Creative Assembly has addressed the disgruntled Total War community, apologising for what has admitted were a series of missteps this year with the release of Total War: Warhammer 3 DLC and the struggling Total War: Pharaoh.
30.11.2023 - 12:56 / pcgamer.com / Haruki Satomi / Will
The devs at Creative Assembly have had a rough time of it recently. Back in September, the studio was blindsided by the sudden cancellation of its upcoming live-service shooter Hyenas, barely two weeks after it had concluded an open beta and one month after an appearance at Gamescom. The result was layoffs, uncertainty, and now the studio is going to attempt to pivot back to what it knows best: real-time strategy.
As part of a presentation to investors (via Eurogamer), CA's owner Sega attributed the studio's ill-fated push into live service to «the favorable winds of the early Covid-19 period, coupled with the strong performance of each title,» which led Sega down a path of «accelerating more, even in areas where those studios have not tried yet for further growth.» In other words, Sega decided to push the boat out, only to realise no one on board knew how to sail.
«To put it simply, Creative Assembly was good at offline games in the RTS genre,» Sega boss Haruki Satomi told investors, «but they took on the challenge of developing Hyenas, an online game in the FPS genre… Although the game itself was good, we decided to cancel the development of Hyenas because we did not think it would reach a quality that would satisfy our users.»
According to Satomi, Sega just didn't think it could really «operate this as a competitive online game for a long period of time.» Thus cancellation, layoffs, refocusing.
«We have decided to focus again on the strength of each studio,» said Satomi, which we can take to mean that Creative Assembly has been directed to get back to work on things more like Total War and less like Alien: Isolation and Hyenas.
As an inveterate Alien: Isolation fan, I suppose I'm a bit disappointed, but it's really no bad thing. After all, the studio's most recent RTS output—Total War: Warhammer 3 and Total War: Pharaoh—both earned plaudits from PCG's resident strategy heads. But it shouldn't have taken a doomed live-service shooter venture and a bunch of layoffs to realise it.
Creative Assembly has addressed the disgruntled Total War community, apologising for what has admitted were a series of missteps this year with the release of Total War: Warhammer 3 DLC and the struggling Total War: Pharaoh.
I haven’t been keeping up with player reaction to the latest Twar and Twarhammer games, but it seems players are none too pleased with Creative Assembly right now. In a rather dramatic open letter, the company's vice president Roger Collum has acknowledged that Total War: Warhammer 3’s Shadows of Change add-on and the recent historical strategy outing Total War: Pharaoh did not ship in a desirable state, with complaints ranging from wobbly execution to overpricing. The studio will try to make things right by offering partial refunds to Pharaoh owners and giving away DLC on top of the usual updates.
Creative Assembly has apologised for «missteps» it made with the Total War series and is offering partial refunds of Total War: Pharaoh on Steam.
The Total War: Warhammer series has a tradition of excellent DLC, whether it adds new armies like Curse of the Vampire Coast, expands existing ones like The Warden & The Paunch, or offers an entirely new campaign mode like the free Mortal Empires and Immortal Empires add-ons. The recent Shadows of Change DLC for Total War: Warhammer 3 was not so well-received, however, being sold for the same price as one of the full army-adding expansions while offering value closer to that of a faction-expanding one.
Last night, Sega announced new entries in the Crazy Taxi, Jet Set Radio, Golden Axe, Shinobi, and Streets of Rage series all at once, and it seems that the company is making a conscious attempt at returning to the rebellious energy it hasn't really displayed since the Dreamcast era. Frankly, it's about time.
Do you want to get the latest gaming industry news straight to your inbox? Sign up for our daily and weekly newsletters here .
This year at the Game Awards, the coveted Content Creator of the Year award went to Ironmouse, a fan-favorite VTuber. It marks the first time that an animated character has won the award, showing how expansive the streaming world can be.
Baldur’s Gate 3 has won Game of the Year at The Game Awards.
As the Greater Chicagoland Area's number one Matthew McConaughey fan and one of its notable BioWare-likers, having him pop up at The Game Awards to announce he'd appear in a new RPG from some BioWare old hands feels tailor-made to make me freak out. The True Detective actor will have an unspecified role in Exodus, the debut game from Archetype Entertainment.
Archetype Entertainment has announced Exodus, a sweeping interstellar RPG that will star Matthew McConaughey in va video game for the first time, and feature some time-altering elements and a focus on repercussions to your actions.
UK developer Creative Assembly, after a brief dalliance with first-person projects on PlayStation like 2014's Alien: Isolation and the recently cancelled Hyenas, will shift focus back to strategy games and PC. It's likely the last console players will see of the Horsham-based company, at least for the foreseeable future.
When was the last time you read a news story about Bungie and Destiny 2 that was genuinely positive about the game? If you only get your gaming news here at Push Square, it would be last week: the new armour set themed around The Witcher 3 looked pretty cool. It was then pointed out you could actually buy the RPG's Game of the Year Edition for less than the cost of just one of the three armour sets on offer.