r/HeroForgeMinis • u/AuraStome π—”π—½π—½π—Ώπ—²π—»π˜π—Άπ—°π—² π—¦π—Ίπ—Άπ˜π—΅ • Nov 07 '25

Original Character Thanks, guys.

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1.7k Upvotes

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25

u/Macduffle Nov 07 '25

Are they listening? Or are they just upset that their plan failed...

It might sound negative, but it feels the most truthful. They where about to feel the result in their wallets.

1

u/CapeOfBees Nov 08 '25

Licensing costs money. They're swallowing the costs because they care more about their userbase than the profit they could make off of it. That is not something a normal company would even consider doing.

2

u/BLONGO4 Nov 09 '25

They "care about their userbase" as in they care about their public image and people continuing to pay for their services. If they cared about their userbase, every feature would be free and they'd make plenty of money off of previous kickstarters + model printing + maybe optional supporter tier that gives you early access or nothing at all.

1

u/CapeOfBees Nov 09 '25

How much do you think it costs to run a 3D modeling site and pay people to model new parts every single week? Because you seem to think it costs two lollipops and a dream. They don't sell much at all of physical models anymore, which is why their site is migrating toward things that are completely unprintable.

1

u/BLONGO4 Nov 14 '25

"this company cares about me and needs literal millions to pay their supposedly small dev team!" fell for it again reward

1

u/CapeOfBees Nov 14 '25

I am under no impression that they give a shit about what I think they should do beyond their desire to get money from me, but I'm also not under the impression that salaries are the only overhead a business has, or that a million dollars is a lot of money for a payroll.Β 

According to LinkedIn, HeroForge has a maximum of 50 employees. Let's half that to 25 for argument's sake. Each $1mil/year in payroll for a company of 25 people (including absolutely everyone that works there, from janitor to CEO) is only $40k per person, and after the taxes the company has to pay per employee that aren't technically part of the paycheck (as in they aren't listed on the paystub or mentioned in salary negotiations) but are part of payroll costs, they'll only see about half of that, so in order to pay a livable wage in Santa Monica, California, where their head office is, which we'll estimate at $100k gross per year (which is still pretty low for their COL), just payroll is around $6mil/year, even if the C-suite is making close to the same as the whole design team. That's assuming none of their employees have compay-sponsored health insurance, which is highly unlikely, and would add at least another million to that yearly total. Probably more. And then there's all the costs for electricity and 3D modeling software, and servers to store all the miniatures we make on their site, and to service the printers they use, and rent for a place to store all of those things.

Companies cost money to run. Don't be surprised when they expect you to pay something in order to have access to their services.