Verdict: Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 is a co-op shooter about Lieutenant Demetrian Titus and two other Ultramarines. The campaign does not add female Space Marines, and we found no Adepta Sororitas class. The women who are in it are an Astra Militarum major and an astropath, not a lecture. Chaos is still the enemy, and the executions are still gory. Progressive outlets attacked the game for making the Imperium feel heroic. That is a green flag, and it cannot push a zero any lower.

Woke Score: 0/100. No documented DEI consultancy, queer writing, girlboss script, or regional content cut. The press attacks are recorded and not subtracted.

Woke Score graphic

This is the standing page for Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 (Saber Interactive, published by Focus Entertainment, 9 September 2024). New evidence gets merged here; the URL stays fixed. The 2011 game is the prequel this story continues, not a separate page.

How the score breaks down

Scored against our How we score rules:

• Female Astartes and the 2024 argument: 0. The playable campaign squad is Titus, Chairon and Gadriel, all Space Marines. The fan wiki’s character list has no Adepta Sororitas and no female Astartes. We found no Saber or Focus statement that the shipped game added women in Space Marine armour, and no statement that they banned a female-armour mod by name. What they did publish, in game director Dmitriy Grigorenko’s Focus community post, is a server rule: from the December update, mods are blocked in public online sessions because of stability and corrupted saves, and they stay allowed in private Operations lobbies. IGN reported that Focus had already said it had no problem with PvE modding. The Steam review-bomb TheGamer covered at launch was about a quiet Epic Online Services install, not about women.
• Titus versus the first game (rule C): 0. The 2011 game ends with the Inquisition taking Titus. This one continues that: he has been a Deathwatch blackshield, he comes back as a lieutenant rather than a captain, Chairon and Gadriel suspect him of Chaos taint, and Chapter Master Calgar later vindicates him (Kyle Barr, Gizmodo, 12 September 2024). That is the sequel’s plot, not a representation rewrite. Creative director Oliver Hollis-Leick told Rock Paper Shotgun they pushed back on Games Workshop phraseology so the squad would sound less “strange and antiquated,” and he kept Acheran’s “company dismissed” instead of the longer “brothers, attend your duties” because the shorter line would be understood. That is a clarity edit. It is not an inclusive-language pass, and we found no they/them, no pronoun lecture, and no queer or bisexual relationship.
• Women (rule E): 0. There is no character named Chairwoman. Chairon is one of the two male squadmates. The named woman with a campaign role is Major Carenz Sarkaana of the Cadian 8th. Lexicanum: she asks Captain Sevastus Acheran for Ultramarine reinforcements, and men she sends in are lost. She is a Guard officer who needs the Astartes, in the same slot Lieutenant Mira held in the first game. That is not girlboss writing. A Steam thread calling her one is a fan complaint, which does not score. The fan wiki also lists Neoma as head astropath. No political line was found for her.
• Squad ethnicity: 0. Hollis-Leick’s interview, as quoted by Edwin Evans-Thirlwell (Rock Paper Shotgun, 24 October 2024), treats Chairon and Gadriel as non-white. Evans-Thirlwell calls that “diversity-washing” and says it is not enough. A non-white Ultramarine is not a queer character, not a moral about capitalism, and not a joke about white supremacists. The Imperium’s xenophobia is the setting the press wanted underlined. It is not a progressive insert, and it is not scored twice as a press complaint below.
• Consultancy (rule A): not found. MobyGames lists 2,065 people on the Xbox Series credits. The roles in the public summary are directors, producers, art and design, including creative director Oliver Hollis-Leick and game director Dmitriy Grigorenko. No sensitivity, diversity or inclusion credit appears there. Sweet Baby Inc.’s MobyGames gameography and its own project page do not include this game. A direct fetch of the full credit page was blocked, so a buried name is not impossible. Nothing retrieved shows one.
• Track record (rule B): not applied. We found no Saber or Focus DEI mandate, and no earlier censored remake, that changed this script. CEO Matthew Karch’s September 2024 comment, which he endorsed on LinkedIn with “Whoever wrote that seems pretty sharp” after Saber declined to confirm he typed it (Andy Chalk, PC Gamer, 18 September 2024), complains about other games “imposing morals.” That is a stance, not a consultancy.
• Press (rule D): 0. Two progressive attacks on this game are documented, and a discount of about 5 would normally apply. It is not taken, because the other lines are zero and a green flag cannot go below zero. Evans-Thirlwell (Rock Paper Shotgun, 24 October 2024) argues Saber made “fanatical killing machines” likeable, treats the modern-soldier dialogue as a failure of satire, and is unimpressed by the non-white squadmates. Barr (Gizmodo, 12 September 2024) says the game is “too busy making you feel heroic to show the farce,” and worries a “sexist, racist, and toxic” part of the fanbase will think the Imperium is correct. Kotaku’s Ethan Gach (18 September 2024) attacks the culture-war reading of Karch’s comment more than the campaign. IGN’s review praises the combat. Praise is not a green flag, and a quality complaint is not one either. The two political attacks are the same signal, counted once, then not subtracted.
• Censorship and regions: 0. The selling point Karch names is “glory kills.” Chaos is on screen as an enemy, and Barr describes the campaign moving from Tyranids to Chaos cultists, with the Imperium still ready to expend planets. We found no report of a gore cut, a religion cut, a Chaos cut, or a China-only build.

Total: 0 + 0 + 0 + 0 + 0 + 0 + 0 + 0 = 0.

Confirmed findings

• No women in Space Marine armour in the shipped game. Campaign player characters are male Astartes. Sororitas were not found as a class or a campaign faction.
• The mod rule is about servers, not a lore police notice. Grigorenko’s post blocks mods in public sessions and keeps them in private Operations. It does not name female armour.
• The launch review-bomb was the Epic install. TheGamer, not a representation row.
• Titus’s demotion is the plot bridge from 2011. Inquisition, Deathwatch, return as lieutenant, suspicion inside the squad, Calgar’s verdict. Gizmodo’s plot account matches that, and it is not a modernisation of his politics.
• Sarkaana is a Cadian major who asks for help and loses soldiers. Lexicanum. Not an infallible lead, and not a “we don’t need men” speech in any source we could verify.

Checked and not confirmed (or ruled out)

Talking point	Finding
The game added female Space Marines	No. Not in the campaign squad or the published character list.
Saber promised them, or banned the mod that adds them	Not found. The published mod rule is stability and saves. Private lobbies stay open.
Adepta Sororitas were written out	Not shown. We found no source that they were in the game and then cut.
“Chairwoman” is a girlboss	Wrong name. The squadmate is Chairon. The officer is Major Sarkaana, and the girlboss label is a Steam thread, not a script comparison.
LGBTQ characters or pronoun changes	Not found.
Sweet Baby Inc. or a sensitivity reader	Not in the sources we could read. Full credit dump was blocked. See the consultancy line.
Gore, the Emperor, or Chaos was censored for China	No report found.
Hollis-Leick’s shorter military lines are inclusive localisation	No. He described a length and clarity choice against GW’s more archaic wording.

Cleanest version and regional notes

The retail build on PC, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series is the game. We found no region that restores cut gore, religion or Chaos, because we found no such cut. Fan mods that put women in Astartes armour are not an official version and are not a cleaner text. They add the thing the campaign does not have.

DEI Detector scorecard

Signal	Present?
Inclusion / sensitivity consultancy (rule A)	Not found
Queer, bisexual or trans writing on screen	Not found
Female Space Marines or Sororitas as a representation add	Not found
Girlboss writing (rule E)	Not found (Sarkaana is a Guard officer)
Woke changes to Titus (rule C)	Not found
Progressive-press attack (rule D)	Yes (RPS, Gizmodo); not subtracted, floor is 0
Regional censorship	Not found

Open to update

This page will be revisited if:

• A credit, LinkedIn post or reliable report shows a diversity or sensitivity consultancy that actually worked on this game.
• A patch or DLC adds female Astartes, a queer relationship, or a political moral that is not just the Imperium being the Imperium.
• A named regional build is shown to cut gore, religion or Chaos.

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Sources: MobyGames, Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine II (2024), Xbox Series credits summary (2,065 people; full page not retrievable here); Sweet Baby Inc. project list and MobyGames company gameography, neither of which lists this game; Dmitriy Grigorenko, “Mod Support — A Message from the Game Director,” Focus Entertainment community; IGN, “Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 Dev Bans Mods From Public Servers” (public-server block, private lobbies, Focus’s earlier PvE-modding comment); TheGamer, launch Steam review-bomb over the Epic Online Services install; Lexicanum, Carenz Sarkaana (Cadian 8th, asks Acheran for reinforcements); Space Marine 2 fan wiki character index (Titus, Chairon, Gadriel, Sarkaana, Neoma; no Sororitas); Oliver Hollis-Leick, interviewed by Edwin Evans-Thirlwell, Rock Paper Shotgun, “Why play a fascist?” (24 October 2024), including the “company dismissed” line and the non-white squadmates; Kyle Barr, Gizmodo (12 September 2024), for the Titus plot bridge and the heroic-framing attack; Andy Chalk, PC Gamer (18 September 2024), for the Karch comment and the LinkedIn endorsement; Ethan Gach, Kotaku (18 September 2024), for the same comment. Steam store library art of Titus, checked against the capsule. Lines marked “not found” were searched and not shown.