Slashdot Mirror
Games Workshop Sues Warhammer Online Fansite
chalkyj writes "WarhammerAlliance.com (run for the last five years as one of the leading fansites for the MMORPG Warhammer Online) is being sued by Games Workshop for the use of the 'Warhammer' name, 'cybersquatting' and 'unfair competition.' This lawsuit is yet another in Games Workshop's disturbing pattern of suing their fans and hobbyists, this time going after a legitimate fansite for their MMORPG franchise. The full complaint (PDF) has been posted online."
If you don't defend it, you potentially lose it. If you do defend it, you look like a jerk. What they need to do is come up with a $0 license for the site to use the name for specific purposes.
Getting sued by GW must be frightening. You can never be sure when they're going to declare Exterminatus on your offices.
... the ones you love
another in Games Workshop's disturbing pattern of suing their fans and hobbyists,
I can't imagine anything worse for their PR. No amount of advertisement can fix that.
Im going to open a fan site for corporations that sue their fans.
Two points:
1. It's not cybersquatting when the domain name is used for legitimate purposes.
2. I don't know about trademark law, but a non-legal, average person interpretation of the term "unfair competition" suggests that you'd have to be competing against the trademark holder rather than expressing support for their product.
"In prison you just have to shut your eyes and take it. Here you have to shut your eyes and give it."
CCP is helping fans with:
creators of warhammer seem to take the exactly opposite way...
let's see how long it'll last
Dear fans,
Please be advised that usage of the Warhammer(TM)®© name on third party websites is not legally authorized. However, we really do value our beloved fans. To show our sincerity, we have come up with a few example names that you may wish to use* to set up your fan site for your favourite online game, Warhammer(TM)®© Online. Instead of Warhammer(TM)®© Alliance, please consider another name similar to the following:
- Battlesmasher Alliance
- Fightmace Alliance
- Pewpewbangbang Friends
Now it's your turn! Try making up some names to refer to the Warhammer(TM)®© franchise without actually using the word Warhammer(TM)®©. It's more fun than you think! More fun than Warhammer(TM)®© Online anyway.
Thanks for your support of the Warhammer(TM)®© franchise.
Sincerely,
Games Workshop.
* No matter how much you wish to use them, Battlesmasher Alliance, Fightmace Alliance, and Pewpewbangbang Friends are registered trademark copyright properties of Games Workshop and may not be used for any reason whatsoever in any third party materials.
Owned and operated by a commercial company (Curse).
Misleading news items? In my Slashdot?
The domain warhammeralliance.com was registered in 2005. But the lawsuit claims it happened in 2009. What's worse, GW even provided promotional materials (such as interviews) over the past five years.
As someone who's played GW games in the past I can tell you that this is just the tip of the iceberg. Over the past year they've been sending C&Ds to lots of the tabletop fan sites. Lots of gamers have been moving towards Privateer Press who's attitude towards their customers compares like night and day to GW.
Your subject shares nothing with your post. Lawyers didn't decide to a sue a Warhammer fan site.
Interested in open source engine management for your Subaru?
This is pretty typical GW stupidities.
The one I like is how you can't sell Games Workshop games online -- they use the same theory to block that, too. See, Games Workshop sells their own miniatures on their own online store. GW prices are, to be charitable, completely fucking nuts. We're talking $35+ bucks for a single miniature, most armies using hundreds of miniatures. What people were doing were buying bulk orders from GW and GW's resellers, then reselling them online for 40-50% discounts.
Well, can't have that, can we? So GW now prohibits anyone from selling their product for more than 20% off, and prohibits the use of online stores to sell their product. How is that legal? Rule of first sale and the like?
Hell if I know.
I myself have rumbled with the big dumb collective -- their website had a simplistic naming scheme, so I guessed the URL of the Necromunda website (Necromunda is one of GW's "flavor of the year" games, wherein they release a rulebook with slightly tweaked rules, a new miniature set or 3, then promptly stop supporting after the early adopters give up some cash -- see also: Mordheim, Inquisitor, Bloodbowl, Battlefleet Gothic, Epic...) and posted screenshots of the incomplete page. I got a nastygram in my email pretty quickly. They were cordial enough about it, but they still had a "do this now or else" vibe going on.
The local gaming store told me why he didn't like carrying GW products, either -- I was buying a Tyranid Hive Tyrant, and he flat out told me that GW would require he buy 2-4 Hive Tyrants to replace that single one. This is despite my purchase of said Hive Tyrant being the only HT purchase that year. GW requires minimum orders, GW requires minimum shelving space, GW requires X number of GW dedicated gaming tables, the works, in order to work with them instead of a re-reseller. And god forbid if you want to host official GW tournaments -- in order to be an official GW store you basically have to dedicate their entire store to them, and get used to buying the "new release of the week" and swapping it out, even if the existing stuff hasn't sold yet.
Did I mention that GW also runs their own dedicated retail store network -- the "Rogue Traders", which means that even if you ARE dancing to the GW tune, you're still a dirty little competitor, and thus they hate you and want to see you suffer?
There's no wonder Warhammer Online is an utter failure, why their wargames aren't selling anywhere near the levels they used to, the works. GW is, to be frank, toxic as hell to work with, and it is finally catching up to them.
Yep. They make life incredibly difficult on game store owners also. GW is basically the Apple of the tabletop gaming world.
If brevity is the soul of wit, then how does one explain Twitter?
Rather than hopping on the 'Screw GW!' bandwagon, I actually decided to rtfa and look into the situation.
The site was originally a fan-site, and it was welcomed by GW. Then it was bought out by a corporation called Curse. Curse is running it with intent to make profit. It's common sense that a for-profit site with 'Warhammer' in the name is not exactly fair business.
It's not a fan-site anymore. It's a corporate asset
If you look into the forums, the second post actually explains that Games Workshop was promoting the site back in 2006 and that they had come to an agreement between the site, Games Workshop and Mythic Entertainment by way of a disclaimer. Apparently, they now allege that they had just discovered the site.
Either there's incredibly bad miscommunication going on inside Games Workshop, or... Well, I can't really think of how anything else really sounds remotely sane about this. I'm not a fan of Warhammer Online or anything, but seriously?
Screw the rules, I have green hair!
Aye, a few fans showing up with chainsaws and cries of "Blood For The Blood God!" would probabl be scary ;)
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
I don't know about that....
Money can buy you a revolving door of hot supermodel class trophy wives and mistresses.
Money can buy you all the cars, boats, planes you want to go anywhere you want.
Money can buy you all the pretty things to look at and fun toys to play with.
Money can give you power and render revenge against your enemies.
Money can let you mess with people's lives and livelihood for your own perverse amusement.
Money can buy you a sense of charity and phony philanthropy.
Money can make a type of people be nice to you, suck up to you, be blithering idiots and servants around you.
Money can buy people's convincingly feigned love and adoration.
People who say money can't buy happiness are either jealous and spiteful or the type that can't be satisfied with what they have and simply want what they can't have, creating a paradox of emotions.
Love the IP, hate the company... I used to work for them in the Australian arm. Back then, they had had slave wages for the drones who loved the games and filled the lower rungs, but for some reason, the upper echelons had non-gamers who seemed to be doing alright for themselves.
Somehow, I doubt that Games Workshop's shitty attitude towards their customers just comes from their legal department. The guys at the top at least have to sign off on it - if they aren't the ones who are pushing the policy in the first place.
Lawyers are rarely the ultimate cause of problems from corporations. They're usually enablers, not decision makers. They get more credit than they deserve for bad decisions because part of their job is to be the designated asshole for a company, but the decisions come from the top at any company that isn't completely dysfunctional. (And in companies that are completely dysfunctional the decisions come from HR anyway, not from legal.)
It was the legal department that waylaid a bunch of sites last thanksgiving (2 days left to comply with most folks on vacation when the letter arrived- somehow taking 12 days to cross the sea from UK.
They are jerks-- even sued the fan site that helped them redevelop the bloodbowl rules.
I will not be buying their products again.
There are too many other forms of entertainment-- more than you can consume in a lifetime-- to bother supporting jerks.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Anyone who's old enough to remember playing tabletop roleplaying games in the 80's and early 90's is likely already aware of Games Workshop's track record. They set boardgaming back by twenty years.
After establishing themselves as the dominant games publisher in the U.K. and having formed a network of like-minds in the 'White Dwarf' magazine and Citadel Miniatures staff, GW merged with Citadel c1989 and White Dwarf became the house publication. Actually, I'll re-word that: It became a monthly advertisement for all things GW.
White Dwarf was almost the only source of games news in those pre-internet days and it had the kind of persuasion and disinformation powers Rupert Murdoch could only envy. The letters page (what they had in place of forum posts in those days, kids) was first neutered (only GW fanboys got printed) then dropped altogether. Presumably because GW wanted to remove all traces of thinking from their fans. Only Games Workshop published games were reviewed - and always only every favourably - and only Games Workshop events were publicised. By 1992 it wasn't even covering anything outside of GW's current catalogue.
Citadel Miniatures had also been co-opted. Their range of miniatures became so much a part of the GW product line that older miniatures were often renamed to suit GW's revised history.
(E.g, a range of 1986 Elric of Melnibone characters became generic GW Elves and an early line of Lord Of The Rings characters were all dispersed to generic 'warrior' or 'wizard'. Even the White Dwarf himself was later redesignated 'Imperial Dwarf'.)
As well as this, the style of the miniatures became ever more 'cartoon' and a lot of the earlier sexuality and violence was purged. Citadel used to have miniatures of slave-girls being roasted over open fires, nude Goblins and Ogres carrying sacks of bloody body parts. Now, every miniature is relentlessly (Christian) family-friendly.
However Games Workshop's corporate policies are hardly 'friendly' in any sense of the word. Endlessly re-releasing the same core games as 'new' releases with (barely) altered rules, unreasonably overpricing miniatures (currently, a 5-man Space Marine squad costs £20. Twenty Pounds Sterling! for five plastic toy soldiers you're meant to paint yourself.), delaying deliveries and payments to competitors, endless recycling of illustrations and ideas, it goes on.
A lot of gamers will point and say that GW has some great games and awesome miniatures but in fact, nothing GW does is original, their best work was pre-1993 and they don't make a single item that isn't designed specifically to shift large amounts of overpriced, crap, miniatures paint. Even the pulp fiction they churn out. There are good, cheaper miniatures made by their competitors. There are also far superior boardgames available (see http://www.boardgamegeek.com//).
It's pretty obvious at this stage that Games Workshop have no respect for their customers or fans. Most of their fans are teenagers and although teenagers with a Games Workshop habit need pretty well off parents to pay for their fix, GW clearly expects them to 'grow out of it' at some stage and piss off. Just as long as there's another generation of saps in line, GW doesn't care.
And that, ladies and gentlegeeks, is why Games Workshop are bastards and why should anyone be surprised at anything they do?
I can't say I know much about how they fare internationally, but I do believe Australia has a pretty strong wargaming community, so I'm a bit surprised you're having trouble. Did you look at Irresistible Force?