There’s a surge of excitement in the chat as the softly spoken, Polish-accented Venris enters, and, after some mic difficulties, begins to show off one of the update’s new features – a special iteration of the hulking orcish Rogue Idol, specific to orcish shaman Wurrzag. Normally I mod around eight to twelve hours a day More specifically, the latest in a long history of updates to Total War: Warhammer 2’s most popular mod, SFO: Grimhammer II.

Its viewers – now nearly doubled in number – will have already donated over $400 toward the team responsible for this evening’s main event. In fifteen minutes’ time, the stream will be well underway.

If I’ve implied a level of journalistic detachment up until this point, it’s only fair to point out I’m just as excited as anyone else here, half tempted to join in as typed chants of faux-orcish “‘Ere We Go” fill the chat. This isn’t even a new announcement from Total War: Warhammer studio Creative Assembly – a game whose dedicated fanbase and frequent official updates have secured it a near-constant place on Steam’s top 20 most played games. This isn’t an official stream from Games Workshop – a company so comfortable in its products’ worldwide popularity that it recently repaid millions of pounds of furlough stimulus.

It’s 8:03 on a Friday evening, and like any young and enviable media professional, I’m watching over a thousand gamers excitedly type Warhammer memes into a YouTube chat, waiting for a stream to begin.

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