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Sad news: GW legal is going after WAP: Warhammer Armies Project.
I guess what prompted this action was the coming of the "Old World" this or sometime next year.

So if you still want to download the rule book and the army lists (don't forget the special characters and magic cards!) then head over to WAP's website and get them in PDF form. Everything is fan driven and free.

If you are seeing this after June 30th and want copies, reach out to me via DM.

https://warhammerarmiesproject.blogspot.com/

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.

It's a shame but guess it was gonna happen eventually. Time to make yet another archive...

 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.

Makes perfect sense, actually. They were content to let WAP exist when it wasn't directly competing with any of their products, now that The Old World is apparently imminent it is a direct competitor and its gotta go.

Honestly, I can't believe it survived for so long with how much art and text was lifted verbatim. It's sad to see WAP go, it was incredibly well produced for a fan project. I'm kind of hoping GW just copies a lot of it right back for ToW, WAP isnt perfect but it's had consistent tweaks and updates over the years, and I'm not sure current GW will do ToW quite as well, considering 40K 10th.

I loved when the Mountain Miniatures youtube channel switched from 8th ed to WAP, thoroughly more enjoyable to watch those games and see old armies shine again

chaos0xomega wrote:

 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.

Makes perfect sense, actually. They were content to let WAP exist when it wasn't directly competing with any of their products, now that The Old World is apparently imminent it is a direct competitor and its gotta go.

yes and no, it would make sense if this would happen to all the projects at the same time

yet Fluffhammer got the letter in 2019/20 and people said it makes sense that with Warhammer coming back GW goes after those projects, yet it took them 3 years to go after the biggest one and some others still received nothing
this can very much be unrelated to TOW and just the usual "lawyer goes thru a list" thing as it is related to TOW

if everyone else gets a letter in the next week I say yes it is because of TOW, if they don't well than it is just GW doing GW things

Some lawyer had to pad up his half year report on what he's actually doing at the company

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.

chaos0xomega wrote:

 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.

Makes perfect sense, actually. They were content to let WAP exist when it wasn't directly competing with any of their products, now that The Old World is apparently imminent it is a direct competitor and its gotta go.

"imminent"

It's easily 6+ months away = 6+ months of killing your own sales for no good reason (and pissing of the community to boot.)

If they sent him a cease-and-desist a week or so before The Old World drops, then I'd understand their actions a wee bit more.

No one engenders a sense of community better than GW.

True. And loyalty by the acre.

The only thing this does is just highlight, that GW is not interested in competition (surprise, no big IP holding company is) and is sure to use IP law as a club.

Further and more pressing, GW was aware that WAP existed quite some time ago. (option on a survey) . the fact that they now force what is in essence a shutdown of a soon to be competing system merely highlights, that they are not sure that they can compete with a fan made system and honestly puts me more on edge regarding quality standards of the ruleset for the ToW than anything else.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

MinscS2 wrote:

chaos0xomega wrote:

 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.

Makes perfect sense, actually. They were content to let WAP exist when it wasn't directly competing with any of their products, now that The Old World is apparently imminent it is a direct competitor and its gotta go.

"imminent"

It's easily 6+ months away = 6+ months of killing your own sales for no good reason (and pissing of the community to boot.)

If they sent him a cease-and-desist a week or so before The Old World drops, then I'd understand their actions a wee bit more.

H.B.M.C. wrote:No one engenders a sense of community better than GW.

privateer4hire wrote:True. And loyalty by the acre.

Considering how cultish marketing has become surounding IP in entertainment or even technological products, yes indeed they behave like a church or more apt a religious sect. Vanquish the heathens and all that. That this will backfire? i doubt it, GW got away with the creator and free-use shenanigans, GW got away with other rather questionable behaviour that was blatantly anti-consumer. This is just that, the other side of the coin, the internal hype and preaching of the "bestest edition ever" internally, vs. the insulation of the true belivers sorry custommers via elimination of fan made, self done adaption.

Games Workshop has a guideline for how to use their IP for fan projects: https://www.games-workshop.com/en-GB/Intellectual-Property-Guidelines?_requestid=19096371

WAP breached pretty much all of their rules, so this was to be expected. Using GW artworks and fiction is copyright infringement, even if it's not for a commercial product.

 stahly wrote:
Games Workshop has a guideline for how to use their IP for fan projects: https://www.games-workshop.com/en-GB/Intellectual-Property-Guidelines?_requestid=19096371

WAP breached pretty much all of their rules, so this was to be expected. Using GW artworks and fiction is copyright infringement, even if it's not for a commercial product.

Yeah, i have to say it's a shame they've got the C&D, but i had a look over some random examples yesterday and by the amount of protected stuff they've just ripped from GW publications wholesale the only surprise is that that letter did not come much sooner. Ire in the community or not, there's a certain point at which a company is practically forced to intervene to defend their IP claims (defend in the legal sense) and this was way past it. It would have been better to nip it in the bud and/or handle it more evenly, but imho it's understandable.

While the timing is unfortunate, and probably tied to TOW releasing in the next few years, I can't say I'm surprised. I was unaware of this project until reading this and having looked through their material, it's all pretty much textbook IP infringement. To be fair, the owner of the project seems to have been fully aware of this.

Not Online!!! wrote:


Further and more pressing, GW was aware that WAP existed quite some time ago. (option on a survey) . the fact that they now force what is in essence a shutdown of a soon to be competing system merely highlights, that they are not sure that they can compete with a fan made system and honestly puts me more on edge regarding quality standards of the ruleset for the ToW than anything else.

It's GW. Quality standards for rules aren't really something they do because they don't see much of a need for them. As can be seen in basically every single release. There always are things that just don't work in a reasonable way and that doesn't even take into account all the obvious balance issues which they usually try to paper over with randomness.

That said, it makes perfect sense to shut down such a project and it's surprising it wasn't done earlier. This project wasn't just some small site in the middle of nowhere (second page of Google) but it actually was pretty big and incredibly obvious in the copyright infringements.

 stahly wrote:
Games Workshop has a guideline for how to use their IP for fan projects: https://www.games-workshop.com/en-GB/Intellectual-Property-Guidelines?_requestid=19096371

WAP breached pretty much all of their rules, so this was to be expected. Using GW artworks and fiction is copyright infringement, even if it's not for a commercial product.

And?
Doesn't change the fact that their IP-Guidelines are borderline unenforcable in some cases and the only reason they can get away with it is because most people can't afford to do them in in a court case.

Doesn't change the fact that the behaviour looks utterly gakky once again.

Doesn't change the fact that it looks utterly ridicioulus 3-6 months before ToW as if GW wasn't confident in it's own product once more.

Their confidence has zero impact except in mind of gw bashers.

Wap could have not stolen art and do books without those. They chose not to.

And gw is by law required to defend their ip or lose control. They aren't idiots.

 Dolnikan wrote:

Not Online!!! wrote:


Further and more pressing, GW was aware that WAP existed quite some time ago. (option on a survey) . the fact that they now force what is in essence a shutdown of a soon to be competing system merely highlights, that they are not sure that they can compete with a fan made system and honestly puts me more on edge regarding quality standards of the ruleset for the ToW than anything else.

It's GW. Quality standards for rules aren't really something they do because they don't see much of a need for them. As can be seen in basically every single release. There always are things that just don't work in a reasonable way and that doesn't even take into account all the obvious balance issues which they usually try to paper over with randomness.

That said, it makes perfect sense to shut down such a project and it's surprising it wasn't done earlier. This project wasn't just some small site in the middle of nowhere (second page of Google) but it actually was pretty big and incredibly obvious in the copyright infringements.

See, i think it's more insidious, GW could "maintain " the disgruntled vets with the WAP still within their ecosystem or within their cult to remain in my religious analogy for a moment longer for 0 developpment cost and could afford to wait until they were ready.
6 months beforehand is merely calculated to make people forget WAP outrage until that point they release ToW.

Not Online!!! wrote:

Doesn't change the fact that it looks utterly ridicioulus 6 months before ToW as if GW wasn't confident in it's own product once more

how do you know it is 6 months away?
others already claim this is because of a release in October

and as this project literally used the original army book artwork without permission, and WAP can put everything back as soon as those things are removed (and generating new art is not a big problem any more unlike 20 years ago when that thing started) it is neither ridiculous nor gakky

but just the community again are starting to hope for something that has no other source than wishful thinking

 stahly wrote:
Games Workshop has a guideline for how to use their IP for fan projects: https://www.games-workshop.com/en-GB/Intellectual-Property-Guidelines?_requestid=19096371

WAP breached pretty much all of their rules, so this was to be expected. Using GW artworks and fiction is copyright infringement, even if it's not for a commercial product.

i find it always funny when people that are basically merely extended PR departments don "a hollier than thou" attidude. Shame that this behaviour doesn't get curbed more.

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.

Is it their IP?

Yes it is.

And that’s……pretty much that, isn’t it?

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

It makes perfect sense since WAP engaged in massive IP infringement. As has been stated multiple times already in this thread, GW were aware it was happening, so they effectively allowed it to happen for quite a while. But because of IP laws, it couldn't be allowed to carry on indefinitely, and as the statement by the guy in charge of WAP points out, he knew he was going to have to do something about it as a result. Which he is. Which means WAP isn't actually going away for good.

As for decreasing sales and enraging the community, the only people that get "enraged" in this "community" are... well. I'll stop there. And since WAP wasn't really all that well-known, I doubt it would have any impact on sales at all.

 kodos wrote:
yes and no, it would make sense if this would happen to all the projects at the same time

What? Why?

 kodos wrote:
yet Fluffhammer got the letter in 2019/20 and people said it makes sense that with Warhammer coming back GW goes after those projects, yet it took them 3 years to go after the biggest one and some others still received nothing
this can very much be unrelated to TOW and just the usual "lawyer goes thru a list" thing as it is related to TOW

Yes, they went through a list. So what?

 kodos wrote:
if everyone else gets a letter in the next week I say yes it is because of TOW, if they don't well than it is just GW doing GW things

GW doing GW things like defending their IP? From the infringement that the author of WAP freely admitted to? Those GW things?

Not Online!!! wrote:
the fact that they now force what is in essence a shutdown of a soon to be competing system merely highlights, that they are not sure that they can compete with a fan made system and honestly puts me more on edge regarding quality standards of the ruleset for the ToW than anything else.

Considering how unknown WAP was, it was likely far more to do with the use of copyright infringing images and text than fear over a "competing" system. Again, I will point you back to the statement made by the author of the project.

I doubt GW legal are being directed by the games designers, fearing they've somehow created a turkey, to squash miniscule "competing" fan-made rulesets on the internet for that reason.

Not Online!!! wrote:
blatantly anti-consumer

lol

Not Online!!! wrote:
Doesn't change the fact that their IP-Guidelines are borderline unenforcable in some cases and the only reason they can get away with it is because most people can't afford to do them in in a court case.

You've just pointed out how eminently enforceable they are, surely? If nobody can mount a defence because the legal system is set up in such a way as to allow large corporate entities to aggressively defend their interests, with little to no recourse for ordinary people, then it sounds awfully like your issue here isn't actually with GW at all.

Not Online!!! wrote:
See, i think it's more insidious,

It isn't.

Thank you for coming to my TED talk.

Not Online!!! wrote:

 stahly wrote:
Games Workshop has a guideline for how to use their IP for fan projects: https://www.games-workshop.com/en-GB/Intellectual-Property-Guidelines?_requestid=19096371

WAP breached pretty much all of their rules, so this was to be expected. Using GW artworks and fiction is copyright infringement, even if it's not for a commercial product.

i find it always funny when people that are basically merely extended PR departments don "a hollier than thou" attidude. Shame that this behaviour doesn't get curbed more.

How is literally pointing out the guidelines a "holier than thou" attitude? How is pointing out the fact that WAP was infringing on copyright, something accepted by the author of WAP in his statement above, acting as an "extended PR department"?

You want this behaviour "curbed"? Pointing out facts that undermine the narrative you're trying to push? That behaviour? Is that the behaviour you'd like to be curbed? Join the club, mate!


The TL;DR is this:


WAP infringed on GW IP.
The author of WAP admitted it.
The author of WAP received a C&D from GW, and will be making an attempt to remove the IP-infringing material in the future.


That's it. That's the story.

 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.

 ekwatts wrote:

 kodos wrote:
yes and no, it would make sense if this would happen to all the projects at the same time

What? Why?

 kodos wrote:
yet Fluffhammer got the letter in 2019/20 and people said it makes sense that with Warhammer coming back GW goes after those projects, yet it took them 3 years to go after the biggest one and some others still received nothing
this can very much be unrelated to TOW and just the usual "lawyer goes thru a list" thing as it is related to TOW

Yes, they went through a list. So what?

 kodos wrote:
if everyone else gets a letter in the next week I say yes it is because of TOW, if they don't well than it is just GW doing GW things

GW doing GW things like defending their IP? From the infringement that the author of WAP freely admitted to? Those GW things?
WAP infringed on GW IP.
The author of WAP admitted it.
The author of WAP received a C&D from GW, and will be making an attempt to remove the IP-infringing material in the future.
That's it. That's the story.

exactly, this is GW doing their thing by slowly going thru a list of "one per year" or whatever their plan is of sending out C&D
nothing more (which is the GW thing, random projects get a letter at random times), this is related to TOW the same way as having STL files removed

if non of the fan made Warhammer projects would have gotten a letter until now and all of them would have had their projects removed at the same time, I would say it is related to a release of TOW
same like all Youtube Channels got a letter by the time Warhammer+ came up

yet it is 1 at a time, with month or years in between, so targeting one and let others go does make no sense at all if this is all because of TOW

 kodos wrote:

 ekwatts wrote:

 kodos wrote:
yes and no, it would make sense if this would happen to all the projects at the same time

What? Why?

 kodos wrote:
yet Fluffhammer got the letter in 2019/20 and people said it makes sense that with Warhammer coming back GW goes after those projects, yet it took them 3 years to go after the biggest one and some others still received nothing
this can very much be unrelated to TOW and just the usual "lawyer goes thru a list" thing as it is related to TOW

Yes, they went through a list. So what?

 kodos wrote:
if everyone else gets a letter in the next week I say yes it is because of TOW, if they don't well than it is just GW doing GW things

GW doing GW things like defending their IP? From the infringement that the author of WAP freely admitted to? Those GW things?
WAP infringed on GW IP.
The author of WAP admitted it.
The author of WAP received a C&D from GW, and will be making an attempt to remove the IP-infringing material in the future.
That's it. That's the story.

exactly, this is GW doing their thing by slowly going thru a list of "one per year" or whatever their plan is of sending out C&D
nothing more (which is the GW thing, random projects get a letter at random times), this is related to TOW the same way as having STL files removed

if non of the fan made Warhammer projects would have gotten a letter until now and all of them would have had their projects removed at the same time, I would say it is related to a release of TOW
same like all Youtube Channels got a letter by the time Warhammer+ came up

yet it is 1 at a time, with month or years in between, so targeting one and let others go does make no sense at all if this is all because of TOW

So your argument is that GW doing nothing is bad, GW doing something is also bad.

Right.

 ekwatts wrote:

 kodos wrote:

 ekwatts wrote:

 kodos wrote:
yes and no, it would make sense if this would happen to all the projects at the same time

What? Why?

 kodos wrote:
yet Fluffhammer got the letter in 2019/20 and people said it makes sense that with Warhammer coming back GW goes after those projects, yet it took them 3 years to go after the biggest one and some others still received nothing
this can very much be unrelated to TOW and just the usual "lawyer goes thru a list" thing as it is related to TOW

Yes, they went through a list. So what?

 kodos wrote:
if everyone else gets a letter in the next week I say yes it is because of TOW, if they don't well than it is just GW doing GW things

GW doing GW things like defending their IP? From the infringement that the author of WAP freely admitted to? Those GW things?
WAP infringed on GW IP.
The author of WAP admitted it.
The author of WAP received a C&D from GW, and will be making an attempt to remove the IP-infringing material in the future.
That's it. That's the story.

exactly, this is GW doing their thing by slowly going thru a list of "one per year" or whatever their plan is of sending out C&D
nothing more (which is the GW thing, random projects get a letter at random times), this is related to TOW the same way as having STL files removed

if non of the fan made Warhammer projects would have gotten a letter until now and all of them would have had their projects removed at the same time, I would say it is related to a release of TOW
same like all Youtube Channels got a letter by the time Warhammer+ came up

yet it is 1 at a time, with month or years in between, so targeting one and let others go does make no sense at all if this is all because of TOW

So your argument is that GW doing nothing is bad, GW doing something is also bad.

Right.

As far as i understand it, his argument is 'GW doing something now does not mean TOW is coming soon, people delude themselves by attaching significance to random acts GW's legal department just does from time to time' and he's not judging the morality of what GW does either way. He's argueing about another thing entirely.

So let's get this straight:
- The individual running the project was using loads of GW art in their army books.
- GW contacted them and said to stop.
- Individual agrees they used loads of GW art and agrees to stop.
- As it stands these books are all currently available.
- People get mad over a very simple and seemingly malice-free interaction from both sides.

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