Girl Gamer

Games Workshop Targets Curse

By Joylia 1 year, 9 months ago • 2 Comments

It was reported on May 7th, 2010, that an official complaint had been filed by Games Workshop against Curse on March 31st, 2010.

The extent of the legal allegations can be viewed here. (Link to Complaint: ) To sum it up, the charge seems to be over the use of the trademarked Warhammer name found in Curse’s Warhammer Alliance and url (www.warhammeralliance.com). The legal claim also says that Games Workshop was unable to contact Curse to resolve the matter, despite the obvious contact links provided on Warhammer Alliance.

Fans of both Warhammer and Curse took to various forums and most seemed to have the same opinion. This is unbelievable, astounding….crap.

Warhammer Alliance has been up and running just about as long as the Warhammer Online community itself. As stated on Arksark.org by Arkenor

“There are some obvious flaws in the lawsuit. It claims that the domain was registered in 2009 with the intent of cybersquatting, but a whois check clearly shows that the domain was registered in 2004.”

Arkenor continues on, bringing to light some other interesting facts and points in regards to this situation that were perfectly articulated and outlined and that I chose to share with GirlGamer’s readers:

[Begin quote] In this post Mark Jacobs, producer of Warhammer Online, laid out why there would be no official forums. Oh, and he posted it ON WARHAMMER ALLIANCE. IN 2008.:

“That’s why I don’t want to have official forums. Whether it was SOE, Blizzard or us, official or semi-official forums are exactly like I described above for every successful MMORPG that I have played or watched from afar (and that is most of them). The unsuccessful ones were even worse. The problem is that most people who read the boards are looking for information and a reasonable number of people want to cause trouble, “grief” the forums or simply get their jollies by saying and doing things that they wouldn’t do in real life. As usual, a small percentage of people make life more difficult for everyone else. Back when games had hundreds of people playing, well, no big deal. We ban those guys and life returns to normal. With millions of subs for WoW and hopefully lots and lots for WAR, well, it becomes much more complicated, difficult and soul-sucking for the devs and the community people. I wouldn’t want anyone to go through what Sanya and I had to go through (and she had it worse since she is a woman and that brought out the worst in some people) in the early days of DAoC. How she and other community managers put up with the kind of name calling, insults, vulgarity, profanity without losing their minds is amazing.”

[End quote]

Warhammer also posted on “their” forums about the legal action taking place between their company and Curse to inform their members of the situation. After a few comments, a Warhammer Admin stepped in:

Warhammer Admin: Andy posted:

Folks,

As this is a legal matter between Games Workshop and Curse we ask that you please refrain discussing this on the official forums.
Thanks.”

Can you guess which side of the coin members of Warhammer were siding with? If you did not want members putting their opinions on your forums about a situation that is controversial, than why did you not lock the forum thread? Or why not add to your statement, what you ended up posting later? Simple. You were expecting a show of “support” to your legal claims and instead ended up inciting the anger of your fans and educating them more about the road of idiocy and greed you chose to take.
I personally checked out the Warhammer Alliance Page and Games Workshop and do not see what the big deal is. They insinuated that people are “confusing” Curse with Warhammer. Not once did that cross my mind. Gamers are not complete idiots as you must seem to think and we can read and have basic deductive reasoning skills.

Overall, I whole-heartedly support Curse and Warhammer Alliance and we at GirlGamer wish the best of luck to them in fighting against these ridiculous allegations.