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Within the past week, Battlefront has announced the following regarding Easy Army:

"Forces Of War!
For many years one of our play testers and proof readers Gregg Siter has in his spare time been running Easy Army. He created it out of a personal desire to have a tool to manage his armies but it has grown so that many other people can now do the same. For those of you who don’t know this is a force building software package that helps you create and use army lists. When we gave Gregg the okay right at the start to do this we always assumed this would evolve into something more and now that time has come.

Easy Army is going to evolve into Forces of War. This will be an official FOW army builder that at its core uses Easy Army but now will have more features and graphics than ever before. We still have a little more work to do until we can show you the final version but our goal is to have it up and running before our next book, Barbarossa, is out in October. Stay tuned for more news as we will be showing you what it looks like and how it will work in the coming weeks.

~John Paul"

This does raise questions as to what will happen to previous book purchases on easy army. Will it turn out to be a software similar to army builder?

Has anyone else heard anything regarding this? Thoughts?

I love easy army and it's .... Easiness? I hope it doesn't crazy to the point that it's expensive like army builder.

Uneasy about it. I look forward to it, but it sounds easy to screw up haha.

As long as my Japs are still there when its updated then im fine with it. If it looks prettier well thats fine too. Just as long as its not difficult to use.

New information from Battlefront:

John-Paul wrote:To answer a few of your questions.
1. Yes we plan on leaving access for those who have paid for the older books for a period of time on the old site once the new one goes live. This will have to be shut down eventually but it wont come down when the new site goes live.

2. You are absolutely correct that this was on the cards as the entire point of us giving Gregg permission to do what he has been doing with Easy Army was that we knew what the end goal was. Gregg has been working hard in his spare time to keep things alive and letting him charge a small fee was our way of keeping it going whilst we got our ducks sin a row for a long term plan. Now those of you who have used it in the past know the value of what he has done but to bring it to the wider audience we have to bring things in house both for us and Gregg as it is the only way it would grow into something more.

3. Not surprisingly Forces of War and our digital book plan are linked and you will see the first part go live in the next few weeks. The impact or not on physical books is not the driving force behind these new services but they are a necessary part of the war gaming offer now expected by gamers and moving into digital products as part of the mix is something we need to do to stay current and evolve.

4. What you cannot see yet is that both of these projects will offer you things that we cant do in paper, the choice to pick exactly what you want. You will be able to get access to single companies so that you don't have to buy the complete book to get the one that you need. Books have never been about paper sales as in most cases the studio cost that goes into them is never paid back for the time they took but books drive model sales and that is what the hobby is all about. Building and playing with armies and the more we can do to make it easier to do that the better for all.

More info will go live on the site as soon as we get our digital app approved to go live later this week so stay tuned as you will be able to see what we have done there and get some sense of what is to come for Forces of War.

So eventually, the money we paid earlier will just disappear?

I assumed that money was also going towards BF license fees in the first place.

I don't expect full access for free, but I do expect them to credit accounts with the money spent in the past, which has been going to battlefront, when using this new service.

I wonder if this is the reason there's no PDF for the revised Grey Wolf.

Looks like this will also be an App for phones/tablets. Hopefully they've learned from PP's mistakes in this area.

More info...

John-Paul wrote:Please remember that you paid a few dollars for an entire book that costs US$30 for the real thing and only after a while as it was free for a long time. The small charge was to allow Gregg the chance to continue doing what he wanted with our permission. The commercial reality of making this work for a much bigger audience, servers, data and the coding time is not free and the fact we are now investing in this means it needs to have a proper business model. We let Gregg offer the lists free and then at a small charge without ever asking for anything in return to let EA exist and grow knowing we would want to do more down the road and now it is the time to turn it into something more.

As far as the future is concerned you will not be forced to buy anything as the option of being able to have exactly what you want means just that. You will be able to buy a single company digital list instead of a book and the FOW list in the same way. For a fraction of the price of a book you can have the digital and FOW access either together or alone. There will be complete books as well and full compilations for those that want that but our plan gives you the choice to take what you want and leave the rest.

I've read enough corporate speak to know that what I once paid into this will be gone eventually. You will not be forced to buy anything, but you will probably not have anything you don't buy again, at the new cost reflective of the "commercial reality".

I've read enough corporate speak to know that what I once paid into this will be gone eventually. You will not be forced to buy anything, but you will probably not have anything you don't buy again, at the new cost reflective of the "commercial reality".

I'm really hoping that Battle Front will offer credits to those who did purchase... though in reality they will overlook this and consider business before the gaming community. Their reply of "This new, greater Forces of War where you can buy individual lists makes up for that" is bull . It doesn't, because we would have to pay again. I understand that they finally acting on a service that grew, but it grew because of how it was formatted: Efficient and Cheap access to expensive rulebooks, and it begs the questions that another user had brought up:

So eventually, the money we paid earlier will just disappear? (...) I don't expect full access for free, but I do expect them to credit accounts with the money spent in the past, which has been going to battlefront, when using this new service.

On another note, it's time to switch to THIS, play Flames in 6mm, and end my post.

John-Paul wrote:I think some of you are missing the point.

We let Gregg use OUR IP for free to give you something FREE and then REALLY CHEAP because we thought it was the right thing to do.
If Gregg was not doing this in his spare time and you had to pay him a wage and then add in all the other costs the books should have cost $10 no $2.
What Gregg does is very time consuming and part of our taking it over is to pay him properly for the time he spends on it and then add the structure to offer it to a much wider audience. This takes time and money. Gregg did this for fun and not profit and it was because of this we let him offer it to the market but the $2 he was charging was to pay servers and hosting charges and then he still needed to have adverts to just keep the thing alive. That situation ends with people getting tired of the work or frustrated with the time they spend without return so we came up with a better version of that plan. You can of course disagree but our position is that it is the right time to do what we are doing.

I appreciate that when things are free or so cheap they might as well be that it surprises some people when a company tries to charge a fee for work they did and own but at the end of the day we have to move ahead and do what we think will work. For those of you that expected Gregg to simply continue operating without any return and keep the site running forever no matter what and all for $2 a book you are a little misguided. We want to give people flexibility and choice at a sensible price. Your choice is as always to buy or not buy and enjoy the hobby in whichever way you feel best suits your needs.

Fair enough.

I do think this is something that should have been stated when people purchased them earlier since they had this planned for a while.

I am not following his logic.

BF let Greg us the IP for free and then "low cost" because it was the right thing to do.

So that must mean that now, "free or low cost" isn't the right thing to do -or- you just didn't care enough about the IP at the time to bother.

You state that Greg was doing it for fun and not profit. I do'nt think there is a person out there that did not accept this and if Greg had said "no, I'm done. Sorry." that anyone would have begrudged him in moving on.

I am thinking the Greg is at this point and it is only after BF saw the community benefit that they decided it was worth pursuing as a company effort. Up until then, they may have been just as guilty of using Greg's free time and effort to promote something they wanted but didn't have the resources to pursue.

I aslo fail to understand what "wider" audience they are talking about. Is there some untapped WWII miniatures play group out there that would jump into FoW if only BF would swoop in and white knight an online army builder? When Easy Army changes "ownership" will it magically unlock some kickstarter stretch goal of players that have been siliently waiting in the wings?

Like many things hobby related, this feels like yet another corporate elbowing on a community driven effort. Obviously we are not aware of the behind the scenes mechanations, but somehow my gut is telling me Greg isn't going to have his picture on the wall in NZ nor is he going to be sleeping on a new mattress stuffed with cash.

I don't begrudge BF for doing this. However, just once I wish someone would do it without trying to sell us on the belief that they are doing us a favor.

That's not what I'm getting.

Shotgun wrote:
I am not following his logic.

BF let Greg us the IP for free and then "low cost" because it was the right thing to do.

What I'm getting is that Greg was interested in doing it, and BF was curious how well it would work.

So that must mean that now, "free or low cost" isn't the right thing to do -or- you just didn't care enough about the IP at the time to bother.

Given that BF owns the lists, they would have been fully within their rights to insist that Greg not charge anything. Or to ask Greg for a cut of the fees. They didn't, presumably because in part they had an interest in figuring out whether the whole thing was feasible. Greg is presumably the one who set the prices, and set them largely to cover the cost of things like the server.

You state that Greg was doing it for fun and not profit. I do'nt think there is a person out there that did not accept this and if Greg had said "no, I'm done. Sorry." that anyone would have begrudged him in moving on.

And yet, now that BF has said, "We're going to make it better. And that dollar that you paid three years ago will be credited in a different manner," people are complaining.

I am thinking the Greg is at this point and it is only after BF saw the community benefit that they decided it was worth pursuing as a company effort. Up until then, they may have been just as guilty of using Greg's free time and effort to promote something they wanted but didn't have the resources to pursue.

BF's comments seem to be explicitly stating that they didn't have the resources to do what Greg did. It's not that they weren't interested. But they couldn't do the proto-typing in-house.

I aslo fail to understand what "wider" audience they are talking about. Is there some untapped WWII miniatures play group out there that would jump into FoW if only BF would swoop in and white knight an online army builder? When Easy Army changes "ownership" will it magically unlock some kickstarter stretch goal of players that have been siliently waiting in the wings?

Like many things hobby related, this feels like yet another corporate elbowing on a community driven effort. Obviously we are not aware of the behind the scenes mechanations, but somehow my gut is telling me Greg isn't going to have his picture on the wall in NZ nor is he going to be sleeping on a new mattress stuffed with cash.

I don't begrudge BF for doing this. However, just once I wish someone would do it without trying to sell us on the belief that they are doing us a favor.

When we see what BF has planned, and can compare it with Easy Army, then we should have a better idea. A straight port of Easy Army will indicate that BF's just doing a straight "muscling in". But if they've got something that has genuine improvements, then that will suggest that the comments they made were being straight with the customers.

I don't expect to get things for free, or at reduced price for no reason. But money paid is money paid, and they've already said that the old stuff will eventually go away entirely.

The best solution is to just credit people's accounts on this new service with the cost of what they bought on Easyarmy when that happens. The total of what people bought won't add up to that much, probably $20 max since the books were $1-$2 each.

Don't try to pull some corporate speak on us. You're buying an existing service and converting it, we already put money into that old service, doesn't matter where it went to. Even if it went only to Greg, it still went towards the development of this service that you're trying to sell to us. You'd have to pay Greg anyway from the same money.

I'm fine with a higher, official cost on the books, but don't you dare try to say that our money spent on this didn't go towards funding the creation of this new service.

I guess I see it more that Greg had 'the license' so to speak to do easy army, and that was cool with BF as they weren't doing it at the time. Most of the money went to this license

Now they are doing it they are charging more (they are a business) I'm surprised it's taken them this long to take it over.

There's been no announcement of prices for Forces of War as of yet.

There is about a 0% chance that they will do this half as well as Easy Army did. They will find a way to slow it down by tying it to some "secure server" for our safety, then make us enter every model we own for our user enjoyment and then try to sell us every model our list makes that we don't own, for our benefit.

VonTed wrote:
There is about a 0% chance that they will do this half as well as Easy Army did. They will find a way to slow it down by tying it to some "secure server" for our safety, then make us enter every model we own for our user enjoyment and then try to sell us every model our list makes that we don't own, for our benefit.

- then tell them you own every model...

I'm by no means a defender of BF's marketing policies and I get that some users may be upset but I'm baffled how some feel that paying $2 three, four, even five+ years ago for access to a book that the site owner didn't even own or produce gives them that same access, in perpetuity, even after that service has sold. EasyArmy locked book access was never sold as ownership of that content. The pay page even said the fee went to the site owner as a donation. We were basically just renting that content.

It's like renting a movie from Redbox for $1.50 and then asking the movie studio to credit you that $1.50 back when you later purchase that movie.

 ancientsociety wrote:
I'm by no means a defender of BF's marketing policies and I get that some users may be upset but I'm baffled how some feel that paying $2 three, four, even five+ years ago for access to a book that the site owner didn't even own or produce gives them that same access, in perpetuity, even after that service has sold. EasyArmy locked book access was never sold as ownership of that content. The pay page even said the fee went to the site owner as a donation. We were basically just renting that content.

It's like renting a movie from Redbox for $1.50 and then asking the movie studio to credit you that $1.50 back when you later purchase that movie.

Here are some points that I feel need to be addressed then:

- Some people might have made purchases within the last month, sucks for them, right? Time is irrelevant; it's more like buying an app for your smart phone and being able to keep the old app when they update the new OS or cell phone in your pocket. It also seems to be an opportunity to appeal with consideration to their customer/fan base...

- I don't think that the service was ever "sold" to BF, I'm under the impression that Gregg was granted rights to make an online FOW army builder by BattleFront, though I don't think it is incorrect to assume that BattleFront's eventual intention was to market it from the start. Gregg is/was employee of BattleFront - point being I don't think it was really ever sold; suggesting it was always observed from the start.

As for the Red Box analogy, people pay money to rent a movie for a duration of time. Easy Army you get access to a book for what seems "in perpetuity." The problem I have with your analogy though is that with Easy Army, users accessed these books for a longer period of time compared to movie rentals. Red Box movies are returned. There wouldn't be a point to asking for credit if you purchase the movie - Red Box and where/who you buy your movies from are different; not inter-related like with our current situation. Easy Army and Battlefront are one are far more similar than you're trying to not make with your Red Box analogy.

I think the point of us "renting" the books is debatable too, what was said was that we we just donated and had access - just saying it seems to be an open question...

Lastly, a point made by a user earlier still stands strong:

Shotgun said: BF let Greg us the IP for free and then "low cost" because it was the right thing to do.

So that must mean that now, "free or low cost" isn't the right thing to do -or- you just didn't care enough about the IP at the time to bother.

 David Hume wrote:

- Some people might have made purchases within the last month, sucks for them, right? Time is irrelevant; it's more like buying an app for your smart phone and being able to keep the old app when they update the new OS or cell phone in your pocket. It also seems to be an opportunity to appeal with consideration to their customer/fan base.......Easy Army you get access to a book for what seems "in perpetuity." The problem I have with your analogy though is that with Easy Army, users accessed these books for a longer period of time compared to movie rentals

You paid a third-party site for access to a data set that is clearly marked as a donation from the "Please Donate" tab header to the 1/2" high bolded "Please Donate!" at the top of the page. Donations are given with no return consideration, even if the donee is offering a small good or service in return. You aren't making a purchase. You certainly aren't buying a copy of said rulebook for personal use at your leisure in perpetuity. Time is entirely relevant. You paid $2 for access to data from a book that can retail anywhere from $30-50 months, even possibly years ago. It's insulting to hear the detractors claim that somehow they're being ripped off when they've paid 5-7% of the total MSRP of a book they've had near full access to its lists for weeks, months, or years. Want ownership and full access at your leisure? Then buy the book. As the saying goes - "You get what you pay for.".

Regardless of what you believe, there will be a cost associated with running the site for anyone who takes it over. There's a difference between selling an item as a loss leader and essentially giving you product away at little to no cost. BF has been incredibly generous over the years to not only allow, but actively support, the work of a third-party that essentially undercut its own sales. How many of us have paid for EA access instead of spend the money on a book? Now multiply that just by the number of people ITT and extrapolate from that across the gaming community as a whole. They could easily have swooped in and shut it down whole hog. Instead they are taking it over and continuing the site. From that point of view, asking BF to credit everyone 5-7% of their already lost sales becomes an act of taking advantage of a company's generosity.

Would these negative attitudes be different if someone else had taken over EA and cut off access? What if the entire site shut down tomorrow and never came back? I kind of feel like nearly everyone in that case would just move on, say it was great while it lasted, and everyone felt that they had gotten their money's worth. When framed in such a way, the detractors' arguments come off more as complaints against BF and JP (and their lack of good customer relations), and less so about the EA switch itself. I've paid for a few EA lists myself and I'm no huge fan of recent moves by BF, but let's pick and choose some of our battles here.

I can agree in the main with ancientsociety philosophically. However, part of me also thinks that BF fumbled their handling of the situation by not having *something* lined up for current users as a marketing expense. I think transferring access wholesale is asking too much, however some sort of offering like a 5-pack of access to a company list so people could retain access to their favorite lists wouldn't have been a massive loss to the company and would help defuse some of the angst out there.

Some people won't be happy with anything less than a 1:1 transfer, which simply isn't realistic in a capitalist society. However, there's plenty of middle ground between "move everything" and "move nothing" which BF might be planning on and just being ham-fisted with their communication. That'd be far from unusual from my limited observations.

WOW,i must be the only one who does not use Easy Army.I really did not care for it.Their are alternatives out their also.'
I just prefer good old pen and paper.