The War On Warhammer

Nothing is safe from the new cultural Red Guards.

Discontent with making every nook and cranny of society a battlefield of agenda advocacy, radicals have zeroed in on the last wild frontier: gaming. The biggest trophy is the Warhammer universe.

I’ve covered many of these instances already, one that I have come to hold particularly near to heart is Warhammer 40k, and its grimdark future, where there is only war. Warhammer 40k isn't just a video game, it also physically exists as a hobby consisting of piecing together and carefully painting small models that you can use to wage small or large scale table top battles.

I think it’s safe to say that the hobby became more mainstream during the 2020 lockdown. Those who did not necessarily enjoy reading the vast amount of Warhammer lore, nor had the time to play the tabletop game itself, did find it very therapeutic to artistically paint their own figurines how they saw fit.

Warhammer has been popular for a long time before this though, spawning a series of video games based on its universe. Space Marine 2 is the most recent title, and while it launched barely three weeks ago, it’s already massively successful.

The game was made to simply be fun, as said by Space Marine 2 developer and Saber Interactive CEO Matthew Karch:

However, this isn’t the 90’s anymore, and the world is much more sensitive than it once was. On cue the Forever Angry People are predictably angry at Karch for making a game that <checks notes> doesn't … morally preen or push bad messages on gamers? Why must everything be so politically involved, not just with this boogeyman of a “modern audience,” but some of the companies too?

My last piece covered a wide range of topics suffering from this disease, be it Assassin’s Creed or Borderlands, there has been a notable push to make everything over-inclusive to the point where the audience attracted by these stories over the years are the ones purposefully being excluded. Don’t misunderstand, diversity in a game is great, and in some instances I would say it makes them spectacular. But not when it’s forcibly performative. When your universe has a very strict set of rules that have been built up over many years, carefully weaving a world where certain things are set in stone and said stone is tread on by untold millions of people that enjoy the universe for what it is, you disrespect not only the people that came to enjoy it all but also the universe itself when you flip everything on its head for a ‘modern audience.”

I am, of course, talking about the inclusion of women as Custodes in Warhammer 40k.

In the Warhammer 40K universe, there’s a prevailing notion supported by multiple sources that Games Workshop embraces a philosophy of “everything is canon, not everything is true,” and while I can sit and write what has been written over and over about how lore doesn’t support the idea of a female Custode, what is far more important is the precedent it sets for the rest of the universe. And before I continue, don’t write this off simply because this has to do with a fictional game. The point here is that history, lore, the very concept of what is fact versus what isn’t is important whether it’s non-fiction or fiction itself. Ideas and concepts need to be respected, and as of late, these have been ruthlessly challenged for the sake of forced diversity. The very fact these things keep getting changed to fit an agenda that leans only in one direction proves that it’s being done deliberately, and that direction has consistently gone against the fans, and more business specifically, it’s going against the consumers. But if that’s the case, then who is it for? What audience exists that would enjoy the type of game they keep falling to sell?

There was a game, well funded and decently hyped up, that would have checked every box for this “modern audience,” giving them a cornucopia of diversity designed to earn praise all around. This game was Concord, and it failed in such a way that it very well may be the worst game to have ever been made, even surpassing the ancient E.T. game [Dana’s note: I just died at “E.T. being referred to as “ancient.”]

Records show that in the first week of its official launch, it could not even reach a thousand players. Strange, I thought this was exactly what the modern audience would want? This leaves us with two conclusions for why this happened: One, this “modern audience” is such an incredibly small percentage of the population that they have been overrepresented, or two, not even the target audience liked the game. I say that it’s both, with a majority of gamers not falling into these agenda centered audiences — and even the people that these companies predicted would be in that crowd disliked being treated as exotic and abnormal. The exact same thing is happening with Warhammer, with similar decisions coming down from on high, suddenly and without warning, sending shockwaves of disappointment and fear through loyal fans concerned that their favorite series will succumb to the exact same rot plaguing most of our modern media. 

Returning to Warhammer 40k, the push for a female Custode was so fast and abrupt that longtime fans came to understand why the decision was made soon after, with Amazon making a series called ”Tithes,” which faced massive backlash for having a female Custode main character. GamesWorkshop was essentially bought out to break their own lore, so a multinational technology company could make money off of this “modern audience,” the same audience proven to not exist time and time again.

Give me a moment to hammer that point into the ground: The realized concept of a “modern audience” does not exist in any way shape or form. And honestly? I think these massive corporations are fully aware of this, yet choose to fund these ridiculous products simply to ruin all escapism for the average person trying to dodge all of the political stress in the world right now. People don’t play these games to be reminded of the real world, they don’t read these stories to see the same agendas in the real world pushed into their faces in a game’s universe, and they certainly don’t spend their own hard earned money just to be disrespected when asked to accept forced, soulless, performative diversity.

This includes the likes of Henry Cavill, who actually has an entire Custode army.

For those who don’t know, Henry Cavill is a massive fan of Warhammer 40k, and has been since he was a child. In fact I think saying a “massive fan” is a bit of an understatement:

This should give you some insight on how familiar he is with the lore of 40k and how deeply he cares for its preservation. When filming for the “Witcher,” Cavill described how there were a multitude of creative differences between himself and the writers when showing the depths of Geralt’s character. He often felt that what was going on in the show was betraying what the characters would do based off of the books and the games, and playing a character that wasn’t lore-accurate left a bad taste in his mouth. I don’t blame him for this, as I stated before, if you want to shoehorn your way into a live action adaptation of a well established and deeply detailed series of stories, you have no justification to toss the source material just so you can cherry pick what you think looks cool. That doesn’t make people want to watch your series, it makes them hate it, and by extension it makes them dislike you as a creator. I say all of this because we may be seeing something similar in the new 40k live action show being made in partnership between Amazon and GamesWorkshop.

If the female Custode wasn’t bad enough, there is a reported problem with the show production over similar changes. What that means is still up for debate. Some sources say it has to do with the implementation of a female space marine, which contradicts 40k lore even more than the creation of the female Custodes. One can imagine that Cavill is displeased with this, seeing as how he is both acting in the show, and overseeing its execution so that it stays faithful to the original lore of the universe. As of now, the show has a December deadline to finalize what will and will not happen in the show, risking the IP being dropped entirely from Amazon if not met. While this would be incredibly disappointing, true fans note the silver lining here: the story won’t be destroyed to pander to a nonexistent audience that doesn’t love it in the first place.

Cavill is holding the line for a massive front of this culture war, with shareholders like Blackrock and Vanguard funding the battle against not just him, but the long-time fans of Warhammer 40k, the people who played the game faithfully, the players who supported this universe from its humble beginning, who painted their figures over the years, strategized with friends over the tabletop, and immersed themselves digitally in the video-game titles. It will be interesting to see what becomes of the show moving forward, as it could predict not only the the future of 40k but many other aspects of culture that have largely gone undefended, with no one standing up to speak for the talented creators, artists, and designers undermined by corporations bent on waging a Mao-istic war on culture.

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L Grey is a researcher, gamer, and Chapter and Verse contributor.