Void War, an indie roguelike videogame with top-down ship battles similar to FTL and grimdark aesthetics close to Warhammer 40,000, has been removed from Steam as a result of a DMCA takedown request, according to its creator. “We were right about to release the next content update when the DMCA notice hit”, designer Morph tells Wargamer, adding “Frankly we are just annoyed that we have to delay the update, potentially by several weeks or however long it takes for the standard DMCA counter notice process to resolve”.
Void War has such excellent grimdark vibes that we put it into the ‘honorary’ section of our guide to the best Warhammer 40k games – games that we think Warhammer 40k fans will love that have no actual connection to 40k or Games Workshop. Void War’s galaxy riffs on similar themes to 40k, with warped cults, a failing space empire, space magic, and daemons.
Writing in the game’s Discord server on January 23, Morph writes “Valve pulled Void War’s Steam page after a DMCA notice that says Games Workshop is claiming copyright infringement”. But “We have not received any other communication from Games Workshop, and the only claimant information Valve has provided is Games Workshop’s public-facing infringements inbox and the name ‘Mal Reynolds'” – the fictional captain of the spaceship Serenity in the TV series Firefly.
Morph adds that “We have not gotten any response from GW when we emailed that inbox”, and so “Right now we can’t independently verify who submitted it beyond what’s in the notice” – they’re not entirely certain if this was indeed an action by Games Workshop, or a hoax. Wargamer has reached out to Games Workshop for comment, and will update this article if we receive a response.
“We still haven’t been able to verify the claimant’s identity and given the circumstances it seems plausible we’ll never know”, Morph tells Wargamer. “All we can do is wait for the normal DMCA process to run its course”. While that happens, and “With the latest content update complete and ready to ship, we don’t really have anything better to do than to start working on the next one”.
Morph, and the other designers in Tundra studio, have quite a busy roadmap for 2026. “I’m personally looking forward to getting all our localization features ready since our fans have been asking for translations for a long time”, Morph says. “Refactoring all our UI code to support all of those international fonts has taken significantly longer than we expected, but boy does Void War look awesome in other languages”, they continue, adding “Cyrillic text looks especially great”.
As well as multi-language support, Tundra’s plans for 2026 include adding ‘Dungeons’, two new ship hulls, a third variant of the Oblivion class cruiser, a revision to the Shrine system for pledging yourself to different factions and cults, updated Planetary Assaults, new quest packs, new encounters, and the mysterious Karmic Vessel. A packed year!
I haven’t played Void War since I tested it for my early access review because – no joke – I realised it was too addictive for me to play without damaging my sleep. Unlike most roguelikes it starts fairly easy, so you can expect to actually face one of the final bosses before you’ve exhausted all the early game content. That in turn means there’s still lots of fresh content to engage with on your subsequent runs as you climb through the multiple difficulty tiers, and unlock new ships and strategies.
Oh hell. I’m going to install it again, aren’t I? If you’re a big fan of Void War, FTL, or other life-stealing roguelikes, come and join the support group friendly community in the Wargamer Discord. And for a round up of our best articles every week, make sure you’re subscribed to the Wargamer newsletter!