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
- The take: GW’s DMCA hit on Warhammer Tabletop Simulator’s two biggest mods may be legal, but it’s a goodwill burn the brand really doesn’t need right now.
- The evidence: Force Org and Hutber’s Map Base getting wiped follows a long GW pattern of cracking down on forums, fan animators, YouTube creators, and now online play tools. Each takedown makes the workaround harder for new players to find, not impossible.
- What changes if we’re right: GW keeps trading short-term IP wins for long-term goodwill, and goodwill is the part of the balance sheet that hobbyists are getting stingier with every time the brand picks revenue protection over community support.
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 meanwhile, are already privatizing 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 importantly, we’re still buying the new sets because we actually like the game. Buying proxies didn’t replace us as customers; it just let us get more value from what we were already 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 shown 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 its 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?
FYI the owner of their discord server was a far right grifter, openly homophobic and mysoginistic and tried profitting off of the server, that’s why so much action was taken against his server.
Yep that seems to be the consensious from the community on the issue there.
They also used AI moderation during their live announcement to send out warnings for using the words hutber and forceorg. They know. They just aren’t giving TTS and the community the respect they deserve. Once again acting as though they are too big to fail. When they strike at the community like this I move to only purchasing used, proxies, or recasts. I’ll continue to speak out with my wallet.
These comments defending gw are absurd. The article isnt debating the right gw has, its debating whether they should. Tts was 100% making them money in the long run. Just in my personal area roughly 100 people play and roughly 85% of them use tts but still buy actual models. We just like testing before we bought OVER PRICED plastic. I refuse to give gw anymore money between them leaving 10e in a terrible spot just to make more money from codexes in 11th and them pulling crap like this. Its pure greed, nothing else.
GW is nothing without their IP and things lile TTS are infringing on that. If they don’t get them struck down then they can effectively lose their IP ownership and rights. Example: If someone brings out a blatant copy that party will point to the long running unlicensed like TTS mods and say well GW hasn’t stopped them so why are they stopping us. GW doesn’t have a choice and I think the community needs to remember we dont have a god given right to access GW IP in the way that suits us, it’s their stuff and they get to make the rules. If we don’t like it make it known with your wallet and go to another gaming system.
This has literally happened for every edition. It will be back in a few weeks once GW has demonstrated they protected their copyright. Can you guys stop bitching and whining for two seconds and put out actual articles instead of clickbait doom and gloom?
I have to disagree about the impact. I’ve been aware of 40K since the early 90’s. I’ve painted thousands of models at this point. I’ve never touched this thing and never considered it to buy an army. It is anecdotal to speculate the hobby community is using this as a conduit unless you can extrapolate numbers.
I think if anything the meta chasers and tournament players are annoyed because they can’t exploit a codex or update in a couple of hours.
GW are well within there rights to enforce their IP, you comment that being right and being smart aren’t always the same thing, but that’s where your wrong, for a company like GW, that’s is built almost completely on its IP attempting to enforce it when ever possible is the smart thing whether it succeeds or not, to not pursue it, would only invite more attempts to violate and profit of it, in this case 1:1 simulation of tt game without permissions, constitutes as violation of their IP, this kind of setup would impact sales, as it gives people a way to play the game without needing to spend money, thus degrading GW as a company, why do you think all previous computer games have stayed away from 1:1 simulations, because it would cannablize GW sales, and as far as I’m aware, and correct me if I’m wrong, but I not heard of dmcas for warhammer conversion mods for other games, and probably why, is because they aren’t replicating the tt games 1 :1
Maybe don’t try to make money off other companies IP. Or get a license, like every other legitimate business does.
TTS is a platform for numerous games. Community members create free add-ons within this framework. They aren’t making money, they’re contributing to the popularity of game. It’s free publicity.