Eagle-Eyed Total War Fan Spots What Looks Like a Leak for Creative Assembly’s Much-Rumored Total War: Warhammer 40,000, With The Game Awards Announcement Just Hours Away

Creative Assembly has confirmed it has a new Total War video game set to be announced at The Game Awards, but what is it? Warhammer 40,000 fans think they know — and one eagle-eyed viewer even spotted what looks like concrete evidence.

The Sega-owned strategy specialist behind Total War: Warhammer (the fantasy version of Games Workshop’s much-loved tabletop setting) is rumored to be working on a Warhammer 40,000 and a Star Wars take on its long-running Total War series, and it looks like the Warhammer 40,000 game will finally get announced at The Game Awards tonight.

Redditor Knavbot took to the Total War subreddit to point to a blink-and-you’ll miss it reference to 40K in Creative Assembly’s recent showcase livestream (the one where the developer announced Total War: Medieval 3). I really do mean blink-and-you’ll miss it because the files labeled 40k are incredibly hard to spot. I had to slow the video right down at the 32:42 mark and freeze-frame to see them, but yes, they are there:

Here are the relevant file names in the video:

• 40k_outfield_sheet_01_base_colour
• 40k_outfield_sheet_01_material_map
• 40k_outfield_sheet_01_normal

This apparent 40k leak appeared during the part of the showcase where Creative Assembly talked about its new game engine, which will help bring its games to consoles for the first time. Assuming this is all leading to a Total War: Warhammer 40,000 announcement, we can assume the game will release for PC as well as PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X and S.

In truth, the announcement won’t come as much of a surprise for many Warhammer 40,000 fans given the sheer volume of rumors floating around Creative Assembly and the Games Workshop community in recent months. But until the game is announced, we should point out that the Total War reveal at The Game Awards could be something else entirely.

Warhammer 40,000 video game leaks have a history of coming from file names shown in videos. The appearance of Dark Angels Primarch Lion El’Jonson in upcoming RTS Dawn of War 4 was leaked via file names in a video. Developer King Art Games recently admitted to IGN in an interview that this was an accident. Perhaps Creative Assembly knew what it was doing here! Perhaps not.

Check out all our The Game Awards predictions and roundup of leaks right here.

Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.