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 Hairesy wrote:
The main issue for me is that Warhammer + takes all that once free fan-made content and puts it behind a paywall. And for what you get, it simply isn't worthwhile. What about Warhammer + could not have been done with White Dwarf online or Warhammer Community?

To me this is indicative that GW has acted not in the interests of the player, but in that of profit. This is in line with other decisions they have taken to maximize profit with little effort, such as power creeping every single edition (since I've been playing anyway, 6th). Formations in 7th is another good example of GW making bad decisions in pursuit of profit.

So... you think that because a business didn't give you their new animations and other video content, which doesn't just suddenly appear out of thin air at no cost to them, entirely for free then that's somehow some egregious thing that's insulting to the fanbase?

 Mentlegen324 wrote:

 Hairesy wrote:
The main issue for me is that Warhammer + takes all that once free fan-made content and puts it behind a paywall. And for what you get, it simply isn't worthwhile. What about Warhammer + could not have been done with White Dwarf online or Warhammer Community?

To me this is indicative that GW has acted not in the interests of the player, but in that of profit. This is in line with other decisions they have taken to maximize profit with little effort, such as power creeping every single edition (since I've been playing anyway, 6th). Formations in 7th is another good example of GW making bad decisions in pursuit of profit.

So... you think that because a business didn't give you their new animations and other video content, which doesn't just suddenly appear out of thin air at no cost to them, entirely for free then that's somehow some egregious thing that's insulting to the fanbase?

GW did not own the fan-made content, nor did they create it. Thus, they were providing nothing to me at any cost whatsoever. To then take that content and put it behind a paywall is something I find insulting, the fact that more people don't is alarming. Was I taking money away from GW by enjoying fan-made content for free? No, on the contrary it was encouraging me to buy models and paint the pile of shame. GW was doing just fine prior to Warhammer +, so the idea that GW had to protect their profit margin is an absolute fallacy. Such behavior does not inspire me to buy more models, it inspires me to not support greedy corporations. When GW did an about face after Kirby and tried to connect with their fans, I was willing to forgive and forget and hope for better. How many more times should I be willing to extend the olive branch when GW has taken advantage of that goodwill time and again?

Again, you too have made assumptions about what I think, despite the fact that I have been clear as day about my position.

GW is moving their IP into TV and film. Right now its fan works and stuff that GW has paid to be made. If their IP takes off in a good way then GW likely envisions that at some point in the future other studios will want to pay GW to use that IP in their own creations. Or at least meet GW on the table to work out a deal.

GW can't do that if their IP is being used to generate profit. Why should the studio pay when a fan can make it without licence and profit from the sale of it or at least from donations toward its creation?




GW actually didn't step down until they stepped into the market. Astartes and others earned money for a considerable length of time before GW stepped into the market.

It's no different to how any other IP is managed. You want to make your own Lord of the Rings? You've got to make an agreement with the Tolkien Estate; you want to do Harry Potter than its JK Rowling (or actually Warner as they hold the rights currently).




Again this is nothing different to what many many other firms big and small do - they defend their IP/copyright/trademarks. You can't blame GW for acting and operating like every other firm big and small is allowed and encouraged to behave.


And GW did not own the fan content, but the DO 100% own the IP that the fan content was based upon. And again the only one that I recall seeing GW going after were those that were not just making fan content, but sponsored fan content.

Yeah, WH+ to me looks like the No model no rules fiasco extended to other media in the sense that gw marketeers want total control over the content beside fan hype of said content.

This is frankly the final corner, for me, around which gw turns and we part ways. I am too invested to stop my hobby, but I no longer feel any duty to support their business model, amd this is to emphasize that there are other ways to do business. Just because one way seems normal, now, doesn’t make it right or even optimal, for society or for the company.

Imho, gw success depends on prior existing ideas and their saturation in the minds of people due to extant literature and movies, folk tales and religion, yada. GW had nothing to do with this priming, but their success depends on it nearly completely.

The best of GW games and universe has been, to date, simply that these were clearing houses of established sci fantasy tropes, depending completely on prior saturation of such ideas for which gw can claim zero credit, and for which the success of gw is nearly completely indebted.

If this is not obvious, consider how inane, yes utterly inane, the story about Cawl and girlyman and the rise of the restartes actually is… they tried to make something of their own post their og trope collators e.g. Priestley, and failed so terribly that the complete dependency of their marketing success on their parasiting on the prior familiarity of related ideas, again, grounded in folk tales and old sci fantasy lit and films, is glaring, obvious, so clear.

I feel zero compulsion to support gw. Does that mean that people should sell direct scans for profit? Not something I can condone, but the point here is that what gw actually does, in creating their models and for all their apparent success, is not so far off.

I think it's wrong for someone to scan a GW model and to sell the STL.

However, what I think GW should do is to enter into agreements with people/companies who are willing to sell those miniatures that GW has shown no interest in producing any more or has discontinued as STLs.

Think Good Old Games (gog.com), but with OOP miniatures from 20-30 years ago that could be scanned, remastered and sold with a percentage cut for GW, similar to a licensing agreement. I would love figures like the old metal dwarf slayers, which go for pretty absurd prices on eBay.

Osorios wrote:
I think it's wrong for someone to scan a GW model and to sell the STL.

However, what I think GW should do is to enter into agreements with people/companies who are willing to sell those miniatures that GW has shown no interest in producing any more or has discontinued as STLs.

Think Good Old Games (gog.com), but with OOP miniatures from 20-30 years ago that could be scanned, remastered and sold with a percentage cut for GW, similar to a licensing agreement. I would love figures like the old metal dwarf slayers, which go for pretty absurd prices on eBay.

This will never happen. GW promotes itself as a "luxury" miniatures maker. GW's (at least in their view) is second to none in the miniature wargaming market. So if GW were to offer STLs they would be priced accordingly to avoid hurting their plastic counterpads even if the STLs are from old IP, so let's say 35 to 40$ per infantry STL. About the same than a plastic box because you are going to print many after all. Do you think those prices can compete with the Patreons all over the web?

All that said, while GW's way to protect its IP might not make sense to us, probably it's the best way when the CEO has to report to the shareholders. Many shareholder's reports seem to be heavy in the: we will utterly crush those that dare use our IP without permision rather than look for ways to acomodate them.

M.

Haha, yeah GW is luxury. A luxury that most other grown ups will make fun of you for owning, and can be had for cheap on Ebay because a 10 year old stuck it in jam and left it on the porch.

GW has changed a lot from Nuns with Guns to Luxury Market.

Osorios wrote:
I think it's wrong for someone to scan a GW model and to sell the STL.

However, what I think GW should do is to enter into agreements with people/companies who are willing to sell those miniatures that GW has shown no interest in producing any more or has discontinued as STLs.

Think Good Old Games (gog.com), but with OOP miniatures from 20-30 years ago that could be scanned, remastered and sold with a percentage cut for GW, similar to a licensing agreement. I would love figures like the old metal dwarf slayers, which go for pretty absurd prices on eBay.

This is getting close to a business model which might be ethically defensible imho.

just because you can get a used Porsche that needs repairs for cheap, does not mean that Porsche stopped to be luxury

GW wants to be the luxury brand, with famous people having Warhammer as their hobby and everything that comes with it
They don't want it to be a mainstream thing were everyone plays the games

And yes, GW moves away from the miniature gameing market and focus in their IP.
Income from Licence gets more and more important and moving from games to movies is the next big step to get the IP into pop culture

I predict that we will get to a point were GW will see the games as side project and not as the driving point behind model sales, but simple the fact that everyone wants to have a Space Marine Army at home on display the same way as people want to have Gundams

When introduced a bit over 100 years ago wargaming was something for the well off gentlemen that wanted to try their hand at emulating the battles of their forebearers.

Maybe GW dreams of heaps of Eton educated gentlemen as their only clients.

M.

 kodos wrote:
GW wants to be the luxury brand, with famous people having Warhammer as their hobby and everything that comes with it
They don't want it to be a mainstream thing were everyone plays the games

I would struggle to believe that's true so long as GW maintains such a large network of brick and mortar stores. There's little point in having all those stores - which are a huge slab of their total costs - if they weren't trying to proselytise the mainstream.

Being "mainstream" also means they make more money for licensing on games, more people want to buy black library books and merch, and so on. They wouldn't be in the position where they are if it weren't for their mainstreamness.

I predict that we will get to a point were GW will see the games as side project...

I think we're already there, and have been for a while

 kodos wrote:
just because you can get a used Porsche that needs repairs for cheap, does not mean that Porsche stopped to be luxury

GW wants to be the luxury brand, with famous people having Warhammer as their hobby and everything that comes with it
They don't want it to be a mainstream thing were everyone plays the games

And yes, GW moves away from the miniature gameing market and focus in their IP.
Income from Licence gets more and more important and moving from games to movies is the next big step to get the IP into pop culture

I predict that we will get to a point were GW will see the games as side project and not as the driving point behind model sales, but simple the fact that everyone wants to have a Space Marine Army at home on display the same way as people want to have Gundams

My emphasis, in bold.
I think that this is inaccurate. Why the Hasbroification of the so-called "luxury" brand, the abysmal management of the IP from a narrative and product introduction standpoint, and so on, if this were the case? Everything about GW marketing screams 'rush to market' and to try to make a model for any old idea that had been lying around since GW had employed people who actually had ideas. Who, frankly, wants this? Unthinking, nonreflective consumers, children, meta-chasing plastic crack addicts... and people like myself who are thirty years invested in a loved hobby, too much so to let it go down the drain due to corporo-fascist mishandling without making some noise. Anyone with an education and some options, sure, might be interested in the hobby for lots of reasons, but to think that this is the target market for restartes, for instance... nah.

Porsche is OK, and maybe a good example for analogy. One reason to buy into a Porsche brand is status. Another is performance. A third is history, legacy, collectibility. GW fails miserably at the second, so lets put that aside. Status, OK sure... nice GW collections draw attention, garner respect among fellow enthusiasts. Where GW had value was the third reason, and this is getting pimped out to pump and dump to max out profits over near term business cycles seemingly without consideration of long term impact on value. Mercedes, Porsche, BMW, Rolls Royce, no established luxury brand would be so flippant about selling out to the lowest common denominator, as the value of the badge should last more than the current economic bubble. GW is not acting like this is the object... There is nothing luxury about GW aside from the price.

The more I think about this, the less I care if anyone wants to sell 'literal scans of GW models' for money, canned beans, or compressed air... treat others as you wish to be treated, as a general rule, invites anyone interested and invested in GW to return the favor that has been disloyalty and disregard for the welfare of their erstwhile most loyal supporters.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

 kodos wrote:
GW wants to be the luxury brand, with famous people having Warhammer as their hobby and everything that comes with it
They don't want it to be a mainstream thing were everyone plays the games

I would struggle to believe that's true so long as GW maintains such a large network of brick and mortar stores. There's little point in having all those stores - which are a huge slab of their total costs - if they weren't trying to proselytise the mainstream.

same as Jacques Lemans have their own network of stores, which is part of being the luxury, having some or all products texclusive to your own stores rather than being available everywhere

and your IP being mainstream, to have people buy merchandise while at the same time you "core product" is luxury is how most companies operate (look how many people have Ferrari merch and how many people actually drive the cars)

jeff white wrote:

 kodos wrote:
just because you can get a used Porsche that needs repairs for cheap, does not mean that Porsche stopped to be luxury

GW wants to be the luxury brand, with famous people having Warhammer as their hobby and everything that comes with it
They don't want it to be a mainstream thing were everyone plays the games

And yes, GW moves away from the miniature gameing market and focus in their IP.
Income from Licence gets more and more important and moving from games to movies is the next big step to get the IP into pop culture

I predict that we will get to a point were GW will see the games as side project and not as the driving point behind model sales, but simple the fact that everyone wants to have a Space Marine Army at home on display the same way as people want to have Gundams

My emphasis, in bold.
I think that this is inaccurate. Why the Hasbroification of the so-called "luxury" brand, the abysmal management of the IP from a narrative and product introduction standpoint, and so on, if this were the case? Everything about GW marketing screams 'rush to market' and to try to make a model for any old idea that had been lying around since GW had employed people who actually had ideas. Who, frankly, wants this? Unthinking, nonreflective consumers, children, meta-chasing plastic crack addicts... and people like myself who are thirty years invested in a loved hobby, too much so to let it go down the drain due to corporo-fascist mishandling without making some noise. Anyone with an education and some options, sure, might be interested in the hobby for lots of reasons, but to think that this is the target market for restartes, for instance... nah.

Porsche is OK, and maybe a good example for analogy. One reason to buy into a Porsche brand is status. Another is performance. A third is history, legacy, collectibility. GW fails miserably at the second, so lets put that aside. Status, OK sure... nice GW collections draw attention, garner respect among fellow enthusiasts. Where GW had value was the third reason, and this is getting pimped out to pump and dump to max out profits over near term business cycles seemingly without consideration of long term impact on value. Mercedes, Porsche, BMW, Rolls Royce, no established luxury brand would be so flippant about selling out to the lowest common denominator, as the value of the badge should last more than the current economic bubble. GW is not acting like this is the object... There is nothing luxury about GW aside from the price.

GW wanting it to be and GW making the right decisions to achieve it are 2 very different things
and this is the only thing I can see GW going down, not because they make bad rules or the models being too expensive, but trying to be too much at the same time, get their IP child friendly making kits toys while being grimdark for adult TV shows, advance to story to have a reason for new models and retrofit all together to make a good narrative for their games (and than it collapse by trying to please everyone they pleased no one)

the main point of GW games is the easy access because everyone plays one, so they have given up trying harder than they need to in making a good game
and to stay with Porsche, the performance is not the best either compared to other similar cars, it is all about legacy and nostalgia.

the reason why GW brings back old stuff is not because those games are so much better than what they currently have, but to for the legacy and nostalgia.
paying an absurd price for a mediocre game only works because you pay into the legacy, and everyone wants it.
Cursed City is not a good game, and still the hype was real because Warhammer Fantasy sells

Everyone is hyped for the Necromunda Trucks, nobody cares how well the game will be (or even if there will be a playable game on the standard table) or how useful those are
Squats come back, no one cares about the rules or how bad 40k currently is, it is just important that the models will be good

Performance is a thing, but GW has learned that there is no need for the games to be good, they just needs to be good enough to prevent people to rage quit and nothing more

and simply selling off copies for people to have a cheaper entry into the GW bubble is not working against it but helps the status and spreading it, as everyone plays the game, so it is the only game worth buying into (buy a printer and do it for cheap if you don't have the money to start with the original stuff), but only few can afford the real plastics and hardcover books

Lol, the way you describe it makes GW look like a Japanese Idol agency. There is no need for the idols to be able to sing, compose songs, or create a dance number, they just need to follow the instructions, look cute/handsome, and the rest is all hype.

M.

 kodos wrote:

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

 kodos wrote:
GW wants to be the luxury brand, with famous people having Warhammer as their hobby and everything that comes with it
They don't want it to be a mainstream thing were everyone plays the games

I would struggle to believe that's true so long as GW maintains such a large network of brick and mortar stores. There's little point in having all those stores - which are a huge slab of their total costs - if they weren't trying to proselytise the mainstream.

same as Jacques Lemans have their own network of stores, which is part of being the luxury, having some or all products texclusive to your own stores rather than being available everywhere

I don't know much about Jacques Lemans, but I can't find a store of theirs in my city. I can find 6 games workshop stores in my city, and they're located in middle class to working class areas of the city, GW are clearly marketing to the mainstream with those stores.

and your IP being mainstream, to have people buy merchandise while at the same time you "core product" is luxury is how most companies operate (look how many people have Ferrari merch and how many people actually drive the cars)

The economies are so different between Ferrari and GW though, a Ferrari sells products that few people can afford but many people can afford their merchandise, GW sells products that (as much as we complain about the pricing) many people can afford. It might be overpriced for what you get, but it's still cheaper than a lot of other hobbies.

 Overread wrote:

 Hairesy wrote:

Businesses must either compete, or go broke. All we are doing by slavishly devoting ourselves to GW is enabling crony capitalism to overtake a niche hobby.

What you are proposing isn't supporting a business competing with GW but a company stealing from GW. There is a difference

The first is a company like Privateer Press, Infinity, Arch Villain Games, Lord of the Print etc.... Companies that hire (or are) artists to create work which is then put into production and sold as models/STLs. Who pay for artwork, lore, rules, models, world settings. Who promote the game, provide structure for competitive events etc...

The second is a person with a 3D scanner. Or a casting machine. Or skill in sculpting, but perhaps not in original designs. They aren't spending money on making something new, on supporting it with artwork, lore, rules, helping community events etc.. They are purely copying and reselling for a lower price. A price that a firm doing all the above can't compete.



Again you are perfectly free to not pay money to GW. You don't have to play their games. You can use 3rd party models from a range of firms making counts as armies; or 3D print ones. You can pay One Page Rules if you want. You can promote other games like Infinity, OPR, Warmachine at your local club etc...
You have the power to do a whole lot of good with your purchase choices and to help and support other competing firms.



Again I'm all for competition and competing firms in the market. I'm all for choice and having more models and creative designs and stuff. I'm all for making the market a better place for both gamers and creative people who have talent who choose to spend their working life producing stuff that I love to buy. I'd rather do that and encourage that than encourage people to steal/use recast/scanned etc... stuff that is just leaching out of the hobby that I love. Again by all means buy 3rd party stuff, but don't give it to Bob and his 3D scanner or Dave and his "I've got billions of STLs for £1" mega download. Give it to AVG, Wargame Exclusive, OPG, Badgers and Burrows, Infinity etc....

IDK, speak for yourself I guess.

Me personally, I picked up Lost Kingdoms recent wave of Mori Elves for the 13$...and went straight to their MMF page and picked up the remainder of the entire range for...god, mustve been something absolutely OUTRAGEOUS like the price of one single box of five (5) tiny plastic howling banshees.

Probably less though. All a matter of perspective. Now ive got 20 ballet dancer elves, a big tree portal, a giant deer made out of boulders and trees, some cool shrubbery unicorns, and big wooden golems piloted by little cute korok lookin' guys, and all told it's likely to cost me less than 1 combat patrol box to make 2,000 points worth of stuff I'm going to proxy as Sylvaneth.

Seeing a large amount of high quality product on a temporary promotional sale led me, a customer, to purchase more of said product, since it had a distinctive style unlike the products made by other people. A wild concept.

So you... Did exactly what he recommended you do?

Exactly

Lost Kingdoms make some fantastic stuff! They are making original designs of their own, adding value to the market and variety. The money you've spent is going right into the pockets of sculptors creating new and original ideas, even if the army uses warhammer as a base for defining unit types/selections etc...

So you get some fantastic models to print (not forgetting you still have to buy printer, resin, ipa and all that) and can paint and put on the table. You are rewarding artists for their creative work.




I've no issue with that at all; heck I'm waiting for LK to release something I want as a new army fully to back them (or put their lizardmen on a big discount and grab ab unch of them but I do have several other creators worth of lizard models already in stl form)

Here's a question for you, Dakka, what about taking 3D models from video games and turning them into printable STL files?

How do we feel about that one?

If you're taking them from your own games and printing yourself something for your personal edification, it seems unlikely to ever land you in any sort of trouble.

Sharing such models online would be a pretty clear copyright infringement.

 insaniak wrote:
If you're taking them from your own games and printing yourself something for your personal edification, it seems unlikely to ever land you in any sort of trouble.

Sharing such models online would be a pretty clear copyright infringement.

I guess it was more a question of how people feel about it. Like, there's tools for pulling STL files out of the Total War games, so you could theoretically make an army of, I dunno, Ogres, by pulling the raw files, then posing them in unique ways and print them off so you could have a full army of Ogres with no duplicate poses.

If someone showed up to the local games club with it, how would it be received?

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

 insaniak wrote:
If you're taking them from your own games and printing yourself something for your personal edification, it seems unlikely to ever land you in any sort of trouble.

Sharing such models online would be a pretty clear copyright infringement.

I guess it was more a question of how people feel about it. Like, there's tools for pulling STL files out of the Total War games, so you could theoretically make an army of, I dunno, Ogres, by pulling the raw files, then posing them in unique ways and print them off so you could have a full army of Ogres with no duplicate poses.

If someone showed up to the local games club with it, how would it be received?

I personally see it a second a failure of the parent company to produce what people want.

There are a few people online who do exactly what you are saying, but they provide the .stl files for free. If it is free, then I don’t have any issue with it, if they charge for those files then I have an issue with it.

Companies like GW sell the rights to the video game to companies to produce these models (in .stl or whatever). They have to be approved, and after such they leave the money on the table. They should be able to capitalize off of the files, but they are constantly ignoring the demand or not seeing the possibilities. If GW were to start selling their digital files from their licensed games, then its a different answer. But as long as they decide they don’t care for the money...then they have effectively (in my eyes) surrendered the rights to monetize them.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
Here's a question for you, Dakka, what about taking 3D models from video games and turning them into printable STL files?

How do we feel about that one?

Well, for starters, as a general fact that results in pretty crappy stl files, because they haven't been designed to be miniatures, but assets in a game with added textures. The most obvious case would be MWO models, which after ripping you need to basically "remodel" if you want to make them useable, or even printable.

OTOH, videogames companies don't usually sell minis, so it doesn't really feel like you're "stealing" from them or anything like that. They are two very separate niches.

Lastly, and again following the MWO example, the aforementioned ripping and remodelling of assets can lead to the miniatures company to actually take notice, work on providing what the market clearly wanted and earn loads and loads of cash by providing it. Because people buy official miniatures even when there are other options.

I'd love to have the skill to rip the models of the old Command and Conquer games, and print them to be used as IG.

M.

 Albertorius wrote:

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
Here's a question for you, Dakka, what about taking 3D models from video games and turning them into printable STL files?

How do we feel about that one?

Well, for starters, as a general fact that results in pretty crappy stl files, because they haven't been designed to be miniatures, but assets in a game with added textures. The most obvious case would be MWO models, which after ripping you need to basically "remodel" if you want to make them useable, or even printable.

OTOH, videogames companies don't usually sell minis, so it doesn't really feel like you're "stealing" from them or anything like that. They are two very separate niches.

Lastly, and again following the MWO example, the aforementioned ripping and remodelling of assets can lead to the miniatures company to actually take notice, work on providing what the market clearly wanted and earn loads and loads of cash by providing it. Because people buy official miniatures even when there are other options.

Yeah I probably made it sound like an easy process. I'm not an expert but my understanding is that (very simplified) you rip the initial STL which will be very low poly, load it up into blender, smooth it out a bit, create the model joints/limbs, apply a texture file that you've also ripped, use the texture file to create actual texture, that'll usually result in something that looks a bit crappy but has the detail roughly in the right area, then you use that as the basis to sculpt the model, then you can use the joints and limbs you created earlier to pose it and clean up any sculpting in areas that the posing messed up.

Not easy, but also not as hard as sculpting from scratch. I've seen some nice looking STLs that look to have been ripped from Total War.

 Miguelsan wrote:
I'd love to have the skill to rip the models of the old Command and Conquer games, and print them to be used as IG.

M.

There are quite a few of Red Alert and Tiberium Sun print files on Thingiverse. There's a variety of buildings, tanks and at least one NOD infantry model.

 DominayTrix wrote:

 Miguelsan wrote:
I'd love to have the skill to rip the models of the old Command and Conquer games, and print them to be used as IG.

M.

There are quite a few of Red Alert and Tiberium Sun print files on Thingiverse. There's a variety of buildings, tanks and at least one NOD infantry model.

Definitely not ripped though. Both of those games use sprites, not 3D models.

 Laughing Man wrote:

 DominayTrix wrote:

 Miguelsan wrote:
I'd love to have the skill to rip the models of the old Command and Conquer games, and print them to be used as IG.

M.

There are quite a few of Red Alert and Tiberium Sun print files on Thingiverse. There's a variety of buildings, tanks and at least one NOD infantry model.

Definitely not ripped though. Both of those games use sprites, not 3D models.

Oh I'm not commenting on the viability of ripping game files to turn into models. Just trying to help make someone aware of resources that already exist if they wanted to make it happen.

A lot of debate on the business model of GW, but it is pretty clear GW needed to protect their IP, but what was laughable is when they tried to do this with frankly, pretty generic orcs, elves, knights, etc. that was in no way ever intellectual property of GW, just proprietary sculpts. Let's face it, the look of these classic fantasy races and medieval were developed long before GW came around. They just had the legal and financial muscle to bully many out of the market, which they whole-heartedly did, and in many cases probably not rightfully so.

So, when they redesigned the entire world so they could come up with designs and names that could be IP protected, in both name and design, that really was a super smart business move by GW - hate it as many do. So, if you blatantly rip off, copy, scan and resell, their unique designs, it is wrong. If I do it for myself and my own enjoyment to save some money, then that is my right, given the technology of today - just do not sell it, as you have no right to do so.

GW didn't gain any additional copyright powers by moving from Old World to Age of Sigmar.


A Daughter of Khaine Melusai is just a medusa. The concept of a lower snake body upper human/elf female body armed with either spear or bow is totally open game. Heck its a highly common fantasy trope (medusa, Yuan ti) that goes back to the ancient greek times.

The only part that's protected is the specific design of the sculpt itself; the name (as that is unique) and some elements of the design itself (eg insignias and the like).



People keep saying Age of Sigmar was a copyright move and I disagree. Age of Sigmar was an attempt to take a failing product line and re-invent it. Sadly it was wrapped up with a load of other issues at the time which made it one of the worst attempts at this move ever done.




We can tell this further by the fact that GW has not destroyed the 40K universe and renamed it. Yes they renamed some armies under new names and that was, honestly, about it. GW could easily have done such things with the Old World setting if they'd wished. Many of the factions even had several different names in the lore and could easily have just used a copyrightable fantasy name from them. The Tomb Kings could have just adopted a formal title of one of the major leaders or their race from the setting - for example.