You may have noticed a significant bump in Warhammer game titles lately, with several new titles releasing within a few months of each other. This includes major game releases like Warhammer: The End Times – Vermintide and Total War: Warhammer, as well as about half a dozen mobile games.

In a recent interview with Gamasutra, Games Workshop head of licensing Jon Gillard explained that one reason for the increase in new Warhammer games is the increase in self-publishing platforms like Steam.

“To be honest we’ve always felt that there could be a lot more games based on our various IPs,” Gillard said. “After all, there’s an awful lot of material from 30+ years of us making games, miniatures, novels etc.”

He added, “It became evident that between Apple/Steam/Google, it was now possible for developers to self-publish, and those kinds of guys had been approaching us for years with great ideas but the mechanisms weren’t there for them to make it happen.”

According to Gillard, Games Workshop is frequently approached by developers with ideas for Warhammer or Warhammer 40,000 games, but the company specifically looks for “a win/win partnership.” “There should be recognition of the risk and reward for both parties,” he said.

“The main things we look for are: is it a good idea? Is it a good use of whichever bit of the IP it’s using? Is it too similar to anything else were already doing? Does it have a sound commercial idea behind it, a good business model that shows a real financial benefit for us? What’s the pedigree of the team, do they have a good track record with the sort of game they’re proposing, either as company or individuals? That sort of stuff.”

Gillard did not expand on how Games Workshop’s licensing works, but he said that the company uses a wide variety of deals depending on the individual projects and partners, ranging from “profit-share style deals with no guarantees through to broader–but not total–rights deals with the more traditional licensing terms.”

Image courtesy of Creative Assembly Ltd