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."

Comments

Wow

[deep9x]

Getting sued by GW must be frightening. You can never be sure when they're going to declare Exterminatus on your offices.

Way to kill your business

[sourcerror]

I can't imagine anything worse for their PR. No amount of advertisement can fix that.

Re:Way to kill your business

[hibiki_r]

They took down a bunch of stuff from BoardGameGeek too: They are doing their best to commit PR Suicide.

Re:Way to kill your business

[Jer]

Games Workshop is a strange beast. They've been like this for a long time. They treat their fans fairly poorly all around in general, and the fans generally put up with it.

From what I understand, it's mostly a social network thing. There's a critical mass of gamers in a local area and while they might all at any point in time be severely pissed off at GW over something, it's not enough for them to dump their expensive investment in GW games and start doing something else. They'll complain about it, but it doesn't impact them directly enough to do more than that. Warhammer - and moreso Warhammer 40k - has been around long enough and people have enough of a financial and emotional investment in the game that GW seems to think that they don't need to worry about what the fans think of their business actions. Which at least for the moment seems to be true. Longer term GW might piss off fans enough that this bites them in the ass, but there seems to be something fairly compelling about the Warhammer 40k property (that I don't see myself, I guess) that keeps even the most angry 40k gamer coming back for more.

Im going to open a fan site

[masmullin]

Im going to open a fan site for corporations that sue their fans.

Questionable claims

[Adrian Lopez]

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.

Re:Trademark is a tricky thing

[MickyTheIdiot]

there is also no reason to defend your copyright against someone who is encouraging others to buy and use your copyrighted product.

There are a lot of stupid copyright suits, but these type are the ones that absolutely astonish me the most. They aren't suing someone who makes them lose money or even a use that does nothing for the bottom line, they are suing people that are helping them make money by giving out free positive promotion and rallying their customer base. They ought to be sending them a thank you a "Warhammer approved!" website badge. When companies that I patronize do this it makes me reconsider being their customer in the future... especially when it's a "want" product like a game rather than a need.

Re:How stupid must one be?

[SpeedyDX]

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.

"legitimate fansite"

[Anonymous Coward]

Owned and operated by a commercial company (Curse).

Misleading news items? In my Slashdot?

Re:Cost them one paying customer

[MicktheMech]

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.

Typical GW

[_KiTA_]

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.

Re:Typical GW

[makomk]

Yeah, there was an interesting post on this in the last thread on the topic. Of note is that their anti-reseller antics only apply in the US and not in the UK - not because Games Workshop is any more ethical in the UK, but because the Competition Commission here came down on them like a ton of bricks and forced them to cease their anti-competitive practices forthwith. Unfortunately, the US is kinda lacking in the consumer protection department and there's a lot of political opposition to correcting this.

Re:Trademark is a tricky thing

[logjon]

27. The domain name warhammeralliance.com and the mark WARHAMMER ALLIANCE itself literally states and implies that defendants and their business are in an "alliance" with Plaintiff and its products and services offered under the WARHAMMER Marks. Stupid indeed. It would be funny if it weren't so illustrative of bogus IP action that takes place every day. This is just the tip of the iceberg. Wait for ACTA.

Re:Trademark is a tricky thing

[_Sprocket_]

there is also no reason to defend your copyright against someone who is encouraging others to buy and use your copyrighted product.

You just jumped from trademark to copyright; two sometimes related but entirely different things.

It's worth noting

[Runefox]

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?

Re:Damm lawyers

[Jer]

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.)