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Hello out there

I wonder why GW drop the Genestealer cult after 2 ed, do anyone now?

Sincerely taogoli

There probably just wasn't enough money in it.

It is still firmly in the background fluff and often crops up in the novels so maybe it will show up again........

I live in hope that Forge World will someday produce a 'Stealer Cult list and models; I don't anticipate their return to mainstream GW, however. In the interim, there's always Project Pandora...

GW dropped the models but they haven't gotten a Stalinist-erasing treatment like the Squats. They still pop up in Fluff/BL publications all the time.

GW dropped "cults" in general when they did away with the Genestealer Cult line. Frateris Militia and Chaos Cultists all went bye bye too.

Really I think FW should be focusing on neglected side armies in the setting. Arbites, Mechanicus, Feral Orks, Harlequins, Exodites, Genestealers, and so on.

I wouldn't say they have gone away indefinitely. Genestealer Cults weakening worlds ahead of a Tyranid invasion are still very much part of the background.

My guess would be that one day Forge World will get around to doing a book and we will have some new rules for them.

Hopefully if the huge Codex:Chaos Legions does well and it has multi list potential (due to all legions) maybe they'll do others with optionally things like that too.

I'd imagine some combination of the following factors:
1) a desire to focus armies in third edition.
2) The relatively limited scope of both rules and models at the time.
3) The inevitable overlap between two other, main, armies (nids and IG)
4) difficutly coming up with an aesthetic for them.
5) low sales during 2nd edition

As said before, they are not dropped from fluff but GW no longer make the rules or models as they were only of interest to a small handful of gamers so it would rather focus on larger projects.

The real reason is because Warhammer 40k is a WARgame, not a 'police action' game. Genestealer cults are a minor threat, a nuisance at best which is usually handled by local law enforcement, it has no place on the same tabletop as a strike force of space marines, a company of imperial guard, a tyranid hive fleet, an ork waaagh, etc. This is the same reason why other such cults and minor forces have been eliminated. Going further off of that, keeping them in game would set a precedent that would require GW to produce army lists to cover all the other such minor nuisance forces that nobody cares about and which lack the numbers, firepower, weaponry, etc. to take on a proper military threat which is the primary focus of the game.

If you want to play a genestealer cult, then counts-as one from the Tyranids codex. Its more than doable.

Widespread 40K-fan demands that "Xenos" should be more "alien" (literally in this case, perhaps) and less human-like?

That's a good point. Smaller games of 2nd edition 40k could really capture the flavor of skirmishes involving genestealer cults and adeptus arbite teams.

Modern 40k is played at notably larger scale, one that represents small companies, not large platoons.