This is important. PLEASE.

[Jan Mattys]

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/266139.page

[warty goblin]

Sorry, but my thinking is that designing a product based entirely around somebody else's game is pretty much asking for a Cease and Desist. The timing is a bit weird yes, but this stuff happens.

[Cheesegear]

The title of the thread doesn't really say anything. Nor does the OP aside from a link.

Next; Boycotting GW for Christmas isn't actually the best idea in the world. Since, the vast majority of people who buy GW products actually buy it for themselves rather than as gifts for other people. GW is one of the very few retail companies where Christmas-time doesn't actually mean a huge boost in sales. In fact, GW's profit margins are a fairly stable plateu all year round.

Unfortunately, boycotting GW for two months hurts you. Not them. Like boycotting petrol. At the end of the day, you still have an empty petrol tank. And you still need to buy petrol at some point. Regardless of what the petrol company does.

As a whole, the Blood Bowl community isn't that great. And the fumbbl.com community is a minority of a minority. Why should I boycott GW as a whole for axing something that I never even cared about it the first place? Same with Vassal40K. I never used it, so I wasn't entirely fussed when they shut it down.

Shutting down fumbbl.com hurts very few people in the GW demographic. I understand people aren't happy about it, and I know people aren't happy about the forced 'downgrade' of Vassal.

But, even the people on dakkadakka don't seem to be enthused about the idea of a boycott.

For it to be succesful, people would have to stop purchasing. Not merely defer purchases. Otherwise all the profits from December that're 'gone' will simply just reappear in January. Like I said; Petrol Company. You need it, regardless of what you do.

Or, you can stop purchasing GW products for good. And catch the proverbial bus full of dirty, smelly and loud people for the rest of your life. Yeah...That's not going to happen.

Hell, Blood Bowl has a new Video Game out. And by all accounts it's very good. I'm yet to buy or play it myself, since, like I said, I don't care about Blood Bowl all that much.

[Klose_the_Sith]

<Snip>

Did you just say that people need 40K and that people who don't buy 40K are smelly and dirty? :smallconfused:

[Cheesegear]

Did you just say that people need [Games Workshop Products]

Well, people who buy GW products do.


and that people who don't buy 40K are smelly and dirty? :smallconfused:

Well, there's somebody who didn't understand what I was talking about.

I said if you don't buy GW then you get to proverbial ride the proverbial bus. Meaning if you don't buy GW (and you want to), you'll have to go somewhere else that probably isn't as good as 'driving your own car'.

[PinkysBrain]

If you want to hurt them go through the rules changing all the wordings and remove all GW specific IP. Change the client as well, call it Gore Sphere or something and just keep playing.

http://www.copyright.gov/fls/fl108.html

[Cheesegear]

If you want to hurt them go through the rules changing all the wordings and remove all GW specific IP. Change the client as well, call it Gore Sphere or something and just keep playing.

http://www.copyright.gov/fls/fl108.html

Seconding this.

[thorgrim29]

Huh, Gav Thorpe isn't with GW anymore, but who will design the 8e dwarves?

And on the boycott, the last model I bought was the white dwarf on a shield born by gothrek and bugman, so it's been a while.

[chiasaur11]

Seconding this.

Worked for Chaos League, dinnit?

[Johnny Blade]

Sorry, but my thinking is that designing a product based entirely around somebody else's game is pretty much asking for a Cease and Desist. The timing is a bit weird yes, but this stuff happens.
The timing is indeed weird, I expected this to happen when the game was released in Europe.

And that's about as far as I'm willing to get into this issue.


As for boycotting them? I do that anyway. The only GW game I play is Blood Bowl, and there are companies like Impact Miniatures, Heresy, Goblin Forge and Rolljordan that simply release better miniatures for that game, and usually cheaper.
Don't know if such options exist for the Warhammer games, of course.

(Now, not that GW's sculpts are bad, but they just charge too much for often poorly produced miniatures.)

[EleventhHour]

Hmm...

Well, I've given it my due five seconds of thought.
Buying IG army ; Still right on track.

[Oslecamo]

I said if you don't buy GW then you get to proverbial ride the proverbial bus. Meaning if you don't buy GW (and you want to), you'll have to go somewhere else that probably isn't as good as 'driving your own car'.

Just like people can become clean out of alchool, smoke and/or drugs, people can become clean of 40K, and fill their lives with something that doesn't involve painting litle EXPENSIVE AS HELL toy soldiers.

For everything else, there's the internet!

[Inhuman Bot]

Just like people can become clean out of alchool, smoke and/or drugs, people can become clean of 40K, and fill their lives with something that doesn't involve painting litle EXPENSIVE AS HELL toy soldiers.

For everything else, there's the internet!

Probably taking up WAR, WOW, EQ, GW and Halo 3 on live, at the same time. :smalltongue:

[SurlySeraph]

As for boycotting them? I do that anyway. The only GW game I play is Blood Bowl, and there are companies like Impact Miniatures, Heresy, Goblin Forge and Rolljordan that simply release better miniatures for that game, and usually cheaper.
Don't know if such options exist for the Warhammer games, of course.

(Now, not that GW's sculpts are bad, but they just charge too much for often poorly produced miniatures.)

There's Forgeworld. They make beautiful minis, for prices that are even more insane than GW's prices.

[NeoVid]

No more Fumbbl? Man, that's depressing.

And here I thought that there being an official BB video game had no down side.

[Lord Seth]

Could someone explain to me what's even going on?

[Celesyne]

He wants to boycott a product for 2 months on the grounds that they cost too much, don't write good errata for the figures, and that the company thinks they deserve that much.

Basically he wants to boycott Games Workshop for being like every other company on the face of the earth and expects them to change.

[chiasaur11]

Basically he wants to boycott Games Workshop for being like every other company on the face of the earth and expects them to change.

Well, except Valve. Those guys are amazing.

[Myatar_Panwar]

Could someone explain to me what's even going on?

Games Workshop has been a tad active lately, and ordered a couple Warhammer specific websites to shut down immediately. Vassel is one I know of, which allowed players a unified system to play the game online. It did not give the players access to any rules, just templates and a very generic toolset to work with in order to play the game.

Fumbbl (as far as I can tell) is similar to Vassel, only players can play Bloodbowl (another Warhammer related thing) online.

Of course GW wants to protect their ****, though I don't know. I don't really see how Vassel (a free to use service which requires the ruleset to even play, I might add) or Fumbbl is really hurting their sales figures. Though if they are... maybe they should appease the player base?

Dudes would like to play online, though GW will probably never release any sort of online component. Their tabletop version is such a money magnet, they might be a little crazy to put a competent product online.

But come on. This boycott is kinda silly.

[Celesyne]

I'm not a Warhammer player, though I have looked at it for a hobby. However, it seems to be that this boycott is absolutely pointless and has no hope of accomplishing anything. If you really wanted a chance of getting them to maybe do something, you would be better of making and signing a petition for online content and then submitting it to Games Workshop.

At least a petition will let them know what it is you want, and have some hope of them, maybe heeding it. A boycott has a 99% chance of accomplishing very little, other than having you postpone a few purchases for a couple months.

[Yuki Akuma]

Games Workshop has been a tad active lately, and ordered a couple Warhammer specific websites to shut down immediately. Vassel is one I know of, which allowed players a unified system to play the game online. It did not give the players access to any rules, just templates and a very generic toolset to work with in order to play the game.

Fumbbl (as far as I can tell) is similar to Vassel, only players can play Bloodbowl (another Warhammer related thing) online.

Of course GW wants to protect their ****, though I don't know. I don't really see how Vassel (a free to use service which requires the ruleset to even play, I might add) or Fumbbl is really hurting their sales figures. Though if they are... maybe they should appease the player base?

Dudes would like to play online, though GW will probably never release any sort of online component. Their tabletop version is such a money magnet, they might be a little crazy to put a competent product online.

But come on. This boycott is kinda silly.

It hurts their sales figures because neither require you to buy miniatures. Games Workshop does not make most of their money on selling rulebooks. Not by a long shot.

[charl]

If you want to hurt them go through the rules changing all the wordings and remove all GW specific IP. Change the client as well, call it Gore Sphere or something and just keep playing.

http://www.copyright.gov/fls/fl108.html

I like this idea. Start playing "Sanguine Cup" instead, with "dorfs" and "gremlins" and whatnot.

[Cheesegear]

It hurts their sales figures because neither require you to buy miniatures. Games Workshop does not make most of their money on selling rulebooks. Not by a long shot.

That's the trick isn't it.
All's you have to do is change the names of everything and there's not a whole lot GW can do. Their copyright only extends to names. GW can't actually copyright rules.

You don't need miniatures to play the game. You need a rulebook and something to represent everything. Which a lot of platforms do quite nicely. But, you have to change names. Once the units in the game no longer have copyrighted names, you can do what you want.

See; Chaos League. The game is near-identical to Blood Bowl. But isn't. Because the names aren't the same.

GW has since bought out the company that made Chaos League. And they went on to create the Blood Bowl PC/Console game. Win-Win. Rip GW off, but not enough to breach copyright, and then they hire you. :smallwink:

[SparkMandriller]

Hey, this isn't important at all.


You lied to me. :(

[Jahkaivah]

One thing that's always bugged me about copyright laws, couldn't you get away with saying this?

"Oh no, this isn't copyright infringement, it's parody!"

".... it's not very funny."

" You just don't have taste in our high class of humour!"

[Yuki Akuma]

It would have to actually be parodic. Which isn't the same as copying the names and then making is slightly sillier.

(Anyway, then you might piss Blizzard off, because they copied Games Workshop and made it sillier first.)

[Cheesegear]

Originally posted by Games Workshop
TRADEMARK INFORMATION
Adeptus Astartes, Battlefleet Gothic, Black Flame, Black Library, the Black Library logo, BL Publishing, Blood Angels, Bloodquest, Blood Bowl, the Blood Bowl logo, The Blood Bowl Spike Device, Cadian, Catachan, the Chaos device, Cityfight, the Chaos logo, Citadel, Citadel Device, City of the Damned, Codex, Daemonhunters, Dark Angels, Dark Eldar, Dark Future, the Double-Headed/Imperial Eagle device, 'Eavy Metal, Eldar, Eldar symbol devices, Epic, Eye of Terror, Fanatic, the Fanatic logo, the Fanatic II logo, Fire Warrior, Forge World, Games Workshop, Games Workshop logo, Genestealer, Golden Demon, Gorkamorka, Great Unclean One, the Hammer of Sigmar logo, Horned Rat logo, Inferno, Inquisitor, the Inquisitor logo, the Inquisitor device, Inquisitor:Conspiracies, Keeper of Secrets, Khemri, Khorne, Kroot, Lord of Change, Marauder, Mordheim, the Mordheim logo, Necromunda, Necromunda stencil logo, Necromunda Plate logo, Necron, Nurgle, Ork, Ork skull devices, Sisters of Battle, Skaven, the Skaven symbol devices, Slaanesh, Space Hulk, Space Marine, Space Marine chapters, Space Marine chapter logos, Talisman, Tau, the Tau caste designations, Tomb Kings, Trio of Warriors, Twin Tailed Comet Logo, Tyranid, Tyrannid, Tzeentch, Ultramarines, Warhammer, Warhammer Historical, Warhammer Online, Warhammer 40k Device, Warhammer World logo, Warmaster, White Dwarf, the White Dwarf logo, and all associated marks, names, races, race insignia, characters, vehicles, locations illustrations and images from the Blood Bowl game, the Warhammer world, the Talisaman world, and the Warhammer 40,000 universe are either ®, TM and/or © Copyright Games Workshop Ltd 2000-2009, variably registered in the UK and other countries around the world. All Rights Reserved

Dwarfs, High Elves, Wood Elves, Undead, Ogres, Orc, etc are all public domain. Chaos League breached nothing, really. Except for looking really similar.
Interestingly enough, 'Ork' - with a 'k' - is Trademarked.

Most of GW's stuff is Trademarked in 40K. You can freely call your giant homebrewed human nation 'The Empire' and have 'Colleges of Magic' and everything.

Also, reading up on GW Legal...40K Tattoos are illegal. As you have to pay (exchange money to) a third party not affiliated with GW to distribute artwork based on GW's IP. Fun times.

[Oslecamo]

(Anyway, then you might piss Blizzard off, because they copied Games Workshop and made it sillier first.)

Because we all know GW created elves and orcs and space bugs and psionic aliens, yessir! LOTR and Starship troopers suing processes should end anyday soon! Also the lesman series is going down after that for having powered armored dudes immune to small weapons fire with armor-cuting melee weapons and heavy guns assaulting space ships!

Also anyone who doesn't see that all of GW work is an huge parody of a lot of things is just in self denial. At least Blizzard doesn't put dudes from WWII alongside tribal spearman alongside starship troopers alongside furry starship troopers.

[Eldan]

Actually, how can they trademark "Eldar"? Didn't Tolkien invent that word? (Also, it's a first name).

[dsmiles]

Hey, this isn't important at all.


You lied to me. :(

I'm with ya' 100%!

[EleventhHour]

Actually, how can they trademark "Eldar"? Didn't Tolkien invent that word? (Also, it's a first name).

I think it'd be Eldar in the context of pansy Space Elves with wraithbone.

[Zorg]

Eldar means "people of the stars" in Tolkein's elvish, being elves of the three tribes of the Noldor, Vanya and Teleri who set out from Cuivienen. Obviously GW ganked it for their space elves, but Tolkein probably didn't trademark it first (what with him dying before it was necessary to copyright everything you invent).

Also most of the activity has been asking sites to remove IP infinging material. Talkbloodbowl.com was asked to change its domain name (for fairly obvious reasons) and remove a donation box (deriving profits from GW's IP). The owner of the site decided to throw a tantrum and shut the whole thing down instead, though members of the site rescued the data and moved it themselves.


Immediately cease and desist from any activity which infringes GW's intellectual property.
either remove remove your website or the reference to 'Blood Bowl' in your website name.
Remove the donations button from the page.
Confirm by return that you will not infringe GW's intellectual properly rights at any time in the future.

Now, I could simply remove Bloodbowl from the domain by renaming it to TalkBB.com, but that means buying a new domain and time spent sorting everything out. Bearing in mind I hardly visit TalkBloodBowl.com anyway, I can't really be bothered with all that so have decided to let it die. Therefore from Sunday 8 November 2009 www.talkbloodbowl.com will cease to exist.

That's from the former webmaster.

Similarly Librarium Online was asked to change its site logo to a less "Imperial Aquilla"esque one recently.

Fumbbl would have been asked to remove all trademark infinging stuff. Given it is 99% trademark infringing it wouldn't leave a whole lot left.


Also as GW is a British company they have vastly different trademark and fair use and parody laws than the UK. In many instances they don't have any protecting parody, relying on the good will of the subject to avoid trouble.
Also 'fair use' is not in any way personal use or just on a fan site. It's for things like quoting or illustrating for context. I can claim fair use quoting a rule (or passage of a story) to show it is well or poorly written in an argument/review. I can't take those rules (or a story), start using them (or publishing the whole thing) and say "but I'm not making money!"

[Myatar_Panwar]

It hurts their sales figures because neither require you to buy miniatures. Games Workshop does not make most of their money on selling rulebooks. Not by a long shot.

Well, I can't speak for the blood bowl website, but Vassel was hardly an alternative to the tabletop version. The program is rather obtuse, and without any actual code to prevent cheating, well, yeah... It was more of a way to test an army configuration and try out new units.

In fact one could argue that it might have actual helped their sales. The people playing Vassel are pretty obviously already invested into Warhammer. Maybe a very small minority isn't, and is just playing off of torrented codex's, though I'd have to imagine that this would be a pretty small fraction, of an already small fraction.

After playing around 3 test games I am now convinced that I need to buy a Demon Prince, Greater Demon, and a couple Defilers (because of how well they performed in Vassel, I woulden't have known otherwise). I've already got the defilers. Thats another $100 in GW's bank.

[Jamin]

And here I thought this would be something cool. Cruse you uninformative titles CRUSE YOOOOOOU

[dsmiles]

Yeah, I really don't think putting the new coversheet on the TPS Reports will really hurt GW that much.

You can boycott all you want, but there are plenty of people who won't (like me) because they don't play BB versions of tabletop strategy games (so why should we care?).

[Gamerlord]

*Reads OPs link*


What a complete waste of time, boycott shmoycott.

GW minis are REALLY expensive though, don't see myself expanding my collection any time soon, I just wish they would release a TBS for the PC that used the warhammer fantasy or 40k rules.