people at GW did it again :o) instead to be excited for "Dawn of War"
PC game succes they wrote this:
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A Message from Games Workshop about Modding Dawn of War
With the recent release of the Dawn of War mod tools we're excited to
see what you can generate in the coming months. There are plenty of
units, races, and places in the Warhammer 40,000 universe that didn't
make it into Dawn of War, so we expect some great things ahead! These
tools are giving you unprecedented access to the Warhammer 40,000
universe and because of that we have a few rules we need everyone to
follow. Yes, this is the dull legal bit, but our rules are pretty
straightforward.
First of all, you need to read our Intellectual Property policy,
which can be found here:
http://uk.games-
workshop.com/legal/ippolicy.htm. It's a lot of information, but
modders can concentrate on sections 1 and 2 (including the 'Can
Do', 'Can't Do' and 'Specific Examples' parts of section 2). After
you've read it you need to make sure that any project of yours
follows the rules laid out in the policy.
We need an IP policy because the law requires us to make a visible
effort to actively police and protect our rights or risk losing them.
If we lose control of our IP rights then we lose the ability to
create cool, high-quality games – that includes Dawn of War. If (to
take an extreme example) we were to allow people to create a mod that
had players fighting against super-intelligent giant badgers with
their Space Marines it could (hard as it is to believe) lead some
people to think that super-intelligent giant badgers are a normal
feature of the Warhammer 40,000 universe. Sounds pretty harmless, but
if each mod introduced one or two subtly different elements (some
silly, some not), very quickly it can become really hard to tell what
belongs in the 'real' Warhammer 40,000 universe. So, if your mod
contains *any* elements from the Warhammer 40,000 universe, it must
contain *only* elements from that universe. If you want to use the
mod tools to create a game set in an entirely different setting, go
for it. An all-badger no-Warhammer 40,000 mod would be fine by
us...if badgers are your thing.
The other factor that people occasionally find hard to understand is
why we need you to display a disclaimer (look for the 'Example
Disclaimers' link on the left side of the IP Policy page). The
disclaimers are also there to protect Games Workshop's ownership of
the Warhammer 40,000 universe. Ideas, settings, and characters are
all very valuable things and Games Workshop needs to always make sure
that there can be no doubt about who owns the rights to everything
contained in our gaming worlds. By using the appropriate disclaimers
you are helping us to ensure that no one gets confused about who owns
the concept and depiction of Space Marines, Eldar, and everything
else from the Warhammer 40,000 universe.
The last thing we ask is that if you become aware of a mod, website,
or other project that isn't following our policy, please let us know
by emailing Legal_at_.... We'll get in touch and make
sure they read the policy and follow it too.
Thanks for your help. Now go make some great mods!
Erik Mogensen, Licensing Manager
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Ah ah ah, I'm happy to see that with the new Year nothing is changed
in the good old GW world ;)
Received on Tue Jan 11 2005 - 10:19:21 UTC