Warhammer Armies Project set to shutdown on Friday, June 30th.

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**Gert**

Is there any evidence to suggest or support the notion that the GW legal team did know about the project though?
This thread is the first I've heard of it for example and I'm sure many others will be in the same boat.
I'm happy to be proven wrong but if it's just an internet assumption that because a Warhammer-adjacent thing exists then GW legal knows about it then I don't see how the anger is justified.

**H.B.M.C.**

They talked about them in a survey. GW was aware of them.

**Not Online!!!**

For the awareness bit 10:50

**Mallo**

MinscS2 wrote:
You guys realize that WAP has been a thing for 13 years and that GW have been aware of them for quite some time but has purposefully left it alone?

GW striking now has nothing to do with actually defending their IP (if it was, they would've tried to shut WAP down years ago), but it's all regarding their "imminent" release of The Old World.

Do they have the right to do so? Yes.
Is it stupid of them to do so at this moment? Yes.

Exactly this. I've seen hundreds of threads pop up on facebook groups defending GW actions as 'having to defend their IP'. This has nothing to do with defending IP.

If it had been about defending IP, they would have needed to do a take down at any point in the last decade or more.

**Slipspace**

Tsagualsa wrote:
MinscS2 wrote:
You guys realize that WAP has been a thing for 13 years and that GW have been aware of them for quite some time but has purposefully left it alone?

GW striking now has nothing to do with actually defending their IP (if it was, they would've tried to shut WAP down years ago), but it's all regarding their "imminent" release of The Old World.

Do they have the right to do so? Yes.
Is it stupid of them to do so at this moment? Yes.

These two things are intimately related though. Without them offering current products that use a given IP, their court cases could actually be decided to their detriment, i.e. it could have been ruled that they are not sufficiently using that IP and that they can't have such a competitor shut down because they essentially abandoned their rights. Now, with TOW ramping up and being promoted, their base for such a case is much better again, and thus they advance it.

This is incorrect, but still a very pervasive misconception. Copyright is an inherent right for any creative work. You cannot "abandon" your rights to copyrighted material unless you explicitly sign them away to a third party. Some jurisdictions don't even allow that level of complete transfer of rights. There is no doubt GW would have won any copyright infringement case in court over the WAP material. The books are using huge amounts of copyrighted material, from artwork to text to rules layout.

You're thinking of trademarks, which do have to be actively defended, mainly to prevent them becoming generic terms, as has happened with the likes of Hoover and Band-Aid. Even in this case GW would have no problem prevailing in a trademark infringement case either, as none of the WH trademarks have lapsed due to their continued use in Warhammer Total War and various TOW materials we've seen over the last few years.

**ekwatts**

Mallo wrote:
MinscS2 wrote:
You guys realize that WAP has been a thing for 13 years and that GW have been aware of them for quite some time but has purposefully left it alone?

GW striking now has nothing to do with actually defending their IP (if it was, they would've tried to shut WAP down years ago), but it's all regarding their "imminent" release of The Old World.

Do they have the right to do so? Yes.
Is it stupid of them to do so at this moment? Yes.

Exactly this. I've seen hundreds of threads pop up on facebook groups defending GW actions as 'having to defend their IP'. This has nothing to do with defending IP.

If it had been about defending IP, they would have needed to do a take down at any point in the last decade or more.

Except they have strict guidelines about defending their IP, and WAP was infringing those guidelines, the author of WAP admitted this, and so they received a C&D based upon that, and they are now obliged to remove the IP infringing material.

Yes, they left them alone for years. That is true. Nobody is disputing that. The fact that they are now being slapped with an IP infringement doesn't change any of that. Nobody is suggesting that it does.

But, equally, the fact they got away with it and/or GW were relaxed about it for so long does not cancel out the fact that it went against the IP infringement guidelines.

Look, you can start hitting me round the head with a baseball bat, and I can either ask you to stop this instant, or wait ten years and ask you to stop then. My delay in asking you to stop doesn't change the fact that hitting me with a baseball bat is infringing upon my right to not be hit with a baseball bat, nor does my delay in asking you to stop mean I relinquish my right to do so.

Has another factor influenced their decision to finally take action? Almost definitely, yes. But that doesn't mean that the material that was infringing on GW IP wasn't infringing on GW IP. It doesn't mean you can just claim, in spite of the fact that the material infringed on IP, and was admitted to infringing on IP by the author, that it has "nothing to do with defending IP" since it very plainly does because it infringed on IP. The author said it did. Go back and read the statement. It's only on the previous page.

This thread is really weird.

**Tsagualsa**

ekwatts wrote:

This thread is really weird.

Nah, it's just entitlement.txt - huge company has ignored our illegal practices for so long, how dare they renege on a deal that only exists in our head and actually enforce their rights?

I get that it sucks to have stuff taken away that you're accustomed to access for free, but the legality of this stuff is out of the question, and personally i would also say that the morality is clear as well. I'd also prefer if GW did not handle such situations so gracelessly, but corporations gonna corporate. Pick any of your favourite dead-for-a-reason games and pilfer then instead if you absolutely cannot handle this.

**beast_gts**

H.B.M.C. wrote:
They talked about them in a survey. GW was aware of them.

Part of GW was aware of them - just because the social media team (or painting or whatever) knew about them doesn't mean the legal department did. Now, GW might have an internal policy that you notify legal every time you come across a possible issue but it's also possible GW's departments don't actually talk to each other...

EDIT: If GW were competent then someone from legal should have looked over the questionnaire before publishing, but who knows...

**Polonius**

H.B.M.C. wrote:
I think the think people are struggling with is why GW was fine with this for over a decade and suddenly now isn't.

If I were to guess it's because GW didn't plan on reusing any of that text or artwork, and now is.

I'm also going to let everybody on a little secret about how law is practiced: a lot more has to do with the tastes and styles of the individual lawyer than any theoretical ideal. If GW got a new person in legal, they might see this differently than the last person, and pushed for a C&D.

**jthewarrior**

I'm not doom mongering; he's taking down all of the books on Friday and you won't be able to get them unless you have them or get them from someone else. Yes, he will repost them.....SOMETIME IN THE FUTURE. Who knows when ("Maybe next year" from your quote). And if you read the quote you provided, he's taking down the majority of the books, even the unofficial armies.

So yeah, you want to go an buy more books from GW when the old world comes out (also who knows when), then be my guest. On the other hand, I was good with the rulebooks that Matthias has so gracefully provided to us for free for the past decade plus. I just wanted to make sure people were informed and got what they needed from WAP's website ASAP.

I'd rather take this seriously and get the current books into the hands of the community rather than cross my fingers and hope they come back.

Platuan4th wrote:
How about actually posting what Matthias said rather than doom mongering:

Quite a bit of sad news here: after over 13 years, I was finally contacted by GW, who requests that I remove all GW art and text from the army books that infringes on their IP. I've always known this day might come, and with the announcement of the Old World, it was more and more likely to happen.
What this means for WAP is that I will no longer be able to keep making full army books with art and text and would be limited to only using their unit/character names for the rules-set in an army-list format. It also means I will have to rewrite the whole rulebook to not use games-workshops original writing, as well as redesigning the cover. There are hardly any army books that does not contain some amount of GW-lore, so this means the "unofficial armies" needs to go too.
Time-wise I would not really have the spare time to do this in any greater extent until September at the earliest, but since the Old World is rumoured to be announced/released around October-December this year; I want to hold off until then so I don't spend a ton of time needlessly redesigning everything only for the Old World to supersede it a few months later. So any further updates would have to wait until early next year when it would be due for the annual rules-revision.
I'll wait until Friday this week to remove all the book links from the blog so you all have time to download them until then. After that, it will be up to the community if they want to share them privately. Please do not PM me asking for links to the books.
This does not necessarily mean the death of WAP, only that it will have to continue in a much more limited form in the future. It's been a good run at least, and I hope it's brought much enjoyment out of it.
To end on a positive note though; future rules updates will go a lot quicker in the new format, layout issues would be much less of a problem, and I'll at least get more time to paint...

Emphasis mine.

WAP is not shutting down, merely taking down the Army Books and revamping once TOW is released in a different format.

**Kalamadea**

The creator even posted the letter GW sent him. I hate to defend GW, but this is the most reasonable and soft-handed C&D I've ever read:

Good Morning,

We are getting in touch today because your “Warhammer Armies” series of documents has
been reported to us for infringing Games Workshop’s Intellectual Property rights. We
appreciate how enthusiastic you are about the hobby and so we will explain the issue further
so that we can work together to better orient the document with our Intellectual Property
guidelines with minimal disruption to your work.

Games Workshop holds the exclusive right to reproduce copies of our creations. This covers
our miniatures, artwork, books, logos, website images and text. It not only covers exact
copies but also anything which copies a significant part, typically the most important and
unique features.

Games Workshop has spent decades creating miniatures, books, merchandise and artwork
for our creations. We own the copyright for these works, including (but not limited to) our
range of Warhammer Army books and our other rulebooks and supplements.

I would like to take this opportunity to go through a few points in our Intellectual Property
Guidelines and how they relate to your project. For ease of reference I will share below the
relevant parts of the guidelines and explain how they relate to your project:
Individuals may write their own stories, hobby books and magazines based on our
characters and settings, but these must:

1) not include text, artwork or imagery copied from any official Games Workshop
material
2) [...]
3) [...]
4) make it clear that they are unofficial, without using any Games Workshop logos, and
include the word ‘unofficial’ prominently on the front cover

Regarding point one, the background, images, text and elements of the page design have
been obtained from official Games Workshop publications and so are not permitted to be
used as part of a fan project.

Point four relates to the front cover of your document, which I can see does not make it clear
that this document is an unofficial publication with no relation to Games Workshop. This
could lead to confusion amongst hobbyists, who may believe that this document is official.

We request that you change this document to be in line with our Intellectual Property
Guidelines as outlined in the four points above, which would allow your file to continue to be
available online. We are available at this email address to discuss this further or to help
provide clarification on any of the points we have raised.

Kind Regards,
Games Workshop Legal Team

That's it. That's the actual letter that Mean Ol' Games Workshop sent him.

It makes sense to allow it for so long, I wouldn't be surprised if GW employees were secretely and unnofically very supportive of WAP since it keeps people buying models, keeps the lore alive. But now it becomes an issue with ToW about to release. The WAP books look so much like official documents that new or lapsed players could find them confusing to come across, I remember coming across the Bretonnia WAP book a few years ago and it took a bit to realize that it was a fanmande document and not the 8th ed amrybook (that never existed).

**Gert**

Not Online!!! wrote:
For the awareness bit 10:50

Thanks for that bit of evidence, much appreciated.

With that in mind, I'm going to argue that whatever was preventing this project from being targeted before has changed. It might be a change of staff in the legal department or (more likely) down to the fact that TOW is getting closer to a release date.

The creator has given people time to download the files which then means they can be shared by anyone else to people who want to try out the system and the door is still very much open for this individual to continue their project without the copyrighted materials, something that is confirmed in the letter sent by GW's legal department.
More importantly, the creator of this project isn't doing this for money so isn't losing income as a result of this, unlike other instances.

**Charax**

Gonna have to uncharacteristically side with the global megacorp here.

WAP were taking the piss, quite blatantly, and GW asked them to stop in one of the nicest ways I can remember them ever interacting with a fan project.

No lawsuits
No threats of lawsuits
No "Take down everything"
No "give us everything"

Just "look, you're rather obviously using our stuff. Don't"

Doesn't matter that it wasn't done earlier
Doesn't matter that it was mentioned in a questionairre,
Doesn't matter that TOW is on the horizon

If you're going to do a fan project, use your own assets and write your own text or expect to get contacted at some point. Even Matthias wasn't surprised by it, You roll the dice, you take your chances.

**Moopy**

MinscS2 wrote:
Makes zero sense to go after WAP at this point. It will just decrease sales for them and enrage the community ontop.

Shows that GW hasn't really changed one bit.

Unfortunately it's pretty common.

I was working on a fanzine for Middle Earth Role Play called Other Hands. We had a few hundred subscribers at the time. When the first of Peter Jackson's LoTRs movies was about to hit, New Line hit us with a C&D letter and told us to stop publishing, which killed us. They did it to a lot of folks. It sucked, but they wanted that iron tight control of who told the stories in that IP. : /

**Sarouan**

This project was indeed not clear about being unofficial in the covers of his works (after all, the creator was pushing his "9th edition" project as a legitimate one in its own, he certainly saw it as "totally official" in his 9th edition setting but with using official Warhammer Battle logos...confusion can be legitimate if Battle returns officially), and was also using a lot of copy-pasted of what was written in previous GW books, artworks included.

Demand is reasonnable from GW, to me.

As to why now...well, the first sentence of the letter can be taken into account. People may not believe it, but there is no basis to counter it officially TBH. Some people at GW were certainly aware that WAP existed before, that doesn't mean they reported it to the legal team (especially if they like it, makes sense they didn't want to release the dogs). Random people may believe GW as the whole company is all-knowing about what all its employees know, and that everything they do is reported to the legal team for copyright violation - but that's not the case in reality. Communication between different services is often compartimented, like it or not, not even talking about communication between employees who never met with each other.

Letter doesn't say who reported it, that's the thing. Can be really a report made by a random person recently. There's honestly no need to build a conspiracy theory from that.

**judgedoug**

What an interesting thread - I assumed people would be discussing what was actually posted on the website but instead have concocted their own narrative

**Platuan4th**

judgedoug wrote:
What an interesting thread - I assumed people would be discussing what was actually posted on the website but instead have concocted their own narrative

I tried, but even the title of the thread hasn't been changed to being accurate.

**kaiserjez**

If you're a fan of WAP already then you've probably already downloaded all the books.
If you have never heard of WAP until now then you probably don't care either way.
It's exactly the same as any other situation where there's a new edition - you already have all the stuff you need to play the game, nobody is forcing you to buy TOW when it comes out and nobody is going to stop you playing with the the WAP stuff you already have. No game system lasts forever.
I looked at WAP a while ago but never bothered pursuing it because it is a very small niche of an already small niche in fantasy wargaming and I figured I may as well wait for TOW to come out.
I understand if you're a massive fan of WAP and were really stoked for version 1.7 of the Amazons book to come out you might be a bit upset but there was no way in hell GW were going to allow all their IP to stay available for free when they are shortly about to start selling a product that shares 99% of it's DNA.
Doesn't matter if it's been available for 13 years or 13 days. I actually think it's pretty cool that they let it go for as long as they did.