This is one of many abandoned babies from the DMfiat.com days. I wrote a satirical news column for the site called “Loaded 20” – I was basically the Andy Borowitz of one of the most popular gaming-themed websites on the internet at the time. Sadly, the site isn’t around anymore. But I held on to all the fake news articles I wrote for posterity.
Enjoy.
BALTIMORE, MD – It started with Paris Hilton trademarking the phrase “That’s Hot” and robbing the common people of the ability to describe anything above room temperature. Soon after, Kim Kardashian gained the legal right to force royalty payments from any female with a posterior wider than 39″. Now, it’s Games Workshop’s turn.
In an entirely moral and financially-driven campaign to eliminate free-use content from the public space, Games Workshop recently filed to legally trademark the phrase “Space Marine”. Now they are enforcing that claim by requesting major websites and online retailers to remove any and all creative content mentioning their money-making astronomical soldiers from the internet.
The term was originally born into existence in 1932 by science fiction writer Bob Olsen who foolishly failed to lay claim to the trope at the time. Since then, Space Marines have been thrown around, left and right, in a disgusting display of creative expression within the science fiction world. But it was the ingenious business acumen and innovation of Rick Priestley in 1987 which moulded space marines into the hugely popular commercial success that they are today.
The latest self-professed “victim” in Games Workshop’s admirable campaign to amass corporate wealth is writer M.C.A. Hogarth, author of Spots the Space Marine, a novel which seems to be about a dog who wants to join the Galactic Military (we think). The author has stirred up some controversy recently regarding Amazon’s wise and thoughtful decision to remove her e-book from their virtual store at Games Workshop’s request.
“When Amazon voluntarily complied, without showing any semblance of a spine or bothering us with expensive legal trouble, we were thrilled,” reports one Games Workshop employee and fellow supporter of stifling creative expression. “The fight to eliminate free-use material really needed one in the ‘W’ column after Disney was forced to retract their atempted trademark of ‘SEAL Team 6’. When Amazon caved, it was a huge win for us.”
Naturally, Games Workshop’s success over one self-published ebook writer has emboldened them to move forward with more ambitious endeavors. Fans of Starship Troopers, the Halo franchise, and Doom can look forward to forking over their “hard-earned” dollars to the deserving corporate executives and their very, very expensive lawyers in the near future.
Following these recent developments, Paul Zaentz reportedly tweeted “How does it feel to be on our side now, Mr. Livingston? Feels good, doesn’t it?” For some reason, his sentiments received a surprising flood of criticism from thousands of common and unimportant twitter users.