Honestly the funny part to me about the pandering and my personal headcanon is that its done wonders to deflect from all the genuine fuckery GW does and has done across the years
Back when I was a bona fide tourist when I just wikiwhored, played Space Marine 1 and a pirated copy of Soulstorm once, I used to keep reading nothing but critiques and constant shitting on GW for various fuckheaded choices, and then events like the Mishandling of the End Times among others. Now some pretty janky plastic sculpts, bits of text, and percived slights of their vauge enemies are enough to get people to clap and consoom more product, even self proclaimed marxists. I remember even reading some redditor asking about this charity program that gave free Warhammer to youth clubs and shit. Iirc it turned out to just be more or less being an upgraded beginner set and that they stopped responding pretty quick.
GW is capitalism incarnate in some forms, and people still praise it for surface level pandering, peak pink capitalism, the fat cats will keep getting a hefty payday as long as all the dual income sysadmins or credit card warriors have jerbs