Creative Assembly: Shady Controversy Stirs Shadows of Change
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Our first article is befitting of the current state of gaming as we’ll talk a bit about Creative Assembly (I know, I’m late to the party — but no time like the present, eh?). Ah yes, Creative Assembly, the studio that has given us Total War and evokes a keen sense of nostalgia when thinking back to the days of Shogun, Medieval & Rome Total War. Barring the Total Annihilation series, Total War was my first real introduction to strategy which spiralled me onto being a strategy addict to this day. Inevitably though, Creative Assembly could now be considered as the proverbial example of Icarus, having flown too close to the sun.
Many will already know Creative Assembly currently finds itself in the midst of a huge backlash from the community that has fervently followed it for the past 23 years. While saddening, it isn’t overly surprising given the direction the Total War series has taken over the past 10 years — beginning with Rome 2.
The excitement around the announcement of Rome 2 was soon replaced with dismay after the numerous issues around performance, stability and the changes to gameplay (such as the infamous addition of health bars for units — which we’ll cover a little later). Since then, Creative Assembly has doubled down on its approach instead of working collaboratively with the community — and as a result, has culminated in the current backlash following the disastrous launch of Pharaoh and the price hike for Warhammer 3’s ‘Shadow of Change’ DLC.
Firstly, let’s address Creative Assembly’s shortcomings with listening to the community. It appears evident that the studio know they have no direct nor indirect competitor, which puts them in a perceived position of power as they clearly view the fanbase as having nowhere else to go. What Creative Assembly haven’t factored in is when forcing people to accept such a slap in the face when it comes to their beloved games being changed at their core, and price hikes being implemented during a global economic downturn, people will simply close their wallets. Pharaoh was a perfect eye-opener for this; at the time of writing 954 players are currently in game, with an all-time peak of 5,424 (steamdb.info). Contrast this with Warhammer 3 that currently has 13,211 in game and an all-time peak of 166,754 and the evidence is clear that the faith in Creative Assembly and Pharaoh is at an all-time low. The peak population between the games is a drop of 96.75% in players — a death spiral of epic proportions.
Let’s move on to the change in DLC pricing for Warhammer 3. Personally, I was always against DLC in all shapes, however, seeing how CD Projekt Red implemented DLC for the Witcher 3 gave me some hope and proved that DLC can be implemented in a way that benefits both the studio and the consumer. It’s a shame that many other studios did not take notice and instead continue to pump out minimal effort for maximum gain — all at the expense of the fanbase that pays their salaries. I’ll be frank — Creative Assembly’s approach to DLC for the Warhammer instalments is nothing short of greed. Chopping up bits and pieces of content and selling characters and units for $10 a pop was not acceptable in my view; but I swallowed my pride and accepted it. Creative Assembly though, well, they didn’t see $10 as enough and instead decided to up the price for ‘Shadows of Change’ to $24.99 — for 3 characters and an additional 11 units. The price of that DLC alone being 40% of the base game. Inevitably there was backlash, and of course Creative Assembly eventually had to make a statement:
“To get right into it: our costs are up. Unfortunately, that means that prices have to rise. We know any increase is going to be tough, which is why our prices have remained fairly stable over the past few years. The downside is that any increase today is going to be more noticeable.
There’s no good time to increase prices, and we have not taken this step lightly. However, this is the business reality of supporting WARHAMMER III and ensuring we’re able to offer the years of extra content that are currently planned.
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That said, we do need to challenge ourselves to ensure that this cost still offers good value. Ultimately, that’s up to each of you to decide and we’ll keep trying to balance that.” — Rob Bartholomew (https://www.totalwar.com/blog/dlc_statement/)
Essentially what Rob is saying here is unless no one buys the DLC, tough luck, this is what it is; which is further evidenced by the final part of the statement:
“So, to recap — we know this is a tough change for some of our players. We know this may mean some of you wait for future discounts or sales. And we know that this explanation does not make the situation any easier. But it’s important for you to hear from us and we hope that, if nothing else, this helps clarify why this decision has been made.”
The thing is, it’s understandable that the business reality of supporting a big title takes money and time, but when your parent company is SEGA Sammy Holdings (who posted a profit of $300m in their Fiscal Year Ended March 2023 presentation) then it becomes hard to understand how the cost is being passed on to the consumer when the owners are clearly not strained financially — is it not enough that we already paid for the other 19 (!) DLC’s? Therefore, it becomes difficult to really feel sorry for Creative Assembly as the intentions behind the thinly veiled sorry are glaringly ominous.
Now, let’s touch on one of the gameplay changes Creative Assembly have made and why this has also caused some unhappiness in the community. I mentioned the health bars earlier — and for those who didn’t play any of the older Total War series, battles were decided by men on the field not by HP. It made things a lot more tense, and a lot more satisfying — cavalry is an obvious example in that throwing a charge at a group of swordsmen was devastating, whereas throwing cavalry against spears would be a blatant mistake and would cost you dearly. These days, everything just seems a little ‘meh’, units no longer face such massive losses due when facing a unit specifically tailored to countering them and a routed unit with 5 soldiers will now be able to escape encirclement and retreat — all due to that pesky HP bar. Why Creative Assembly deemed this a good change is boggling, and yet they still won’t listen.
Finally, I’ve saved the best for last, the epitome of Creative Assembly’s downfall. The approach towards it’s community. For lack of a better way of putting it, it is downright disgraceful to see fans being treated they way they have been over the past week or so. For those unaware, Creative Assembly took the measures of banning individuals from the Steam community forums, and has excluded individuals who were part of their partner program if there was even a hint of criticism. This, once again, reinforces the view of that Creative Assembly sees the situation as “my way or the highway” due the lack of competitors, and the power-tripping attitude that comes with that. What they must come to understand, although dare I say I think it will come too late, is that the people hold the power. They decide to open their wallet for your product, and there’s nothing more off-putting than someone dangling the keys to the castle over your head while laughing at you and mocking that no one else has the same or similar set of keys. That isn’t the hilarious part though, the hilarity comes from the fact that the act of giving those keys to the people who want them is essential to you covering costs (looking at you, ‘Shadows of Change’), remaining viable from a business reality (looking at you Rob), and putting food on the table for your family.
All in all, if you listened to your community, canvassed them, and actually made changes based on that feedback, you’d see a significant improvement in mood alone. Censorship has never worked in the games industry. Creative Assembly need to be the meaningful change the community wants to see from them. Bring back the nostalgia, and do away with the clear profiteering from DLC and the thinly veiled attempts at playing victim to the economy — as the customers are the only ones who can save you from it’s jaws (I mean, bar SEGA Sammy Holdings, of course…)
Thanks for taking the time to read my late take on Creative Assembly. I appreciate I may have missed more details, but this drama has been rumbling for a long time, and I don’t pretend to know all the details!
Until next time.
