An official post on the LEGO Ideas blog has provided updated guidelines for fan submissions, terms of services, and house rules. The two biggest changes are a 3,000 piece, single-box limit for all creations, as well as a new rule for third-party licences. Once LEGO accepts and produces an Ideas set based on another company’s property, no other Ideas submission from that property will be accepted.

While that may sound like bad news (like we won’t get an EVE to go along with 21303 WALL-E, it may not be. This may lead to LEGO adopting the licence to create new sets, just like it did with Minecraft and Ghostbusters.

The changes are listed below:

• Once we produce a LEGO Ideas set based on a third-party property, we will not accept more Ideas submissions based on that property. This sharpens our guideline on follow-up products based on LEGO Ideas submissions. Once we approve a licensed project for production through LEGO Ideas, we’ll archive other projects based on the same property and not accept new submissions based on the that property.
• Projects must fit in a single product box, so we’re setting a part count limit of 3,000 pcs.While we can’t count the pieces in your photos, if your model looks too big we’ll send it back and ask you to submit a smaller model at our own discretion.
• Projects must focus on a single concept or third-party property. This essentially expands on the “no playthemes or series” rule and also rules out “mass customization” projects (e.g. custom mosaic or minifigure makers) as well as combining more than one third-party property into a single project. (e.g. a project containing both Porsche and Ferrari cars).
• It’s now simpler to collaborate on projects. We’ve removed the requirement to email us declaring your collaboration. You must still receive explicit permission from someone else before including their original work in your project. All new collaborative projects must mention collaborators’ LEGO Ideas usernames in the description, and state that their original work is included with the member’s explicit permission.
• New restrictions on project contents
  • No iconic elements referencing third-party properties we find inappropriate for the LEGO brand
  • No large or human-scale weapons or weapon replicas of any kind, including swords, knives, guns, sci-fi or fantasy blasters, etc.
  • Projects may not propose LEGO Dimensions expansion packs
  • You may only use logos that belong to third-parties in the context of your model, similar to LEGO logo guidelines. You may not display logos that do not belong to you in your artwork, since this can imply endorsement from the logo owner.
• New guidelines to help improve project descriptions
  • At minimum, please write your description to include a description of your model, why you built it, and why you believe it would make a great LEGO set.
  • In some cases, moderators may make basic grammatical changes on your behalf so we can speed up the approval of your project. We will never change the nature of your project and we’ll notify you by email if we make any changes.
• Terms of Service now preserves projects that gain a significant following. While we understand you may occasionally want to delete a project with only a handful of supporters, to either re-submit with improvements or clean up your project portfolio, once a project reaches 1,000 supporters it will not be removed.
• Terms of Service revises language regarding assignment of rights. We’ve worked with our Legal department to clarify how you assign us rights when you submit a project, and reassure you that you may share and publish your submission to promote your project online, in media, your portfolio, and other places for non-commercial purposes.

Read the full announcement here.