I know very few seem to care, but for those who do,
I already posted Janovichs video about GW attacking fan animators again:
Unfortunately the situation has escalated. GW decided not only to attack Fan Animations,
but also Fan Art, Parodies and even Cosplayers!
Janovich has decided to leave Warhammer behind and move on,
as the Guys from TTS did 3 years ago.
If he’ll finish the “Siege of Vraks” Lore Videos is unclear at the moment.
Here’s the related video:
More about the entire situation on his channel…
Link to his channel:
This is truly sad, because it means that basically all of the old, creative fans are going to leave WH40K and only those who are just good consumers remain.
GW was never quite right after the Chapterhouse thing about ~15 years ago. Their legal department has always been a bit screwy since then.
That’s also why naming conventions for stuff in GW products have gotten increasingly ridiculous over time. GW can’t copyright or claim “Imperial Guard” or “Stormtroopers” as its own thing, but can with “Astra Militarum” and “Tempestus Scions”, regardless of how stupid and Harry-Potter-ey they may sound. It’s also why tabletop 40k never gets new rules for things anymore unless Games Workshop makes a current model for it, they put out rules for a Tyranid Drop Pod called a Mycetic Spore, but didn’t immediately release a model, Chapterhouse did, and that became a point of contention in the legal proceedings, and so GW killed off the Mycetic Spore and reimagined it as the Tyrannocyte.
As annoying, frustrating, and ludicrous as GW’s pursuit of their copyright can be, and what a meme it has been for a long time (short FlashGitz video on it from 11 years ago), they have every right to do it as a business to protect their IP. They’ll still make tons of money off people no matter how bad their behaviour as a company could be perceived because people go mad for their stuff.
The line about GW killing off the community is one that many people have said over the years. I’ve been saying it since the years of the mad Codex power creep, what, 15 years ago? Then GWs focus had changed - in my opinion - to two demographics:
Children, always have been and will be a core demographic, because if they can get them on board with their products then parents would be buying them stuff for birthdays and Christmas, or the kids buying stuff with their pocket money. I ran more than my fair share of short intro games for children when I worked for GW in the early-00s and got kids into 40k especially.
Meta tournament players. With the seemingly-perpetual Codex creep at that time, such players would get the newest Codex, work out the strongest and most viable option in the surety that this army was more powerful than any of the others as a rule, buy it all, slap three colours onto it, and use it at the next tournament they attend.
Their vociferous defence of their IP is a real bloody kicker when it comes to animators like Janovich. Imperial Armour V: Siege of Vraks (pt 1) remains my favourite GW book - somehow trumping my beloved Mordheim - and I was loving what Janovich was achieving with it. Then GW ruin it for all of us and I don’t blame any of them from turning away from GW’s IPs; it is what GW wants now they have content for Warhammer+. I suppose the canary in the Plastic Mountain mine for all of this was when they got rid of the in-store Mail Order service (or I’m just really nostalgic for it).
