Warhammer videogames have been pretty hit-and-miss over the years, to put it mildly—but Saber Interactive's Space Marine 2 was firmly on the 'hit' side of the fence last year, reaching a player count of 4.5 million a month after launch and drawing more interest to the world's most grimdark sci-fi setting than ever. Unsurprisingly, Games Workshop's quite happy with that result—and pretty keen to see it happen again.
The company's half-yearly report reveals an enormous rise in revenue from licensing in the 2023/2024 financial year—from £12.1 million to £30.1 million—with "the increase being mainly from Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2". Even with the core business (miniatures, rulebooks, etc) continuing to boom, that makes licensing over 10% of the money the company earned in that period, largely off the back of one big success. The report also suggests that the resulting excitement has led to "more people coming into our Warhammer stores".
Of course, you get a boost like that, and you're going to want more. "We recognise that successes like these for Warhammer are not a given in the world of video games," the report concludes, but adds that "clearly we are looking for the next one". Elsewhere, it says "we own what we believe is some of the most underexploited intellectual property globally" and lays out a plan to expand Warhammer's reach going forward, with film and TV via its deal with Amazon, and a continued focus on videogames. "We intend to ensure Warhammer’s place as one of the top fantasy IPs globally," it says, brimming with confidence.
How realistic is that confidence? I'm a little on the fence. I can certainly understand why Games Workshop would look at their rich, layered worlds, still enjoying a dedicated fanbase over 40 years since the series began, and think "surely these could be more popular?" I do think as well that there's a big audience out there of Warhammer fans who love the settings but don't want to collect the miniatures and play the games, and those people are perhaps under-served (or underexploited). As far as I can tell they're all just voraciously reading the Horus Heresy novels, as it stands.
On the other, going bigger with Warhammer is certainly easier said than done. Making it work on the big or small screen is going to be a serious challenge—it's an incredibly dense and truly outlandish setting, and ensuring it seems both approachable and not, uh, ludicrous to a mainstream audience on a relatively limited budget won't be easy, even with Henry Cavill leading the charge.
More success in videogames is perhaps a less daunting goal, but comes with the baggage of a long history of pretty bad adaptations. For many, the word "Warhammer" in a videogame's title might as well be a byword for "crap", and it's easy to see how a lack of proper oversight from Games Workshop has contributed to that. For a while it seemed like absolutely any studio, big or small, could get their hands on a chunk of Warhammer to mess about with, regardless of their expertise or track record. At the same time, the company's involvement in those games has usually seemed minimal—in overseeing quality and tone, but also in letting developers in on upcoming tabletop releases, frequently leaving games feeling years out of step with the actual wargames.
There have already been signs of that changing, however. Games Workshop seemed to be far more forthcoming with Creative Assembly for the Total War: Warhammer series, and even drew inspiration from it in their own development of the Old World wargame. Similarly Cyanide got enough of a peek behind the scenes for Blood Bowl 3 to make it up-to-date with the new edition, even if delays and a rough launch rather spoiled the attempt at synergy.
That kind of tighter hand at the reins and greater openness with licensees seems like the path to victory—and as a lifelong Warhammer fan, I'd certainly love to see the reputation of its videogame side turned around. Whether even that will lead to another hit as big as Space Marine 2 is harder to predict. Though if all else fails, at least Saber Interactive is already thinking about Space Marine 3.
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