It is fine to demand whatever you want in a contract, as long as the other party has the option not to sign the it.

Even though we are not going to solve the discussion about what is and is not ethical for a company to do, I think it's valuable for people to try out different ideas about this issue and to try and formulate a defense of their own pre-conceived position.

I think this kind of thing is especially pertinent to discuss in the context of a hobby forum. I would hate to live in a world where the proper place to think and talk about how to interact with the corporate entities that shape our daily lives is in journals and books that get locked away in university libraries to collect dust

 

Agreed, and I live in those dusty libraries.

2 minutes ago, Neil Arthur Hotep said:

Again, I don't want to say the case of the GW NDA is analogous to someone scamming or robbing a person. That's also clearly absurd. But it is worth asking yourself the question: "How ethical is what is happening here, really?" and not just defaulting to "GW can do what they want, you can just say no."

I am mostly concerned with what this does to the "community", which is organized around such personalities (to an extent). The fact that they call their marketing outlet "warhammer community" makes me cringe so hard. That they would attempt (I think they succeeded) to strong arm reviewers with NDAs that "ban" criticism is just ugly.

I completely understand why reviewers accept it, though. But that doesn't make it any better.

[yukishiro1]

8 hours ago, Gaz Taylor said:

But going back to the topic in hand, no matter what you think about the NDA, you still have a choice to sign it or not. As mentioned previously, if you feel you can not follow the terms, don’t sign it.

You don't have a problem with a company sending around unenforceable contracts that violate public policy?

Not trying to be argumentative here, I'm just honestly curious. So many people in this thread have said some variation on "if you don't like it, don't sign it, problem solved." But even the legal system itself doesn't follow that principle. The legal system says there are a category of things you can't get people to do just by pressuring them into signing a contract, because the legal system recognizes that if you do allow that, the result is a lot of bad behavior by parties with greater bargaining power. 

I'm bothered if a company I buy from and therefore financially support is sending around a contract like that, because it shows either (1) they know they can't enforce it and are just trying to deceive people with a contract they know is oppressive and violates public policy but they're gambling you'll follow anyway out of fear, or (2) their legal department is really incompetent and/or unwilling to stand up to management to tell them they can't do some things. Both those things would concern me, I want the company that gets my hobby dollars to be operating within the law and succeeding based on the merits of its products, not abusing its power to squelch dissent and control what people are allowed to say about it. And I want that company run by people who understand what the law is and attempt to follow it. I don't think those are unreasonable things to care about. 

To me the bottom line is GW doesn't need to be doing stuff like this. They create good miniatures. They make tons of money. They don't need to be trying to control reviewers' behavior with (at the very minimum) exceedingly strict and onerous NDAs and non-competes compared to what is standard even among other companies. Do we think those companies are any less interested in making a buck? And yet they manage without contracts like that. GW should be able to manage, too. GW itself has managed with less onerous NDAs, because we know from other content creators that the ones they signed aren't like this one. 

Edited September 30, 2021 by yukishiro1

[Orsino]

9 hours ago, Gaz Taylor said:

But things like this do happen. People are under pressure or just generally don’t read things and sign them. One of my old bosses wrote a clause in a SLA that if X thing happened, the department who caused it had to get cakes for everybody. He did it to see if anybody read things. He had a lot of cakes until his message got across 😁

But going back to the topic in hand, no matter what you think about the NDA, you still have a choice to sign it or not. As mentioned previously, if you feel you can not follow the terms, don’t sign it.

The poster explained why it is unlikely to be a mix-up with an employee contract, almost anything can happen but that doesn't make it credible.

And justifying shady contracts by saying people don't have to sign them sort of misses the point.

[Lucky Snake Eyes]

This entire thread now is now reminding me of the video games industry. There's been a long drawn out debate on the ethics of companies giving out review copies of games and the NDAs that accompany them. There's a belief among some people more involved in video games as a hobby that some companies/individuals that do games news/reviews can't be taken at face value because their livelihoods are built off of their reviews, that is to say that they compromise on their impartiality in reporting and reviewing to gain the favour of publishing companies to ensure a steady supply of advanced copies of games so that they can have their reviews out first or get exclusive coverage to announce new releases or development progress.

This results in cases where individual reviewers and organizations will put out high scoring reviews of games that wilfully ignore or even try to positively spin anti-consumer practices within a games internal systems/economy and in some cases will ignore or exclude mention of any prevalant bugs or issues with the game (this last point however is subjective as an individual reviewer may not encounter a given technical problem during their review playthrough. Software dev is a pain like that)

It makes me wonder as the wargaming hobby grows larger that we may end up seeing a similar sentiment develop among reviewers and consumers at a similar scale.

[Lucky Snake Eyes]

26 minutes ago, Orsino said:

And justifying shady contracts by saying people don't have to sign them sort of misses the point.

I feel like this is a point a lot of people are missing. To be hyperbolic about it, for someone whose career is built upon delivering news and reviews about a hobby and it's products it can be akin to (and once again making a hyperbolic example) being given a choice to get a promotion at cost of being shot in the leg, or you could not take the promotion and not get shot in the leg. There is an option that does no harm to yourself, but also set you back in career advancement. Unfortunately most consumers aren't as aware or ethically minded as we'd like, and just expecting the average consumer to "know better" or educate themselves is wishful thinking. So there is an unfortunate reality that as a hobby grows larger and becomes more mainstream, the lions share of revenue for breaking news or reviews will go to those who release their content first. This leads to situations where a reviewer may compromise on their impartiality or even freedoms to conduct their business to ensure a steady stream of early product to review so that they can maintain a better income off of those early/day one clicks from eager customers.

[yukishiro1]

Just having an advance review copy system itself creates a strong incentive to play nice and give the products good reviews, because you can bet that if a given content creator gives bad reviews to GW products consistently, they aren't going to be getting advance copies any more. But that's precisely why there's no need to try to further shackle people with these sorts of contracts. GW has all the tools it needs to make sure advance reviews are positive, it doesn't need to also dangle the threat of legal consequences on top of that.

All GW needs for people who receive advance review copies (or for playtesters) is a basic NDA that stops people from disclosing confidential information, there's no need for all this non-compete nonsense to be layered on top of that. It's not like GW is signing any agreement to keep sending people review copies no matter what they do, its remedy if they don't like the coverage they get from someone is just to stop sending advance copies. 

 

Edited September 30, 2021 by yukishiro1

[The Red King]

Oh man theres the counter argument I cant believe it took this long to see. Note I'm only quoting Gaz in this case because he put the argument the most succinctly. This is in no way an attack on the messenger.

 

"you still have a choice to send out content that may be viewed negatively early or not. As mentioned previously, if you feel you can not make a product that will earn praise, don’t send out review copies."

 

There is no reason that GW should be excused for trying to legally stifle criticism.  Yes you can't please everyone but when you go out of your way to try to legally mandate positive reviews it starts to look like maybe the criticism is more valid than the praise. Whether that's true or not, an innocent man doesn't fight so hard to keep people from being honest and perception is very much a factor.

[Gaz Taylor]

3 hours ago, yukishiro1 said:

Not trying to be argumentative here, I'm just honestly curious. So many people in this thread have said some variation on "if you don't like it, don't sign it, problem solved." But even the legal system itself doesn't follow that principle. The legal system says there are a category of things you can't get people to do just by pressuring them into signing a contract, because the legal system recognizes that if you do allow that, the result is a lot of bad behavior by parties with greater bargaining power. 

I think a lot of this discussion, depends on how you see GW. I don’t see GW as a horrible, evil mega corporation. I just see them as a company with lots of employees who are very passionate about what they do (making miniatures). It doesn’t always mean they are good at other things but I suspect it’s because I’ve worked at a few different companies like this and I’m not surprised. 

Also it always comes back the question - If you want X, then you sign the NDA. If you don’t like the NDA you don’t sign it or even discuss changes with them about it. If my lively hood depended on me being aware about such stuff, common sense says you would get legal advice! 

2 hours ago, Orsino said:

And justifying shady contracts by saying people don't have to sign them sort of misses the point.

I’m not justifying it, I’m just saying if you don’t like it, don’t sign it. That’s the case for anything like this, especially if my livelihood depended on it. 

Also I think too many people are in the Review mindset and sort of comparing this with Video Games. Advance copies of stuff aren’t for reviews, it’s about building hype. For example, GW release a new battletome. Now what are my options here? I can’t go to another company for rules to play in age of sigmar, so it just boils down to the advance copy video building hype for the release by showing off the rules, background and what models you can use. 

[yukishiro1]

1 hour ago, Gaz Taylor said:

I think a lot of this discussion, depends on how you see GW. I don’t see GW as a horrible, evil mega corporation. I just see them as a company with lots of employees who are very passionate about what they do (making miniatures). It doesn’t always mean they are good at other things but I suspect it’s because I’ve worked at a few different companies like this and I’m not surprised. 

I don't think GW is a "horrible, evil mega corporation" either. But we're talking about a specific thing. Saying "well GW does lots of stuff and they aren't always good at all of it" doesn't really address this particular thing. If your argument is "this particular thing may be bad, but I don't really care because I like GW overall" then sure, you're entitled to your opinion. To me, liking a company makes me care more about it behaving well, not less, but to each his own I suppose.

To me, this isn't about hating on GW, it's about wanting GW to be better. I don't accept the argument that we have to just take the bad with the good, and therefore GW's bad actions are not something to really care about as long as we like the company overall. That's a defeatist attitude. The only leverage we have as customers is expressing our dissatisfaction when a company we support does something we don't support. 

 

 

Edited September 30, 2021 by yukishiro1

[Sarouan]

30 minutes ago, yukishiro1 said:

To me, liking a company makes me care more about it behaving well, not less, but to each his own I suppose. To me, this isn't about hating on GW, it's about wanting GW to be better.

In that case, you should fact-check more before going on a rant like you did multiple times in previous topics showing GW on a bad light or something. You sure tend to be quick to attack GW first in case of doubt, which is kinda weird for someone saying they "like a company".

Not saying that you're lieing here, but your actions don't really match your words, IMHO.

Caring for behaving well, sure. Though to me, it's better to be certain they indeed behaved badly...and not being a tool for other interests like youtubers defending their respective point of view and trying to weaponize their base.

 

30 minutes ago, yukishiro1 said:

I don't accept the argument that we have to just take the bad with the good, and therefore GW's bad actions are not something to really care about as long as we like the company overall. That's a defeatist attitude.

Thing is, you lean to think that arguments not going your way are defending "the bad with the good". Because that's how you view it.

Maybe there simply isn't any "bad and good", here, but just people with businesses who want to protect their respective interests their own way. It's easy to say "content creators are poor independants ! they're the victims here !"...but I'd be more cautious instead. Maybe it's because I'm older and have more experiences with similar things like this, and knowing that reality isn't black and white - and there are a lot of shades of grey. It's not a novel you're writing, here : you don't know who are the true villains and heroes because you don't have the writer's omniscient point of view. You just have your subjective human point of view, and you certainly don't have the full picture here. And if you say you do because of "morality"...I'll just reply that's how all dictators think as well.

Making things better ? All right, indeed. But making sure it will make things better that way (ie attacking GW on dubious bases without checking the facts and seeing what the other side may gain for it) sounds a lot more healthy, to me. Anger never leads to good results on long term.

 

30 minutes ago, yukishiro1 said:

The only leverage we have as customers is expressing our dissatisfaction when a company we support does something we don't support.

Yes, indeed. But what you're doing here is expressing your dissatisfaction to others users of this forum that is, for sure, not owned by GW nor even sure to be seen by their employees. In fact, there are pretty good chances the people who want to target in this particular topic - meaning people from the legal branch of GW - will never read all your posts here at all.

Thus meaning doing that here is utterly and completely pointless. Again.

No, your intent here is just proving you're right and gather people behind your way of seeing things - maybe debating with people like me who don't agree with you on your very black and white vision of the world. But certainly not trying to make GW better. Because your way of doing it here has zero chances of having any effect at all.

That's how I view it.

[Orbei]

1 hour ago, Gaz Taylor said:

Also I think too many people are in the Review mindset and sort of comparing this with Video Games. Advance copies of stuff aren’t for reviews, it’s about building hype. For example, GW release a new battletome. Now what are my options here? I can’t go to another company for rules to play in age of sigmar, so it just boils down to the advance copy video building hype for the release by showing off the rules, background and what models you can use. 

This is a very insightful post for me. Thank you. This is definitely my mindset. I don't have any interest in a content creator simply promoting a new thing without a critical eye as part of some hype train. When I watch unboxing videos or reviews I want unbiased criticism. The good and the bad. Currently I am able to get this from some content creators, and I interpret this new NDA as GW's best effort to limit criticism. Obviously they cannot prevent ALL unbiased reviews and criticism, only those who sign the NDA. But this is at least an effort by GW to lessen honest, critical content that consumers have access to. I value that content so I don't like it.

There really is a lot of value that can come from unbiased, critical early access. How many boxes do I need to make a unit, meaning what are the options the sprue let's me build? Are the rules in a campaign book like Broken Realms worth it for my faction, or can I skip it? Is this new faction one that is good for a player with my mindset, or should I wait for an upcoming release? Hands on feedback from people with access to the product helps consumers make informed purchases. We'll be getting less of that moving forward, per this NDA.

[Sarouan]

17 minutes ago, Orbei said:

We'll be getting less of that moving forward, per this NDA.

That's what you're assuming, but how are you sure that will be the case ?

We're still waiting for the apocalypse for content creators with the previous topic about "modders being censored by GW". There was a buzz, sure, and now we're just changing topics.

Something tells me we'll soon forget about this "NDA leak" in a few weeks later. And that we'll keep having critical reviews nonetheless.

Edited September 30, 2021 by Sarouan

[Deepkin]

24 minutes ago, Sarouan said:

In that case, you should fact-check more before going on a rant like you did multiple times in previous topics showing GW on a bad light or something. You sure tend to be quick to attack GW first in case of doubt, which is kinda weird for someone saying they "like a company".

Not saying that you're lieing here, but your actions don't really match your words, IMHO.

Caring for behaving well, sure. Though to me, it's better to be certain they indeed behaved badly...and not being a tool for other interests like youtubers defending their respective point of view and trying to weaponize their base.

 

Thing is, you lean to think that arguments not going your way are defending "the bad with the good". Because that's how you view it.

Maybe there simply isn't any "bad and good", here, but just people with businesses who want to protect their respective interests their own way. It's easy to say "content creators are poor independants ! they're the victims here !"...but I'd be more cautious instead. Maybe it's because I'm older and have more experiences with similar things like this, and knowing that reality isn't black and white - and there are a lot of shades of grey. It's not a novel you're writing, here : you don't know who are the true villains and heroes because you don't have the writer's omniscient point of view. You just have your subjective human point of view, and you certainly don't have the full picture here. And if you say you do because of "morality"...I'll just reply that's how all dictators think as well.

Making things better ? All right, indeed. But making sure it will make things better that way (ie attacking GW on dubious bases without checking the facts and seeing what the other side may gain for it) sounds a lot more healthy, to me. Anger never leads to good results on long term.

 

Yes, indeed. But what you're doing here is expressing your dissatisfaction to others users of this forum that is, for sure, not owned by GW nor even sure to be seen by their employees. In fact, there are pretty good chances the people who want to target in this particular topic - meaning people from the legal branch of GW - will never read all your posts here at all.

Thus meaning doing that here is utterly and completely pointless. Again.

No, your intent here is just proving you're right and gather people behind your way of seeing things - maybe debating with people like me who don't agree with you on your very black and white vision of the world. But certainly not trying to make GW better. Because your way of doing it here has zero chances of having any effect at all.

That's how I view it.

I quite like his posts and find them persuasive. 

So in that sense, he's had a positive impact.

[Sarouan]

Just now, Deepkin said:

I quite like his posts and find them persuasive. 

So in that sense, he's had a positive impact.

Yet, if his goal is to make GW better, his posts miss the point.

Good for you, though.

[Orbei]

1 minute ago, Sarouan said:

That's what you're assuming, but how are you sure that will be the case ?

Because I read it, found it to be very clear, and have seen legal analysis that confirms my reading of it.

2 minutes ago, Sarouan said:

Something tells me we'll soon forget about this "NDA leak" in a few weeks later. And that we'll keep having critical reviews nonetheless.

I hope so. That would mean people aren't signing it.