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Whoops, I smell some company getting a truckload of shit at their doorsteps pretty soon…

A copyright row means that one of the most ambitious fan films ever made may never be shown before an audience.

One of the things today’s company people should’ve learned is that you don’t wanna be asshole to your fans. Never. Ever. Because no matter how big a company you are, you don’t want to end up in the same shithole as Metallica and others who’ve gotten the undivided hatered of the Internet folk on them, lost their believeability and will only be rememberd as the assholes who hate their fans by the generations to come.

It seems Games Workshop, the publisher of Warhammer, is desperately wanting to hop on the same ship, although they are hoping to push the blame on somebody else. GW is pretty well known for their tremendous work they’ve done on creating the world of Warhammer - first in board game format, later in tabletop RPG and then immortalized in a computer game. The world has meant a lot to roleplayers around the world, who’ve been writing and playing adventures to the setting since ‘83.

So it’s not a wonder somebody might want to make a film set in the world of Warhammer, not at least nowadays, when it’s actually possible. Well, the lawyers down at GW say something cryptic about German copyright laws and deny the fan film, after it’s been filmed, spent tousands of dollars on it and almost being released. Although I can understand that it’s not easy to cope with copyright laws, I smell shat pants… To quote the aural equivalent of Warhammer, Manowar - wimps and losers, leave the hall!

Ok, it’s not like I’ve been waiting for this film - called Damnatus - but I’ve been following them distantly and would’ve really like to see the film once finished. What I’m more angry than the crap GW is giving to these individual filmmakers is that this is a clear message to all the paranoid IP owners around the world to start shitting their collective pants and start banning the healthy and ever-growing fan film culture born on the Internet - which nowadays in many cases is the only one really nurturing and treating rightfully the IPs!

I feel GW is gonna have a nice little hatestorm coming their way, and I certainly hope they’ll re-think the case. If a person does a fan film set in a RPG world - which has been turned into hundreds, even thousands of fan-made adventure, unofficial world appendixes and everything, not to mention the hundreds of thousands of adventures, hundreds of live RPGs, tousands of dioramas… well, you get the picture - it will not spoil the IP and GW won’t lose trademark, I’m quite sure.

You may read the whole story on BBC.