> This is the third webcomic, among the ones I read, that has quit Hiveworks in the past month. Anyone know what’s up with that?
What were the other ones? Any material changes from the Hiveworks folks that prompted this?
There was a rumor going around that Hiveworks is having financial issues, linked to a post that was then taken down and vagueposting from the DotL person. When I saw DotL move, I figured it was personal drama, and when I saw the one rumor post get taken down, I figured it was inaccurate to the point of being lawsuit material, but SMBC is kind of a big deal. If the rumor is anything, I wouldn't be surprised if SMBC is causation instead of response though and the SMBC move is driven entirely by the annoying ads / shop issues mentioned in their post. Most webcomics do not make a profit.
My personal guess, though, would be that Hiveworks wanted creators to sign an updated contract that had some terms around feeding their stuff into genAI and creators who could are NOPEing out of that.
I cannot overstate how much comic creators don't want to touch managing any of this, so n=2 or more of them leaving in a short window is a really, really bad smell.