GW’s Goes To War With its Online Community Again Over Tabletop Simulator

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Tabletop Simulator just lost Force Org and Hutber’s Map Base to GW DMCA takedowns, and this feels like the kind of goodwill burn Games Workshop really can’t afford right now.

Sure, Games Workshop is legally within its rights here. Nobody’s arguing that. But being right and making the smart move aren’t always the same thing, and this one feels like another swing at the fans who keep the Warhammer hobby moving in their spare time.

Tabletop Simulator Takedowns Are a Self-Inflicted Wound 

These mods basically WERE 40k on Tabletop Simulator, Force Org for army importing, and Hutber’s Map Base for scoring and measurement, both took DMCA hits. Valve had to comply, so the mods are gone or on the way out (but Force Org is defiantly already back though, and Hutber is also rumored to be “findable” as well.) Other TTS modders mneanwhile, are already privating their own work to avoid getting caught in the blast radius.

This is the same kind of playbook we covered when the 40k TTS Discord server got nuked and when GW went after Warhammer creators on YouTube. Plus, the big $10 million global seller takedown last year was the corporate version of that same instinct.

We said back in 2020 that GW tries to copyright everything, especially when there is a buck or two to be made, and that pattern hasn’t exactly slowed down.

Wizards of the Coast Figured This Out. GW Keeps Picking the Other Playbook

The easiest comparison here is Magic: The Gathering, and it’s been hard not to think about it all week. Wizards of the Coast still swings hard at early leaks and spoiler dumps on YouTube. But for the most part, they leave deckbuilders, proxy communities, and playtest tools alone. We think it’s because they figured out something pretty useful about their own customer base: those players are still buying product.

Here at Spikey Bits we have been buying proxy Magic cards for years. We don’t proxy cards we don’t already own, which is just our house rule, not some grand moral stance. But in Commander, where you only need one copy of a card to legally run it, proxies often replace the repeat purchase, not the first one.

So, more importaly we’re still buying the new sets because we actually like the game. Buying proxies didn’t replace us as customer, it just let us get more value from what we already we’re doing.

That same dynamic was happening inside Tabletop Simulator. Not every TTS player was going to build a 2,000-point army. But plenty of “digital” players have bought their first paints, their first Combat Patrol, or their first codex after an evening of pushing virtual models around online.

That $20 Steam purchase turned into a few hundred dollars of plastic for a meaningful number of new hobbyists, and now GW just made that gateway into the Warhammer Hobby even harder to find.

TTS Was the Cheapest Customer Funnel GW Will Ever Get

So yeah, that $20 copy of Tabletop Simulator was doing perhaps the most free marketing for the Warhammer brand, and we’d guess GW either doesn’t know it or has decided revenue protection beats sales funnel-building this quarter. They seem to have also forgotten about the TTS golden age during COVID that gave casual and competitive players a way to keep playing 40k when nothing else was even open. A lot of those players have even showed up at events, local stores, and on Best Coast Pairings since then.

Some of them only stuck with the hobby during COVID because TTS bridged the gap, and even more got into the hobby because of it.

The competitive cycle’s loss of value here is even worse for GW. Iterating an army list digitally before dropping $200 on a single new kit is exactly the kind of stress test that turns “maybe I’ll try this detachment” into “I’m buying the codex and that new Battleforce.” Kill that loop, and you don’t magically make those players buy more plastic, you just make them stick with what they already own.

Or play a different miniature game. Or even 3D-print the next thing they want to test instead of paying retail.

We’ve been around long enough to remember the 2010s, when GW tried to copyright “space marine” and the BBC picked up the story by the next afternoon. The boycotts that followed didn’t really do much, but what eventually moved the needle was GW updating their IP guidelines after enough community pressure finally registered.

None of that history makes this look like a company that has learned to leave free customer-acquisition infrastructure alone.

Final Thoughts on Warhammer Tabletop Simulator and What Comes Next

This story isn’t going to vanish quickly or quietly for Games Workshop we don’t think. The TTS community has adapted to GW takedowns before by moving mod files off Steam Workshop and onto anonymous third-party hosts, and the same playbook will probably run again (and by the time this article was published it appears it already has).

New players will have a harder time finding the front door into the hobby from the digital side, sure, while the people already deep in the hobby will figure it out fast enough. Either way, that’s the call GW just made.

The bigger problem is goodwill, and goodwill is a lot harder to track on a P&L than a legal win. Many hobbyists already see these moves as GW putting revenue protection ahead of community support, and the longer that perception hardens, the harder it gets to undo.

We’d rather see GW spend the next quarter figuring out which fan-made tools actually convert players and which ones genuinely cannibalize sales, because right now it just looks like they’re swinging at everything that has a dollar sign attached to it for 11th edition.

And we think they’ll wish they hadn’t the next time they need the community to show up for a big new reveal or edition relaunch.

🔗 Related Reads:

• Warhammer 40k TTS Discord Server Gets Nuked
• GW Strikes More Warhammer 40k Creators On YouTube
• Editorial: GW Tries to Copyright Everything
• GW Freezes Assets Amid Global Seller Takedown
• News of the GW ‘Fan Revolt’ Has Hit Wall Street
• How To Play Warhammer Over The Internet
• Hobbyists Are Reconnecting With Games Workshop

What do you think of Games Workshop hitting Warhammer Tabletop Simulator with DMCA takedowns?

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