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Ghostship Games has sold DRG merch on the website ForFansbyFans.com for some time and things were good. Lots of swag, $100 order = free shipping, and DRG beer steins. However, times have changed. It seems the original site has been bought out by a new company called the Good Smile Company. A number of DRG merch has been removed from the store (i.e., beer mugs, particular posters/art, etc.) and now charges astronomical shipping rates like $20-50 for a single package.

Devs, any consideration of moving merch to a new storefront? Or perhaps pulling a Valve and just creating your own?

The morkite (merch) must flow! :)

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over 2 years ago - /u/GSG_Jacob - Direct link

Originally posted by After-Ad2018

I thought the merch wasn't made by GSG but was actually designed by fans. A previous post said that non of that merch was actually official, but it is unofficially endorsed by the devs.

I could be wrong of course, since I only recently found out about it.

A lot of it is official, but FFXF had a thing called Fan Forge, allowing people to submit their own designs.

over 2 years ago - /u/GSG_Jacob - Direct link

Originally posted by fishling

It's surprising how few games handle merchandising well. DRG is one where they are absolutely sitting on a gold mine with various mugs/glasses for an adult audience.

One of my daughter's favorites stuffies is her loot bug, and my kids both want a steeve. They would both love red-colored rock candy labeled as DRG "red sugar". And my son absolutely wants some DRG dwarf action figures and has asked me to see if they exist.

I get it isn't the sort of thing that is necessarily big enough to end up in a toy store, but doing smaller runs of toys and items seems like it would be easier than ever these days.

Slime Rancher is another one that comes to mind, especially considering how popular slime is with kids these days. Money left on the table, sadly.

Overall, profit on merch is low - producing a physical product and shipping it is surprisingly expensive to do. If you can't do it yourself, you need to get someone else to do it for you, and covering all the costs of that chain does not leave a lot for profit. It's not the goldmine people think it is.

Slime Rancher actually has a subsection on GoodSmile and I can imagine they're doing pretty good with all those custom plushies.

over 2 years ago - /u/GSG_Jacob - Direct link

Originally posted by arson_cat

You assumed correctly. The website's old name, "For Fans By Fans", does hint at the fact that the designs are made by individuals, in this case not by anyone from GSG. It's just that in the case of copywritten material, the owner of the copyright can either press charges for infringement or negotiate a cut of the profits.

RedBubble works with a similar model: artists upload their art and you can buy it on everything from a laptop case or a throw pillow to a sticker or an enamel pin.

It's both - we supplied a lot of the designs, and fans had a section too.

Redbubble is a bit different, since you can set that up as your own store front and sell whatever you upload. FFxF is/was more of an official storefront handling both official merch and official fan merch, so it's curated and as official as it gets.

over 2 years ago - /u/GSG_Jacob - Direct link

Originally posted by zekeyspaceylizard

As the person who designed the shirt with the giant drill that says ROCK N STONE and also made the "To The Bone" painting that was a poster and a mousepad I had no idea this happened.

Usually ForFansByFans email the artists letting them know when things are changing. I didn't know they'd been bought out by GoodSmile until I saw this thread.

And it appears the two things I made for this lovely game, that I was quite honored got picked to be official merchandise, both got axed and wiped from the web in the transition from forfansbyfans to goodsmile.

This also explains why the two warframe official shirts I designed also mysteriously vanished, as well as the DOTA one.

I can't be too sad cause getting my art onto official merchandise is pretty much the only time in my career as an artist where I've achieved anything without someone else's help. I'm just happy that it happened in the first place.

I'm more perplexed that there was absolutely 0 notification from the ForFansByFans website to let everyone know that alot of the apparel and posters were going to be deleted and they were being bought out.

I'm very sorry to those of you who wanted to get a shirt or poster. I'm also very sorry to any fellow artists here in the DeepRock subreddit who also got their designs deleted. What a shame this all is.

I do hope the Ghostship crew try to find a new storefront. I'd happily resubmit my art if they want it.

I think they were a part of Goodsmile even before we started working with them, they just haven't initiated the merge until now.

almost 2 years ago - /u/GSG_Jacob - Direct link

Originally posted by lolzaurus

Goodsmileus are accepting designs right now and I wanted to propose the RadioactiveZone wallpaper as a mousepad. But that would require me to own the artwork which I don't.

They have a mousepad for the Glacial Strata one so I'm curious if some random person sold them your art, or if it was uploaded by GSG. If it's the latter, could you do it for RZ? Or is the former and GSG doesn't care that much?

Sorry for the thread necro. I just want the nice mousepad!

I think we submitted our own stuff too back then. We also accepted reedits or reworks of our artwork, but I don't think this falls under that, so if it's not attributed to anyone, we put it there ourselves.

almost 2 years ago - /u/GSG_Jacob - Direct link

Originally posted by HerpDerp1909

I know I'm pretty late to the party, but is there any chance glasses like these are ever going to be sold on the DRG Merch Store again?

It's possible, but it's all up to FFXF/Goodsmile to make it happen.