And a month later I wandered into one of their shops and was greeted by a drone that asked me if I was interested in the “Games Workshop Hobby”, or if I was just there to pick something up for a kid. (I wasn’t even thirty at that time dammit!)

No more Games Workshop for this Orc anymore! :)

My background I was a Games Workshop employee from 2000-2008 in my time I have been a part-timer and full-timer and 5 years as a store manager in 2 different stores..

(IP protection)
The Bottom line is (and will always be) Games Workshop “WILL” protect it’s IP rights no matter what. So if that means they make Websites remove articles that infringe their IP then they will, Yes “Gamers” get annoyed about this, and they have every right to but it doesn’t prevent them from using any material they come up with themselves in their own homes or even at any Gaming Club they may go to it just prevents them from “Publishing” it to a wider audience.. (Staff on the other hand have to Offer Games Workshop all IP rights over any drawings, writings and Ideas that they may have whilst they are in Games Workshops employ) which i believe is one of the reasons Gav Thorpe left before he released his Star Ship troopers games

A couple off of topic points.

As a manager in the 5 years i was there i had to deal with the over-staffing of both the stores i managed and in total i had to fire/make redundant 17 staff members, not because they were crap at their jobs but because the “LOTR bubble had burst” But i never experienced any 1/2 year burn out, i sent more staff on to the management training course than left for any other reason. Games workshop “Store” staff from my experience are “Gamers” first and staff second and they work bloody hard for very little reward now that they have removed the “Staff Weight” purchase price.

The Lord of the Rings “Bubble”
Did any off you really expect it to last?
Did any off you really expect to still see it in the stores now?
Tell you what none of the staff i’ve worked with in GW expected it to go past 2004, we all thought GW was going to do it and take the money and run, but they are still milking it for all its worth.

The biggest impact of the bubble! its all of you out there every single gamer and model builder/painter, Games Workshop got so much investment during the “Bubble” years that it spent on new offices and extra staff, that now it is still struggling to pay stock dividends that it had to withhold/delay and postpone. even though they did have a good year last year with pretax profits of £3.5

Most stores in the UK are now 1 man stores open 5 days a week and they aren’t opening during the early evening when you can possibly get down for a game or a chat after work because you “The established gamers” aren’t making them the kind of money they need to make. Its a very sad fact that a new person into the “Hobby” will spend up to 5x the amount of money that established gamers do.

And an even sadder fact that they know they can release a limited run of a “Classic” game like Space Hulk for an immediate cash injection… and when you think that games workshop has so many “Classic” games it still holds IP rights on….

Do you really wonder why they fight every IP issue.

Any questions just ask

I am a customer who bought my first army via phone order and had huge box of lead shipped across the pond before your games were even widely available in the U.S.. I was there in the beginning with you guys in the 80’s, I was with you through the 90’s and up till now, I loved your games and fluff so much that I put up with your corporate shenanigans. But all people have a point at which they finally get sick of being taken for granted as a customer. The BGG incident is the last straw for me. If you are so wrapped up in profits and litigation that you trample on your customers and fans trying to create fan material to help themselves and their friends enjoy the game better, then you have become too corporate oriented for me. It seems as if you are letting your lawyers steer the ship and not the creative people who started your company. When greed so totally outweighs the fun and creativity of the game, it’s no longer fun. I wish you luck in the future and if someone over there ever gets their heads out of their collective arses and starts steering the company with the right mix of artistic fun, consumer support, and an invisible legal staff who has a shred of common sense, I may consider coming back. I wouldn’t count on it though. Right now, with your prices so high, I can sell my armies for a pretty penny and still beat your prices, so by the time you may get your act together, I will probably have moved on to something else and will not have the desire to restart collecting your game.

In other words:

Bugger off!

Sincerely

Dennis H. Foos Jr.

Former player of:

Ultramarines
Blood Angels
Black Templars
Imperial Guard
Chaos SM
Tyranids
Orcs

Fantasy:
Orcs
Gobbos
Dwarves
Empire
Tomb Kings
Dark Elves

Space Hulk
Man O’ War
Epic
Warmaster
BattleMasters
Heroquest
Advanced Heroquest
Warhammer Quest

Former purchaser of:
White Dwarf
Citadel Terrain
Citadel Paint
Forgeworld products
Codexes
Games supplements such as Apocalypse, Planet strike and Cities of Death (as well as buildings, bunkers, terrain etc… associated with them)

P.S. There is a saying here in the U.S. about not stepping over the dollars to pick up the pennies, but I guess you have proven that you couldn’t comprehend that anyway, so I wont go into it.

CC OPEN

“This also means that we cannot allow tattoos as an acceptable use of our IP as a third party necessarily has to perform the “service.”

They havn’t sued anyone for getting a space marine tat but they want you to know that they can!

http://gamingdead.com/2009/07/26/games-workshop-shuts-down-vassal

Dear sirs,
I will no longer be purchasing any of your products. This is a direct result of your decision to pursue the removal of fan created materials at boardgamegeek.com and other websites. Materials like these were what sparked an interest in your games for me in the first place, and you are doing a great disservice to you biggest customers by taking action against them.
As a published author and musician with four albums currently in print, I understand as well as you do the necessity and seriousness of copyright. I also understand that penalizing your customer base for their own loyalty to your product is extremely counterproductive.
I am not alone in this. I could point out the rise of independent artists such as myself who embrace file sharing- and whose profits are rising as the major labels fail; or the epic dynasty that is Star Trek- maintained in large part through fan activity; but to be honest, I’m simply done with your company.
-M

from Daniel Nicholls
to Hobbyservice@games-workshop.com.au,
orders@games-workshop.co.uk
date Mon, Nov 30, 2009 at 10:55 AM
subject Please stop destroying the fan base

Hi there,

Listen, I’ve been a loyal games workshop customer for over 20 years. I’ve spent literally tens of thousands of dollars on your products. I was extremely disturbed today to see that you were removing fan-created and out-of-print material from the fansites that pretty much keep the GW fanbase alive.

http://www.boingboing.net/2009/11/28/games-workshop-decla.html

A great example of this are the older Space Hulk missions. They’re out of print. You have no plans to republish them. I just shelled out over $500 on two copies of the game plus additional models and paints to supplement it. Why shouldn’t fans swap older material to supplement the game and make it better for them? It will make me buy more product. I want to underline that: it will make me buy more product. The stronger the community, the more people to play with, the more product I buy. Instead, right now, I am so angry at the company that it’s very likely I will never walk into another GW store again, unless it’s to go and make this complaint to staff directly. In addition, the community is going to shrink now, because of this anger.

I simply can’t fathom the stupidity of this move. It’s not helping your bottom line, it’s hurting it. It’s not catering to the fanbase, it’s causing us to resent you and the way you treat us.

Rethink your policy, and do it fast.

Yours sincerely,

etc

This is why I play and support Privateer Press games. They recently released the latest WM rules version to the public for free so that people can tweak and test play the rules and give feedback, even though it has huge potential to kill profits when they release the finished revised rulebook. Companies that do stuff like that need to get more support. They understand this “business” is like no other, and its the fans that keep it alive.

I for one am tired of GW constantly treating us all like this, and even tireder of the goons that defend them (especially with the worn out and incorrect “luxury hobby” defense of GW). I would love to think that us all sending letters could do something to affect them, but I seriously doubt it. They are all about the profit, and lets be honest, our growing horde of miniature addicts will never get a successful boycott going.

I have been playing WH40K since Rogue Trader but I don’t think I will for much longer.

The ones who claim ownership of all fan-created derivative materials (but graciously grant you permission to use them), and go after anyone who converts any of their material for use in other game systems?

Oh, yeah, they’re much better than Games Workshop.

On a related note, I’m surprised nobody’s yet brought up how the grand-daddy of all RPG companies, TSR, tried to pull something similar to what Games Workshop is doing, back in the early days of the Internet. It was the beginning of the end for them, and not long afterward they were bought out by Wizards of the Coast.

Old fans have already paid their money, and are having too much fun with old games that don’t get GW any money. GW has no interest in doing anything for you if you’ve already bought all their games. They want the people who haven’t done that yet.

I, just for once, would like to see something Open Sources, GPL’d or otherwise Creative Commons licensed… make it main stream and give these money grubbing corporate types something to think about.

Anyway, you can look at their employee roster here. And pick who you’d like to contact… http://www.linkedin.com/companies/10567?trk=ape_s000001e_1000

p.s., My captcha for this comment was “Aspromonte oddity” =D

The only thing worse than the american legal system is the british legal system it was based on. Absolutely no room for common sense, strict interpretation of every law and hundreds of years of prescedent on every issue. It is like they are continually recodifying 18th century morality.

I mean, this is the only way you get people worldwide to spend an average of $5 on a 1 inch piece of plastic, then go buy 100s of them. You have to have a system that is immune from interpretation, unyielding in it’s tolerance for innovation, and immutable in it’s goal of maintaining the status quo.

M

http://nwn.blogs.com/nwn/2009/04/enforcers-of-dune.html

Linden Labs got a cease and desist from the Estate for all Dune-related sims and objects on the Grid. This meant that several massive, detailed, lovingly constructed sims had to either shutdown or re-purpose. That Dune-influenced groups had to disband.

What really gets me is, there’s no Estate-cleared mode to roleplay Dune. The Last Unicorn game “Chronicles of the Imperium” will never see the light of day outside of a few hundred demo copies. There aren’t any current-gen video games, either. Given this, I really don’t understand the threat, and I really don’t understand the compulsion to protect an IP to its detriment. By shitting on your most dedicated fans, you diminish the staying power of the IP. George Lucas understands this– one of the reasons for Star Wars’ continuing popularity is the laissez faire attitude LucasArts takes on fan material. For someone to spend unpaid hours crafting an amazingly detailed sim for any IP is an act of love and true fandom. To punish these people for expressing a passion for your property, and wanting to live in the world you create, is just insanity.
Insanity keeping along Herbert’s own opinions (Iron Maiden, anyone?), but insanity none the less.

Of course, reading the “new” Dune novels, it’s pretty clear that those behind the Herbert Estate have pretty much lost all contact with what made Dune great.