Warhammer 40K-Inspired FTL Mash-Up Removed From Steam After Seemingly Bogus DMCA Takedown

FTL-but-make-it-40K strategy roguelite Void War has been delisted from Steam for a very strange reason. The removal of the game from Valve’s store (thanks IGN) occurred after a DMCA takedown was purportedly sent by Warhammer owners Games Workshop. Except it appears to have been written by Firefly‘s cowboy captain Mal Reynolds, who doesn’t work for Games Workshop on account of being a fictional character.

It’s fair to say that Void War is not the most innovative of games. Very much inspired by 2012’s FTL, but delivered through the aesthetic (and a fair amount of the IP) of Warhammer 40,000, it’s the sort of indie project for which the word “derivative” was invented. Also, that sounds like a completely brilliant idea and I want to play it. Except right now I can’t do that via Steam, where the game’s store page has been removed. (It’s still available via Itch, and ridiculously enough that comes with a Steam key that players are reporting still adds the game to your account.) According to the indie game’s developers, Tundra, this has happened because of a DMCA notice sent to Valve from Games Workshop over copyright infringement claims. Except, Tundra received no such communications from GW, and as parenthetically mentioned, the game remains available on Itch. So what’s going on?

Tundra says that Valve’s evidence for the complaint from GW is “Games Workshop’s public-facing infringements inbox and the name ‘Mal Reynolds’.” The studio’s statement continues,

“We have not gotten any response from GW when we emailed that inbox. So right now we can’t independently verify who submitted it beyond what’s in the notice.

We’re proceeding through the standard DMCA process to get the page back up, and we’ll post updates as soon as we have confirmed info.”

Imperium Takedown

Now, Games Workshop is not shy about issuing DMCA notifications, with some alleging this is performed by a third-party company’s AI scouring the net for anything that might violate the company’s copyrights. Given the small scale of Void War, there’s a good chance it only survived this long because GW didn’t know about it, and it’s not impossible to imagine that this bogus takedown could result in the Warhammer corp turning its sights on the game. Heck, the owner of the Imperium also asks its own customers to snitch on copyright violations:

© Games Workshop / Kotaku

We’ve contacted Games Workshop to ask if the company has been involved at all, and indeed whether it currently employs space pirate Mal Reynolds to issue such takedowns. (Which would be a devastating fall for the once-proud rebel.)