The Expurgation of the Squats OR Why Games Workshop Doesn't love you, part one

In the recent history of hobby gaming, no hobby games manufacturer has been able to cultivate an especially good reputation among its followers. TSR, distributor of dungeons and dragons, was notorious for suing into oblivion any who who co-opted the D-20 system for public use. Wizards forces its patrons to buy products in unmarked random "booster" packs. The corn liqour inspired results of incest who brought us FATAL have managed to malign no less than 70% of the earths people. And all such companies have abused their customers by charging exorbitant
amounts of money for their products.
All of the offenses detailed above (save one) have been comitted in the name of the capitalist economy and the norms thereof. But there is one company that cares less about profits than it does about making its adhearants suffer. This company does not care who you are or what you've done. This company simply wants to get you. (And when I say "You" I mean YOU personally!)

What company am I referring to?
Why Games Workshop, of course!

Many would say that this is a serious accusation and that without providing sufficient evidence to support my case, I could be susceptible to a highly unpleasant libel suit from which I might never recover. It is for this reason that I will now outline the evidence that proves, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that not only does games workshop not care for its customers, but that, in many cases, this apathy manifests itself in acts of sheer spite.

Exhibit the first: The Squats
For those not "in the know" the squats were a race of spacefaring dwarf archetypes, supported under the first and second editions of warhammer 40,000. When third edition was released in 1997. the squats ceased to exist, with the rationalization given that "they weren't selling well". Fair enough. Why then did Games Workshop proceed to purge the background material for the game of all references to this once prominent race? Why liquidate them without so much as a period of grace for those who had invested signifigant time and effort into their squat armies?
As time passed, the reasons for this became all too clear. Games Workshop, overseers of the hobby, had grown ashamed of the squats. It wasn't enough to stop making models for the race or to limit them to a barebones core rulebook list, as they had done for the Chaos Dwarves in fantasy. No, the squats had to be destroyed. And so, the squat players, their countless hours of work, their hundreds of dollars invested, were sacrificed on the altar of a few designers pride.

Some rationalize the exodous of the squats by invoking the right of an artist to control the distribution of his intellectual propery. My rebuttal is this:
Any person who collected a squat army during their heyday paid for a box of unassembled grey plastic components. It was left to the player to assemble and paint thse models and only then could their artistic value be realized. We can compare this to another field; Architecture. A pile of girders, bricks, glass panes, wires and other raw materials would only qualify as art amongst the pseudo-intelligensia of New York City. It takes an architect and his subordinantes to assemble these components in such a way that as to be aesthetically pleasing and/or thought provoking, thereby qualifying it as a valid example of what could be described as "art".
Games workshop produced the components for the love of money, wheras the player assembled and painted these components for the love of the game. Who, of these two, is the real artist?

The last reference to the squats in any piece of fluff can be found in the third edition Ork codex in a transcript of Ghazhkull bragging about "Crushin da stunties at Golgotha". The Eulogy of a race which held honour at a premium is nothing more than a passing insult directed not only by the Ork warlord towards his vanquished foes, but by games workshop towards those they betrayed.