This might have been it, then.
Maybe this needs a bit of context, so prepare for a longer, somewhat ranty post.
I was 13 years old when I entered into a GW shop for the first time. My first set was the Battle for Macragge, some paints a few brushes. From that day on out, I was hooked on the hobby. I built and painted whenever I could, did some first conversions. My first factions after the initial Space Marines were Chaos Space Marines and Necrons.
After a few years, my interest in the hobby waned. These were the dark times of GW: even worse communication with the community then now, prices were too high for my non-existing income, and the only store close to my location permanently closed its doors. Rules were mismatched, specialist games were dying out, White Dwarf issues were void of fan content and creations. Around 2013-2014, I had barely any interest left in the hobby at all.
That was until the period following the resignation of Tom Kirby. After the disastrous year of 2014, GW had been trying to turn their ship around. Community engagement was on the rise, specialist games were being brought back, starter boxes started appearing which offered genuine savings.
Maybe it had also to do with me starting to earn a bit of side income, but the main two things that got me to dive back into the hobby, into the Unvierse of Warhammer 40k, were me joining the Warhammer RPG sessions of a group of friends, and TTS.
If the Emperor had a Text-to-Speech device was such a burst of fresh air. It went on to become such a huge phenomenon that basically half of all Warhammer memes and headcanons can kinda be traced back to the show. For me it reinvigorated a passion for the Warhammer universe I did not know I could still have. This was the height of my Warhammer obsession: I dove back into the lore, started immersing myself in Warhammer Fantasy and AoS when I had been a pure 40k fan before. I learned so many things about everything pertaining to the hobby, wrote stories for my friends, created one homebrew army after the other (on paper at least). And I purchases a LOT of GW stuff (too much, but reselling it was always an option).
That is until recently. Several price hikes. Imho somewhat mediocre new stories. Things like the Cursed City debacle. Disastrous handling of scalpers on so many levels. Warhammer +. The scandals surrounding the payments (or rather the lack thereof) of GW writers and game developers. And now the final nail in the coffin for me: the new zero tolerance policy and the shelving of TTS.
That is... too much for me. Our hobby is an inherently creative one. We see and read these stories, we experience these universes and we add to them. We put our own spin on things, create our headcanons. We imagine where these things might lead and what could be done with them. We put so much of ourselves into these world that we explore.
Fan creators were a major part of me rediscovering my love for the hobby. Be it TTS to start out with, or Inquisitor, Hellsreach, and Astartes to name a few. Seeing creators being forced to stop their projects which they made with such passion, combined with everything GW has done recently, has entirely soured my relationship to Warhammer for now. That is why I have decided that I will no longer purchase from GW anymore. Not because I think that the universe has become unenjoyable, but because I think I can no longer give my money to a company that seems to have so little concern for its fanbase, or the people that helped make GW this successfull in the first place.
So yeah. That might indeed have been it. I will keep painting from time to time, try to work through that backlog. I might purchase some minis from other companies. Maybe even a GW mini if I can find a preowned one off of Ebay which I need. But I fear that just like in the past, my interest will wane until I move on to something different. Because this zero tolerance stance, which basically kills off fan made content and locks the rest behind a monopolized paywall, is basically the death of creativity in the hobby. And without that, what is there left?
