idk ill stop now but i really think that the defense brigade being activated, tons of people complaining and no longer buying things isnt good for gw. and i think theres reason to believe its going to get worse for them, and i dont really see the point in trying to say its not as bad as other times when if you are angry at those past times you could just pile it on as further grievances in fact many have from buying and promoting 3d printers while mentioning the ridiculous monetary practices.
Problem is, the whales have faced far worse real-life issues when playing this game, and they stayed loyal anyways.
Since Warhammer has no canon, any fan can make their own, and they can easily excuse that story of the Female Custodes as a prank played by the men who dressed a Sister of Battle in Custodes armor, or just write it off as propaganda or the account of an unreliable narrator. Primaris Marines, a person with a better head-canon can explain them in a way that would make sense in-lore. Like say, instead of randos from Mars, they're actually veteran Space Marines who signed up for an experiment and came back with enhanced gene-seeds and armor, and you can even explain the Primaris becoming the face of the Space Marine forces by saying that once the few test subjects who signed on for Caw's experiments turned out to be successes, Guilliman had the process rolled out and by the end of the year, all Space Marines were given Primaris geneseeds and the new armor, thereby explaining why all the new art for Space Marines have only Primaris and no more Firstborn marines, since they all got improved.
But the fact that GW continued to nickel and dime the customers, and the customers continued to buy regardless. GW's prices never went down no matter how many improvements to the process of creating the plastic they've had. The prices continued to inflate, exacerbated by scalpers who would buy the product from the online store, then hang on to it until prices rise when the product is sold out, so they can sell it back on the market for a markup price. If the whales didn't leave after GW jacked up the price tag again and again and again, from the 90s to the 2020s, then they won't be leaving over some silly story about a female Custodes.
They've been talking about 3D printers rendering GW obsolete for almost a decade now. It hasn't happened. If it didn't happen in 2017, it sure as fuck isn't happening now.
The ''defense brigade''-I've seen it back in 2017 with GW going after Arch, but of more serious note is them going after fan animators and banning people from tournaments for having custom 3D-printed model kits. Such moves were extremely dickish towards the fanbase which loved the IP for so long, yet the fans continued to buy regardless of GW's dickery.
Every time we hear that GW has crossed the line, GW is never getting our money again, this is the last straw, I've been hearing it since fucking 2017, and it doesn't really matter, since it didn't matter back then, it won't matter now. GW being dicks to their fans, wiping their asses with the lore, jacking up price tags for their product, it's been happening for decades, and the fans still stay anyways. The Female Custodes are supposed to be this ''last straw'' according to grifters, yet if they actually studied the real-life history of Warhammer 40K as an IP, and the history between the fans and GW, they'd know this is a drop in the bucket compared to all the shit the fans went through in the past.
The people who actually care about the lore checked out a long time ago. They probably only spent money on Black Library novels, and I'm sure they'll probably honor their promise of not buying GW products after this, but they're a minor, negligible loss compared to the whales.