Something I want peoples opinions about. Especially newcomers/younger people vs olds.
To paraphrase the opinion.
"[Game X] has better lore than 40k. [Game X] has a setting written to facilitate wargaming, while 40k lore was made to facilitate endless novels."
Most other wargames barely have any lore to begin with.
Malifaux hasn't done anything with lore for years. Warmachine even after being bought by SFG hasn't done shit with lore since PP wrecked everything with MK3 and even the lore for the end of that is difficult to find(it was published to twitter as "microfiction"). Trench Crusade's lore is a joke. Conquest has a bare minimum of lore describing factions. Warcrow is new and doesn't have much yet. Konflict 47 is literally just weird scifi ww2. Dropfleet/zone commander barely has anything other than again basic faction descriptions and a general setting that could be described in 3 paragraphs, BLKOUT has next to nothing. Kings of War again is just incredibly basic shit. OPR basically has nothing. Carnevale and Rumbleslam have basically no lore outside of single paragraph character descriptions.
Bolt Action, Team Yankee, Flames of War, Checkpoint Charlie, Spectre Operations, basically all of the 20th-21st century wargames themed around real or theoretical conflicts between real nations have basically zero lore because they don't need it. Same for the historicals since with those the "lore" is history.
Infinity is actually continuing to build up their lore, but they're basically an exception in a sea of games. Battletech would be the other obvious game with a shitload of lore, but the lore for Battletech is just as complex as 40k at times with named characters, changing factions, a timeline even more all over the place than 40k in terms of the part people actually play in along with. Novels alone there's easily 60+, then the magazines, a bunch of source books, anthologies of short stories, it would take years for anyone to finish going through this stuff and isn't as numerous as 40k for novels but the only reason it's not is due to some owners trying to kill it over the years with dumb decision making and not being as popular.
What other wargames actually have any real amount of lore beyond the basics for a setting? MESB, Marvel Crisis Protocol, ASOIAF, any of the Star Wars games, Halo, Starcraft, the handful of Star Trek games, the Fallout Games, Elder Scrolls, CTA the Babylon 5 game, Starship Troopers, etc. these games only have any lore at all because they're all licensed.
So most of [Game X] is likely to be a licensed game if it actually has any amount of lore beyond the most basic of shit, it's a historical or modern fictional setting where the lore is either history or recent world events, or it's a GW product/Infinity/Battletech.
As far as 40k lore only existing to sell endless novels.. I'm just going to post this from their last full year report(yes I know there's a more recent half year, but I'm going with the full year for a broader picture).

If GW's lore for 40k were simply to endlessly sell novels, they're sure as hell doing a piss poor job of that.