Space Marine 2 studio boss hopes for a 'reversion' to a time before games were 'imposing morals' on players

Space Marine 2 tips - Deathwatch
(Image credit: Saber Interactive)

Saber Interactive CEO Matthew Karch—or someone claiming to be him—has stirred up controversy with a comment on a recent Asmongold YouTube video in which he decried the current state of videogames, saying too many of them are built around "messaging or imposing morals on gamers."

"Hey man. CEO of Saber here. I love your videos," an account named 'MatthewKarch' said in response to the video, which is actually an hour-long "reaction" to a 20-minute video posted by Legendary Drops. "When we signed the deal to make Space Marine 2, all I wanted was a throwback game. We had the chance to work on something which by its nature was 'old school.' 

"I can't even comprehend many of the current games that we play these days. They are too complex and too much of an investment. We worked on Halo back in the day, and that game could be distilled down to the simplest of shooting loops, but it was entirely addicting. That is what we wanted to recapture.

"I hope that games like Space Marine 2 and Wukong are the start of a reversion to a time when games were simply about fun and immersion. I spent some time as Chief Operating Officer at Embracer and I saw games there that made me want to cry with their overblown attempts at messaging or imposing morals on gamers. We just want to do some glory kills and get the heart rate up a little. For me that is what games should be about."

(Image credit: Matthew Karch (YouTube))

In many ways it's a fairly anodyne comment—I miss the old days of my youth—but the specificity of "imposing morals on gamers" was immediately picked up as ammunition in the never-ending online culture wars: Hundreds of replies to the comment poured in heralding Karch as "the gaming hero we all been waiting for" and bemoaning the supposed rise of politics in videogames while celebrating the underperformance of  Dustborn and Concord as evidence that games have become 'too woke.'  It got similar traction on social media.

Weirdly, there's some question as to whether it was actually Karch who posted the comment. Some people noted the YouTube account behind it is relatively new, having only been created in May 2024, while Karch himself has been in the business for decades. The comment itself, particularly the part where it denigrates other developers by saying their work "made me want to cry," also doesn't come off as the sort of thing you'd expect from the head of a large game studio.

Saber Interactive hasn't helped clarify that situation, declining to comment on whether it was actually Karch who posted the YouTube comment or an imposter. Yesterday, however, Karch put up a comment on LinkedIn that could be taken as implying that he did in fact write it: "Whoever wrote that seems pretty sharp," he said. At the very least, it's an endorsement of the message, but if Karch really didn't write it, you'd think he'd just come out and say that it was an imposter.

(Image credit: Matthew Karch (LinkedIn))

Wherever the comment originated, it's ironic that the subsequent discussion about "messaging" and "imposing values" is arising from Space Marine 2. In 2021, Warhammer 40,000 company Games Workshop released a statement explaining that "the Imperium of Man stands as a cautionary tale of what could happen should the very worst of Humanity’s lust for power and extreme, unyielding xenophobia set in," and explicitly condemning the presence of hate symbols and groups in the WH40K community.

Andy Chalk
US News Lead

Andy has been gaming on PCs from the very beginning, starting as a youngster with text adventures and primitive action games on a cassette-based TRS80. From there he graduated to the glory days of Sierra Online adventures and Microprose sims, ran a local BBS, learned how to build PCs, and developed a longstanding love of RPGs, immersive sims, and shooters. He began writing videogame news in 2007 for The Escapist and somehow managed to avoid getting fired until 2014, when he joined the storied ranks of PC Gamer. He covers all aspects of the industry, from new game announcements and patch notes to legal disputes, Twitch beefs, esports, and Henry Cavill. Lots of Henry Cavill.

Read more
Spartan armour in Helldivers 2
Helldivers 2 director decides to kick off 2025 by wading into a conversation about DEI: 'Make good games, don't make a contemporary political statement'
Lords of the Fallen (2023) promotional image - very large man with a very large hammer on a very large horse charging a very small man with a very small magic sword
Lords of the Fallen publisher embraces fear of the DEI boogeyman, says it will not include 'any social or political agendas' in its games
sniper elite 5 cover
Sniper Elite CEO reckons Swen Vincke is right to snarl at short-sighted publishers: 'You could argue that their business at senior level isn't making games… their business is managing their shareholders' perceptions'
Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 screenshot - swordfight with man in armor
Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 forum rules that banned racism, homophobia, and neo-Nazism walked back by the publisher, which now just asks everyone to please be nice
A peasant in Troskovice
Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2's developer is 'fed up' of being dragged into the culture war: 'It seems like someone is always trying to brand us somehow, and we are just trying to make a cool videogame'
Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 promo art - three Space Marines standing in formation
Space Marine 2 dev acknowledges its FOMO events are 'a source of frustration and stress for everyone', says it'll fix things and isn't trying to make 'a full live service game' by stealth
Latest in Third Person Shooter
A player character with an ominous mask
The Forever Winter, my favourite extraction shooter, just overhauled its most contentious feature for the second time: 'It was a hell of a rollercoaster to make the adjustment'
Marvel Rivals crosshairs - Star-Lord flying up towards the camera with his guns at the ready.
Best Marvel Rivals crosshairs and reticle codes
Mister Fantastic fridge mode
Marvel Rivals announces a new limited-time game mode, Clone Rumble, and manages to pull off a comic caper that players only thought was possible in theory
Jeff, from Marvel Rivals, poses merrily with his cute little winter onesie on.
Jeff the Land Shark's creator tells whiny Marvel Rivals players who can't deal with her hero to buck up: 'Sounds like a skill issue to me, if my boy is beating your ass every night'
Best Free Steam Games - Marvel Rivals - Black Widow aims down a sniper scope.
'The market is large enough to accommodate both games': NetEase is confident it can make space for Marvel Rivals and Overwatch 2
Moon Knight action shot
Marvel Rivals is considering 'crossover events and promotions with other media' but all players want is more comicbook and movie skins
Latest in News
Nvidia RTX 4060 Ti graphics card
Specs for Nvidia's new RTX 5050, 5060, and 5060 Ti GPUs leak out and that 5060 might actually be half decent. If it's priced right
Pipboy holds up an open padlock.
A BIOS update could be all that's stopping you or someone else from jailbreaking your old AMD CPU
Asus's new ultrawide sucks as hard as it blows
Asus' new monitors purify 90% of airborne dust from your desktop and I've definitely seen some gnarly gaming setups that would benefit
A screenshot from Sony's PlayStation 5 Pro announcement video, showing a stylized processor against a dark background with glowing lines streaming from its edges
The AMD x Sony collab gave us FSR4 and a version will appear in PlayStation next year, too, having 'already started to implement the new neural network on PS5 Pro'
Pedro Pascal as Joel in a coat in winter looking unhappy
'Don't you know what he did?': The truth comes out in The Last of Us Season 2 trailer
Aloy
'Creepy,' 'ghastly,' 'rancid': Viewers react to leaked video of Sony's AI-powered Aloy