40K 8th Army Builder Shuts Down at GW Request
One of the early 40K 8th Edition army construction tools is no more at the request of Games Workshop.
The popular Warhammer 40k Army List Builder is no more.
Creator Reepy took the tool down with the following notice:
“Hey guys,
A big pile of bad news now…
I was contacted by GW Legal. They requested that I remove the website and I did. It is their right and I must comply.
AdvertisementI was infringing on their IP with:
- GW artwork (featured in the background of your website)
- Photographs of GW’s painted miniatures (taken from the GW web store)
- Legion logos/ iconography
- Army points and stats for 40K units
- The Warhammer 40,000 logo
Seeing all of these I feel lucky they didn’t actually sue me.
I didn’t actually remove the site but, as you can see, it is unusable – I am leaving it for now just for this news so you know what’s going on.
I cannot say I wasn’t expecting this. I really did use a lot of their data. But I have to say I just cannot use the new points without some kind of list builder. And using things like BattleScribe is total bullshit. Those lists are UGLY as hell.
This was a labour of love for me. I have a patreon but hardly any body has been using that. This project is now more than three years old. The last month with the coming of 8th edition I was spending almost a full work day extra supporting it – crunching data and developing. I am lucky to have an understanding and supportive girlfriend. I even left my painting to update to 8th (I have about 500pts of Tyranids, 1000pts of Space Marines and 500pts of Harlequins and Craftworld eldar waiting for me).I really hoped if GW contacted me it would be for some sort of collaboration. Not removal 🙁
AdvertisementI want to thank all of you for all the gratitude and some of you really helped with the data.
If you think something can be done about this maybe you could all send emails to Games Workshop saying you really want this… There are 12 000 of you each day on here… It may make a difference.
Someone posted these emails in my blog as comments. I have no idea which of these are real:I am so sad… 🙁
Happy Wargaming,
ReepySubscribe to our newsletter!Get Tabletop, RPG & Pop Culture news delivered directly to your inbox.By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.P.S. On the bright side, now I can do much more painting and actual gaming.
If any body wants to contact me for some reason: [email protected]
I want to point out the email I got from GW was not a Cease and Desist order. It was a polite notice of infringement with which I complied. They didn’t just throw the book at me.
AdvertisementI did brake many infringement rules.
If you send mails (and many of you already have) I would very much like it if they are not negative towards GW but more on the soft “we rally liked that” side. This company has given me personally a lot of joy and I will continue playing. I am actually playing my second 8th edition game in a few hours (saturday). I don’t want all of this to become too negative. It’s our hobby and I feel we must protect it even if we don’t like something that’s happening.”
Looking Forward
I can’t say this is too much of a surprise move by GW with their own official 40K 8th army construction tool just around the corner. With this tool shuttered, it leaves two choices going forward for online tools for army construction.
1) GW’s official 40K Army Builder, which should be coming along any week now… and will almost certainly join the Age of Sigmar builder on the Warhammer Community webpage.
2) Battlescribe, which is trucking along just fine, and there are already community datafiles for 8th Edition. It’s a no frills approach to army construction for a variety of game systems, but it gets the job done.
Of course I’m still confused by all this need for a tool in the first place. Back in my day if you wanted to build an army you did it with these tools:
~Have at it.
