A recent alleged statement from Saber Interactive’s CEO, Matthew Karch, has sparked controversy by criticizing the games industry’s approach to imposing morals on players. The statement surfaced in the comments of an Asmongold video from a relatively new YouTube account named @MatthewKarch, active only since May 24, 2024. While its legitimacy is debated, the message it purportedly carries is noteworthy.
Karch’s message reads: “Hey man. CEO of Saber here. I love your videos. When we signed the deal to make Space Marine 2, all I wanted was a throwback game. We had the chance to work on something which by its nature was ‘old school’. I can’t even comprehend many of the current games that we play these days. They are too complex and too much of an investment. We worked on Halo back in the day, and that game could be distilled down to the simplest of shooting loops, but it was entirely addicting. That is what we wanted to recapture. I hope that games like Space Marine 2 and Wukong are the start of a reversion to a time when games were simply about fun and immersion. I spent some time as Chief Operating Officer at Embracer and I saw games there that made me want to cry with their overblown attempts at messaging or imposing morals on gamers. We just want to do some glory kills and get the heart rate up a little. For me that is what games should be about.”
A similar opinion was supposedly shared by Oliver Hollis-Leick, the creative director at Saber Interactive, whose account seems more credible, featuring personal videos of him at work.
The Warhammer 40k franchise, including Space Marine 2, has been a hot topic as Games Workshop makes efforts to expand its reach through various media forms like games and movies. This shift has sparked debate among fans, with some accusing modern games of being overly sanitized and geared towards pleasing HR departments rather than embracing genuine human interaction.
One social media user commented: “Thinking about this again. What plagues so much of modern gaming is how they write and design like they’re always in earshot of HR and have never had a human interaction. It’s all so fake, a clean facade of surface-level quips, small talk, acceptability, and smoothed-out politeness.”
While the authenticity of these statements remains in question, they have undeniably triggered a backlash. Fans seem divided between those welcoming a return to the simplicity and excitement of older games and those supporting the industry’s current direction.
Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 is now available on Windows PC, Xbox Series X|S, and PlayStation 5.
