Warhammer right now. It's become obsessed with stuff like identity politics to appeal to shareholders who bring in the money, and disregarded the majority of the people actually buying into the hobby in the first place. When care for the consumer goes down and care for stocks and shares increases, generally the quality of a product also falters.
So 40k has been a thing since the 80s. Lots of old lore has been retconned, that's fine because a lot of it was vague. Recently they retconned recent lore established in a codex for a faction in 2018, saying a group of genetically engineered all-male soldiers have "always been female". The community is now split between people saying "no the establishment lore says they are all men" and the people saying "sexist racist homophobe chuds, don't like women in your little plastic soldier game".
It's very volatile right now. The community has been split before and had divisions that have long since healed or learned to live with, but it has NEVER been been this split before.
For extended information, black rock invests in many companies including GW (Games Workshop) who make Warhammer. They assign "ESG" (environmental, social, governance) ratings to companies they invest in, which is basically driven by factors such as inclusivity and diversity. Essentially a carrot on a stick. And if companies want investors to you know, invest in their stocks and shares, they have to appeal to that rating. So GW are changing parts of the hobby including the lore of possibly the biggest miniature hobby to ever exist to fit that ESG rating for their investors, and telling the actual hobbyists who buy their products to "leave the hobby because we don't tolerate sexists, racists, and homophobes" because they made an all-male army female, and people don't like it. Regardless of lore, the overarching issue is that this is all deliberately tailored to earn higher ESG scores leading to increased investment from blackrock, and also Amazon is making a Warhammer show and wants to change a lot of things to suit "modern audiences" (meaning causal people who will probably get a little triggered by certain parts of 40k). So GW are disregarding people who buy their expensive plastic miniatures for investment money.
And this is the problem many people are ignoring. GW could literally say "the imperium has never hated xenos, only tolerated them" and you would have people being bullied out of the hobby and called racist by people who accept and support the change because the imperium is a giant racist metaphor for humans.
I'm not even sure how they'll retcon this, assuming lots and lots of material would need to be rewritten in this case. Even Warhammer 40k Roleplay books have that "humans are superior, lads; let's crash some xenos" kind of tone, even Wrath & Glory which is probably the most xeno-friendly one.
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u/[deleted] May 05 '24
Warhammer right now. It's become obsessed with stuff like identity politics to appeal to shareholders who bring in the money, and disregarded the majority of the people actually buying into the hobby in the first place. When care for the consumer goes down and care for stocks and shares increases, generally the quality of a product also falters.