How a Games Workshop Copyright Strike Cut My Revenue by About 30 Percent

A copyright strike filed on behalf of Games Workshop against my Warhammer 40K work crippled my YouTube earnings and reach, and it took two weeks of chasing and a threat of court before the strike was withdrawn. I believe the work was defensible under fair use. I'm also done with Games Workshop for good.

On the 18th, in 2026, I received a copyright notice. It wasn't a gentle warning. It was a full copyright strike, the kind that tells you that you broke the law and are being punished. It didn't come from Games Workshop directly. It came from MarkScan, an enforcement company working on its behalf.

The Games Workshop copyright strike hit harder than I first realized

At first, I was concerned but not panicking. It had been a few years since I'd dealt with anything like this, so I didn't fully understand how YouTube had changed its system. What I didn't realize was that behind the scenes, the strike was already hitting my work hard. When I finally worked out the real cost, I was furious. Because of what I see as Games Workshop's enforcement ecosystem, my work wasn't inconvenienced. It was crippled.

The timing could not have been worse. Things had been going well and I was gaining momentum again. I had hired an editor, sponsorships were coming in, and I was even getting invited to Star Trek conventions. Everything was finally moving in the right direction, and that's when it hit. Once I understood what was happening, I was dealing with a mix of fear and an unhealthy amount of rage.

Roughly 30 percent of my revenue disappeared after the strike

I'm not going to give exact dollar amounts, but the percentages show the scale. My revenue dropped roughly 30 percent. A third of everything I was making was gone. Pieces that would normally pull 10,000 to 20,000 views were struggling to hit even 8,000. A few broke through that ceiling, but not many.

Based on everything I could find, when you have a copyright strike, YouTube doesn't fully trust you any longer, so your work doesn't get pushed out the same way. I was suddenly relying almost entirely on people who already followed me, with very few new people coming in. That creates a downward spiral. Fewer new people means fewer new followers, which means less promotion, which means even fewer views, and it keeps feeding itself.

The part that bothered me most was that it wasn't only hitting me. I had brought on an editor to make my work better, more consistent and more professional. If I'm making less money, I can't pay him the same, or I can't use him at all. Someone else was losing an opportunity because of something he had nothing to do with, and I don't have a word for what that felt like.

Why I believe my Warhammer 40K work was defensible under fair use

None of this matters if the strike is legitimate, so here is a simplified version of copyright and fair use. When you create something in the US, you own it, and no one else can take your work and make money off it as if it were theirs. The US also has the DMCA. As I understand it, anyone who files a copyright takedown on YouTube is agreeing to operate under US federal law. It doesn't matter that Games Workshop is based in the United Kingdom or that it uses a third party out of India. If they want the work to stay down, they have to be willing to take me to court in the United States.

People get confused about fair use. It isn't a free pass. Every time you use someone else's work, you are technically infringing copyright, so the question is whether you are the exception. "Fair use is a defense. It's not a right." It's me saying yes, I used your work, I'm allowed to, and I made something different. I've taken film classes and studied this outside of them too, so I'm not coming into it blind.

I'm not a lawyer, but in my opinion the work was defensible. I broke the material down, added context and used title cards. I talked more than I played clips, and I didn't play the original in its entirety, so anyone who saw my piece did not get the same experience as the original. I did make mistakes. Some audio clips played all the way through, some dialogue got to finish, and certain key moments ran longer than they probably should have. I did that to analyze them, not to show them off, but that doesn't mean it wouldn't be used against me.

Do I think I would have won? Absolutely. Do I think they would have made me answer for those clips in court? Also absolutely. It would have been a real fight over time, money and PR. Even if they won, which I don't think they would have, they'd be pouring resources into something that would only give them bad PR, because I would have been talking about it constantly, after letting my lawyers review it first. They would have gotten no real return.

Two weeks of silence from MarkScan and Games Workshop

The reason I'm angry is that none of this had to happen, because I tried to talk to them first. On the 18th, I sent a response email to MarkScan, the company that issued the strike. I got nothing back: no response and no acknowledgement. On the 20th, I escalated and emailed Games Workshop directly, copying MarkScan, as I did on every email I sent. MarkScan never responded to any of them.

To Games Workshop's credit, I did get a reply. They said, "We'll forward this to our enforcement team." After that, there was silence: no follow up, no updates and no resolution. Seven days went by, and the damage kept getting worse. So I bought an international plan for my phone and called the United Kingdom office directly. For my trouble and the extra cost, I was told there was nothing they could do. It was still customer service, or someone pretending to be.

On the 30th, I stopped playing nice. I found every email address I could connected to Games Workshop, including Black Library, and sent one simple message: if I didn't hear back in 24 hours, I would file a counter notification, and we would be doing this in court. After two weeks of silence, they finally responded and said they would remove the strike. Within an hour, it was gone.

That didn't fix anything, at least not immediately. The damage was done. I won't get that money back unless I take them to court, and that would cost more than I lost. The algorithm doesn't reset and apologize. It has to relearn my work and my audience and figure out who to show it to again. At the time I wrote this, I was still dealing with that fallout.

What creators are reporting about MarkScan

MarkScan is an India based digital enforcement company. Its job is to find content online, flag it and take it down on behalf of whoever it represents. On paper, that sounds normal, and many companies outsource enforcement like this. But across YouTube, Reddit and creator communities, there are many reports about how MarkScan operates. I'm not stating these as fact. I'm telling you what is being reported, and what I experienced.

Creators have reported strikes that seem overly aggressive, claims that don't clearly explain what was infringed, and a consistent lack of communication. That last one was exactly my experience. It isn't one or two people, either: multiple creators across different types of content are reporting the same thing. In some cases, creators reportedly faced deletion entirely before they could get a proper response, and some have questioned whether MarkScan had the authority to act for the companies it claimed to represent.

To be clear, I'm not saying MarkScan lacks that authority. What I am saying is that from the outside, there is very little transparency. Combine that with automated enforcement, minimal communication and platforms like YouTube acting on claims immediately, and you get a system where a third party can hit your work and you don't get a conversation until you threaten legal action. In my case, that is exactly what happened, and what bothers me is not only that it happened, but that it worked like that.

The chilling effect reaches far beyond my case

It sounds cliché, but this is bigger than me. It's happening to creators all over the internet, and I think the problem everyone is missing is the chilling effect. Companies don't have to win in court. They only have to make it painful enough that you don't want to deal with it. So people stop talking about the things they love and stop creating. Once that happens, it's a very short step to people being too afraid to call out these same companies when they mistreat people.

If you want my opinion, you fight. Not blindly or stupidly, but if you believe something is wrong, stand up. Talk to a lawyer, understand your position, and when you're ready, make it clear you won't roll over. I'm not giving legal advice, but "bullies do not stop until someone tells them no." If this happens to you, talk about it loudly, because silence is what lets it keep happening. You can try talking to the companies. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. If they won't talk to you, talk to everyone else.

Why I will never work with Games Workshop again

I'm changing how I make my content, and that change is already happening. I will never work with Games Workshop again. I'm angry about the situation, but that decision isn't anger. It's a business decision. "I'd rather work with companies that support creators, not ones that tear them down."

I have a few commissions left specifically for Games Workshop, but they will be delivered privately and I won't publish them anywhere myself. If the person who commissioned them wants to show them, they can. Beyond that, you won't see Games Workshop content from me anywhere I'm involved. They could not pay me enough to make content for them, and I will not work with companies like that.