Games Workshop Forbids Warhammer Fan Films

EikeHein writes "Made by dozens of fans over a period of several years and featuring impressive special effects, the feature-length Warhammer 40.000 epic DAMNATUS ranks among the most elaborate fan productions ever made — and yet may never see the light of day. Despite initially giving a go-ahead to the project, UK-based Warhammer franchise owner Games Workshop has come around to forbid distribution of the film just as it was being readied for release. What's more, they've amended their IP Policy to forbid any such projects in the future. At the heart of the matter appears to be Continental European copyright law, which grants the German film makers certain irrevocable rights to their creation which they cannot sign away. Given that the owners of the other two SF mega-franchises, Star Trek and Star Wars, have been able to come to terms with such issues and arguably benefit greatly from the media attention paid to popular fan productions, it would seem that Games Workshop still has to learn a thing or two about how to capture fan enthusiasm for their benefit."

Comments

Preposterous

[Control Group]

Well, congrats to GW for taking my general disinterest for their products and elevating it to actual dislike of their organization.

Ignoring my personal purchasing decisions, though, this is still stupid. I mean, it's not like Games Workshop actually sells games. They sell miniatures. They encourage purchase of the miniatures with something like a game structure (so it's a little more advanced than playing with toy soldiers...but not much more advanced than the games I invented for my various little figures when I was 10. Except for Blood Bowl, of course. That game is two shots of high-proof awesome.) that requires you to buy more miniatures if you want to play by the rules and an (admittedly) pretty compelling universe to set your encounters in.

I would, in fact, make the case that the universe is more important to their income than the "games" are. I know plenty of people who play Warhammer with pretty major departures from the rules, but I don't know anyone who plays Warhammer without Orcs.

So when presented with an opportunity to, at no cost, generate fan excitement and greater exposure, you'd think the smart thing to do would be to run with it as far as possible. Squelching it - moreover, squelching it in a way that makes you look like a bully, an ingrate, and general underdog-trampler - would seem to be the worst thing you could do.

I mean, aside from kicking puppies and smogging out rainbows.

(As an aside: the bright spot in all this is, should some miracle of rationality prevail, and GW manage to figure out that blocking this is a bad move, it should generate plenty of publicity for the project)

Re:Preposterous

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, congrats to GW for taking my general disinterest for their products and elevating it to actual dislike of their organization. Well said! Kudos to you.

Re:Preposterous

[andrewd18]

I don't know anyone who plays Warhammer without Orcs.

Waaagh!! We be Orks wid uh k, you insensitive 'umie!

Re:Preposterous

[Phanatic1a]

I would, in fact, make the case that the universe is more important to their income than the "games" are. I know plenty of people who play Warhammer with pretty major departures from the rules, but I don't know anyone who plays Warhammer without Orcs.

And the ironic part is that the Orcs are what aren't necessary to play the game. They make (relatively) inexpensive rulebooks and horrifically expensive miniatures. It would be entirely possible to play the game by buying the inexpensive rulebooks and using a bunch of scraps of paper with "Orc" written on them in crayon in lieu of the expensive orc miniatures. But as you said, nobody does that.

They're an an enviable position of having valuable IP that's *hard to reproduce*. But they still end up being dicks over it.

Re:Preposterous

[Col. Blackwolf]

Preposterous? More like retarded, unfortunately. I'm an avid GW gamer, primarily due to the setting (WH:Fantasy is pretty bland, but 40K has a really deep story. And the gothic setting with tanks just looks cool), and am not ashamed to admit that I have spent many a paycheck on their products. But I will not defend them when they do something stupid like this.

You are right on the money about them stomping something that will generate interest and excitement for free. Sadly, this is not the first time that GW has taken such a stance over their IP. Way back in the distant 90's a group of modders set out to create a 40K QuakeII mod. Unfortunately, once well into the process, they were told in no uncertain terms that they would need to pay a licensing fee for the 40K setting and properties. And since the Quake EUL states that no id product can be sold without paying licensing for the engine, the group abandoned the project as too costly to produce a free mod for a game they loved.

This time it appears that GW's problem stems from being unable to secure the rights to the movie itself, which would allow them control over distribution. As in the past, this inability to maintain absolute control over every aspect of their IP has led them to quash something that would otherwise prove a boon to the company's flagship product.

Sad, really. I know they're in the business of making money, but this could really have been turned to their advantage. Hell, they could have even offered to bundle it with future products as a purchase incentive or to sell it on DVD in their stores (at production cost, unless they decided to pay the makers of the film). But alas, I doubt this will ever occur.

Re:Preposterous

[russian_casey]

This isn't surprising at all...I've been playing 40K since 1994 and have watched GW threaten all sorts of "intellectual property" suits, all the while driving prices through the roof and driving quality through the bedrock. Yes, the models look good today, but they don't have the same sort of character as the old stuff did (Rogue Trader-era was the Golden Age of Citadel for a good reason).

I've said it before and I'll say it again - Games Workshop is the Microsoft of miniatures gaming. Fuck you, Games Workshop.

Anyone interested in a huge 40K Ork army, cheap?

Re:Preposterous

[BadMrMojo]

I mean, it's not like Games Workshop actually sells games. They sell miniatures. ...
Except for Blood Bowl, of course. That game is two shots of high-proof awesome.

Important note: Blood Bowl - along with Necromunda, Mordheim and some of the other Specialist Games which essentially got axed - did not require a huge investment in miniatures. One team per person is enough to play. A full collection (one of absolutely every possible legal team configuration) would probably be less than 200 miniatures (although I can't be arsed to figure it out exactly at the moment).

Re:Preposterous

[cayenne8]

Ok..I've been trying to figure out what Warhammer was...I'm guessing it is an old D & D type game?

Re:Preposterous

[lakeland]

No, nothing like D&D. It is battle reenactment except it also has fantasy sets (hence orcs) and futuristic sets (robots). There isn't any role-playing or characters - the players are sorta army generals trying to coordinate their armies.

Re:Preposterous

[Control Group]

Warhammer is a tabletop - ie, using miniatures - tactical war game with role-playing elements. Rather than using a hex map or other grid, all line-of-sight and range measurements are actually taken relative to the actual analog position and facing of the miniatures. The business proposition from Games Workshop is that they sell you the rulebooks for the game. The rules include provisions requiring you to purchase Games Workshop miniatures (eg, if the miniature on the table doesn't have a boltgun in its hand, the character it represents also doesn't have a boltgun in its hand); GW is, first and foremost, a seller of miniatures. Warhammer as a universe encompasses several different game systems and miniature series: Warhammer, Warhammer 40,000, Battlefleet: Gothic, and Necromunda all spring to mind, though I believe there are others.

In my opinion, the game aspect of it is particularly shallow in comparison to most other similar games (tabletop tactical), with odd and limiting provisions such as only being allowed to fire at the nearest enemy.

One way to look at it is that Games Workshop is the grown up (that is, expensive) version of playing with toy soldiers: you collect your toy soldiers, then get to use them in a game structure.

(Note: I completely understand the attraction of buying and painting miniatures, building up huge collections of them, and getting enjoyment out of deploying them in a structured game format; I don't mean to disparage it as a hobby. I, personally, prefer the game to be more involving than the game pieces, but I'm not much of a collector.)

Re:Preposterous

[garyok]

Well, congrats to GW for taking my general disinterest for their products and elevating it to actual dislike of their organization.

Way ahead of you, big man. I used to be a real hardcore fan of GW and, back in the day, I was a subscriber to White Dwarf for a long time but around #110ish things started going badly, badly wrong at the ranch. That's about when they switched their focus from RPGs to the miniatures business. They stopped doing articles on other companies' games and started bigging up Warhammer, Blood Bowl, and WH40K. They even seemed to lose interest in their own roleplaying games. Before that it was a hell of a magazine - fiction, articles, art, and quality all the way. After that it became a big ad you paid for. I had no interest whatsoever in their dinky little toys and I was on a one-way ticket to Alienation City. It was a real shame because a lot of real talent used to contribute.

They seem to be doing well enough out of it but, if such a thing is possible, they sold their soul back at the end of the 80s for their money. Plus the staff in the stores I've visited since are total dicks.

Re:Preposterous

[Seraphim_72]

I tried this once with MTG. A bunch of my friends used to play, so one day we sat down at the table and everybody got out their carefully crafted decks and I brought out a large deck of cards.

"What is that?"

"My deck, it is a black green deck, mostly rares, should work well together."

"What?"

You see I had scanned in the cards from one of the "recognition manuals" printed them on a color printer and taped them to regular playing cards. The whole room about blew a gasket. One guy, who owned the big 7 (or whatever they were called moxes, lotus, etc) about had a heart attack. This was a guy that for a few of his rares would take a land and write the name of the rare on it in marker and use it in play - that was OK, because he 'owned' the real card. We argued for quite a while about it all. I finally gave up, I gave up MTG a few months later realizing what a money sucking hole in the ground it was, and is to this day.

Side note, before I gave it up I tried to talk them into what was essential sealed deck games long before they became the norm for tournaments, not a one would do it. It was so out of their mindset they literally couldn't comprehend it.

Re:Preposterous

[Control Group]

How is this surprising? I imagine you'd get a similar reaction if you sat down at a poker table and produced a stack of hundreds you had run off on your inkjet. The scarcity of the game piece (in this case, money) is key to the game.

Similarly in M:tG, the game balance depends on the rarity of the cards. Free access to as many copies as desired of whatever cards you choose does completely change the nature of the game (which is why you always want to play with people in similar financial circumstances as yourself...sort of like poker).

If your point was simply to highlight that WotC was selling cards rather than a game, fair enough - though I don't think there's anyone who would argue with you. It is, after all, called a collectible card game for a reason.

If your point was to make a negative comment about either your friends or players of M:tG, however, I think you missed the mark.

Re:Preposterous

[Anonymous Coward]

I want to share a GW story that involved a gaming store I used to frequent:

A few years ago GW set mandatory sell targets for their merchandise. If you weren't pushing their games and selling x amount of figures every week, they would drop you as a supplier. So a lot of gaming stores sucked it up and really pushed GW hard, resulting in an expected increasee in GW sales. GW then analyzed the sales demographics and totally fucked these top selling stores by cutting off their stock and opening Games Workshops stores right in the middle of their territories. My favorite gaming store went under a year later. I will never forgive GW for this. They are a loathsome company who screwed over the very people who made them successful in the first place - fuck you GW, you worthless pricks!

Re:Preposterous

[mal3]

That's not the half of it. From the GW website:

This also means that we cannot allow tattoos as an acceptable use of our IP as a third party necessarily has to perform the "service."

So if i get a Tattoo of one of their trademarks, exactly what do they plan to do about it?

Re: Preposterous

[Sawopox]

I had to clear up a few things here and there, not just in this post.

First of all, Games Workshop does *not* produce miniatures of any sort. The miniature models come from Citadel Miniatures. Games Workshop produces games.

The older models were quite expensive. Lead, and most recently pewter, hand-cast miniatures are not exactly cheap pieces like those found in Monopoly. That, and if you've actually held and seen some of the miniatures, they have FANTASTIC detail. To address the cost question, plastic miniature kits have been produced for almost all army types, lowering the cost. A quality army can be built for $100 or so now, as opposed to $400 ten years ago.

As an aside, I'd take the $400 army of high quality pewter models over the $100 plastic kits though.

Re:Preposterous

[BridgeBum]

There is a role playing version of Warhammer (with the ever so original name of Warhammer Fantasy Role Playing or FRP), which is actually not a bad system at all. Brings back memories from many years ago. It is true that when most people refer to 'Warhammer', they are thinking the miniatures battles.

Re:Preposterous

[Saxerman]

I'm a fan of Warhammer 40k not so much for the game system for but for the game content. They're created an incredibly interesting game universe which lends itself well to telling stories about the massive conflicts between their various factions. I've been a fan for years, and have witnessed the terrible debacle as Games Workshop tries to define itself. Though out the years, they have been painfully protected of their 'content' and have been 'unusually' picky about who and where they license it. If you compare the vast litany of licensed fan fiction nobles created for the various FASA universes, you can see the relatively sparse offerings available.

At first they were completely against the idea of creating any computer games, as they were terrified that players would be able to enjoy their content without buying their over-priced miniatures. The few games that have been attempted in the past were largely crap. Starcraft was originally going to be set in the 40k universe, but, again, they pulled out at the last minute and Blizzard was forced to rename their units and rewrite their story. Partly based on the success of Starcraft, they finally agreed to try again with Relic and Dawn of War was the first game they actually allowed to continue to completion that wasn't total crap.

Strangely, their over-priced miniatures are their major source of revenue. I say it's strange because over the years their models have largely become high priced crap. The exception being for their Forge World miniatures which are much more expensive, but are typically of exceptional quality. They 'control' their miniatures market by being the sole provider of 'official' miniatures for their products, which they enforce by only suppling game shops that agree to their questionable control practices. This is even more strange because the only reason to actually buy and use their miniatures is so that you can compete in licensed tournaments. You could just as easily use pennies and bottle caps to represent your forces to play at home. Of course, as anyone who actually plays and enjoys miniatures knows, that's not the point.

So I'm not terribly surprised to see them dragging their feet on this again. They've been playing around with movie deals for years, and in typical Games Workshop style they still have nothing to show for it. And now when their fans who decide to put together their own movie... they still have nothing to show for it.

Re: Preposterous

[Phanatic1a]

First of all, Games Workshop does *not* produce miniatures of any sort. The miniature models come from Citadel Miniatures. Games Workshop produces games.

This is a meaningless distinction. Citadel Miniatures is a *brand* of Games Workshop. What you just said is akin to saying "General Motors does not produce cars of any sort. The cars come from Chevrolet."

Re: Preposterous

[NeilTheStupidHead]

$100? Surely you jest, unless you're referring to the purchase of used models via a service like eBay (which does have some fantastic deals). A box of basic troops (W40k) or a core unit (WFB) is about $45 CDN and about $35 US. You need far more than two or three of these plus more to make even a basic army. The Batallion boxes are $90 US and $135 (or so) CDN; these are a good start, but still not enough to have more than a very simplistic army. $200 is certainly a good number for a reasonable start. At current market prices, my investment is well over $2000 for three armies.

While I agree with you that the pewter minis are higher quality (given the relative age of the sculpt i.e. Dark Eldar) overall, the plastics are far more enjoyable to work with from a customization angle. A limited edition pewter piece looks amazing as a centre piece to an army or a squad, but 15 of them don't stand out, they just blend in, especially when you consider that pewter models have very limited posability. And if you haven't seen some of the newest plastic moulds, you might be in for a suprise, the quality is leaps and bounds over those 1st generation plastic Space Marines or Gobbos (which haven't been retired quite yet)

Re:Preposterous

[yogi]

And you are not the only one who came to that conclusion. I've got a big stack of White Dwarf back episodes from my subscription, and the first editions of WH40K and WHRPG, but lost interest when the rules started changing so you would need to buy more ( relatively expensive ) vehicle miniatures.

Of course, before WD become a large, paid for, GW advert, they used to publish adventures and source material for all sorts of games in the magazine. I can look in the corner of the room now, and see Traveller, AD&D and other game system adventures published in White Dwarf. If that's not making money from derivative works of other peoples IP, I don't know what is. And what's more, they did this quite unashamedly for 10 years, before GW had enough games to fill the pages with adverts for their own games. Talk about hypocrisy.

Re:Preposterous

[NeilTheStupidHead]

a third party necessarily has to perform the "service." Obviously, they don't actually know any tattoo artists. My friend and all his co-workers are covered in work they have done themselves, either as practice or because they don't trust others to do it 'right'. If any one of them decided they wanted a tattoo of any of GW's IP, they would not need a third party. I realize this is not a common case, but still, even one exception seems to disprove their claim of "necessarily".

Also, I know several people, including at least one GW staffer, who have tattoos of various GW IP (a list soon to include myself).

Re: Preposterous

[RedHat Rocky]

That's only because GW acquired Citadel, just as they finally acquired Forgeworld.

And just as after they acquired White Dwarf, all of it will turn to crap.

Re: Preposterous

[Hognoxious]

First of all, Games Workshop does *not* produce miniatures of any sort. The miniature models come from Citadel Miniatures.

They were once a separate company (in theory) but now they're not even a wholly owned subsidiary. More like a department.

Re:Preposterous

[R_Dorothy]

Careful - Orcs with a 'k' almost certainly violates their IP.

Re:Preposterous

[Hognoxious]

That's about when they switched their focus from RPGs to the miniatures business.

For me they jumped the shark when they introduced that stupid imperial chariot with the 20 foot long musket that could shoot the enemy general (even through a hill) anywhere on the board if you could roll 2 or above on 2D6. Around 1990?

Then there was the stupid colleges of magic thing that seemed like a cross between Terry Pratchett and scissors-paper-stone.

Re:Preposterous

[Original Replica]

Well, congrats to GW for taking my general disinterest for their products and elevating it to actual dislike of their organization.

Maybe they've been hanging out with Sony Execs.

Re:Preposterous

[WhatHappenedToTanith]

One of the things that really makes me slap my forehead and say 'doh' regarding the quake mod is the large number of GW players who got into the miniatures from the computer games - especially Dawn of War. People are normally going to buy a branded, similar game if there is a decent fan-created game out there which spreads interest around, and at the end of the day GW need interest to help sell their miniatures. They could even license and improve good fan games in a similar fashion to what happened with Counterstrike. GW made a killing from the interest gained from Lord of the Rings so why not do it in reverse and encourage the spread of their IP with fan created content... oh yes you already said it... they are retarded.

Re:Preposterous

[myowntrueself]

White Dwarf used to be a regular purchase for me; it had source material for all sorts of different games from Traveller to AD&D

I also remember when the Citadel minatures went from an average of 50 pence to 5 pounds in the space of about a month.

Re:Preposterous

[Anonymous Coward]

No, nothing like D&D. It is battle reenactment except it also has fantasy sets (hence orcs) and futuristic sets (robots). There isn't any role-playing or characters - the players are sorta army generals trying to coordinate their armies.

You obviously haven't looked at a DnD rulebook for a number of years.

Re:Preposterous

[Zantetsuken]

So what you're trying to say is that whereas D&D is a tabletop RPG, Warhammer is a tabletop RTS? I dunno, I'm like a lot of people on here it seems - the most I've seen about Warhammer is a few bad PS2 games...

Re:Preposterous

[rgaginol]

Yeah dude, I couldn't agree more... GW used to be good, *sigh*. I'm not sure when it turned sour, but something definitely went odd in the GW mix about a decade ago.

At the moment, I'm about to get back into the swing of things after a decade long hiatus from miniatures with other pursuits (I just can't seem to get rid of that hankering of painting nicely done miniatures). Yet... after checking out the local GW store and noticing that:
- Most of the cool miniatures now suck or have been replaced with 'yet-another-iteration-of-the-army'... this is like the 3rd iteration of Tyranids...
- Most of the nice boutique games like Necromunda are old history.. or at least can only be ordered through the US/UK stores (the good games which meant you only had to collect a few miniatures)
- Most of the good metal miniatures going plastic... seriously, plastic Terminators??? Those are meant to be ball breaking mega troops... yet how can they stoke the imagination when they sound like lego?
- A terrible experience with the staff at the GW store... I've never had a sales assistant literally hump my leg before then

So, since then I've re-evaluated my options:
- I spent a bit more then I'd like (via E-Bay) getting an out of production functional Space Hulk set together with proper metal Terminators. That game was awesome fun... lots of thinking and the guessing, gods that was good.
- I also went a bit crazy with some Warmachine stuff (the e-bay seller 'discount_games' in the USA was half the price of any stores in Australia). Me and a buddy figure Warmachine should take a hell of a lot less miniatures for a fun game, and the focus with them is as much on collecting and painting as the actual playing.

So off I go... See ya later GW. This latest fiasco won't mean much to me, but I'm sure that there are plenty of current fans who will see this as a reason to start re-evaluating their own choice to buy into the GW universe or others.

Re:Preposterous

[Molochi]

The basis of MTG's card value was "the ante". At the beginning of each game each player exposed a random card from their deck and the winner of the game got that card. Thus, there was real value to the card. As the number of each type of card was limited, very small decks increased the odds of playing powerful card combos. Shortly thereafter (after the beta run was done) people started paying cash for good cards(Mostly alpha and beta cards at first), because they couldn't win without them in tourneys. After awhile it became hard to find an ante game, but the card value stuck... Then WoTC changed the game rules to encourage the purchase of new cards.

In contrast, WH/WH40K was based on a "recognisable" force and scratchbuilt models were even featured in WhiteDwarf, the Games Workshop owned game 'zine. This was because GW could not innitially supply models for every unit in their rulebook(s). The basic rule that most people seemed to play with was if every detail in your army's models options was accurate and the army was all GW models, your opponent didn't get to look at your army list (though it still had to be verified by a ref in a tourney). Otherwise you had to let your opponent read your list. Despite this there was an advantage to playing powerful scratchbuilt models. Then GW changed the game rules to encourage the purchase of "official" models.

In both cases, it was the newer players of the games that allowed the rule changes to go into effect. They were at the disadvantage if they didn't and massively outnumbered the old school. The rule changes were only official tournement rules, and yet they became defacto because they benefited the masses.

Re: Preposterous

[Paradise Pete]

That's only because GW acquired Citadel

And in his example, that's "just" because GM acquired Chevrolet.

Re:Preposterous

[Bronson33]

Now it remains for Games Workshop to forbid any fan fiction creation that is not solicited by their company or posted on their own approved websites. All images of Warhammer 40,000 should be removed from the Internet except for official GW websites...

Re:Preposterous

[Molochi]

No. Paper rulebooks. Fantasy Lead/Pewter/Plastic Miniatures. Buncha geeks arguing about obscure game related rules. Deathstalker II playing n the background. Maybe 1 girl in 10 gamers. Nothing like D&D.

Re:Preposterous

[Anonymous Coward]

My friend and all his co-workers are covered in work they have done themselves, either as practice or because they don't trust others to do it 'right'.

I don't trust *anyone* to do it right. Not even myself. That's why I don't have any tattoos. Oh wait, that's not the reason - it's because I don't want to inject some permanent image into my skin that later on I'll almost surely think was a retarded thing to do but it's too late now.

Re:Preposterous

[Molochi]

Folks, this should be modded up. It happened all over the f'n country.

Re:Preposterous

[Anonymous Coward]

They're an an enviable position of having valuable IP that's *hard to reproduce*. But they still end up being dicks over it.

Rubbish. IP is information, what IP is hard to reproduce? Is it a grueling arduous task to crank out more 1s and 0s? The problem is that Games Workshop seem to be frauds, asserting that they own _physical property_ that obviously is not theirs. Or that they own filmclips produced entirely by other parties. "Forbid such projects?" No one needs to ask their permission, and Games Workshop have no authority to forbid such a thing as they have no controlling ownership.

No one is infringing their copyright, their patents, or their trademarks, so what can the problem possibly be? Its a scam pure and simple. The RIAA and MPAA do this to shakedown people and groups they know are innocent for cash, and due such crimes being unprosecuted, more would-be criminal groups are getting in on the action. Of which Games Workshop are one.

Re:Preposterous

[z3d4r]

friend of mine had a tyranid army made entirely out of cheap plastic frogs

Re:Preposterous

[armareum]

Too bad you can't trust your own judgement. :(

Re:Preposterous

[kenok]

It's called a table-top miniatures/war game.

There are characters in the game - and there is a role-playing component as well, but in a separate system.

Re:Preposterous

[Seraphim_72]

I disagree, it is more like entering a poker game where you can only buy the cards you are dealt - "sorry bub, I can't deal you an Ace till you dropped $1000 for it" (thus my point). Poker can be a game of skill. Magic quickly descended into who could spend more money. They even started selling "tournament decks" for Pete's sake. Your annalogy might make some more sense if there were "I dropped $500 this month on cards" tables, as it stands, you always walked into a supposedly level field. For all the great "skillz" that every Magic player thought he had in the beginning of the game, it was really who had more disposable income to drop on cards. But you missed my point entirely, and the fact that you remembered (where I did not) the correct abbreviation for it makes me wonder how much of your cash went down that rabbit hole.

Obviously I didn't miss the mark.

Re:Preposterous

[Miseph]

whereas D&D is a tabletop RPG, Warhammer is a tabletop RTS

Not quite... it's turn based and lacks any sort of resource gathering/production aspects, so it would be more like a tabletop RTT without the "RT".

Re:Preposterous

[KDR_11k]

From what I read about the history of GW they started with making rulebooks for reenacting historical battles with toy soldiers.

Re:Preposterous

[Anonymous Coward]

Only if you're playing Warhammer 40,000, not Warhammer ;)

Warhammer has Orcs.
Warhammer 40,000 has Orks.
Lord of the Rings has Orcs.
Lord of the Rings (the books) came first.
Tolkein was also planning to change Orc to Ork (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orc) in the Silmarillion.

And then they ban a film. Typical.

Re:Preposterous

[Anonymous Coward]

(eg, if the miniature on the table doesn't have a boltgun in its hand, the character it represents also doesn't have a boltgun in its hand)

Having been an avid video gamer since I was 5, I believe my imagination was destroyed years ago, and now all forms of entertainment have to actively entertain me or my ADD kicks in and I MAKE my own entertainment...but seriously? Even if there's no boltgun there, oh how I can pretend!

Re:Preposterous

[Anonymous Coward]

using a bunch of scraps of paper with "Orc" written on them in crayon in lieu of the expensive orc miniatures

Obligatory The Order of the Stick link.

Re:Preposterous

[Anonymous Coward]

I've never had a sales assistant literally hump my leg before then

WTF? Are you male or female? What about the assistant? Not that it matters; I can't imagine any combination that makes any kind of sense. Please tell us more.

Re:Preposterous

[Hydian]

They're an an enviable position of having valuable IP that's *hard to reproduce*. But they still end up being dicks over it. I dunno...I thought that Blizzard did an excellent job of reproducing the Warhammer IP with all of the Warcraft games.

Re:Preposterous

[Control Group]

Too late for you to see this, but what the hell.

1) Poker is, in fact, a game of skill. But if you actually think that the amount of money one brings to the table relative to other players isn't a huge determining factor of how well one does, you obviously haven't played much poker. Notably, this is why poker tournaments generally specifiy how much money one starts with: to level the playing field.

2) M:tG was, in large part, about who had spent more money on cards. Just like street racing is, in large part, about who has spent more money on his car. The other part - and a significant one - is the skill of building a deck given the cards you have. A random assortment of super rare cards generally won't beat a carefully crafted deck. But you're right in that actually playing the game is the least important skill involved.

3) Of course you didn't walk into a level playing field. It's a collectible card game, for crying out loud. The whole point was to make the field non-level. That's precisely what separates it from other card games: the game is in the collection and setup, not in the playing. It's perfectly understandable to not like it because of that, but it's not like you're being cheated. That's the nature of the game.

4) Not that it matters, but I won't deny I went through my M:tG phase in college. I almost completely stopped buying cards in 1995. I bought one deck in 1996 and one deck in 1997, and not a single card since then. Total money spent? Probably on the order of $400.

For whatever that's worth.

Re:Preposterous

[Anonymous Coward]

No you did miss the mark.

You obviously don't play poker. Money matters ALOT. As much as the cards you have in MtG.

Re:Preposterous

[Anonymous Coward]

I propose orca.

Re:Preposterous

[ShadowsHawk]

I have a group that plays using 'proxies'. We use Magic Suitcase to generate starter and booster packs. It's a bit of a pain since you have to cut all the cards, but it's worth investing a bit of time. One person generates cards and prints them out and everyone gets to see what the other people got. It keeps the system fair.

Re:Preposterous

[Seraphim_72]

I had never heard of it - thank you.

Re:Preposterous

[Anonymous Coward]

Too bad you can't trust your own judgement. :(

You can't either. You just think you can. Anybody young enough to think a tattoo is a good idea has no clue what they will be like later in life. I'm a photographer. The other day I was photographing a woman who, when she saw the picture of her lower back tattoo, burst into tears, saying "how could I have been so stupid?"

Re:Preposterous

[ShadowsHawk]

If you want the card pictures, you'll have to search around a bit. I've listed some instructions that I wrote up a while back.

Guide to Magic Suitcase:
http://www.magic4you.nu/software/magicsuitcase/Sui tcase80BReview.php

Official website: (instructions below)
http://www.magicsuitcase.org/

1. Go to Suitcase Downloads
2. Download and run latest version eg. Full Install v1.8
3. Download and extract Master Database (replace old MD)
4. Download and extract Editions File (replace old EF if needed)
5. Download and extract Cardview Templates
6. Download and extract Edition Symbols

Picture Location: (instructions below)
http://www.bersogeddon.com/Risorse/cardimg.html

1. Download desired edition
2. Extract entire .zip file (extract, do NOT copy files out of zip) to
desired location eg C:\program files\magic suitcase\pictures
3. Run suitcase.exe
4. Go to Edit, Preferences, Default Paths.
5. Enter appropriate information.

EG:
Path to full picture files:
C:\Program Files\Magic Suitcase\pictures\

Default master database:
C:\Program Files\Magic Suitcase\Master.mdb

Default inventory:
C:\Program Files\Magic Suitcase\Master.mdb

Re:Preposterous

[armareum]

...when she saw the picture of her lower back tattoo, burst into tears...

Hmm, the infamous 'slag tag'. No surprise there then!

Look, just because you think you'd end up regretting it yourself, and you have some anecdotal evidence that someone actually did, that doesn't mean that everyone will.

Re:Preposterous

[Anthony]

The business tactics I've observed looks like they were taught by Billy.

A local comic shop was persuaded to run their games and started a roaring trade. Within a year, GW setup their own shop within 400 metres of the comic shop. I also saw the staff prevent a 12 yo boy from playing with his army in the store because it wasn't being sold anymore. I shed crocodile tears when the GW shop closed a couple of years later. It was over a decade before the comic shop bothered selling GW merchandise again.

Short-sighted bullying? Looks like their culture is still intact.

Re:Preposterous

[WNight]

It's not like his friends wouldn't let him wager print-outs versus real cards, it's that they wouldn't play at all.

The game rules are such that these players are encouraged to act this way. Yes. But they're total douches for doing so. It's a totally transparent way to maintain an unfair edge in the actual competition and lying about their motives as they all do is pretty lame. (Movie downloaders suddenly concerned with copyright issues...)

Re:Preposterous

[Paradise Pete]

that doesn't mean that everyone will.

I didn't say everyone will. That would be an absurd statement. That's not the point. The point is you *can't* know now. If you want to do something, get a piercing. Or ten. You can take them out if you later decide it wasn't such a good idea. How many people do you know who had a piercing who later took it out? That right there should hint that people change their minds about things as time passes.

Jolly Roger

[Anonymous Coward]

I suppose they could sue Games Workshop, but that would drag on for a rather long period of time. By the end of the lawsuit, the movie will be irrelevant regardless of the outcome. And after 4 years of film development, that's a really cruddy result. Especially since it sounds like the only problem is that Games Workshop wants 100% control and they can't have it. Well duh, it's not your film. It's a fan creation that you *should* be finding a set of guidelines under which it can be distributed.

Desperate times call for desperate measures. I hear that there are alternative (?) distribution methods out there. Something about "hoisting the flag" and all that?

*ahem* *ahem* *ahem*

"Arrrrghhhh"

Re:Jolly Roger

[sorak]

I suppose they could sue Games Workshop, but that would drag on for a rather long period of time. By the end of the lawsuit, the movie will be irrelevant regardless of the outcome. And after 4 years of film development, that's a really cruddy result. Especially since it sounds like the only problem is that Games Workshop wants 100% control and they can't have it. Well duh, it's not your film. It's a fan creation that you *should* be finding a set of guidelines under which it can be distributed.

The real tragedy is that after four years of working on a project, just to have the company that originally gave you permission say "throw it away. We changed our minds and would like for you to undo all of your work". After that, how hard will they try to get it distributed? Someone may put it out there just for spite, but I doubt it will ever be the labor of love that it once was.

Re:Jolly Roger

[thegnu]

Desperate times call for desperate measures. I hear that there are alternative (?) distribution methods out there. Something about "hoisting the flag" and all that?

If they're allowed to show it to their parents and friends, it should be no problem getting it on Bittorrent and eDonkey (hint:use emule or amule, double hint:they're free) untraceably. I'm sure if you accidentally dropped the DVD at a few LAN parties, you'd be well on your way to hassle-free distribution.

AND, they could put a donations button on their site. Fucking genius.
-Nathan

Re:Jolly Roger

[WhatHappenedToTanith]

Games workshop are a company which are hated by their fans as well as their foes and this is largely because of the arrogance of the management. The company has a large legal department which cracks down heavily on anyone who has anything relating to their content anywhere online. For example, they state in their legal documents that you are not allowed to have ANY income from a site with GW content (want banner ads? nope sorry GW will send you a cease and desist and other 'legal' threats). Want to do any fair use stuff whatsoever? No chance! The bizarreness of GW is that the fans in the lower parts of the company (store workers, game designers, writers, etc) love most of the things that have been online and GW even push it themselves for their specialist game range, yet as soon as anything gets popular it gets crushed by GW's fierce IP protection policy. I wonder why GW has freefalling profits and a declining share price! The one thing that many fans are hoping for is that GW gets bought out by a decent company or shareholders get angry enough to boot out management (although one of the things that will hurt this chance is the massive golden parachute offered to the CEO to bring him in last time they had a fall in profits).

Re:Jolly Roger

[dsmall]

Control freaks are to be found everywhere and they make the most despicable moves sometimes. This is truly one of the worst I have ever seen.

I've seen 'em called "pricks" and "dicks" in this thread, but let me add my opinion:

They're thugs.

They really do want to own dreams. And they want to own other people's dreams. God Dammit, we are the dreamers, and we dream the dreams!!

Thugs like this want to take all the dreams in the world and lock them up in their cabinet at home. I really believe it's because they don't have any dreams of their own.

And as people far wiser than I am have pointed out -- Terry Pratchett, or Eric Raymond -- that doesn't work very well.

Four YEARS of work by fans? NO! Don't take that! Don't let them have one INCH of that!!

Now is the time you're most challenged. Now you have to dream strong and sure. Do it.

Here are some idle thoughts...

The laws of other countries are not the laws of Germany.

-and-

Let me gently suggest that while it might look like an orc/ork/whatever to *them*, why, it looks like something else to me. "Orc"? Where did you get that idea? We don't need no steenking "orcs" to dream. They look like "ginks" to me.

And personally, I found the preview to be an interesting... oh ... fan-built ... (roll) allegory of ... (roll) the ideals (roll) of Ayn Rand set against ...(roll) a universe struggling against (roll) ... the social implications of (roll) ...the discovery of the first alien race ... blah, blah, blah for another 12 paragraphs. What "warhammer"? I don't see a single "hammer" anywhere. I know several film students who would be happy to recut/redit this as a for-profit effort not involving Those-Whose-Name-Must-Not-Be-Said.

DO EVERYTHING!!! The most effective approach will become clear. Don't even consider doing nothing. Hand out DVD's on the streets. Spread the word in the chat rooms. Satellites can microwave this data down. Plenty of "Public Channels" looking for a nice movie to show.

The scariest thing in the world is having someone tell you they've locked your dreams.

This is a direct offer to help. Email me.

davidmsmall-at-gmail.com

Not too surprising

[MuscaDomestica]

Wow from what I heard of how they run their game stores this doesn't surprise me, they still are not as bad as Palladium which tried to get reviews taken down on websites because they were concerned about their ip.

A "fuck you" from GW...

[imbaczek]

...to which fans will reply with a generous "fuck you too."

More news at 11.

Re:A "fuck you" from GW...

[Kitanin]

You're funny.

Seriously, based on the players I see in the two GW stores in town, I doubt more than 10% of GW's base these days knows there's a story behind the minis, let alone that some people in the other 10% were making a fan film about it. This is going to be a ripple, at best.

And if it gets any bigger, we'll just feed the God-Emperor of Mankind a few hundred more souls today, and he'll smooth it right out.

Simple Solution

[rhartness]

"Dammit! 'Somebody' has leaked the film..."

Re:Simple Solution

[orkysoft]

Probably a rogue trader.

Torrent?

[Is0m0rph]

Torrent link anyone? Seems like that's where it will be headed.

Games Workshop has a lot to learn about fandom

[ArchAngelQ]

They've done a lot to undermine their fans for years. That they are now buggering this up surprises me not at all.

They have many creative individuals working for them that I respect, but as a company, they have basically sucked to be a fan of for YEARS.

And really, their background material is largely 'borrowed' from other fantasy and sci-fi sources anyway, so that they should be so very protective, when the movie will just bring them more exposure and act as a huge advert for them, seems utterly ridiculous.

Re:Games Workshop has a lot to learn about fandom

[Anonymous Coward]

True dat. I recall reading that Blizzard were huge fans and wanted to make their games in the GW universe, but were refused a license.

So what we got was basically:

Diablo ~= Heroquest
Warcraft ~= Warhammer
Starcraft ~= Warhammer 40K

Re:Games Workshop has a lot to learn about fandom

[Trent Hawkins]

they're just venting frustration over the fact that they still can't compete with Blizzard.

GW really knows how to reach fans!

[HexRei]

That is really too bad. GW has made some great games over the years, I really enjoyed Warhammer and Space Hulk as a kid. Now, I HATE Games Workshop and hope their offices get infested with lice and skunks.

Re:GW really knows how to reach fans!

[3chuck3]

And Tryranids and Necrons...

Re:GW really knows how to reach fans!

[RedHat Rocky]

Agreed, and I speak as a recently-stopped Warhammer 40k player.

GW has gone significantly south in the last few years, along with its magazine/catalog White Dwarf.

From Peter Haines whining about "the internet", Jervis Johson pontificating about "Just Play for Fun" without allowing reader feedback (Hey Jervis, why tournaments then?).

This is just one more spike in the pudding.

Re:GW really knows how to reach fans!

[Anonymous Coward]

Got any links on what Haines and Johson have to say?

Your comments have me mildly curious how they stack up to the grand implosion of FASA or the disintegration of TSR.

Re:GW really knows how to reach fans!

[Anonymous Coward]

I remember hearing a Games Workshop rep criticizing WotC for selling a game that didn't have all of the parts needed to play. I guess he never bought a Space Hulk expansion set that was missing the auto cannon.

Re:GW really knows how to reach fans!

[RedHat Rocky]

Johnson: Have to see the pages of White Dwarf, specifically the Standard Bearer column.

Haines: Some creative searching on warseer.com might present something.

Sorry I don't have anything more specific, I'm trying to move past GW. :)

Re:GW really knows how to reach fans!

[Doug-W]

How creative? I just spent about 15 minutes with google and didn't see what you were referring to.

Re:GW really knows how to reach fans!

[Shadowlore]

Sounds to me like that's may have happened already.

Alien(s)

[Culture20]

Then they'll modify the content like we saw in the Alien movies, and W 40.000 will seem like a cheap knockoff again.

sell it to games workshop!

[SolusSD]

its all in the subject line

IP Laws

[GWLlosa]

Apparently, they were completely willing to sanction the movie under the terms of a deal that they and the movie producers had agreed to regarding the ownership of the intellectual property (i.e., Games Workshop's entire universe). Then it turned out that according to German copyright law, the producers are prevented from signing away some of their own rights, which derailed the deal. What I'm curious about is what rights are you prevented from signing away? Does this mean that German developers can't assign copyright to 3rd parties (FSF?)? Does it only apply to movies? Why would it be a problem to willfully and knowingly explicitely sign away your rights to something as nonfundamental as a movie?

Re:IP Laws

[cdrguru]

My understanding (limited as it is) is that you cannot sign away "moral rights" in Germany. This has many implications legally. It applies to everything that is copyright-able, such as books, movies, help files for software products, manual, artwork, etc.

Re:IP Laws

[EikeHein]

Indeed, this has implications for European open source developers as well. The FSF Europe's mechanic for dealing with this problem is called the "Fiduciary License Agreement" (FLA) which works by giving $central_body a license that allows it to e.g. relicense code contributions made by the copyright owner. Press coverage on the FLA: http://www.linux.com/articles/60129

Re:IP Laws

[Zatic]

You can't sign away Urheberrecht, which simply states that you are the original creator of a piece of art. Kinda makes sense to me.

They could sign over the copy/distribution/whatsorever rights with no problem. But still GW can't say that they created this movie. Which they haven't. That's all there is to it.

Re:IP Laws

[mocm]

I don't know if this is the relevant part of German copyright law,but it states that in case the work is resold, the original author can get a percentage of the price. This right cannot be signed away. But is limited by a 12500 Euro cap.

Re:IP Laws

[Wesley Felter]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_rights

Re:IP Laws

[Gorath99]

IANAL, but this may be about the moral rights of the authors, which includes things like the right of attribution. In some countries/jurisdictions these rights can go quite far and cannot be transfered or waived. For instance, in The Netherlands, artists can object to defilement of their work. This can have nasty implications, for instance, when you want to alter a building you own in a way that the architect or interior designer objects to. My alma mater cannot alter the interior design of one of its libraries for this reason.

Re:IP Laws

[lastninja]

Are they allowed to tear it down completely?

Re:IP Laws

[foobsr]

What you cannot sign away is the fact that you are the creator (Urheber). If you are an employee, it is a different story.

You can however sign away commercial rights (usage, protection).

This is what the German Wikipedia says (and what I recalled).

CC.

Re:IP Laws

[Gorath99]

Yes, that they are, fortunately. The Dutch supreme courts have ruled in 2004 that demolishing a building does not violate the moral rights of the architect. (The LJN number of that case is AN7830, for those who are interested.)

Re:IP Laws

[Anonymous Coward]

Stupid fucking cheeseheads.

Re:IP Laws

[Anonymous Coward]

Urheberrecht translates as copyright whilst urheber translates as author.

IMHO GW need to stop using google for translation and consult a bilingual copyright lawyer.

Re:IP Laws

[Pofy]

> If you are an employee, it is a different story.

Does this apply to all types of work in German copyright law? Because in Sweden, the employer part only applies to computer software, not to other types of works. You know how it is in Germany?

Re:IP Laws

[foobsr]

Huh, I looked a little into it and it seems complicated (IANAL :).

The first big difference is invention/other work, there is an extra law for the first case(employer gets all).

If other work (other than software) is considered, it seems that the 'Urheberrecht' (~creator's right) still cannot be signed away (as it is law there are of course extra traps/exceptions, e.g. logos).

It seems that some courts have ruled that the 'Urheberrecht' for software is assigned to the employer if the developer was instructed to design, there are comments which say that the 'Urheberrecht' holds but is only of formal value.

Here is a 'tutorial' (German) which gives an entry point. You have been warned.

All in all, I get the idea that it is much like in Sweden here.

CC.

Re:IP Laws

[KnuthKonrad]

> Does this apply to all types of work in German copyright law?

Mandatory: IANAL.

Yes it does. And it's not different for work done as an employee either. You still hold the copyright. But the employer is automatically granted usage rights ("Nutzungsrechte") from the work. Where "work" has to fulfill some quality criteria ("Schöpfungshöhe") in order to be copyrightable at all.

And you don't have to put a copyright notice somewhere. Copyright apllies automatically to the creator, no notice necessary. It might, of course, help you to prove your copyright.

Well, duh

[slapout]

1. Leak film on bittorrent.
2. ?
3. Profit!

Why doesn't GW just build a public website

[lena_10326]

....for fans to submit work? Videos/art/themes/scripts/mods/etc.

GW gets the credit and any revenue generated; fans get to be creative.

If I was their CEO, that's the way I'd do it.

Re:Why doesn't GW just build a public website

[SterlingSylver]

So GW creates a website where fans upload to their creations, giving up their rights in exchange for the opportunity to be creative? Great idea! Except that German copyright law forbids fan-creators doing this. I guess GW could block german fans?

I'm not a GW defender here, but this seems to be a case of copyright law not giving enough flexibility to allow for fans to create works based on the copyrights of others.

Re:Why doesn't GW just build a public website

[lena_10326]

So GW creates a website where fans upload to their creations, giving up their rights in exchange for the opportunity to be creative? Great idea!

Ever heard of youtube.com? It'd work like that.





slashdot = eager to assume

Re:Why doesn't GW just build a public website

[Anonymous Coward]

You completely missed his point. I suggest you read the rest of his comment.

lena_10326 = eager to jump to conclusions

Re:Why doesn't GW just build a public website

[RedHat Rocky]

Avast!

When a vacuum is created, something will fill the void. In GW's case, that something is Privateer Press (privateerpress.com).

Now there's a company that knows how to interface with their customers!

Re:Why doesn't GW just build a public website

[lena_10326]

You completely missed his point. I suggest you read the rest of his comment.

I understood his point. He had two points. Germans can't give up irrevocable ownership rights and the copyright law is flawed. I consider that particular law moot because forbidding is not enforcement, and thus is not a violation of irrevocable law, which is why I didn't specifically refer to it.

Courts and governments enforce. Not companies. Just stop injecting other's trademarks and copyrighted stuff into your art and there won't be a problem. Simple as that. I have no sympathy for one's belly aching if one does.

Anyway. My original point was there could be a happy medium where the two could merge. GW lets you insert trademarks in your work if you limit publishing of your work on GW's youtube clone site, otherwise they sue you within the guidelines of the law. As I said before, they would yield profits and credit because it's their trademark on your creation. You could still maintain ownership and author credit to satisfy the German law. By submitting your work, you would be licensing GW to publish your work on the site. If you wanted to take it elsewhere, you'd have to strip the trademarks and anything resembling copyrighted material.

The point is it could be done. If you say it it can't, then how else could trademarked products be co-branded in Germany? Think about that for a minute.

lena_10326 = eager to jump to conclusions

You're right. I made a conclusion in error: that you could understand my point without the training wheels.

Re:Why doesn't GW just build a public website

[Anonymous Coward]

Hahaha! Do you think we're that stupid? Now, explain the "slashdot = eager to assume" part. That should be entertaining.

Re:Why doesn't GW just build a public website

[Anonymous Coward]

Page five...

Call it a parody instead

[athloi]

Then it's legal.

This doesn't get around a truth of a world in which ideas generate money in a hostile environment where those without money suffer badly. If you create something, and own it, and want to keep profiting off of it, the tendency is to reserve as many rights as possible. And until you get the fifty million bucks that puts you and your family out of society's reach, that's what you're gonna do.

Wonder how long that ill-designed paradigm will last.

Re:Call it a parody instead

[iAlta]

Probably won't work, since ... it's not.

Re:Call it a parody instead

[bigdavex]

Call it a parody instead. Then it's legal.

Hmmm. What if we call it a banana?

Re:Call it a parody instead

[nightrain_tg]

Hmmm. What if we call it a banana? Then it might have greater a-peel!

Re:Call it a parody instead

[Anonymous Coward]

Or they could minimally rework the film as "BattleAxe 44000". Extra credit for changing any military emblems to, for example, something resembling a fist with an upraised middle finger or a fist thrust through a hand circled around the wrist as a not-so-subtle "fuck you!" and "fist you!" to GW.

- T

Re:Call it a parody instead

[ducomputergeek]

Bannanas are good. You should always bring a bananna to a party.

Re:Call it a parody instead

[Shadowlore]

Then you need to call the tallyman to come tally it.

Unsurprising.

[Bieeanda]

Games Workshop has a history of not only keeping a stranglehold on their IP, but also doing their damnedest to control resellers as well. If there were a way to make miniatures self-destruct on contact with non-GW paint or scratch-built gribblies, you can bet that they'd implement it without blinking, and declare that all of the old miniatures are tournament-illegal. The idea that they might have to trust another outfit, even one so tiny as a bunch of hard-core fans, is utterly anathema to them.

Re:Unsurprising.

[Hognoxious]

If there were a way to make miniatures self-destruct on contact with non-GW paint or scratch-built gribblies, you can bet that they'd implement it without blinking

Haven't touched their stuff since I grew up (I mean, became a boring old fart), but does their paint still suck like it used to?

Re:Unsurprising.

[BlueCodeWarrior]

Warning: I've only been a hobbyist for about two years. Their individual paints are fine. They've released a new line called "Foundation Paints"....aka paints that actually cover in one coat. However, they've totally screwed up their primers. They've stopped making the good stuff and just started selling Krylon, basically....it's horrible.

Re:Unsurprising.

[Ford Prefect]

Haven't touched their stuff since I grew up (I mean, became a boring old fart), but does their paint still suck like it used to?

No idea, but you've obviously never seen the spectacularly, hideously useless results obtained through attempting to paint a Citadel miniature using enamel paints intended for Airfix model planes.

WHEN CULTURES COLLIDE and all that. Never again.

Re:Unsurprising.

[Hognoxious]

Enamels work perfectly well if you know how to use them - the first Citadel ones I ever painted (Chaos warrior & Orc hossifer on a boar) came as a gift and I painted them in enamels because that's what I had in my box. Previously I'd mostly done Airfix 1/32 & Tamiya 1/35 AFVs - I probably had more tanks than Rommel at one point. Sigh. Those were the days...

There's MUCH more to this story.

[iknownuttin]

Then it turned out that according to German copyright law, the producers are prevented from signing away some of their own rights, which derailed the deal.

There, you have it. There's a lot more to this story that's not even mentioned in the summary - it's just another /. IP is EVIL story. Just the summary on Wikipedia is kind of confusing. And to honest, I don't blame GW for putting the brakes on the movie. Wikipedia summary of German copyright law. I'm trying to find more English versions, but even then, I'm not a lawyer, let alone a German lawyer.

There's more to it than GW maliciously hurting fans.

Re:There's MUCH more to this story.

[jayp00001]

If the problem is the EU copyright laws why aren't /.ers boycotting german products? If GDW was willing except the law wouldn't allow the artists to comply I see no fault by GDW.

Re:There's MUCH more to this story.

[spir0]

GDW. there's a company I've not heard of in years...

This article is about Games Workshop, not Game Designers' Workshop. GDW shut down down in 1996. :)

Re:There's MUCH more to this story.

[jayp00001]

thanks for the correction- like my plastic surgeon told a girlfriend of mine "what's an extra D among friends".

Here's what I don't understand

[Mysticalfruit]

Ground isn't being broken here. Plenty of fan flicks have been created and distributed for everybody to see and the net benefit is more interest in the product...

The fucktards are short sighted idiots who will undoubtly realize their stupidity when their fan/customer base up and leaves...

You're only as good as your last [insert thing of interest].

Fascinating IP Policy

[paladinwannabe2]

As far as I can tell, everything that's not allowed by fair use (in the U.S.) is forbidden. If memory serves, the U.K. has no 'fair use' provisions in its IP law, so it may technically be more permissive than the default U.K. policy. Either way, it does seem like it hurts the fans without helping Games Workshop make any money.

Re:Fascinating IP Policy

[lachlan76]

If it's anything like Australian law, then there is Fair Dealing, which is somewhat analogous to Fair Use. My understanding, however, is that the issue at hand is that of Moral Rights, the non-transferrable right to a) demand attribution, and b) not have the work mutilated.

Relic just made a game for this last year.

[Safiire Arrowny]

At the heart of the matter appears to be Continental European copyright law, which grants the German film makers certain irrevocable rights to their creation which they cannot sign away.

Ok, but they just signed Relic enough rights to make a game about Warhammer so what the hell?

Games Workshop gives fans the shaft yet again...

[spocksbrain]

This coming from the company that does the equivalent of LEGO selling unpainted/uncut plastic minifigs for 15 bucks a pop.

If anyone wants to know...

[jdb2]

... "damnatus" means condemned. (perfect passive participle of "damno"/"damnare" -- "to condemn") YIAALG Yes I Am A Latin Geek jdb2

Re:If anyone wants to know...

[giorgiofr]

Yeps, and (for completeness sake) der Feind im Innern ought to mean "the enemy within", but then again I'm not too good at German :)

Re:If anyone wants to know...

[Anonymous Coward]

Frankly, I don't give a condemn.

Re:If anyone wants to know...

[RotHorseKid]

Das war völlig richtig. Dein Deutsch ist ausgezeichnet. :D

Gruß,
RHK

Desperately clinging for relevence

[grapeape]

This sounds alot like what has happened in the past with Paladium and WoC. Though im sure I will piss off some diehard ccg players and d&d geeks, face it their business if not dying is surely shrinking. Rather than embrace the technologies that are making them irrelevent they have chosen to mostly ignore them and instead bolster attempts to "protect" what they have to the point of turning away their audience.

If it was my film i'd swap some of the characters around..throw in a semi rediculous sub plot and call it satire.

Re:Desperately clinging for relevence

[Gorkamecha]

So you're suggesting they call it Starcraft the movie? ;D

Re:Desperately clinging for relevence

[Bieeanda]

As much as I agree, Wizards has been doing a lot better than TSR ever did, given its massive diversification-- and that Open Gaming License thing was at least some sort of polite-ish gesture to fans, compared to the TSR lawyers who would come down on fansites that dared to breathe the term 'armor class'.

Generally though, yeah. Aside from the occasional official site, few gaming outfits have done anything to embrace a changing marketplace. Sure a few have sold PDF downloads of their source material, but by and large those tend to be copy-protected and sold at nearly the cost of retail hardcovers.

Re:Desperately clinging for relevence

[WhatHappenedToTanith]

You joke, but did you know that one of the lead Warhammer 40K designers - Andy Chambers, is now one of the lead designers for Starcraft 2 and the creative director of Blizzard? I assume you did know judging by your username so I'll explain it for everyone else ;) GW is dying but hopefully a better company will buy it out and make it good once more.

Re:Desperately clinging for relevence

[Gorkamecha]

I half joke....As I've known about the rocky start that was the first Starcraft, and the dance blizzard had with GW in the beginning.

It's only a half joke, in that the Starcraft universe (despite all in game jokes) is a deadly serious place with a well crafted story of it's own. To make a movie a silly 40K riff, and slap Starcraft on it would be a disservice to both.

That being said, taking a 40K movie...and tweaking a few plot points....and making it a Starcraft movie....now your cooking with gas ;D

wow.. Evil Empire of the tabletop world, evil?

[uncledrax]

.. imagine that.. .. among most of the tabletop/(non PC) gamers, GW is well known as 'the Evil Empire' of the tabletop world.. this is just another shiny example.. big deal..

I'll admit I bought a few of thier things.. promptly modified them to be more realistic (why do evil robots need axes on the end of thier particle cannons? oh wait.. they dont.. THEY ARE EVIL ROBOTS!!!).. and used them for non-GW uses... hurray hurray!

Hey

[Ren.Tamek]

Hey! These guys are masters of business here, they've been in charge of the miniatures market in the west for 25 years, they know what's best for their business, even if it seems like it might not be in the fans best interest. I heard they once pumped thousands in development costs some some crappy RTS, and then had the forethought to ditch the company before the whole money sucking company before it they released it and it went under. Good thing they jumped off that sinking ship, lemme tell you...

There's MUCH more "/." to this story.

[Anonymous Coward]

"There's more to it than GW maliciously hurting fans."

Well there's the page hits and the warm feeling of being manipulated for them.

I'm a diehard GW fan

[Anonymous Coward]

But I haven't bought one of their miniatures or miniature games in years. I buy a lot of the Black Library books, and do enjoy looking through the rulebooks (more for the stories than the rules). I've bought nearly every computer game with a Games Workshop license. This move disheartens me on some level. I like seeing more fiction set in the Warhammer universe, and hate to think it's some fancy lawyering that's preventing something potentially good from getting out.

Look at the bright side...

[Spudtrooper]

The world has just been spared another game-based film holocaust. Now if we can just somehow shut down Uwe Boll...

Games Workshop - Emipire to the End.

[deweycheetham]

Games Workshop always was the biggest control freaks out there. These Brits could have ruled the Gaming World, but decided to keep changing the Rulz. How Un-British!!!

GW doesn't care about fans.

[Chas]

They're just in it for the money.

Warhammer's title has a typo. As it's a reminder of the minimal buy-in price for a decent, tournament-official army.

Warhammer $40,000

Don't get me wrong, GW's minis are the shit. But between their money-grubbing and the paint-scheme nazi fans...

FUCK...THAT...NOISE.

Don't even get me started on WHOL.

E-mail to Games Workshop

[alexgieg]

An e-mail I just sent to Games Workshop Customer Service:

Dear Sir,

Over the last months, since I discovered about the Warhammer 40,000 franchise, I had read many positive reviews on what seems to be a really nice fictional universe with some pretty good games based on it.

However, after reading today's Slashdot article (link below) on how Games Workshop is bullying the producers of a German fan movie based on the Warhammer 40,000 universe, I must confess your misguided approach to the situation caused my interest to drop into nothingness.

Link to the Slashdot article:
http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/07/11/ 1536240
(I advise you to read both the article and the community comments below it.)

Thus, I'm sad to inform you that, effective today, I'm not only utterly uninterested on your games, but actively boycotting each, every and all products based on each, every and all pieces of Games Workshop intellectual property. I'm also advising all my contacts (those who play games and video-games, and those who read fantasy and sci-fi to do the same.

The moment you drop your bullying tactics towards fans is the moment I'll think about becoming one. Before that, sorry, but it's too risky.

In the meantime, I hope you take the backlash on your decision wisely, for your PR and legal departments certainly don't seem to understand how the fan/producers relationship is developed and maintained in the new world of 21st century Internet. The geometric progression you'll experience on this matter in the following days will surely be instructive, provided your management shows some willingness to learn from it.

Farewell, and good luck.

Sincerely,

Alexander Gieg
Sao Paulo, Brazil

Re:E-mail to Games Workshop

[Conspiracy_Of_Doves]

Nice email. I'd love to know if you get a response from them.

Re:E-mail to Games Workshop

[Anonymous Coward]

"Hey John, Some guy from Brazil just complained about the damnatus thing and told us he'd never buy any of our products."
"WHAT?!?!? OMG, GET THE CEO ON THE PHONE!!! Mr. CEO? We have a problem. Some guy in Brazil is pissed about the whole Damnatus thing and said that he wouldn't ever buy one of our products! I know, it's horrible sir. Well, sir, I think company-wide suicide may be the only option! Really sir? That's great sir! I'll get right on it! You call the press conference!"
"What did the CEO say?"
"Well, after he stopped crying, he said he was going to call a press conference where he will scourge himself and then dive into a big vat of vinegar. Meanwhile, I have to track this guy down, and offer him my kidney and inform him of our commitment to never ev-" ...and then you woke up.

Re:E-mail to Games Workshop

[alexgieg]

...and then you woke up.

Lol! :D

But the point is that geography matters. They do something nasty to some guys on Germany, and all of a sudden not only a obscure groups of German fans is pissed, but people all over the world start complaining. If that doesn't cause at least a "What the Hell!?" reaction in them, I think nothing (short of actual bankruptcy) ever will.

In any case, Brazil is in fact one of the main worldwide consumers of RPG-related goods. We have widely deployed pen-and-paper monthly magazines on the subject that are running uninterrupted for over a decade, the most important titles are translated and available for sale in the big book shops, and all the time there are RPG events happening in lots of cities. It's not a small market by any means, even though tabletop miniatures themselves are, as far as I know, just a small subset of it.

Re:E-mail to Games Workshop

[RedHat Rocky]

If you'd painted a nice mininature holding a sign with that text, you might have gotten GW's attention.

However, GW seems to not get "that Internet" thing. From discontinuing their user forums to denigrating huge fan forums such as warseer.com.

Sad really. Guess that's why I stopped buying their products. :)

Re:E-mail to Games Workshop

[nurd68]

For what it's worth, my old gaming group has been having fun with Flames of War, and I've been looking at the Modern FOW. Furthermore, since the basic unit is a squad mounted on a base (rather than individuals), it means that you don't have to play it at 15mm scale - it works just as well at 6mm scale (1:285/1:300/aka microarmor), which means that you can field a whole battlegroup for about 1/3rd the cost, and just leave the ranges the same - it makes the ranges closer to actual scale anyway (considering a 1:285 M1 Abrams can fire something like 700 inches, letting it shoot 48 is a lot closer than a 1:72nd scale tank which can only shoot 48 inches).

The hard part is finding people who play FOW and do it without the proper minis, but instead use the rules for Micro. That said, there are lots of Micro players, and you'd have more luck convincing them to play with these alternate rules.

crush elvish imperialism!

[__aapspi39]

i used to feel slightly guilty for the lead figures (fully painted) that i pinched from their little shop in Hammersmith; now i shall dust the nicer ones off and enjoy them without the tinge.

thanks Games Workshop!

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Must've grad'd from the RIAA PR school...

[The_REAL_DZA]

...they're not using all the same tactics (yet) but they have the school spirit about right.

Unsurprising Indeed

[Anonymous Coward]

As the company has grown, there has been a change in the impression they want to give.

In the 80s it was basically just a weirdo factory where plenty of pot was smoked during any creative work. At least that's how it looked like. In the 90s they got a lot of market share simply by keeping their product line consistent while other manufacturers did some horrible mistakes. GW introduced the regiment box, a (relatively) cheap way to build larger units for fantasy wargaming. Other companies sold random RPG models and small warbands. GW sold a product which usually led into armies of hundreds of models. Guess who won.

Back then the general attitude was "let's play some games with toy soldiers and enjoy the goofiness". However, when the company became more and more investor-friendly, the fun had to go. Now they're trying to look extremely professional. No jokes. No silly cartoons. No crazy sales. The model production has become more professional, the rules haven't. Mediocre games + arrogant attitude + the whole focus on recruiting young kids to the hobby = lots of pissed off veteran gamers.

Anyway, the point is that their current style is "We are teh bestest. You buy our products and STFU." They have cut off practically every single feedback channel. They do not take fan-made material into their publications. They refuse to admit that anyone else can do anything worth mentioning. After you realise this, it's not surprising at all that they ban fan films too. It doesn't fit into their "professional" image but violates their "valuable IP" (read: every single fantasy/scifi cliche ripped off and trademarked with slightly different names).

Unfortunately there are very few serious competitors. That's why fantasy wargaming is still controlled by the EE and they can get away with stuff like this. Quite sad, really, but that's how it goes. GW won the toy soldier wars and now it reaps the profits. For every veteran who quits there are five newbies who go "ooh, elves!" without knowing the filthy details. I can't see major changes coming to the situation anytime soon. So shut up and buy, just like before.

Re:A Lesson Learned

[EikeHein]

> The links don't provide any details on what "go ahead" means, and there was no link to this copyright law they are talking about, so maybe I'm wrong. But it looks like these people spent years on a project without getting any clearance in writing. It sucks you had an unwritten agreement, but this will teach you to do your research. One thing they (Games Workship) did do, however, was promote the movie project in their own official magazine publication, the "White Dwarf". While not being a written permission, it does serve to illustrate how hypocritical GW's turn-around is on this one.

Letter to GW

[techsoldaten]

Dear Legal Department -

I am writing to express my severe dissatisfaction with regard to the decision made by Games Workshop as to the organization's IP policy related to video productions. More specifically, I am concerned to hear about the process that was used to determine the company's stance with regard to the fan-produced movie Damnatus and how several years of labor from hobbists / enthusiasts was wasted producing something while internal deliberations took place.

With all due respect for the valuable intellectual property of Games Workshop, the core audience you market your products to are hobbists who engage in similar types of creative activities and who would be rightfully outraged to think that an arbitrary legal process can wipe out several years of creative endeavor. It is simply wrong to let people invest years of their time and energy in an effort your company is fully aware of while clarifying legal issues on your end no matter how onerous the international process may be. At the very least, Games Workshop should consider selling the producers a license (non-transferable, at a severely discounted rate, and with provisions limiting the group's ability to make money off the materials) to enable them to publish the film as recompense for your legal department's incompetence in clarifying the issue.

Please regard this as more than a statement of disagreement. I can envision numerous scenarios under the terms of your IP policy which could be used as a form of protest here in the US and will be happy to organize such events and promote them should the creators of this film not be offered some means of sharing their work. Visiting emergency rooms en masse in your t-shirts chanting 'BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD'; public prayers at funerals to the Lord of Decay for disease and pestilence (with proper attribution offered at the top of our lungs); handing out graphic background text solicitations for Slanesshi Pleasure Parlors at junior high schools that fully credit Games Workshop; many things come to mind.

I stopped playing with your minatures in my teens and have better things to do than protest your decision. I hope you will find a better way to treat the people who enable your company to operate and find someone more responsive to handle inquiries into the use of Games Workshop material.

Regards,
A Really Paranoid IP Freak

Re:Letter to GW

[Anonymous Coward]

With all due respect for the valuable intellectual property of Games Workshop, the core audience you market your products to are hobbists who engage in similar types of creative activities and who would be rightfully outraged to think that an arbitrary legal process can wipe out several years of creative endeavor.

It's spelled "hobbits."

Re:Letter to GW

[nomadic]

Why would you send it to their legal department?

Re:Letter to GW

[techsoldaten]

Oh, customer support is going to handle it in a better fashion?

M

Re:Letter to GW

[Anonymous Coward]

Because the legal department are the ones who made the IP policy and the ones who should receive the letter. The customer service department cannot do anything, except forward it along.

Re:Letter to GW

[nomadic]

Oh, customer support is going to handle it in a better fashion?

Umm.....ok. So you think there are only two divisions in the company, legal and customer support? For a letter like that you want to send it to a division that is involved with fomenting customer good will and sales strategy. So, marketing or sales would be a much better bet.

Re:Letter to GW

[techsoldaten]

Well, the guys who make the miniatures are not going to care either way, they are probably intimidated by management and legal to the point where they are not going to upset themselves over something they can do nothing about.

I will remind myself next time to check with you before writing a letter in protest of a decision by a legal department.

M

Re:Letter to GW

[nomadic]

I will remind myself next time to check with you before writing a letter in protest of a decision by a legal department.

Legal departments generally advise rather than make executive decisions like that. What probably happened is someone in legal found out, or was asked about it, and said something like "well, if we don't vigorously defend our trademark, we risk losing it". The decision then is put to the executive decision-makers how they want to react. I doubt the actual decision was made by the legal department.

Re:Letter to GW

[techsoldaten]

Good point. I just have this core belief that people take pride in their work (in this case the recommendations they make) and lawyers should be more on the side of getting deals done than making deals die. Hopefully, someone reads it, passes it along to someone else, and it generates some discussion.

Thanks for the advice.

M

Re:Letter to GW

[nomadic]

It's entirely likely they did pass it along; while we do like to take pride in our work, lawyers are bound by certain ethical obligations which means sometimes we have to suggest things we don't really want to, just to "diligently represent our clients".

Re:A Lesson Learned

[EikeHein]

One thing they (Games Workship) did do, however, was promote the movie project in their own official magazine publication, the "White Dwarf". While not being a written permission, it does serve to illustrate how hypocritical GW's turn-around is on this one.

Just change a few names around...

[Anonymous Coward]

...and base it on Warcraft. Afterall, they're pretty much the same thing.

Re:Just change a few names around...

[penp]

Warcraft is a knockoff of Warhammer to begin with. However, the film in question would actually be based on Warhammer 40,000, which bares a closer resemblance to Blizzard's Starcraft universe. I wonder how that happened?

Re:Just change a few names around...

[Anonymous Coward]

You DO realize that Warhammer 40k predates Starcraft right?

Re:Just change a few names around...

[RockoTDF]

40k came before Starcraft. Having said this, most of 40k is taken from Dune, Star Wars, and Starship Troopers (the novel, not the awful movie)

Re:Just change a few names around...

[penp]

Yes, I realize this. My post was (intended as) more of a knock on Blizzard than anything.

Re:Just change a few names around...

[3chuck3]

WH 40K was out in tabletop game form before starcraft. GW let Blizzard get away with using the Tyranids as the Zerg.

THQ was not able to add the Tyranids to DOW:dark cursade, stating that the DoW 'Nids are the Zerg, and could not Implement the 'Nids that had not been implimented as the Zerg in Starcraft.

Very sad to let the IP go to a, now, rival (Dawn of War vs Starcraft II) but give a hard time to a Non-Profit fan project.

Re:Just change a few names around...

[vimh42]

Curios. Why knock Bliz for having characters similar to that of Warhammer? Honestly. What somebody else can't have Orcs? Or is the complaint that Warcraft has Humans? Damn they must have copied somebodies IP.

GW's business plan

[Talgrath]

1. Absolutely crush any fan-based creativity so only you can create new material for the game without being sued. 2. ? 3. Profit? Seriously, Games Workshop seems to be run by complete idiots now, take a hint from the video games that so many of your potential fans now go to, people like to create fan movies and content; it helps your image and ultimately helps you sell stuff, embrace it! It's odd, a few years ago Games Workshop seemed to be on the road to a big return to doing extremely well again, but now I'm thinking they may start bleeding money again.

Re:GW's business plan

[WhatHappenedToTanith]

now I'm thinking they may start bleeding money again.

They already are - you think they would learn but they are just going to do some cost cutting and tighten the IP reigns a bit. There is no lord of the rings to bail them out this time though.

seems like bad publicity

[jollyreaper]

On one hand, I know the law-weasels need to defend the IP to prevent someone else from coming along later and saying they have a right to it since nobody else was speaking up for it. It is an unpleasant but necessary bit of stewardship. On the other hand, ham-fisted and draconian enforcement will cause more harm than good. Why not have the fan filmmakers sign an official licensing agreement and just set the cost as something nominal like $1? GW can then show that the IP was defended, the movie was legally produced and distributed, and thus IP is defended and the realm is secure?

Re:seems like bad publicity

[Anonymous Coward]

I wish people would stop repeating that drivel. You do NOT lose copyright if you don't defend it. The only thing you HAVE to defend is trademark. That sort of ignorance leads people to stealing IP on the basis that "the owner didn't defend it" and then they find out the hard way that that is wrong.

Obnoxious....

[UncleTogie]

...and after finding the link to their number, 1-800-394-4263, at their Contact Page, I called to get their take on this. I asked why they'd choose to alienate their fan base like this, and was told "to protect our IP". I asked just what the rationale was for this decision, and the response once again was "to protect our IP." I asked who made the decision, and the CS rep wouldn't say, just restating that it was their IP. "I know," I told them, "but using Star Trek as an example, Star Wreck: In the Pirkinning was lovingly made by fans of ST and Bab5 as a nice spoof. They weren't sued; they were encouraged." The rep once again quietly parroted "but it's OUR IP...", and I gave up.

I'm not selling any of their material to make my money back, either. At this point, my choice is simply to burn it/melt it all down before someone else gets the infamous "FanBoi Bitchslap"....

Re:Obnoxious....

[RobertLTux]

i would guess the big question for your minis is

[font style=huge red blinking] WILL IT BLEND!!!![/font]

Re:Obnoxious....

[Kreigaffe]

Um.. what world do you live in that a CS rep has absolutely any say whatsoever in what a company does, and moreover is able to actually relate facts to you rather than the company-approved responce to inquries that they recieved in their email that morning?

You DO realize what you did is basically the same as arguing with the kid behind the counter and mcdonald's over the prices on the menu, right. Right? Just checking.

Re:Obnoxious....

[UncleTogie]

Um.. what world do you live in that a CS rep has absolutely any say whatsoever in what a company does, and moreover is able to actually relate facts to you rather than the company-approved responce to inquries that they recieved in their email that morning?
Info digging. Social engineering can many times score more info than lawsuits, reporters, or subpoenas can. Phone calls, of course; you can better gauge their reactions. I can think of many [admittedly anecdotal] incidents where a bit of bluster or "C'mon, what's the *real* answer..." has loosened a tongue or two. Additionally, I wanted to see how quickly the PHBs were reacting to the news and briefing the staff to hold to that line...

My current impression is that of a corporate deer caught in bright headlights....

...on the Autobahn...

For those who don't know...

[Valdrax]

Wizards of the Coast got their start by putting out a multi-system compatible game called, "The Primal Order" in 1990. Part of the system included rules for converting characters to and from its system and the system used in games by Palladium Books. Palladium Books went nuts and sued WotC over violation of their intellectual property.

After 3 years, WotC ended up settling with PB for an undisclosed sum and an agreement not to mention their games again. (This is ironic considering that most of PB's claims were rejected by the judge in the case.) You can read a summary of the events here.

In retrospect, it's not surprising that WotC came up with the Open Gaming License.

Personally, the whole thing left such a bad taste in many gamers' mouths, that we chose never to do business with Palladium again in spite of WotC asking people not to boycott them (apparently something PB had demanded as part of the settlement). Like most people, I didn't really even care about WotC at the time, I was just angry at PB.

On a side note, I happened to see the publishers of Manhunter (the only game to actually license conversion rules from PB) at a con one year, and I asked, "Well, how'd you manage that?" only to get chewed out by Kevin Siembieda's wife who was staffing the PB booth next door. Being a teenager and not informed at all about IP law, I was kind of flabbergasted and didn't know what to say.

Heh. If only I could go back in time...

Re:For those who don't know...

[Control Group]

Heh. If only I could go back in time... ...you would tell WotC to not completely ruin their hojillion-dollar game by flooding the market with expansions every couple months, steadily increasing the power/cost ratio of all their cards, regularly invalidating old (valuable!) cards, and engaging in general asshattery? Or that there's no legitimate place in tabletop RPG for version "3.5" of anything?

'Cos that would be pretty nice of you.

Re:For those who don't know...

[mvdwege]

And the fun thing is that WotC got their fingers burned by a related IP case as well. I don't know if this was before or after the Palladium flap (I believe it was after), but they got caught distributing some material by Kenzer & Company without clearing it first.

Now KenzerCo is the hobby company of one David S. Kenzer, who in real life is an attorney specialising in IP law. Ouch.

From what I understand, this is how KenzerCo got to be one of the very few third parties to actually publish a fully licensed D&D 3.x setting. Apparently, Mr. Kenzer took the license as settlement for WotC's infringement.

I may have a few details wrong, but this is the gist of the matter. Disclaimer: I currently DM a campaign in KenzerCo's Kalamar setting, and I really like it.

Mart

Re:For those who don't know...

[Anonymous Coward]

The Primal Order was a great book. It may have been the only RPG book I ever read cover to cover. A funny, entertaining read. It was a cap system for running deities in your RPG. They called it a "cap system" since it was supposed to work with any other RPG system. In the back of the book they had an appendix where it told you how to translate The Primal Order's rules to any of a couple dozen different RPGs. It was just a page or two about Palladium in the appendix that brought about WotC's legal problems. This was before Magic: The Gathering when WotC was a tiny little company.

If you read Kevin Siembieda's description of the history of Palladium... you get an impressive amount of ego and bluster. Palladium's books strike me as a perfect contrast to a book like the Primal Order. Palladium turns out a bunch of books that seem very derivative of early D&D. Oh, this one will be Sci-Fi D&D, and that one will be Horror D&D. They all use the same clunky system with classes and levels and a really crappy skill system. The Primal Order was a fresh, fun, innovative take on what an RPG could be.

Re:Games Workshop gives fans the shaft yet again..

[Craig Maloney]

$15? Try $20-30 for anything remotely interesting.

They definitely are about gouging the fans. I have a can of $10 acrylic primer to prove it. :) (That's white acrylic spray paint for the rest of you folks).

Re:Ahem.

[Anonymous Coward]

And just think, YOU posted here. That makes you a wannabe nerd who's not cool enough to even hang out with nerds. So, what now? :P

(think I'll post this anon... the modders are more likely to mark it flamebait than my intended funny. ;-) -- but just in case, a pre-emptive *shakes fist* if it gets modded up. hehe)

Here's what *I* don't understand

[mrchaotica]

Why would they need any kind of "permission" from Games Workshop to begin with? Games Workshop sells miniatures, i.e., objects. Saying that the people buying the miniatures aren't allowed to make a movie with them is as absurd as IKEA saying I can't make a movie featuring my coffee table!

Re:Here's what *I* don't understand

[MrNiceguy_KS]

Didn't you know that IKEA has trademarked hex bolts? Your coffee table movie is infringing on their intellectual property!

Re:Here's what *I* don't understand

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, Games Workshop doesn't sell just bare miniatures. They have a whole involved storyline which is the focus of the creativity that leads to well, their minis being organized and structured. IOW, they're not just doodling up cool things and putting them for sale. They do have a universe.

So as such, they very much have an interest in any works based on said universe. If you wanted to just make a story with GW minis, I suppose you could, but violating their creative rights would be another matter.

Petition

[the Grimnok]

I havent read it here, so this is a link to one petition against GWs behaviour and just the first step! Its more to collect a number of fans and supporters and get people informed then to change GWs mind, but it might work

and here...

[Mr.TomatoMan]

And here comes the link ;) [url]http://www.petitiononline.com/damnatus/petiti on.html[/url]

For what it's worth (not much):

[Control Group]

(sent to custserv@games-workshop.com):

Dear Sir or Ma'am,

I am writing in regards to your decision to withdraw permission for the release of the fan-created film Damnatus, based on your Warhammer 40,000 universe. While I understand the economic necessity of protecting your intellectual property, I also have a difficult time believing there is no acceptable license under which it is possible for a group of such obviously dedicated fans to release a work that has been four years in the making - moreover, four years during which the makers had your approval.

I will admit, though I have fond memories of playing Necromunda and Blood Bowl, and while I dabbled briefly in Battlefleet: Gothic, I have not involved myself to any degree in Warhammer 40,000. However, even as a largely non-fan, the Damnatus project (which I only learned of recently) had piqued my interest enough to begin dusting off my Battlefleet: Gothic miniatures. This move on your part, however, has sapped my enthusiasm.

Prior to this, I was at worst a disinterested party, respectful of the pastime you sell. Given this behavior, however, I have switched from disinterested to evangelically negative. While I will not claim to speak for dozens of people, I can assure you that my gaming group will not be purchasing any of your materials. In addition, I have already secured permission from one of my local gaming stores to post a flyer describing the situation.

From my point of view, what could have been a positive publicity event for you - even if a relatively minor one - has been transformed into an episode which will generate nothing but distrust, resentment, and disappointment among the very people you depend on most: the dedicated fans of your games, your miniatures, and your universe.

Sincerely,
Matt R. Cherwin

sick of GW

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know anything about this story in particular, but I'm sick of GW in general. I used to play some of their games. Among the top peeves I've heard about them:

* games are expensive, and they raise prices too often

* a few years back they decided they could make more money by forbidding retailers from selling their products online; I think the rationale is: if the only online store is the official GW store, they'll make more money on the sales.

* crack down excessively on any use of their IP. No putting up one of their pictures on your fan website. None of that.

* horrible rules maintenance. They'll put out a new book and sometimes the FAQs and errata will practically beat the book out the door (and you're left wondering why you bought a rulebook with so many errors in it.) Other times (like the main rulebook to 4th edition 40k) a books is out for years with clearly ambiguous rules and they won't say anything. And also, need I point out, you have to collect a dozen rule books and subscribe to their magazine to be sure you have all of the rules to a game...

* they put out perhaps the worst piece of software I've ever paid money for in the form of army generators for 40k.

* making armies obsolete in new editions of the rules.

* they market to kids. Fair enough. They don't have to treat everyone like children on their online forums (although there was a lot of immaturity there.) Problem solved though: they closed their forums awhile ago.

* they have some strict rules on minimums that stores can order. The game is a niche anyway. Forcing the little stores to buy more of their expensive merchandise than they think they can sell ends up with some stores stopping to stock their stuff altogether.

* declining standards; their magazine used to feature some of the most detailed painting around. Lately, they claim they want to show people "realistic" standards. (Probably, they don't want to pay talented people to spend all that time on it.) Why would I pay money to see pictures of average-looking stuff? Also, they used to talk about "WYSIWYG" -- What You See Is What You Get. Meaning, you have to model everything on your army men that they're supposed to have. Lately, I've heard talk of "counts as" -- meaning you can go ahead and use the wrong figures. So much for "modeling" -- just use whatever you want, I guess?

Yep, I'm sick of GW alright. I won't even bring up any perceived problems with how their games play. The company sucks.

GW Attitude

[draevil]

Unfortunately Games Workshop has had a generally retrograde attitude to copyright/IP for a long time. They take all the fun out of the game/environment due to their obsession with protecting their "IP".

This spreads and if you check out the interviews with Warhammer Online peeps, they consistently talk about a feature "coming from the IP" when I think the correct term they were reaching for would be "it comes from the backstory" or the warhammer world. This transformation of all ideas, plot lines, concepts into mere chattels is a sloppy way of thinking of the world and ultimately chokes all creativity beneath a web of artificial scarcity wherein nothing new is born and all that remains is to be jealously guarded and traded under fiendishly odious terms.

I recall going to the GW web site years ago and downloading a pdf of rules for a particular, I think Tyrannid, unit. I was astonished to have to agree to a license just to download the pdf and that the license effectively prohibited me from even giving the file or the physical copy to another person. This would make gaming with the information quite difficult I suppose. I would have to shield their eyes from the offending document until I had either established whether they had the appropriate license for the photons to reach their retinas or direct them to download their own entirely identical stream of bits.

And so the world turns I suppose...

I'd consider threatening legal action.

[Fantastic Lad]

If GW gave them the okay and they can prove this, and the people making the film invested time and resources into the project in the belief that they were allowed to, only to have the plug yanked, then that puts them in a position to sue for their time and money.

It seems ridiculous to even suggest that one should fight with the very group that inspired them, though. The whole world-wide hoopola over intellectual property we're investing so much time and anxiety into these days is totally nuts. --I've talked to teachers who tell their kids not to copy pictures out of books because it's copyright infringement. How crazy is that?

Of course, I also find it interesting to note that War Hammer is all about hyper-competitiveness, focusing every last atom of one's soul upon the annihilation of your opponents. With that kind of crazy-selfish thinking, is it any wonder GW is acting this way? "I AM THE KING OF THE HILL. MINE! ALL MINE! NOW, DIE!!!"

You don't see the Harry Potter franchise trying to stomp out fan fics. Or who knows? Maybe you do. The world is crazy enough.

-FL

Re:I'd consider threatening legal action.

[Dunx]

Actually, yes you do see the Harry Potter franchise behaving stupidly - there were several stories about fan websites being sent cease and desists letters by Warner Brothers lawyers about brand dilution and so on.

They haven't done that recently - the Potter people have learned.

Games Workshop are special, as another poster remarked, because they have been pulling these kinds of customer alienating tricks for years. I gave up on the hopeless bunch in around 1990.

Re:I'd consider threatening legal action.

[Anonymous Coward]

Games Workshop are special, as another poster remarked, because they have been pulling these kinds of customer alienating tricks for years.

Obviosly GW need to alienate quite a few more customers before the drawbacks of their strategy becomes apparent to them.

Stop playing their games and dump all your old stuff on ebay - flood the market with cheap GW games and they will not sell so much new stuff.

Re:I'd consider threatening legal action.

[Anonymous Coward]

But Rowling herself encourages fanfiction (presumably because she's a parent and believes that improving literacy is good).

The only limitation Harry Potter fanfiction encounters is that you have to put a disclaimer at the top of the page. I know because my fiancee (mainly under the penname "Myth and Legend") writes/wrote HP fanfiction and works with some of the really big archives like FictionAlley.org and PhoenixSong.net. From what I know the main ones that WB went for were ones they found distasteful and not fitting with the child-oriented nature of their films like 'slash' (male/male porn) stories.

Ignoring dives like FanFiction.net, places like Fiction Alley must be into the thousands of stories on their own.

GW actually do the same thing with their fanfiction (they have a stock disclaimer in their legal section) so quite why they then prohibit films I don't know.

Does this mean that GW fans in Germany can't write fanfiction or "house rules" and publish them because they can't sign away these rights?

Re:I'd consider threatening legal action.

[Shadowlore]

The whole world-wide hoopola over intellectual property we're investing so much time and anxiety into these days is totally nuts.

Absolutely. Change "OUR IP" to "OUR CHILDREN". Ahh but "children are NOT property!" someone cries. I agree. Neither is something that does not physically exist. At least people are physical entities.

waiver?

[WingedEarth]

Isn't Games Workshop estopped from changing their minds now after the producers spent their time and resources making the film, based on their detrimental reliance on the initial go-ahead? Doesn't laches apply here?

Decided to churn their audience a few years ago

[alexhmit01]

I've played GW games on and off over the years, more off then on, but every once in a while someone gets me into it. They decided to bring their GW Stores to the US, which decimated game stores that used to sell GW stuff, not because of competition, but because GW would play games with events, etc.

They also realized that their old-time base was mostly using their older miniatures, just updating rule books and adding a few neat elements. Their third edition tried to force changes by making the troops more powerful than the specialists, to encourage more purchases as well.

They found that with their game stores, they were able to bring in teenagers with disposable income, but the other gamers didn't want to play with teenagers... makes sense, if you're in your 30s and 40s and have kids at home, your hanging out with the guys night is less fun if there are 14 and 15 year olds there.

They found that getting teenagers into the game, who would drop money then disappear when they got older gave them a constant supply of people buying miniatures. The guy playing the same Imperial Guard army for 10 years doesn't generate that much revenue.

They took a very anti-fan approach, and while it gave them a bump in sales, they have become one of the companies hated by gamers... including those that play their games.

Re:Decided to churn their audience a few years ago

[WhatHappenedToTanith]

Check out Flames of War as a good alternative to games workshop. It is 1/100 scale WW2 and seems to be growing in popularity faster than the other major alternatives (such as hordes, warmachine, etc). The IP is WW2 as well so there is a lot more freedom for fans.

Re:Ahem.

[MS-06FZ]

Nerds. And news for us! And stuff that matters!

Is warhammer even *legal* in Germany?

[sam_handelman]

While we're discussing the vagaries of German law, isn't Nazi iconography (like, say, skulls and lightning bolts and everything else anyone in WH40K ever wears), illegal in Germany? I suppose there might be a "toy soldier" exception.

  Disclaimers:
1) I'm opposed to the German laws in question. I believe that even Nazi's should have freedom of speech. To quote Chomsky: "Goebbels was in favor of free speech for views he liked. So was Stalin. If you're really in favor of free speech, then you're in favor of freedom of speech for precisely those views you despise. Otherwise, you're not in favor of free speech. It is a poor service to the memory of the victims of the holocaust to adopt a central doctrine of their murderers."
2) I'm Jewish.
3) Nazis really knew how to dress - proof positive that fashion is evil.
4) I have space marines.

Re:Is warhammer even *legal* in Germany?

[the Grimnok]

Why is a skull a Nazi emblem? So, nothing in Citadel Miniatures stuff has Naziemblems, there a some armies like steellegion which look like, but there are no explicite icons. So, real swastika or SS runes are still illegal, expect in historical stuff. 3)hm...last saturday i was hunting some of these guys, and they look crapy.

Re:Is warhammer even *legal* in Germany?

[Anonymous Coward]

No, perfectly legal stuff.

GW would get in touble for using
* the swastica
* the SS-Icon

Skulls, lightnings, Chaos runes is all fine.

bye
Former Chaos Space Marine Player

Re:Is warhammer even *legal* in Germany?

[Inquisitor S.]

"GW would get in touble for using * the swastica" Funny, actually there is some old Games Workshop artwork where there are symbols that look like Swastikas. Not to mention that their old "Stormboyz" looked more then a little bit like Orks in Wehrmacht uniforms. I do not, however, think that this was done on purpose^^ But then I am pretty sure that if the German official people who are responsible for rating films, products etc where confronted with a letter written by someone with deep insight into the background then there would be quite a chance that GW wouldn't be allowed to sell their products to kids anymore (excessive violence, implied racism, Slaanesh?).

Hah.Comedy gold...

[nowhere.elysium]

I used to collect Warhammer and Warhammer 40,000 miniatures, and I played for some time, back when I was about 13. I even went so far as to submit self-designed stats for a legendary character in the Warhammer universe. My submission was answered by one of their designers: a guy named Tuomas Pirinen: not only was he very polite, he was actually quite encouraging about the whole thing, even my rough sketches (which, although not particularly bad, were obviously drawn by an arty teen). I've still got the letter he sent me, somewhere. I found the whole thing to be quite satisfying. Imagine my amusement when I discovered that he left Games Workshop, to work in IT, because 'IT pays better' - http://everything2.net/index.pl?node_id=871858/

Typical GW.

[Nim82]

I really am not surprised by this, I used to be quite a fan of GW products ~13 years ago. At the time they were quite cheap and you could collect armies relatively easily, they had a greater range too (I collected EPIC mostly). Then slowly but surely they began to ramp up the prices, first they made all £3.99 blisters £4 (not a big deal), then every couple of months £4 would change into £5 into £6. They began dropping gaming systems they couldn't market easily, EPIC got the chop - they replaced it with a LOTR themed Warhammer to tie in with the movies. Even the official rag White Dwarf has changed from a hobby magazine into an overpriced catalogue.

When I first started they would let you play with custom armies in-store, if you had the odd model from another dev they didn't care, if you didn't have a Terminator with a Flamer they would let you use a normal one and put a counter by it. Nowadays the staff are nazi's, they wont let you play with a badly painted army, they wont let you use other miniatures in your army, you have to have the proper model for everything (unless it's a custom conversion using their gear). They wont even let you play their old games there anymore. The higher ups only want people to see in-store what they can buy, in-store gaming is now product placement, using the unpaid kids who game there these days.

Since GW floated they have tried to screw everyone over, and a few of their big name developers walked (unsurprisingly). They are now in a catch 22; their steep price has deterred many from pursuing the hobby and they have driven away the vets (who now use Ebay). The result is lower sales, necessitating yet higher unit costs. In the not too distant future I can see them having to bail on miniature gaming altogether, and simply use their IP for video games and literature.

Talking of games - I wonder if this will have an impact on the modding scene? There are an awful lot of WH/40k themed mods, most of which directly compete with the official games (and some tabletop systems). Time will tell I guess...

They really are shooting themselves in the head with this one, utterly retarded given their predicament.

Re:Typical GW.

[dances with elks]

I was in there recently thinking about getting back into it. I casually mentioned that I'd got some stuff from ebay and the shop guy had a go at me saying it was ruining the hobby! No, trying to rob your customers blind and aggressive sales are what are screwing you over. Why do I care if you're closing shops thanks to ebay?

Re:Typical GW.

[nosferatu1001]

The above comment about not being allowed to use unpainted miniatures / non-GW converted miniatures* is certainly NOT true of all GW stores; I regularly visit about 4 (I know people in each of the areas and it's a handy gaming place) and I play with unpainted, converted, and painted to my standard (poor) miniatures to NO comments, and I have never seen anyone else have negative comments about their work.

Yes, certain items are expensive (obliterators at £12 each!) however the detail on the latest models, for example the Forest sets, is stunning

*the MAJOR exception is Golden Demon, where you must have a majority (51% or better) of GW components in any model you submit. This is a reasonable stipulation - after all its a painting competition for their models!

Re:Typical GW.

[mearsy360]

I'm not sure where you guys are gaming but I have been using their product for years and have had nothing but good experiences. I can play whatever game with whatever army (painted or not) intheir store and have even proxied charaters with no hassle. I guess it's all how you look at it.

Call me paranoid

[maximander]

The cynic in me is thinking "Look how much PR for the film they just drummed up in one of their target markets" (i.e. slashdot geeks).

Now whether the film is leaked or the "dispute" is resolved, all of slashdot now has this film on their radar, and will be much more likely to see it -- like "banned" commercials showing up on youtube. And more likely than not, when the film does make it's way out, they'll get another slashdotting, and the associated bump in PR.

Sure, this makes GW look less than great, but if the film and the game get the PR bump, it will trickle back to GW and /.'ers are quite used to Evil Company IP Rights bruhahas tend to get over it if they like the product.

Warcraft

[Akaihiryuu]

It's rumored (I don't know how accurate the rumor is) that the original Warcraft was originally going to be a Warhammer game. The deal supposedly fell through, and Blizzard kept the gameplay and units intact and instead came up with an original story, taking it out of the Warhammer universe. If this rumor is accurate, perhaps this is the very reason that happened (GW wanting complete control over it). There's a similar rumor about Starcraft/Warhammer 40K.

Re:Warcraft

[just_forget_it]

I wouldn't be surprised. If the deal did fall through it was likely because GW realized that sales of their $40 boxes of plastic would suffer.

WARMACHINE and HORDES

[LukeCage]

Maybe I'll get modded down for this as off-topic...but I wanted to say it anyway.

Most people think that Games Workshop is the only "real" miniatures game in town. But it's not. There is another really good game out there called WARMACHINE (and it's companion product, HORDES).

WARMACHINE (yes, it's spelled in all caps) is much cheaper to get into. A "battle box" of a commander and two to four "warjacks" (basically a walking locomotive with weapons - and no they don't look as dumb as that sounds) is 50 bucks, or 35 dollars online. And it comes with the rules and unit stats included.

Whenever you buy a unit, you get a card with all the unit stats. You don't have to ever buy a rulebook if you don't want to. And the miniatures look really nice. Just search around and see. The fiction (aka the "fluff") for the game is just as good as Warhammer. For example, one of the nations in WARMACHINE is a Russian-style fascist state that discovered hundreds of magical swords in an ancient tomb buried under one of their cities. The swords are powerful, but unfortunately cursed, and anyone who uses them goes berserk. So what do they do? They chain convicts to the swords and point them at the enemy! That's the same sort of grim pragmatic feel you get in Warhammer.

I suggest anyone who is sick of GW and Warhammer (I sunk 500 bucks into the game and got 200 back, there are literally hundreds of ebay auctions selling these units at a loss because the game is simply a grind and NOT FUN to actually play for most people) but wants to play a fun miniature game give WARMACHINE a look. I got into it and am enjoying it way, way more than Warhammer. It's tons cheaper and just as fun.

Re:WARMACHINE and HORDES

[thedarknite]

The company behind WARMACHINE, Privateer Press, also provide basic rules and some additional content on their website. I haven't looked closely at their wargame, but found Iron Kingdoms (an RPG in the same universe) to be quite well developed.

Re:WARMACHINE and HORDES

[z3d4r]

i converted from playing Eldar and Dark Eldar in WH40k to playing Khador in WARMACHINE a few years ago and havent looked back since.

for anyone interested in miniature gaming or currently dissatisfied with games workshop, i strongly encourage you to seek out the WARMACHINE website - privateerpress.com - or something like that.

many of the privateer press staff are former GW employees (including miniature designers) who saw the direction that GW was heading and set off for a brighter future

Oh please...

[Anonymous Coward]

When you make a fan film that liberally borrows copywritten thematic elements, settings, visuals, etc. then start throwing around works like "publication", "premiere", and "duplicate prints" on your film's web site, don't be surprised when you get shut down.

Re:Oh please...

[panxerox]

They are still assholes.

Re:Oh please...

[Pofy]

You didn't read the article, now did you?

No suprise

[geekoid]

Games workshop has huge egos and have a history of being petty in their demands and changes. More then one hobby stores has been screwed of by them.

Worng wrong wrong

[geekoid]

The can create a licensing saying they own all the rights. Done, nothing given up, and it's only the trademark that's at risk. A risk that is simple to mitigate with a trademark icon.

This is another company that doesn't understand the new way of making money. They no they offer nothing that can't be easily duplicated. Fear of that makes them do stupid crap. I can't wait until the desktop modeling tool get cheaper. I will make copies of several of the warhammer miniatures and mail them to there head quarters. Just to hear the scream.

Re:Worng wrong wrong

[Pofy]

>The can create a licensing saying they own all the rights.

The problem here is that they can't own the rights the law attributes to someone else. It is not an issue of what they license to their fans, it is an issue of the fans having certain rights they can't give away IF for exmaple they are to make such a movie. So it is not about giving up but about not being able to get some rights from others.

Stallman says...

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't Buy Harry Potter Books

Stupid, stupid move.

[gunny01]

I played GW (40K & Inquistor) for a while: but the prices where just ridiculous. You could by just as detailed miniatures at the hobby shop down the street, for, half, hell, even a quater of the price of GW mini. GW games are pretty awesome: but they overcharge you for everything. (Australian Prices) $30 for a Codex or Army Book: slightly more content than your average magazine. $50 for a squad of ten Space Marines. A decent army is in the $1000+ range. If you're rich, it would be a pretty cool hobby. GW has such a rich and exciting backstory: that's what makes the games so damn good. But screwing your fans like this is just stupid. Not to mention they bring out spinoffs like Inquisitor, only to remove them to UK/US mail order only in a year or so. I was considering making an computer version of Inquistor due to the cost of importanting minis from the UK. But this IP rubbish has turned me off. So, GW, essentially you want to kill off FREE ADVERTISING for your products.

Oh let me count the ways

[panxerox]

Like the biggest price hike in their history was made in the US only on July 4th (not this 4th but a previous one), and there famous "no internet sales" fan slap. Suck it fans suck it long and suck it hard.

And here's mine - Congratulations...

[garyok]

...you've managed to shoot yourself square in the foot!

I'm not sure when GW turned from being the epitome of gaming excellence and the premier recipient of fan loyalty to being just another corporation packaging product for the dead-eyed taxation/consumption units out there (about 1989, I reckon) but you've really nailed it now. Your decision to allow loyal fans to waste 4 years of their life on the DAMNATUS project and pulling the plug on them just as they finished and were about to release their project is about as despicable an act as I've ever heard. I understand that your intellectual property is important, and that it provides your dependants with food and clothes, but you could have shut them down 3 years, 11 months, and 3 weeks ago. Allowing loyal fans hell-bent on giving you free publicity to continue to completion, to premiere the film, and then shutting them down... well that's pretty damn sadistic.

I enjoyed WH40K:Dawn of War and I was really looking forward to the Warhammer MMORPG, but I think it'll be a cold day in Hell before I buy anything branded GamesWorkshop again.

You could have offered them a one-off licence and then made it clear to any other projects that the rules had changed afterwards, but you guys decided to be hard-nosed. Fine. Reap what you sow.

No regards whatsoever

Gary

p.s. I sent mine to legal@gamesworkshop.co.uk - I figured they deserved it more.

Wow talk about alienating your fans

[asm2750]

So not only does GW price gouge you when it comes to building an army, but they don't want to see any fan movies either? Whats next, fan fiction thats written? If I were GW I would have went in the other direction and embraced it, nothing pays best like free advertisement from your loyal fan base.

Why Not Buy It?

[cranos]

Here's a thought, if all the fans who are ticked off by GW's behaviour (and I'm one of them) put in say $50 and bought shares in the company, you'd get quite a block of votes when it came time to determining the companies direction.

Want Games Workshop to return to its roots? You won't make it happen by boycotting them, you need to get into their heads.

They have a petition going

[Faaln]

chances are the petition probably wasn't up on their site when this story went up but it seems that the fans who made the film put a petition on the news section of their site in both german and english; here's the english one (last I checked they had a little over 500 signatures): http://www.damnatus.com/news_popup.php?id=1929&lan guage=english

The bleak reality ...

[nargileh]

It's the saddening and bleak reality of our current corporate ruled world: someone's word doesn't mean squat anymore unless it's backed up by a legally valid contract.

The result:
4 years of work down the drain from a whole bunch of fans because GW doesn't trust the makers to stick to the original intent of not making profit from it.

WFRP

[mcvos]

There is a role playing version of Warhammer (with the ever so original name of Warhammer Fantasy Role Playing or FRP), which is actually not a bad system at all.

I'm not familiar with WFRP2, but the original game actually is a pretty bad system. I love it and have played it for ages, and played it again when Hogdhead Games rereleased it, but its awesomeness is entirely due to the setting, the mood, the atmosphere. And the The Enemy Within campaign, ofcourse. The system itself had lots of problems. I hope WFRP fixed them, but I haven't looked at it yet.

Replacement for WH40K

[halivar]

Try Warmachine. This game kicks Warhammer's ass. Customer support by Privateer Press is TOP NOTCH (I reported a missing piece, they sent me a whole new mini, no questions asked). Also, Warmachine has its own spin-off d20 setting (Iron Kingdoms) that is freakin' awesome (some will argue which came first, WM or IK. Doesn't matter, they're both great).

Warhammer 40?

[AP31R0N]

What the hell is Warhammer 40? And why does it need 3 digits of resolution? i've heard of Warhammer and Warhammer 40K... is this some sort of inbetween release?

No.

[paladinwannabe2]

This doesn't seem to have anything to do with attribution or non-mutilation of the work (I haven't seen the movie, but I have to assume that it treats the WarHammer universe with respect). They have banned all movies using 40k references. Contrast with Star Wars/Star Trek, where fans are allowed to make fanfic videos if they want, so long as they don't make a profit off them.

Games Workshops cannot legally forbid publication

[Anonymous Coward]

Well I don't know what Games Workshops doesn't like about the german copyright, but their legal position to stop the movie would be fairly unsure, to say the least.

German law does not need a written contract, it is just easier to prove in court compared to a spoken one. The problem (for GW) is that they apparently gave Damatus an oral permission and even promoted the movie in the official magazine.
Provided there are witnesses to Games Workshops oral permission or even the issues of the magazine alone, should/could force a geman court to uphold the permission over the recent change of mind of GW.
They gave the permission/licence to make a fan movie and a court would find them liable to stick to it.

I guess Games Workshops is hoping that
a) fans who love them enough to make a movie won't sue them
b) said fans won't have enough money for a lawsuit
c) if it comes to the worst case, they can drag it out in court until the movie is obsolete, although they will be forced to accept its publication eventually

Ex-player considers this a bitter pill

[fortiguy]

I used to dabble with GW products. I had lots of fun painting them, and some fun fighting battles with them. It was expensive but fun.

Then Warcraft came along and sucked up all my free time. If GW had been on the ball they would have gotten their game out ASAP after that to keep their players interested.

So this nostalgic ex-player has considered checking out recent changes to Warhammer, until I saw this news tidbit.
Now I'm joining the expanding ranks of very unhappy GW customers who have forked out hunders or thousands of dollars for products of theirs only to have all creative efforts by very qualified people squashed.

The only possible way they could redeem themselves at this point without fully reversing their position, is to release news of a major hollywood movie with $100s of millions in CGI. If they have lisenced the rights to someone already, they are proctecting rights in that media. If there is nothing coming out anytime soon, they are just shooting themselves in the foot for no good reason. Only time will tell.

Oh wow

[Anonymous Coward]

Move over, Eldrad! You've just been out-dicked.

WARMACHINE and Fans

[pwylltwiceborn]

I must admit i converted to warmachine a long time ago ( and Iron Kingdoms is now my RPG groups play of choice ). The BIG BIG Difference - they like Fan based items and actually SUPPORT them on THEIR website. like most old timers I drop GW when White Dwarf went bad and you had to by the new mini to match the new books.... Hopefully they will die off soon, or grow up and realise the only bankable thing there IP owns is the FANS

irony

[Anonymous Coward]

Ever since GW sold their soul, they've been trying whatever they can to get money, and what must chafe at them maddeningly is that it isn't working.

Even after jacking up prices again, neglecting minor 40k races in favor of, whoopee, more Space Marine codices, trying to stamp out the miniatures bits trade by forbidding manufacturers from selling them with online shopping systems, pushing their direct order services and stores to edge out local game shops, and generally being assholish to anything that stands in the way of that extra penny under the couch, their profits are plummeting.

Maybe there's a reason.

Explanation

[czsmith82]

Got this from Chris Gohlinghorst, head of US "Kommandos" and employee for GWUS. He requested an explanation from GW legal team and summarized what they said: "Hey guys, I was able to have a fantastic talk with a gentleman I am well acquainted with in our Legal Dept in the UK. He was able to go into a lot of detail with me and I'd like to share the highlights with you. Please note that this is a bit of privileged information, and I'd rather you keep it to yourselves until something is officially released. It would put me into a compromised position if it just winds up cut and pasted somewhere - but I'd like you to know what's going on to avoid the dreaded foot-in-mouth disease that is far too prevalant on internet forums. >From our conversation, it appears there are two main points we have to work with: 1) The German legislation would in fact automatically give some rights to the Warhammer 40,000 universe to Damnatus if it was released. I would be surprised to find anyone arguing that this is a tolerable situation for any company to find itself in. Large amounts of money were spent by GW Legal for German lawyers to try and find away around this on Damnatus' behalf, to no avail. This was all done despite there never being any official permission or signatures for the Damnatus team to go ahead with their plan (which is horribly unfortunate for everyone involved). 2) The above situation would have directly interfered with an already existing, exclusive license that was granted to a third party in respect to Warhammer 40,000 IP being used in movies. In conclusion it appears that GW's hands are tied in this respect. The value of the company's IP far outweighs any fan film, no matter how hot our passions might run to see something so very cool released. It is a shame (and heartbreaking for many) that it took this long for things to come to a head as it only serves to muddy the arguments that I'm sure will run hot for weeks to come on this topic. Chris " It sounds like they aren't the baby-killers a lot of people are making them out to be.