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I don't think it was from white dwarf, I believe it was mentioned during a Q&A at games day (same context though, flippant off-hand response to "what happened to the Squats" "Tyranids ate them")

Much later Jervis wrote an article for the Citadel Journal in issue 33 about how to use your Squat armies (essentially either as Imperial Guard to represent those who reintegrated into the Imperium or Orks for those who didn't and became nomadic). Interestingly that article mentions that the Squat Homeworlds are "lost" but neglects to mention why.

Later than that in the reprints of the Inquisition War novels they added a foreword referencing the Squats:

As to the abhuman, the thread is cut. The accursed hive fleet of the tyranid put paid to that line too long ago

I'm fairly sure that was the first textual reference to the Tyranids having anything to do with the Squats dying out, but the idea had permeated throughout the nascent hobby Internet long before then

According to some internet sleuthing:

In White Dwarf January 2000 GW said this in response to a write-in:

Would you believe they were all eaten by the Tyranid invasion? Or, due to the Squats biker life style, everyone of the was arrested for disturbing the peace and sacrificed to the Emperor. Where do you think they get all of those souls anyway? All kidding aside, it doesn't seem likely the Squats will ever again see the light of day. When they were out they never seemed very popular, showed up at our stores, or tournaments, and didn't sell on top of all that. Their look was really outdated compared to the hundreds of other great Warhammer 40,000 models. Don't send us hate mail, it's just the cold hard facts of the 41st Millennium.

Then, in July 2004, Jervis Johnson on the old Specialist Games Forum posted this (amongst a much longer post on the whole affair):

In the end (and it took years to really get to the roots of the problem) this led to a realisation that we were going to have to drop the Squats in their 'Squat' form from the 40K background. There was little point having a major race that we weren't willing to make an army book for, and their inclusion in the background meant that people kept asking us when we'd do a Squat Codex. Instead we decided that we'd write the Squats out of the background by saying that their Homworlds had been devoured by a Tyranid Hivefleet. This would give us the option in the future to return to making a race based ont he Squat archetype for 40K. This race was given the name of Demiurg, and a certain amount of preliminary work was done to get a 'feel' for what the race would be like. At present the only hint of the Demiurg in 40K is the Demiurg spaceship for BFG. However, we do have this race 'in our back pocket' as a possible new race for 40K, or an interesting character model in Inquisitor, or whatever. So far the Demiurg have lost out to other projects, and it may be that their time never actually comes, as they will have to win through on their merits, not simply because we once made some Squat models in the past. At present, I have to say that it is more lilely that they don't make the cut than do, as there is a certain predudice these days to simply taking races from Warhammer and cross them over to 40K like we did in the early days, so it may be that the Squats/Demiurg end up remaining a footnote in the history of the 40K galaxy. Only time will tell...

It's notable that he recalls they'd write the squats out by having them be devoured, although we never really saw much actual canon statement on this beyond the above

Which largely matches the Votann background. A large group did get scoffed by Tyranids. And that was pretty much the only League commonly abroad in the wider galaxy.

So the others were always there, just content in the Deep Core where pretty much no other major player goes due to the extreme hazards.

Votaan were written about 20 years later to revive the squats. The extent to which they "match" the lore is just GW canonising the tyranids thing.
I'm not aware of any Leagues having been arrested and sacrificed to The Emperor though!

I have nothing to contribute to this thread, since I do not use the sort of internet that exposes me to "memes"

indie web FTW! Flock corpo big sosh media forever

 Ashiraya wrote:

Andykp wrote:
Apparently the purple thing was first mentioned by GW in catachen devil, 2023 where the kommando character thinks about purple being the sneakiest colour.

The meme far, far predates this novel. I think it's yet another case of the writers mistaking community memes for their own actual lore.

It happens from time to time. Like how the community associated the "Saturnine" name with a Terminator suit that never had it (and that was equal in performance to the other marks), until last year when HH3.0 dropped and the suit was Saturnine after all.

Yeah, the meme has been transfered to actual lore. Let's see if it gets put into a Codex at some point. I'll admit I hope this doesn't happen to "Orks think things into reality", so far GW has restrained themselves a bit to take that path. The Beast series has a scene that materializes orky belief a bit more and some Codex throwaway lines are ambigous, but other than that there's nothing concrete. I hope it stays that way. I'd like it even more if we get some fluff blurb that shows us a Mek analyzing imperial tech and coming to the very same conclusion as that tech priest: "No no, this stoopid 'umie tech can't work, this is all nothing but scrap, surely this only works because dem 'oomies fink it does. I've seen blue beakies shoot mind bullets, surely that's how deyz 'iz running scrap guns like this."

The Beast series should be stricken from the record of 40K.

 Da Boss wrote:
The Beast series should be stricken from the record of 40K.

Frankly, so should the HH novel series.

I think these "historical" novelisations are bad for the setting IMO.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
On topic, my memelore nominations:
-Guard troopers have an average life expectancy of 15 hours
-DKoK guard never break and are basically fearless automatons

Honourable mention to faith being a tangible force for ordinary, non-psychic humans to tap into if they are sufficiently fanatical. This would be in the list above except sadly GW seems to overwhelmingly support this being the case in lore now.

Guard life expectancy is on the shortlist.

DKoK might do as a general catch all. So the clone thing, the shovels thing etc.

 Haighus wrote:

 Da Boss wrote:
The Beast series should be stricken from the record of 40K.

Frankly, so should the HH novel series.

I think these "historical" novelisations are bad for the setting IMO.

I like 30k more than 40k at this point, so I'll fight you on that.

I agree about the Beast though. Ridiculous novel series. It's criminal how pathetic it indirectly makes Ghaz look because the Beast authors were obsessed with shock value.

Yup, when they first announced The Beast Arises series it I was excited but it quickly devolved into hodgepodge writing for a terrible attempt at Imperial intrigue over a looming Ork threat. The worst part is their portrayal of the Orks. There's not one proper named Ork character in the entire series, just a nameless caricature of Primarchs of not one, but several "Prime-Orks" that basically just exist to get worfed by either Vulkan (who also bizarrely existed in this series to die shortly after debuting to commit sudoku against the Orks) and the other Imperials through the exact same process of just invading Ullanor multiple times. Considering how much flavour Nazdreg, Wazdakka and several existing Ork characters have in modern 40k, it just smacks of the laziness they had in The Beast Arises that The Beast never even has any dialogue or any sort of rivalry with any of the Imperial main characters. Functionally, the Orks seemed more like Tyranids than Orks. They also "Star Wars streeted" it into modern 40k by making Ullanor and Armageddon the same planet, which seemed frankly unnecessary.

The writers clearly didn't know how to write the Orks as a compelling foe other than "what if Orks, but bigger, and better tech?". They basically had to rely on two macguffins to beat them and it was a piss poor retcon on how they created the Deathwatch for marines.

Oh and let's not forget some of the weirdest side-tangents in the story, like a group of Harlequins infiltrating through the Imperial palace, killing dozens of Custodes, just to send the message to the Emperor that "Don't forget that Chaos still scary, kthxbye". Oh wow, thanks guys, really needed you to kill my bodyguards and get danger close within the Imperial Palace for me to take this very self-evident statement seriously. You know what would help? You jumping in to deal with the Ork attack moon in orbit instead of talking about a different threat.

Overall, 100% a series that either needs a do-over or be banished into the shadow realm of non-canon.