Warhammer 40K developer says hate groups: "We don't want your money"

On Friday, War hammer 40,000 and Warhammer: Age of Sigmar Publisher Games Workshop posted an unusual note on its official community page entitled The empire is driven by hatred. Warhammer is not. The entry is a strong statement from one of the largest game companies in the world, and it says in part, “If you come to a Games Workshop event or store and behave differently, including wearing the symbols of real-life hate groups, you will be encouraged to leave. We won’t let you participate. We don’t want your money. We don’t want you in the Warhammer community. “

The statement comes after that Fans visit a Warhammer 40,000 competition A player with Nazi iconography caught the eye in Europe registered under the name of Austrian painter. GT Talavera Tournament organizers posted a comment on the tabletop wargaming site Spikey Bits “That the association rejects the Nazi mentality in all its aspects” […] Nazi ideas have no place in our group because they are contrary to everything we stand for. ”The organizers said that the player said he would not leave unless they called the police on. Since showing Nazi pictures is not illegal in Europe, the organizers hesitated that doing so could cause legal problems for their club.

In Necromunda: Hired Gun, a battle takes place in a skull-lined pit, where colorful sci-fi raiders attack each other with guns, robot dogs and, in one case, a rat.

Warhammer 40,000 is a dystopian science fiction setting on a grand scale, with billions dying every day amid a massive battle against everyone between multiple fearsome factions, from the voracious alien swarm called the Tyranids to the stoic and immortal Eldar. The human empire is the hiding place we have available to a faction that looks like us. It is a monotheistic, active fascist, heavily armed race that, as the blog post notes, is ruled by “the living corpse of an emperor of God whose commandments are at best only half-remembered, twisted by time and the fallibility of humanity. “It is xenophobic without excuse, and its history is marked by more than 10,000 years of repetitive, brutal genocide.

It’s a setting so grim it’s often referred to as “grimdark” – there aren’t any good guys, and the heroes can only scrape the narrowest of victories out of a callous, actively hostile universe. The imagery of the Imperium of Man, however, has attracted a loyal following among real-world hate groups and has become an integral part of the modern online hate meme economy. In 2019 that flashed into the real world as a float in an Italian parade presented the former President Trump, who was wrapped in the golden armor of God’s Emperor

The artist Fabrizio Galli later stated that the car was “a joke” He comments on the fact that “he is trying to destroy nations with the economy rather than with nuclear missiles. This is, shall we say, one of the most powerful actions that powerful people like Trump can use. “

Such artistic interpretations make sense and can be made in good faith. At long last, Warhammer 40K is a setting that is heavily based on satire and black comedy. The developer Games Workshop confirms this in the blog post (focus on Games Workshop’s).

The Human Empire is a cautionary tale of what could happen should mankind’s worst greed for power and extreme, relentless xenophobia set in. Like so many aspects of Warhammer 40,000, the Empire of Man is satirical.

To clarify: satire is the use of humor, irony, or exaggerationdepicting people’s vices or the flaws of a system of scorn, scorn, and ridicule. Something doesn’t have to be crazy or laughing out loud to be satire. The mockery lies in the reinforcement of a tyrannical, genocidal regime through the setting, which was shot on 11. The empire is not an emerging state outside the universal perspectives of those who are slaves to its systems. It is a monstrous civilization, and its enormity is evident to all.

That is, certain real world hate groups – and adherents of historical ideologies better left in the past – sometimes try to claim intellectual property for their own enjoyment and co-opt it for their own ends.

Even so, right-wing extremist groups continue to use Warhammer 40K as part of their branding. A group of fans infamously adopted the iconography of the empire into their own movements. Games Workshop has already taken action; a YouTuber in 2020 removed the Warhammer from its title at the request of Games Workshop for racist rhetoric in its stream and Leaked images of his discord revealed more racist comments.

This isn’t the first time Games Workshop has stepped out to make its own position on hate clear. In June 2020, a similar statement was made on Twitter, “Warhammer is for everyone”.

Games Workshop has become increasingly strict in enforcing its intellectual property in recent years. Fans and creators are now arguing that it is even strict when it comes to fan animations and other projects on the internet, a decision many consider hostile and defensive in the face of the new online streaming service. However, it seems that the developer is using all the resources at his disposal to solve the culture problem within his fan base – and encourage local organizers to do the same at their events.