Once again Arch has placed himself back in the spotlight, only one month after his racist outbursts, and three years after he attacked Spikey Bits directly.
Back in 2017 we published an editorial that basically said that GW should police the hobby for individuals that were toxic, bullied others, or were just plain cheats. Just a few months later in July 2018, the ITC started their floor rules system because of bad conduct at Warhammer 40k events, and now Arch finds himself in GW’s crosshairs.
Editor’s Note: In an earlier version of this article we mistakenly referred to Arch as a Swede. We apologize for that mistake, and to the Swedes as well.
According to Arch, Games Workshop has forced him to remove “Warhammer” from his channel name. One of GW’s cross-promotion partners has also publicly apologized for collaborating with him.
Based on their public statement, World of Wargaming feels they made a mistake in choosing to work with Arch, in the cross-promotion. The statement came out around the same that GW notified Google/YouTube about their issues with the “Warhammer” part of his channel name.
We are inferring this as no content seems to have been targeted by this notification.
Some content does seem to be disappearing from Arch’s channel for an entirely different reason. Content has been disappearing from his channel amid alleged racist comments from Arch and his mods in his Discord channel back in June. Whether this was Arch himself or YouTube cleaning things up a bit themselves, is unknown at this time.
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What Might It All Mean For Arch?
Well in a nutshell like one of my good friends said “being a pariah does not make you immune to the penalties of breaking the rules”.
The thing about free speech is you’re free to say and do what you want, but that doesn’t mean you’re free from consequences…
I think some of the comments from the World of Warships Reddit thread really bring this into perspective for anyone not understanding why Arch is being “prosecuted for free-speech”
Saying shitbird things on Youtube is NOT protected. If a company doesn’t want you being associated with their IP, they are free to pursue any and all legal paths to protect their IP from you.
Another commenter had this to say:
It is interesting that he goes on a 14-minute rant about how GW are wrong legally to force him to stop using the Warhammer trademark in his name. However, he does stop using it anyway because legally he knows he has not got a leg to stand on. Also, he cannot use the IP for games workshop including artwork images, site, etc that is all.
Due to the fact, there is a line in the fair clause which GW can invoke. In any way which is defamatory, obscene, offensive, hateful, inflammatory, likely to deceive any person, or which infringes the rights of any third party. It is would pretty easy to prove his content is inflammatory and hateful.
While none of this may pertain to why Games Workshop went after the Warhammer usage in Arch’s channel name, it does speak to the content within these videos.
Presumably, Games Workshop felt that the Scandinavian’s use of “Warhammer” in his channel title could cause people to confuse it with the official Warhammer channels. Searching YouTube for “Warhammer” and spot-checking the results shows that no other channel that covers primarily or exclusively 40k content uses the “Warhammer” name in their channel title.
At this time it’s unclear if Games Workshop will go after his Twitter handle, which as of this writing still contains “Warhammer” in the title, but judging by thier actions on YouTube, and their recent Warhammer for Everyone statement, it may not be long before Arch is forced to change that handle too…
The Long War and Spikey Bits team are all about creating a hobby safe place, and if you experience, or see, anything on any of our platforms that you feel should be addressed, reach out to us. It will be taken care of in a timely manner if we haven’t already taken care of it already.
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What do you think about the latest episode in the saga of Arch?
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