GW starting shutting down fanbased games?

[juergen]

While stumbling accross the Cyanide forums I read a thread about a Vassal BB Module where the last post states

Sadly GW closed down our site before we got to finish VassalBowl properly.

I tried to search for more information and found a link to www.vassal40k.com/the-end-has-come/ which isn't available anymore (not even through web.archive.org

Then I headed to fumbbl and found them in maintainance mode.

Anyone knows more about this? Is GW really starting swinging their hammer at us? With all respect to VassalBB, but AFIK nothing there was automated. When I think what JavaBB, the new LRB5 client, Botocs can do I start fearing the worst.

Whats with alle the team creators/league managers (at least the word skaven is copyrighted)

i am very confused and worried....

[duttydave]

Just logged on to Fumbbl IRC and saw the following announcement:

'Site is down for maintenance. Things should be back up and running tuesday at around 20:00 (hopefully or as soon as Christer gets online)'

Hopefully nothing too sinister to worry about.

[juergen]

yeah, i also hope its just a coincidence that I found this message at the same time fumbbl is down.

[Darkson]

The Vassalbowl people were pretty stupid imo, going to the Cyanide forums and plugging an alternative to the official game. Not saying it was the only reason it was shut down, but it probably didn't help their cause in any way.

As for FUMBBL, as many have said before, the website is just a (extremely large) database for games played using the java tool. They can (try) to shut down javabowl, but if they try to shut down FUMBBL, they'll (in theory) have to shut down all the other league sites out there.

[juergen]

As for FUMBBL, as many have said before, the website is just a (extremely large) database for games played using the java tool.

I know and I told other people the same. Guess I was to fast in typing since fumbbl somehow needs a client to run the games, so if they would start shutting fanbased clients down then what games would fumbbl show?

[Darkson]

Ironically, if I go to any GW page, I get this:

We are currently performing maintenance on our web site. Please check back at a later time. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.

Thank you for your patience.

Perhaps Cyanide/Focus have shut GW down as well?

[Angeblich]

If it really would come to problems with league-sites using "GW-material" - would it be enough to password-protect your league-site? Would it be a wise move to password-protect your league-site now? Just in case?

[Tim]

Doing it proactively is not required i'd say. Put up the required disclaimer and do not host rulebooks and larger picture collection and i'd say you are not a target- I can not imagine GW hunting smaller league sites.

Our league site uses the race logos and a banner and that's it. If i ever should be targeted by GW, i'll just put the whole site behind the coach logon.