Is Chapter House Dead?

[Denzark]

Evening All.

One of the FB 40K pages is running a thread by a CHS customer who paid months ago, no delivery, no response. The CHS FB page has had no update since April.

The discussion (40K for grown ups) makes the situation sound exactly like when Maelstrom Games went down, taking orders and not fulfilling.

Anyone got any ideas?

[Mr Mystery]

Their website is still up, but they don't seem to have produced anything new for a while, so far as I can see.

[CoffeeGrunt]

Yeah, there was a big fanfare when they 'won' the case against GW, but then nothing after that. Very glad I didn't buy some bitz I was debating from there.

[Charon]

Hardly surprising as GW worked hard to freeze their assets for the time beeing. That does crush small businesses no matter if they win or no. That is why big companies can basically blackmail smaller companies into submission because even if the small business has a perfectly winnable case, it will go bankrupt over the course of the trial.

[Mr Mystery]

Then don't give the big boys reasons enough to sue you, and have your assets frozen?

But of course, GW = BADIRTY. Everyone else = sweetlysaints....

[CoffeeGrunt]

Yeah, Chapterhouse made a deliberate thing out of challenging GW's IP, and if that happens, you either contest it or lose it.

I buy more from third party sellers than GW themselves these days, but places like Puppetswar, Maxmini and Victoria know not to be moronic and directly challenge a larger company just for the sake of naming your minis Space Marines rather than Astral Warriors or some other different-enough name that no-one has to bother.

You'll notice there's plenty of third party companies ripping GW's designs or at least making stuff intended to replace their minis within GW's game system that GW haven't sued. It's not like those companies are hard to find, either.

[Erik Setzer]

Then don't give the big boys reasons enough to sue you, and have your assets frozen?

But of course, GW = BADIRTY. Everyone else = sweetlysaints....

Well, to be fair, GW has a bad history with this kind of stuff, like when they threatened to sue fan sites over using art (like what BoLS does all the time) at the same time as they were featuring links to (with screenshots of) websites that used said art, creating a double-standard. Their legal department has always been pretty ridiculous.

It's also strange that GW never went after these other companies. Kromlech's bits are clearly made to go with GW products. There's a company featured on BoLS all the time that makes blatant Chaos models and upgrades. Other manufacturers make stuff specifically to fit on GW models, or even whole models to fit into GW armies (some with disturbing results, like the one Tau "sniper"... if you've seen it, you know the one I mean).

[Defenestratus]

Then don't give the big boys reasons enough to sue you, and have your assets frozen?

But of course, GW = BADIRTY. Everyone else = sweetlysaints....

Sorry Mr Mystery but this is a traditional tactic of bigger businesses all over the place. Specifically in America. It's called "Lawfare". My dear sweet father, Defenestratus Sr. has been going through this personally.

He has a commercial painting franchise who did some work for a notable large chain that rhymes with "Stall-Fart". Well into the 5-digit invoice. Dad's business met the conditions for fulfillment of the contract - yet the chain store never paid. Defenestratus Sr. decided whether to take them to court and decided that it wasn't worth it since the lawyers fees would outweigh the monies he'd receive from any judgement.

"Stall-fart" knew this, and thus is the reason why they didn't pay up.

Defenestratus Sr. is now in the process of trying to sell the business franchise to a new owner, and re-entering the workforce at the age of 67.