Gamers Backlash Hits Warhammer 40K and Stellar Blade
The backlash over recent woke gaming moves is massive. The first example is Warhammer 40K, which not only introduced female Custodes to the tabletop game’s lore but told fans who knew better that there were always female Custodes, which was just begging for the deluge of George Orwell invocations they got. The moves Games Workshop, the company that makes Warhammer, made since then, like changing Wikipedia pages so that they allow for the existence of female Custodes and having Discord groups insult and kick out anyone who has a problem with the change, have signaled a hostility towards their customers that was inevitably going to result in a backlash. So far, that has taken the form of cancellations of Warhammer+ subscriptions and threats to boycott Games Workshop. This resulted in Games Workshop’s outgoing chief financial officer selling the bulk of her stock in the company. Now, the official Warhammer YouTube account is having its videos ratioed – all of them. Yellowflash made a video showing this happening:
This is important not just because it’s funny to look at the numbers but because it suggests that the pledges to boycott the game and its company are not empty threats. Warhammer 40K, as Yellowflash points out, is a very niche hobby, one that takes a lot of time and dedication to participate in. Most people are probably not even aware of Warhammer, which means the downvotes to those videos are not “trolls” or whatever other boogeyman will inevitably be blamed by games journalists who want to protect their woke narrative. Warhammer fans are angry, and Games Workshop is about to feel that. Good luck with that Amazon show.
Elsewhere, the Stellar Blade backlash over lead character Eve’s censored outfits and removed blood looks like it’s making waves because the game’s official X account posted this yesterday:
Thanks to all our Stellar Blade fans for your passion & feedback. Stay tuned for updates🤍 pic.twitter.com/jCRzM4OQBS
— StellarBlade (@StellarBlade) May 1, 2024
Of course, that could mean anything, but there’s no way Shift Up is unaware of the displeasure their customers are feeling over the censored version of a game they were assured would be uncensored. The CEO even talked about it in an interview, though his comments didn’t go over well. The petition to reinstate the edited costumes and gore started by Mark Kern, alias Grummz, has reached 71,979 signatures as of this writing, and while there’s no way of knowing how many people discontinued their PlayStation+ subscriptions or wrote to Sony and Shift Up (which were other major parts of Kern’s plan), plenty commented on Kern’s posts saying they had. Shift Up also cited fans’ “passion” in their post, which is a diplomatic way of acknowledging anger. It would also be stupid to make an announcement like that if they aren’t addressing the only serious complaint I’ve seen (everyone seems to like the gameplay); customers will be livid if the update is something like a new sword or shinier boots. I don’t want to call it early, but the Stellar Blade censorship may be undone soon.
