ooohhhhohohohoho hiveworks did a bad. hiveworks did a BIG bad.
To put it simply: they fucked over a lot of their creators by not paying them. they made WAY too many ambitious promises, and there are allegations of manipulation / abuse from that of the platform owners Xel and Isa.
It's unfortunate because Hiveworks was seemingly a great option for people who wanted to elevate their webcomics to traditional publishing, but eventually they couldn't afford to do print anymore, and now they're functionally the same as any other comics collective, akin to Foxglove Comics or SpiderForest (i.e. the benefits are just hosting your site through them and being a part of an organized collective of artists for the sake of community collaboration and cross-promotion).
Hiveworks Comics press release regarding the future of the webcomics site.
Buuuuut a lot has come out since then from creators who have worked for Hiveworks and now it's become pretty obvious why the platform has been downscaling. They are severely in debt and don't have a plan, at least not one they're capable of committing to or fulfilling.
Webcartoonists formerly hosted on Hiveworks have spoken out in a statement alleging financial misconduct by management
Now, one thing that came out of this whole mess was a new guild of artists called the Hiveworks Artist Guild, basically operating like a union where it would represent the actual artists and protect them from further mistreatment.
Buuuuut unfortunately apparently even that group isn't entirely honest either because according to a few creators who have tried to work with them, they've faced issues with certain folks being allowed into the guild who really shouldn't have been allowed in-
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Unfortunately I can confirm this kind of behavior as well, from the Cartoonist Co-Op. There is a current attitude of bailing out and protect
That said, I only know so much as what I've seen online. I'm not really in talks with any creators specifically who were involved in this situation so take all of this with mountains of salt, it's a lot of hearsay and allegations, much of which happened a decent while ago so the situation may have even changed since then (but heeeeyyy, if you're one of the creators who was affected by this and you wanna share further details I may have missed or misrepresented, my inbox is always open! wink wink)
Unfortunately because of the nature of webcomics as an accessible free form medium, it's extremely easy for artists to get taken advantage of by platforms that promise money, growth, traditional publishing opportunities, etc. It's what's allowed platforms like Webtoons to trap so many creators in hostile contracts. A lot of the folks in this community are passionate and hard-working, but we're also a bunch of big-eyed dreamers who often yearn for more outside of just our little webcomic circles, and so it's hard not to put our faith and trust in platforms like these - after all, these platforms are the ones making these promises in the first place, and they know it's easy to do.
But that's also all the more reason why it's important to address these issues when they arise and not stand for this kind of treatment, so we can hopefully get better at identifying red flags in contracts and publishing deals and standing up for ourselves if and when we find ourselves trapped in one.
