The Amazon Prime Effect: learning from Fallout to predict Warhammer's streaming series

[N1SB]

From YouTubers to even Games Workshop annual reports, there's been discussion of future Warhammer streaming shows on Amazon Prime.  In the meantime, the platform has had seasons of shows adapted from other properties, including Fallout, a dystopian satirical game series with power armour.

 

Fallout is NOT Warhammer 40,000 despite superficial similarities (both being dystopian, satirical, a game series, with power armour).  This thread is NOT about Fallout, but being familiar with it (too many hours logged in its games), I already got a front row seat, so I didn't just watch, I observed how the show affected the player base.

 

Would a TV show based on a game drive players to play it?  If so, how long does that affect last?

 

 

I went into the online Fallout 76 and invented Vaulthammer 40,000, like Fallout's version of 40k and built a Friendly Local Gaming Store for it.  In case you know Fallout, YES, I DO sell Molded Plastic (used in the game's crafting system) to represent Vaulthammer models.  Other Fallout 76 players who know 40k will buy all my Molded Plastic.

 

Fallout had 2 seasons on Amazon Prime.  For cross-promotion, Fallout 4 and 76 added new free content each time.  In the case of the older Fallout 4, a decade-old game, it was substantive: they gave away some previously paid for items, with new makeshift weapons AND stitched them together with new story content:

 

 

That massive update paled in comparison to what Fallout 76 had.  They had veteran actor Walton Goggins's character, a bounty hunter named The Ghoul, appear in-game played/voice acted by him.  They made him the 1st person you meet when you leave the starting Vault now.  The show and the games are directly tied, share a setting:

 

 

NOT everyone likes all the changes, for good reason.  In addition to Walton Ghoulguns, who remains universally liked, they added armour skins from the Fallout TV show in Fallout 76...but the game is a prequel that takes place 2 centuries before.  Those designs should not exist then.  We openly question the lore now.

 

(Those of us that track Fallout's lore call Fallout 76 "Tranquility Lane", meaning we're just an in-universe simulation like the Matrix.)

 

Both games are on Steam, the PC gaming platform.  There is a tool called Steam Charts that only count Steam players.  For our purposes, we don't need to know the absolute numbers of Fallout players, we just want to get an idea for how much Amazon Prime's TV show got people in or BACK into the game, like a percentage.

 

(As one former McKinsey Consultant said to me, "I'm a historian, don't give me a snapshot, I want to see the TREND.")

 

— Fallout 4

— Fallout 76

 

The top green line represents Fallout 4's Steam player count.  The bottom blue line represents Fallout 76's Steam player count.  Take note Fallout 76 initially launched exclusively on its developer's Bethesda.net platform, only to be added to Steam later, so we don't see its absolute peak (usually the 1st month of a game's release).

 

Why yes...you see those 2 recent peaks, those ARE exactly Amazon Prime's Fallout Season 1 and Season 2.

 

(There are issues I won't go into as not to go further off-topic, like imho Season 1 was a lot better than 2.)

 

After dropping off from release, there's a few bumps from new Downloadable Content, then it just flattens out.  There's a MASSIVE 7x (seven-fold) SPIKE early 2024; THAT's the 1st season of the Fallout TV show, then a much SMALLER 2x to 3x (double or triple) bump in at the turn of 2025/2026 for the 2nd season.

 

(Older games like Fallout 3 and New Vegas had similar bumps, but too small side-by-side with Fallout 4/76.)

 

A Sugar High That Doesn't Last AND Doesn't Repeat

 

I could've just shown you this chart, I think, we're Warhammer players, we're smart.  I just wanted to show I did my homework.

 

It's very obvious there are 2 things going on, despite all the talk about an Amazon Prime series, celebrity this, studio exec that, it's just:

 

• Amazon Prime can absolutely bring a Sugar High that will spike interest in Warhammer
• But that Sugar High does NOT last, and it does NOT quite ever repeat to the same heights

 

The following is actually a common marketing mistake.  You do a big marketing campaign, it creates awareness, brings all these potential customers to your places of purchase.  After that initial success, you repeat that marketing campaign...it barely moves the needle.  Why?  People are already aware!

 

The old adage about you only get one chance to make a 1st impression, you also only need to do that ONCE.

 

New Customers or Lapsed Customers?

 

Did the Fallout TV show actually bring new players that bought a game, or just old ones that re-installed for free?  It's Fallout 76's Steam player count that reveals there WERE new customers.  It reached a new peak more than double its release on Steam.  I cannot say the same about Fallout 4, as it's all mixed together.

 

It's rare I can make such a concrete, definitive, self-evident statement.  It's only because you can clearly see a new peak.

 

Lest GW Forgets

 

GW's old guard, like Rick Priestley (Beloved By All), knows all this and more.  A similar thing happened with Lord of the Rings:

 

 

He's describing when GW licensed LotR for their own miniatures game, the belief...actually the hope, perhaps the cope, was that it would bring LotR fans to then Games Workshop stores and be converted to Warhammer players.  You see him here describing a sales curve that will reach a new peak, and plateau.

 

That's not what happened at GW.  After reaching a peak with Return of the King AND (thanks to you, my Frateri et Sororitas) the Eye of Terror campaign, GW had a period of decline until its worst year in 2007 when it had negative profits, had to lay off a bunch of employees, close many of its stores, going into a decade of decline.

 

The reason was the initial Sugar Rush from Fellowship of the Ring and Two Towers prompted GW to expand with GOOD intentions.  You got all these new LotR players that need to be taught to play the game, to paint tabletop miniatures, so GW hired more employees to help customers.  Problem was, 1 day the customers left, never to return.

 

More recently, we saw a similar thing with Space Marine II the video game.  A much lighter touch cross-promotion with Captain Titus and the 500 Worlds.

 

Effect On the Hobby?

 

We're not GW employees, although I value those of you who are or were, you always bring the best intel to the table.

 

We're The Hobbyists.  We're greater than GW.  We span different games.  D&D players love us because we can paint their minis.

 

The Fallout community is kinda like us.  We talk army lists, they talk character builds.  We talk about painting/converting, they talk about player-made mods you can install.  Our D&D friend who hears us 40k players discussions calls what we do "talking shop", like we're craftsmen, which we are.  Same with the Fallout community.

 

When the Fallout TV show hit, it went from a hobby similar to ours to a FANDOM.  We who referred to the older games' lore, like how the timeline of the show doesn't quite make sense, we were shouted down because we're supposed to LOVE or HATE this celebrity, SO EMOTIONAL THE ACTING/THIS SCENE BROKE ME.

 

It was very irritating, but I bear good news: this, too, will pass...because the Sugar Rush will.  We'll ride it out together.

 

It lasted for like...a month after.  Then all those guys moved on to whatever is the next hyped thing.  We remain.

 

TL;DR:

 

• Amazon Prime Warhammer series will bring a huge Sugar Rush spike, then smaller bumps every new season
• It will likely bring back lapsed players AND will introduce new players to The Hobby (based on Fallout 76's peak)
• GW should be careful to account that the Sugar Rush is temporary and does not quite reach the same peak after
• If you are annoyed by The Hobby turning into a Fandom, I believe that too shall pass, because Fandoms do

[grailkeeper]

I think it's fair to say the hobby is already a fantom. Outside of blood bowl I haven't really played a tabletop game in a long time but I love 40k all the same. I've read literally hundreds of BL books.

[MoriyaSchism]

The Fallout show was one of the dumbest things I've seen in recent times. Season 1 was really bad too, it was just visually recognizable and I guess that's enough for most people. Hard to imagine watching a television show and not actually hearing the dialogue. I don't know how anyone who enjoyed that can really call themselves a Fallout fan, but hey Bethesda Fallout fans will eat anything up. As Todd once said "people will buy just about anything". Fallout went from a post-apocalyptic RPG series to what Todd called "funny Itchy & Scratchy violence". The show itself originally started as a nepotism job for the son of the late Zenimax CEO. Warhammer getting irreparably changed for the worse just to get a short boost that will gradually fade away would be the worst case scenario. I welcome part of this, it will mean many people who got suckered into this hobby will be flogging all their shiny new partially assembled and still on sprue miniatures on Ebay at firesale prices after the daunting task of the hobby starts looming over them. Getting into a plastic miniature wargame hobby takes a lot more work than buying microtransactions or picking up Fallout 4 or 76 at a really discounted price off steam. In general if the Warhammer TV show is on par with the Fallout show in terms of quality, lore impact and writing then I don't think it would be worth it.

[N1SB]

1 hour ago, grailkeeper said:

I think it's fair to say the hobby is already a fantom. Outside of blood bowl I haven't really played a tabletop game in a long time but I love 40k all the same. I've read literally hundreds of BL books.

 

Brother Grailkeeper, you are way too modest.  You PLAYED 40k.  You STILL play Blood Bowl.  Srsly, if YOU're not a Hobbyist

 

I owe this kid that came into our Warhammer Store for showing me what a Warhammer Fan, instead of a Hobbyist, is:

• "Who's your favourite Primarch?"  He conceptualises them as Marvel/DC superheroes
• "What's your favourite piece of lore?"  He never played, never read, knows 40k only via LoreTube

The questions were so odd to me, I said something about my favourite Primarch is Angron (because he clearly saw that he and everyone else in the Imperium are just slaves) and that scene in Master of Mankind where the Emperor and Arkhan Land were examining him was my "favourite piece of lore".

 

And as always, the best lessons came from making mistakes, as I just did here.

 

After that kid left, I turned to our Warhammer Store manager and another friend, "I was wrong," like that scene in Monty Python where a knight was asked what's his favourite colour and he gave the wrong answer, I felt so stupid.  Because what's my favourite piece of lore, YOUR favourite piece of lore, is...

...what we made ourselves.  We create our own 40k characters, our own armies, our own lore.

 

These new fans, they never created before (but hopefully will soon).  They only consume.

 

Our Warhammer Store exclaimed back, "I was about to say!"  Because I won one of the stores Armies On Parades with a converted army, he knows how I create my own characters.  We are entirely a different breed, Brother.

 

Btw, that kid, he left the Warhammer Store with a novel and a box of Goliath, I think.  So there's hope.

[Valkyrion]

I watched Fallout without ever playing the game and enjoyed it. It didn't inspire me to dive further into the setting, I just enjoyed it for what it was.

The Witcher was another show I watched without ever having played the game and thought it was rubbish.

I'm a big Warcraft fan and enjoyed the live action film despite its terrible acting, but it wasn't 100% true to lore and that annoyed me a bit.

 

I suppose my point is that a 40k show will draw people in who don't care about it and just want to watch Henry Cavill in space, it will draw in proper fans who will enjoy it despite its flaws, it will draw in proper fans who will despise it because of its flaws.

[Doghouse]

I want to believe.

 

I know it will be an unpopular opinion, but I don't have faith in either Amazon or Henry Cavil on this. As a caveat, I really do genuinely like Henry especially as Superman but he's attached himself to so many underperforming or failed projects.

 

I really did not enjoy saying that... 

 

For me it will be the success or failure of the Highlander film series that seals it for me. I did sort of dip in and out of the Fallout tv series having played the games for years but wasn't overly impressed. There were a few cool moments like seeing things from in game such as the Deathclaw or the Power Arnour but other than that I went back to channel hopping.

 

I think there will be an enormous amount of hype, especially with the painful Youtube click baiters before they move onto the next thing but can't see it being a sci fi master piece.

 

If I want to watch 40k on the big screen I can just go watch Dune. 

 

Having said that I still watch and genuinely enjoy Ultramarines and the Final Liberation cutscenes and really don't like the modern CGI animated shows so may not be the target audience. 

 

I will give it a try though.

[Dark Shepherd]

GW are now in a position to get a lovely spike in licensing revenue from videogames especially, and merch, when an Amazon show goes live

 

If theyre clever they can also do a *Show Title* special box designed for new players, heck sell it on AMAZON and toy/nerd shops. Make it troop heavy so existing players dont scoop it all up

[N1SB]

10 hours ago, Doghouse said:

I know it will be an unpopular opinion, but I don't have faith in either Amazon or Henry Cavil on this. As a caveat, I really do genuinely like Henry especially as Superman...

 

It's too big a burden for a Brother to bear.

 

I see these YouTube videos with clearly made up news about how Henry Cavill locked up all the writers in a room with the Horus Heresy novels and a box of ramen or something, and then the cheerleading in the comments section.  They're living precariously through this parasocial relationship with him.

 

A friend does not help a friend by placing a bigger load on his shoulders.

 

Then you add on GW execs, who can barely manage themselves, you see how much infighting there is within GW, adding an extra dimension of bureaucracy to deal with.  If you had to deal with 2 corporations, it's not just double the load, it's like a whole new dimension of complications.

 

You're brave enough to correctly point out that this is probably not a job even for Superman.

Edited Sunday at 12:17 AM by N1SB

[Jukkiz]

Intresting topic but easy answer is: Maybe?

Take critical role for example, it was about d&d then started going on the rails story telling with weird premises of certain real life things mixed in. Later moved to their own thing, but still partly related to D&D. 

If you know critical role and people who watch it, it ain´t really D&D. It´s an rpg that´s puppeteered forward with base as D&D. Sure it drove up intrest and maybe players to try the thing, but after being dm in couple of such games with such people, they´re insufferable. Their expectations is YOU (DM), the basically play everything like critical role does and not close to roots of D&D. 

Sure the fallout show also drove intrest to said series, but most people poked their head in 4th game (which is really weird, i leave it at that) and due the show being full of not great story telling, weird reddit chungus humor and BoS turned to moronic fratboys, it isn´t really what you´d want for YOUR hobby, do you? 

Anything with show can start intrest in people, but does it have proper staying/spending power behind that intrest? Most people might peek in, see current prices of warhammer and nope out faster then GW store manager restocks ultramarines to shelf. 

[Doghouse]

2 hours ago, N1SB said:

 

It's too big a burden for a Brother to bear.

 

I see these YouTube videos with clearly made up news about how Henry Cavill locked up all the writers in a room with the Horus Heresy novels and a box of ramen or something, and then the cheerleading in the comments section.  They're living precariously through this parasocial relationship with him.

 

A friend does not help a friend by placing a bigger load on his shoulders.

 

Then you add on GW execs, who can barely manage themselves, you see how much infighting there is within GW, adding not a layer of bureaucracy to deal with.  If you had to deal with 2 corporations, it's not just double the load, it's like a whole new dimension of complications.

 

You're brave enough to correctly point out that this is probably not a job even for Superman.

 

I think he genuinely has the best intentions but he did with the Witcher as well. I think this time he has creative control but I'm not sold just yet, one day I hope to eat these words but for now my gut is telling me I am probably right.

 

I think he geeks out on quite abstract things at times, like the chandelier in the Witcher that looked a bit like a Blackstone Fortress but he couldn't explain to others because they wouldn't get the reference. He has the homeground this time though and the majority of the people surrounding him do get the Blackstone Fortress reference.

 

Yeah those vids drive me up the wall with the Henry sat up all night with a red marker nonsense, I've also seen a few "influencers/content creators" suddenly getting into Warhammer getting ready to tap the Sugar Rush before moving onto the next stage of get excited for product, consume new product and get excited for next new product.

 

I truly miss the pre-social media days when we just used to make cool stuff and show each other how to make it online without the need for side hustles or sponsorship.  

[Magos Takatus]

3 hours ago, N1SB said:

 

Brother Grailkeeper, you are way too modest.  You PLAYED 40k.  You STILL play Blood Bowl.  Srsly, if YOU're not a Hobbyist

 

I owe this kid that came into our Warhammer Store for showing me what a Warhammer Fan, instead of a Hobbyist, is:

• "Who's your favourite Primarch?"  He conceptualises them as Marvel/DC superheroes
• "What's your favourite piece of lore?"  He never played, never read, knows 40k only via LoreTube

The questions were so odd to me, I said something about my favourite Primarch is Angron (because he clearly saw that he and everyone else in the Imperium are just slaves) and that scene in Master of Mankind where the Emperor and Arkhan Land were examining him was my "favourite piece of lore".

 

And as always, the best lessons came from making mistakes, as I just did here.

 

After that kid left, I turned to our Warhammer Store manager and another friend, "I was wrong," like that scene in Monty Python where a knight was asked what's his favourite colour and he gave the wrong answer, I felt so stupid.  Because what's my favourite piece of lore, YOUR favourite piece of lore, is...

...what we made ourselves.  We create our own 40k characters, our own armies, our own lore.

 

These new fans, they never created before (but hopefully will soon).  They only consume.

 

Our Warhammer Store exclaimed back, "I was about to say!"  Because I won one of the stores Armies On Parades with a converted army, he knows how I create my own characters.  We are entirely a different breed, Brother.

 

Btw, that kid, he left the Warhammer Store with a novel and a box of Goliath, I think.  So there's hope.

 

This is an odd concept to me. 

 

I have been involved in this hobby since the early 90's. I started off collecting Blood Angels and gradually started to create my own colour schemes, chapters and lore.

 

However, I also greatly enjoyed the background for 40k with novels that gave me inspiration to paint, create a kitbash or tweak my own lore. I've had reveals in novels that gave me the chills.

 

If someone asked my about my favourite piece of lore, to me  that answer feels like being asked for my favourite episode of a TV series and answering with "the one I wrote on this napkin, of course". Perhaps I over-value the official work or under-value my own background but I feel what I write is just a reconstituted imitation of existing lore. I look at projects like the Dornian Heresy as an interesting experiment but I just don't hold fan content in the same regard. I view that as a way of creating my own little plot of land within the setting, but I don't consider it part of the setting.

[grailkeeper]

6 hours ago, N1SB said:

 

Brother Grailkeeper, you are way too modest.  You PLAYED 40k.  You STILL play Blood Bowl.  Srsly, if YOU're not a Hobbyist

 

• "Who's your favourite Primarch?"  He conceptualises them as Marvel/DC superheroes

They kinda are like Marvel superheroes now, any fight between them is basically meaningless as they'll still be back next week. But you're being nice to me so I wont niggle about it. 

Ive played Fallout, my wife hasnt. We both loved the show. 

I suppose another IP it could be compared to is 2000AD as a bad case scenario. The first Dredd Movie was bad, the second was excellent but not a box office smash. Neither did 2000AD much good. Doug Jones said that they even made it hard for him to get his Rogue Trooper movie funded. Perhaps it might do more for 2000AD or the rumoured upcoming Taika Waiti Dredd movie. (Which I'm a bit dubious of)

Edited Saturday at 07:58 PM by grailkeeper

[N1SB]

4 hours ago, grailkeeper said:

I suppose another IP it could be compared to is 2000AD as a bad case scenario. The first Dredd Movie was bad, the second was excellent but not a box office smash. Neither did 2000AD much good. Doug Jones said that they even made it hard for him to get his Rogue Trooper movie funded. Perhaps it might do more for 2000AD or the rumoured upcoming Taika Waiti Dredd movie. (Which I'm a bit dubious of)

 

And Hollywood is all about Marvel/DC films, yet Diamond Distributors who de facto controls their comics went bankrupt last year.

 

7 hours ago, Magos Takatus said:

If someone asked my about my favourite piece of lore, to me  that answer feels like being asked for my favourite episode of a TV series and answering with "the one I wrote on this napkin, of course". Perhaps I over-value the official work or under-value my own background but I feel what I write is just a reconstituted imitation of existing lore. I look at projects like the Dornian Heresy as an interesting experiment but I just don't hold fan content in the same regard. I view that as a way of creating my own little plot of land within the setting, but I don't consider it part of the setting.

 

I agree, yet remember the Astartes animation was a fan-made YouTube animation before it was acquired for Warhammer+.

 

How about if I were to ask what your favourite Dungeons & Dragons or Dark Heresy campaign?  Probably not the Dungeons & Dragons films (neither the early 2000s one with Jeremy Irons nor even the recent one with Chris Pine) nor Critical Role, but your own campaign where your friend did that idiotic thing and the DM allowed it, but it worked.

 

(That idiotic friend would have been me.)

 

Maybe lore was the wrong word, I was replying this neophyte.  But "lore" like our favourite stories are the ones with our friends.

[N1SB]

10 hours ago, Jukkiz said:

If you know critical role and people who watch it, it ain´t really D&D. It´s an rpg that´s puppeteered forward with base as D&D. Sure it drove up intrest and maybe players to try the thing, but after being dm in couple of such games with such people, they´re insufferable. Their expectations is YOU (DM), the basically play everything like critical role does and not close to roots of D&D.

 

That's good intel, thanks for sharing that.  I know of it because my Discord friends referenced it, I saw some clips, I know what you mean.

 

On the ground of your words, I'm going to look at Critical Role again, maybe let a session play out while I'm painting or something.  A really good point.

[Magos Takatus]

I understand a little better now.

 

I suppose as more of a painter than a gamer or lore writer most of my energy goes into the models but even if you are a novice lore writer like myself I have plenty of stories from the tabletop to reminisce over.  In fact, I just remembered an Apocalypse game where we had two Stompas on our side. The other Stompa got outflanked by a multimelta-armed Land Speeder. When my fellow Stompa Kaptain was about to turn around to engage it I confidently stated he should push toward the enemy and my Stompa would handle the Land Speeder and cover his back. Of course, I completely failed to hit the skimmer and when it got it's chance to fire it set off a chain reaction and blew the other Stompa apart. Oops! 

 

Thinking about it, most of the was stories I remember are when things went horribly wrong for me.

 

As for comparing it to D&D, the reference isn't something I can directly relate to but I did watch TotalBiscuit's Dark Heresy campaign and I still remember someone picking up a pot of beans cooking on the stove and throwing it as in improvised weapon and joking about whether it would get the melta rule. It was so long ago I can't remember if someone in the party made that joke or if it was a comment I left beneath the video but the whole ordeal was so funny it stuck with me.

 

In light of your post, I guess I understand what you were getting at. I have some ideas sketched out for lore between three of my armies and how they interact with each other and though it isn't fleshed out yet it's more personal to me than the official lore, even if it's not been written by a professional author and isn't up to that standard.

[Firedrake Cordova]

21 hours ago, Doghouse said:

I'm not sold just yet, one day I hope to eat these words but for now my gut is telling me I am probably right.

Hope is the first step on the road to disappointment. At least if you have low expectations, it's unlikely you'll be disappointed, and more likely that you may be pleasantly surprised.  

[Frogian]

On 8/29/2026 at 2:28 PM, Doghouse said:

I know it will be an unpopular opinion, but I don't have faith in either Amazon or Henry Cavil on this. As a caveat, I really do genuinely like Henry especially as Superman but he's attached himself to so many underperforming or failed projects.

 

I don't have any faith in Amazon but with Cavill at least he wants to be loyal to the source material. Seeing what happened with the witcher or halo series (we don't pay any attention to the games...) that's a good thing - just have to hope he doesn't go too Filoni with it, but hopefully GW would rein any of that in