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[Egan_BW]

Praise the Toad-Emperor.

Now let's let this thread quietly die until the next time someone comes along with Chapter Master news. And talk about girl-marines in the 40K thread.

[Retropunch]

-snip-

I found your first paragraph of cases quite interesting - I had no idea the US has such strong inherent protection on copyright and I've definitely learnt something today. It seems odd that there is such a push to defend copyright whilst also having such strong written protection.

The rest, I'm not even going to dignify with an answer. Even if you are a lawyer, I don't think that making jabs at someone's country is the right thing to do, and neither is the way you go about presenting your argument.

[ChairmanPoo]

Chill. There was just a mod intervention

[ZeroGravitas]

Let's just hope no dwarf ever makes a pair of pauldrons painted blue with an engraving of a white inverted statue on them.

funny story, there was a company called ChapterHouse Studios that made minis for use with tabletop WHF and WH40k. Which itself isn't illegal, and nobody can stop you - you can't copyright the rules of a game, and you can't stop someone from saying "this figurine is intended for use with Company X's game but not made by Company X". The problem arises when your minis are too similar to existing minis, or they create confusion about the source or endorsement of the product.

So in 2010, GW sued them over whether their minis and accessories were infringing - 116 copyright claims and 92 trademark claims. At the end of the day, ChapterHouse actually won on most of the claims - either their designs were actually independent creations, or whatever infringement there was fair use. Still, they had to pay $25,000 for the infringing products, stop making/selling them, plus whatever it cost them to defend themselves in the case. Company shuts down.

But among the claims ChapterHouse won on: 17 pauldron designs! Ha!

[rincewind]

Disclaimer haven't been able to check this thread for a while, and haven't made it through all the posts but had a question. Is the internet lawyer consensus that a chapter master can never happen? follow up, would there be a way to get around copyright laws if it was described as a parody? IE text to speech device, make it a fan made game, no monetization and just change the setting slightly to a what if scenario? FYI I only know a little on US business law/employment law nothing on the EU or their recent copyright rulings.

[LoSboccacc]

Won't happen as a indie hobbyist work of love format. Best is generic space army simulator. A parody cannot be declared, whether something is parody and constitutes fair use is for a judge to decide so you'd still need deep pocket for that if gw wants to challenge it and past indication is that gw is willing to. And even a clear parody could risk getting litigated on trademarks.

Even games simply inspired to the setting could be litigated. Not that gw would necessarily win, but it'll run the hobbyist financially.

There are many cases at this point, but gw isn't totally unreasonable. If you change course after the first cease and desist they don't go full postal, see for example alien assault

[EnigmaticHat]

Disclaimer haven't been able to check this thread for a while, and haven't made it through all the posts but had a question. Is the internet lawyer consensus that a chapter master can never happen? follow up, would there be a way to get around copyright laws if it was described as a parody? IE text to speech device, make it a fan made game, no monetization and just change the setting slightly to a what if scenario? FYI I only know a little on US business law/employment law nothing on the EU or their recent copyright rulings.

I don't think the internet lawyers reached a consensus, or it was nuked by the Toad.  But I'll throw in my understanding.  Chapter Master has no budget and no revenue, so.  I don't think anyone is lining up to meet GW in court over this.  Making games is already a lot of time and effort, add a court case on top and its even harder.

So the question isn't "would GW win?" but its "would GW sue?"  And judging by their past actions the answer is yes.  So unfortunately being a parody is not going to be a good defense here.

Now, if you stripped away all the 40k terms + names, and changed the outlines of all the graphics so that none of it resembled GW art assets, then yeah the code of Chapter Master could be used for something.  You'd have to ask the internet lawyers if that would be enough to get a lawsuit thrown out of court, but I'd damn well hope it is.  Unfortunately it couldn't be called Chapter Master and I'm not sure the appeal of the game would be that great without the 40k connection.  Also since CM has already been presented openly as a 40k fan work it would require a lot of modification to be "safe"; if the game had been presented from square one as an original IP I imagine it could cut very close to copying 40k and GW wouldn't care, lord knows plenty of other games are similar.

So basically: does anyone feel like putting a lot of work into a space game that's partly done but can't be set in the 40k universe?  That's the answer to your question.  (also not making money isn't a defense; most companies simply ignore fan works because it drives business their way.  GW is trying to maintain their monopoly on their own figures which is why they're assholes about this.  Parody is something else, you're allowed to make money off of a parody)

[rincewind]

Damn, I was afraid that would be the answer. I had always wondered why GW seems to be so anti fan anything since it always seemed to be a plus to me, more traffic, more sales, more invested fans. But I can see the point with how hard they try to protect the figurine sales, even with the "Interstellar army simulator" split and it being all original code I can see the IP argument. That's really a shame because it's a better game than most of the licensed stuff GW has put out recently. Thanks for the answers

[Retropunch]

Without retreading everything again, it all comes down to if someone wants to make an interstellar army simulator game with mod support. That's absolutely fine - no one has really opposed that, although some of the previous False Emperors made the excuse that they were abandoning work due to it being too risky. There's no risk to creating a interstellar army simulator with nothing referencing GW, and I don't think any of the internet lawyers have disputed that.

If an interstellar army simulator was to be made, then Chapter Master 2 would would be a flavour mod away. The issue as stated is that it's hard work and there will be a distinct lack of interest until a Chapter Master mod becomes available which doesn't give people the attention that they need to keep on with such a project.

[ChairmanPoo]

It's not like you can't make an ad hoc analogue mythology that fits the bill... GW setting is hardly unique. Heck even in the field of role playing games there are many that follow similar templates (eg: Fading Suns, Renegade Legion, Battletech...). That's without going onto films, novels, or videogames (*atchoo*Blizzard*atchoo*)
- Insert a standard template galactic empire, feudal style.

Add
- generic hivemind aliens
- generic lovecraftian entities and cults (heck, you could use Lovecraft directly... he's public domain)
Etc...

[LordBaal]

The Imperator
The Empire of Humankind
The Auric Chair
The Disorder Deities
Space Elfs
Space Black Elfs
The space locusts
Vacum Seamen
Empire Fleet
Space HugeGoblins / Sentient fungus symbiotes....

So many terms that could be used, and if the text can be taken from an indexed txt modding them would be really easy.

As for the looks, that's more tricky, but doable is you employ generic art and models and let them be replaced too. For easiness only make a single generic model/art of soldier, tank and ship, apply it for all factions. Then use the actual 40k art models you make for the game and release them as a mod, even if using a proxy to further avoid troubles.

[Tack]

Hah. We’re back to disorder vacuum seamen.

[Kot]

Space Black Elfs

It's Melanin Enriched Space Elves, thank you very much.

[Retropunch]

Pulling everything from a JSON file (structured text basically) would be really easy, and is one of the best ways in many languages to store objects.

I feel that the best thing that could happen with this is someone made a really, really basic, version which was open source and well commented. From that, I'm sure there would be more people willing to actively take up the mantle 

[Trekkin]

I feel that the best thing that could happen with this is someone made a really, really basic, version which was open source and well commented. From that, I'm sure there would be more people willing to actively take up the mantle

What minimal feature set would you want in that version?