Space King made nearly $10 million roasting 40k, and a week later GW dropped a goofy Space Marine cartoon like a dad borrowing his kid’s slang.
If GW had put this cartoon out two years ago, we’d have laughed at a few exploding Intercessors and moved on. But Only in Death: 40,000 Ways to Die dropped on October 2, exactly one week after Space King wrapped its Kickstarter by roasting the very army GW is selling a new book for. And that’s what makes it awkward.
So yeah, we’ve gotta ask. Did Games Workshop just watch a 40k parody pull in almost $10 million and suddenly remember Warhammer’s allowed to be funny?
GW’s Cartoon isn’t Cringe, but the Timing is
- What’s happening: GW released a free four-and-a-half-minute cartoon of Space Marines dying in ridiculous ways on October 2, seven days after the Space King Kickstarter closed.
- What we have seen so far: Space King raised about $9.34 million from more than 25,000 backers, and fans are split on whether GW’s cartoon is a wink at it or just its own dumb joke.
- What’s next: Space King keeps taking pledges through its pledge manager, and GW looks reactive whether it meant to or not.
GW’s own pitch for the short is “endearing cartoon-animated Intercessors being mercilessly dismembered,” and it’s tied straight to the new Space Marines Codex. By itself? That’s a fun bit of Codex marketing. Bright, goofy, violent, and built entirely around turning superhuman space warriors into punchlines.
But nothing drops in a vacuum. Space King closed on September 25, and seven days later the official Warhammer account had little Marines getting mulched for laughs. Can anyone outside the studio prove one caused the other? Nope, but the comparison writes itself anyway.
That’s why this one lands like a dad who suddenly starts using whatever slang his kids were using last week. The joke isn’t bad; it’s just showing up right after an independent animation studio made nearly $10 million selling its own legally distinct spoof of 40k.
Space King Turned Marine Jokes Into Real Army Money
Here’s the number GW should be sweating, though: Space King asked for $50,000 and walked away with about $9.34 million from more than 25,000 backers, per Kicktraq. And Flashgitz has confirmed late pledges are still open through its pledge manager, so that haul can still climb.
That’s roughly $369 per backer. That’s not novelty board game money; it’s starting-a-new-40k-army money, and it’s going to a game born from mocking the exact genre GW owns.
So Flashgitz didn’t just rack up YouTube views. They spent years proving there’s an audience for juvenile, brutal, irreverent cartoons about power-armored lunatics, then turned that audience into 25,000 paying tabletop customers. Kinda hard to wave that off as “internet parody,” right?
Which is why GW’s short reads less like competition and more like validation. It’s not like GW’s short on animation, between the Warhammer TV library and the Deathwatch series headed to Amazon. But this brand of dumb Marine comedy? That’s something it’s mostly left to its fans.
Not Every Fan Thinks This is a Space King Wink
The Space King comparisons started the second the cartoon went up. Over on r/Grimdank, some fans called it an indirect response to Flashgitz. Others pushed back, saying it’s much closer to a “Dumb Ways to Die” parody than a Space King knockoff.
And look, the second group has a point. 40,000 Ways to Die is a string of increasingly ridiculous Space Marine deaths and not much else. Space King goes after Imperial culture, Space Marines, grimdark machismo, lore excess, and 40k fandom itself, all at once.
So no, GW didn’t copy the premise, per se. The overlap is attitude and presentation, not the plot.
Sure, Warhammer Was Always Supposed to Be Funny
Let’s be fair to GW here. Warhammer’s always had satire, dark humor, and stupid deaths baked in, and GW itself describes 40k as satire. Old-school Warhammer was a lot sillier than the dead-serious marketing image the hobby runs on now.
GW’s also got a habit of answering outside noise without leaving the setting. Remember 2017? PETA really did write to CEO Kevin Rountree asking GW to stop putting fictional fur on Warhammer characters, which we covered when PETA came after 40k. GW’s answer? A Regimental Standard bit about troops being ordered to burn enemy pelts instead of wearing them.
That’s what makes an indirect Space King wink believable. Is it proven? No. But it’s right in character for a company that’d rather answer a ridiculous situation in-universe than put out some sterile corporate statement.
They don’t really seem to like doing any sort of corporate statement outside of “we made lots of money this year.” I mean, supposedly there’s lead in Citadel Spray Primer, and there’s still no word from Games Workshop about it.
Final Thoughts on the Space King Comparison
So the knock on GW isn’t that it stole Space King. It’s that Space King made nearly $10 million by getting the same brand of Warhammer humor, and then GW put out something remarkably close to it a week later.
Intentional or not, that makes Games Workshop look reactive. But if a cartoon about Marines dying stupidly is what it takes to remind GW there’s a big, paying crowd for a Warhammer that doesn’t treat every Space Marine like he’s posing for box art? Then we hope this isn’t the last one.
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- Space King Eyes $10 Million in Last Day by Roasting Games Workshop
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- Space Marines Codex, Model Pre-Orders: Oct 3rd Now Available
- Finally, Games Workshop’s Response to PETA!
- Warhammer Animated Series Confirmed: Deathwatch on Amazon
- Dread Fall is the Warhammer 40k Animation We Needed!
Did GW just take notes from Space King, or is this cartoon its own dumb joke?
