I keep hearing there is some ongoing drama with Hiveworks but I never really get to know what it is. What is going on.From what I understand, Hiveworks is a curating association who reach out to webcomic they judge of good enough quality to propose cross-promotional services. Sort of like what webrings used to be. What kind of drama can stem out of that?
>>153353634They're just a giant scam. Think webtoons but way way worse.
>>153353685how is it a scam? They do not claim ownership of any comic and they don't do "sponsorised comics" where they ends up owning every right of the comics either.
>>153353634All I know is that /hyw/ goes from "I hope I get accepted" to "fuck them!" Funniest shit ever.
>>153353839>/hyw/Are you talking about the How Is Your Webcomic threads?
>>153353634>What kind of drama can stem out of that?IIRC it involves a lot of money not being handed to the creators of the webcomics
>>153353846Yes. Whenever Hiveworks had auditions, the threads were full of people preparing and hoping they get picked. When they don't, they get pissed and talk shit about Hiveworks. But that was years ago and I don't go to those threads anymore.
>>153353634Fuckers still owe me my physical SSSS book 4, way back from the 2022 last kickstarter.Things started simple in late 2023, with some delivery issues where DHL would hand the book over to local postal services, and postal services would look at the address and realize it's fucked. Kept trying, re-sending, trying to get in contact with DHL, and get them in contact with our local postal services. At one point they offered a refund, but I naively decided we could get this to work.Eventually responses slowed down to a trickle and I had to prod them more and more for any response. One day they came to me claiming they wanted to try sending the book through something other than DHL at a ludicrous surcharge that felt more like an attempt at discouraging me more than anything else.At one point I asked them to show me the damn book, see if it even existed. Got nothing. Instead they asked me to write down the address the way a local would, to crossreference what the form had recorded vs what it's supposed to look like. Turned out there was a glaringly obvious mistake in how the form had recorded it, which I pointed out. And from there, absolute fucking silence since 2024.Sweeping a problem delivery under the rug? Scammers? Just plain lazy? Who fucking knows at this point. Had I known I should have taken that refund when they offered. Take heed, anons: if you have to buy shit from them and any issues crop up, don't pursue, get a refund instead.
>>153353946You can't even buy any physical books from them right now.They have a message on their storefront that says "Due to the current world situation, we are not shipping physical items at this time. Our ebooks remain available to purchase."
>>153353634If that's true that's a shame. I only just found their website.
what do the do, aside from curating webcomics?
>>153353634isn't hiveworks dead after 2020? I stopped giving a shit about them, foxglove comics is better
>>153358178There are still a lot of popular comics that are under its umbrella.
>>153353634There should be some recent articles on it. Basically the owners were stealing money for personal use while failing to provide the services they claimed the company would do.
>>153358178>foxglove comicsFirst I hear of that, let me check it o-Ah. I see. It's you.Guess Kemono Cafe had too obvious a name for bait, huh? At least you're not forcing the kit'n'kay meme anymore
>>153357278>what do the do, aside from curating webcomics?Hiveworks purports itself as a webcomics "services" company. They would help you with the technical aspects of maintaining your own website (instead of comic platform like webtoon), merch/crowdfunding logistics, and a few other things. They'll also put you in their promotional network of affiliates.Their promise was always "we don't get paid until your comic is profitable". But it looks like that was a lie according to:https://www.comicsbeat.com/hiveworks-artist-guild-calls-out-hiveworks-execs-mismanagement/Before whatever this recent controversy is, they've had a bad rap on /co/ for several reason:First, plain old jealousy. A lot of big names in webcomics become affiliates, like Awkward Zombie and Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal so being part of the webring was very aspirational. So naturally there was a lot of sour grapes about the organization.Second, they were very much a circlejerk. Hiveworks advertised that affiliation required a semi-professionally ran comic with regular updates and a few other basic standards. In practice, they were a club for friends-of-friends. Rarely would their open submission periods actually lead to a complete outsider getting in unless they had a huge pre-existing following. Instead, affiliate creators would get their fiends involved and Hiveworks would ignore their own policies when their friends were concerned. Years before it all fell apart this year, the affiliates page was graveyard of comics that hadn't been updated for years yet never seemed to get booted per their policies. Finally, there were the reports of incompetency for their crowdfunding services. Stories like >>153353946 were pretty common, so the whole enterprise seemed suspicious. You had to wonder how bad they were at stuff that customers didn't see.And now we know: mismanagement that's landed them hundreds of thousands in debt and affiliates fleeing the sinking ship.
>>153362083As someone who's been reading webcomics since 2024, the collapse of Hiveworks feels like closing the book on "webcomics" as we used to know them.I've always roughly conceptualized webcomics into three generations. First where the late 90s/early 2000s comics like Penny Arcade and B^U. Mostly gamer comics and strips that tried to migrate the newspaper comic format to the internet.Then there's a generation starting in the late 2000s through mid/late 2010s. It became way easier to host a website and you get a bigger proportion of webcomics attempting serialized storytelling with art more ambitious than just three-panel newsstrips. A lot of this rode the wave of Homestuck.And then we have the latest wave, which has abandoned the concept of a traditional "webcomic" completely and just posts to Webtoon, Tapas, or some other platform that leeches off their artists.Hiveworks in my mind was the forefront of that middle generation and offered a promise that creator-managed websites were viable livelihoods. A lot of bright stars joined up and it seemed from the outside that maybe they were right. But now I think we're seeing that all that viewership momentum they were building in the 2010s completely ran out of steam. Websites in general are dying as internet users allow themselves to be herded into a handful of massive corporate social media platforms.I'm doubtful that this trend will reverse anytime soon and it makes me despair that a new serialized storytelling comic - something like Gunnerkrigg Court or Unsounded - could ever build enough audience to fully support the creator using the model those older comics have. Even if you go viral on Webtoon, can that really support the artist? Does it translate to patreon subscribers?
>>153362395One final thought I have about Hiveworks' implosion ties back to their lack of policy enforcement and who they allowed in as affiliates.A huge percentage of creators starting webcomics in the late 2000s/early 2010s were art students still in school doing their webcomic as a side hobby. I can't count the number of comics I use to read that would post "hey going on hiatus, it's finals month". I think the ever-growing graveyard of Hiveworks affiliates was due to these types of artists outgrowing webcomics and moving on to professional careers. And since Hiveworks was organized around their friend network and not built to actually foster new talent, they had no way to replace the attrition.I think a lot of audience trust has been erroded by this pattern. Who would ever start reading a new webcomic when it has a 9 in 10 probably of dying unfinished when its creator gets too busy/bored? Manga has much higher success rate for reaching a finish line despite the number of early axes many series get.I'm really glad that the series I currently read (and even support monetarily) were able to grow to a power of sustainability for the creator, but I just can't see the current ecosystem of comics letting that happen ever again.
>>153362395*2004, not 2024I'm old.
>>153362083>The statement alleges that Hiveworks owner Xelette Velamist and manager Isabelle Malançon were guilty of bad management, poor communication, non-payment and possibly even embezzlement – Velamist reportedly bought a car with Kickstarter funds. While creators tried to work with the remaining staff, it was soon revealed that the company was $340,000 in debt “from years of mismanagement of Kickstarters, failure to pay the company that hosts the Hivemill shop, and other smaller financial failings on behalf of Xel and Isa.”Pretty crazy stuff. Gotta wonder if the owners were colossally stupid or spitefully immoral to buy a car while sinking into that much debt.This part from the original statement is also crazy:>Crowdfunding campaigns would be left incomplete, or would be completed very late, and Hiveworks would start new ones to fund the older ones, creating an incredibly disorganized queue. Late fulfillment often resulted in backlash towards the artist, which Hiveworks did nothing to mitigate or take responsibility for. Isa was in charge of handling most, if not all, Kickstarters through the Hiveworks account, and would order massive quantities of books without the artist’s consent, cutting into the originally outlined budget of the campaign. Artists would be left with the burden to move thousands of books with little assistance from the company after campaigns were concluded, and would occasionally be billed for staffs’ labor that hadn’t been previously negotiated.
>>153353634Oh yeah i know these guys.I found them when searching a webcomic i was noticed story timed and advertised on /co/, and found another ad for one of their comics.It was about a witch being married to a monster by force. I didn't read it as it was too wicked and sad for me, especially as a Christian man.But i found out that it was apparently own by a thing called HiveWorks, new to me back then, and i got interested, but not too interested to keep up with the website for more than a few days.Apparently that witch webcomic wasn't a Hive Works original, in case anyone was wondering.
