Popular 3D upgrade bits site Pop Goes the Monkey has just had hundreds of items purged from their Shapeways store allegedly courtesy of Games Workshop.
Shapeways, for those who don’t already know, is a high end 3D printing company that allows users to create their own Marketplace where they designers can upload their own 3D files for others to purchase 3D printed items. Pop Goes the Monkey is probably the most popular Warhammer Marketplaces on Shapeways, and now, without warning, they have had hundreds of items purged from their web store.
Latest count is 302 items taken down from @shapeways today. Many are confusing. No official word yet for Shapeways just 362 separate emails
Shapeways has a very strict copyright policy, and any company that feels someone is infringing on their copyright can submit a take down request.
Ultimately this is probably what Games Workshop did with a lot of Pop Goes the Monkey’s designs (seemingly line by line).
As specified in our Terms & Conditions, we expect that the creator of a 3D design hold the copyrights to the content. Hence, please only upload your own original work, work that is freely available through a Creative Commons license, or work that does not infringe on the rights of another copyright holder.
If it was their doing, this isn’t the first we’ve seen Games Workshop going after people for copyright infringement, and it’s most likely not going to be the last.
With over 1,000 designs still available on Shapeways, even after the purge, there’s still plenty of items available to upgrade your miniatures. So, make sure you head on over to Pop Goes the Monkey‘s Shapeways Marketplace and get those orders in before anything else gets taken down.
We’d really like to know what you have to say about the recent purge of Pop Goes the Monkey’s web store, both the claimed “infiniged” items as well as the custom designs themselves.
