RUMOR: Is Amazon Behind Warhammer 40K’s Female Custodes?

Television

Is Games Workshop merely the scapegoat in the Warhammer 40K female Custodes controversy? A new rumor says that the actual force behind the lore change is Amazon. If you’ll remember, a Warhammer 40K TV show is being developed for Amazon Prime Video, with famous Warhammer fan Henry Cavill producing and starring. According to a 4chan poster who claims her father works for Nintendo (are they involved in this?), Amazon wanted “a woman in power armor and wouldn’t settle for SoB,” which refers to the Sisters of Battle, a female warrior group. She also says that Games Workshop doesn’t intend to make any sculpts of female Custodes, but that the new version of the codex was simply to facilitate Amazon’s demand. Unfortunately for them, the “social media department jumped the gun” and responded before Games Workshop could figure out the best way to proceed, leading to the catastrophe going on right now. You can read her posts in the X post below, courtesy of KiTA:

Female Custodes 4chan Leak.

tl;dr: GW isn't really supporting them at all, they're just in there becuase Amazon is forcing them to put them in the new show, and they need them to exist in the lore beforehand.

It's a stage 4 cancer situation: A business partnership shared the… pic.twitter.com/q6AMRRY61O

— KiTA (@eldarmark) April 18, 2024

On its own, I wouldn’t pay too much attention to an anonymous post like this, but a second source backs up this take and adds some new wrinkles about the show and Henry Cavill’s position. This is a video from The ArchCast on the subject; he claims that an Amazon insider has told him that Amazon actually wanted female Space Marines, and the Custodes are the compromise, with Amazon using leverage like halting sales of third-party Warhammer products in their marketplace. Meanwhile, Henry Cavill – who is, once again, stuck with a dud – may not be able to leave the show even if he wants to.

What he says about Amazon being a woke company that forces DEI into those with whom it does business sounds about right, and it makes me wonder if they were the source of the problems with The Rings of Power as well. On that score, I like that their tracking bots are picking up on fan displeasure with their shows (if that’s true), although I don’t think it will matter much. One of Amazon’s advantages on the culture war front is that the vast majority of their revenue comes from their marketplace, with their foray into streaming being the equivalent of a billionaire buying a boat. They can more than sustain their losses on something like Warhammer 40K. This also gives them the power to throw their weight around with companies like Games Workshop because they need Amazon a lot more than Amazon needs them.

Although, depending on where Amazon’s influence takes their business, they may have wished they’d never bothered with the streamer. Is curbing third-party dice sales worth losing a huge chunk of your customers and giving Henry Cavill a peptic ulcer? And all this for a TV show that might bomb anyway? Tabletop gaming is a very niche hobby; the people who partake in it love it, but it’s not for everybody, especially when it involves painting sculpts and intensive lore. How many new players will a TV series bring in, even if the base likes it? And how does that potential benefit compare to losing a lot of the players you already have because the streaming company forced you to compromise on their stupid DEI initiatives? If this story is true, their deal appears to be going the way of Lando Calrissian’s.

On the other hand, as The ArchCast points out, Games Workshop has a reputation for being woke itself; recall the post from a few years ago when they told any customers who weren’t down with DEI in their tabletop gaming to leave and that they “will not be missed.” Also remember that BlackRock, Vanguard, and Baillie Gifford are huge shareholders in Games Workshop, and they’re infamous for pushing DEI in an effort to “change the culture.” So, while I don’t doubt that Amazon is part of this, I don’t think Games Workshop is the noble resistance the 4chan post makes them out to be. We’ll see if the next round of lost fans won’t be missed, either.