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 Da Boss wrote:
Seems like the latest codex is leaning into it more and more. The purple Ork thing I don't care about really.

I think When I start my Ork army they will be purple.

To me, that quote still reads as pretty vague and not 100% "things work because Orks".
I also stick to the notion that all Codexes are written from an Imperial POV (something that was suggested to me by a GW staffer once). All of the Imperial Codexes are puff pieces about the faction and while non-Imperial Codexes contain basic info they're still clearly biased. Craftworlders are haughty self-serving prats, the Orks are a violent menace, CSM are evil monsters.
The biggest supporting point of this notion for me was the 8th Ed CSM Codex naming Horus as the first Traitor Primarch (not first among or greatest to fall, first), which isn't true since Lorgar orchestrated Horus's fall in the first place but according to the Imperium, Lorgar turned Traitor after Horus did.
Plus, have we ever seen evidence of T'au or Aeldari attempts to use/dissect Ork weaponry? I can't recall anything like that, which means the only perspective on Ork weaponry not working for non-Orks is an Imperial one.

Fair arguments perhaps. But if they don't make that obvious to the readers, then most of them will take the Imperial bias as fact. The old codices used to present that stuff as actual quotes with attribution.

When I discuss Orks online these days I see the "ork tech works because they believe in it" stuff being touted as absolute fact by the majority of fans, you can see plenty of it here or in any other thread about Orks.

In the end, if this becomes the dominant view of the fanbase it will change the background. That is what happened with Space Marines, everyone took the over the top bolter porn stuff seriously and so Marines had to keep getting hyped up more and more in game until I can't really recognise their role in the story compared to when I first got interested in 40K.

It's probably inevitable in any long lived franchise that becomes corporate property and a "brand" rather than the vision of a creator. It will inevitably be handed off to people with a new understanding of the material and change with time. That change is what alienates me from the setting. But it's probably a good thing - it encourages me to go and make my own versions that I enjoy and be a creator myself instead of just being a consumer of other people's work.

I think the fact that we can have a discussion about it with even points on both sides says a lot.
I did have some other thoughts on it as well.
Almost every other 40k race uses mass-produced standardised weaponry in its armies and while there are variants based on specific manufacturing locations (i.e. Kantrael (Cadian) Lasguns vs Lucius (DKoK) Lasguns), the weapons are generally the same across the board. Orks might have Mek Worlds dominated by massive factory complexes but the construction of weapons is by no means standardised. You might get a batch of 50 Shootas that have an increased rate of fire but have small ammo capacity and then the next 50 would be slower but more accurate. It gets even worse when we get onto things like Killa Kans or Gargants which are basically built at random by Meks. If a Techpriest were to examine 10 Shootas all from different batches of production then there would be far fewer similarities than 10 different Lasgun Patterns.