Creative Assembly, the developer behind the Total War series, has not only discounted the most recent entry—Total War: Pharaoh—after just two months, but it has also refunded players and stopped selling the Deluxe and Dynasty Editions.
In a lengthy blog post, Creative Assembly vice president Roger Collum explains that the game has been knocked down from $59.99/£49.99 to $39.99/£29.99 on Steam. Normally, this would be an infuriating change for anyone who bought Total War: Pharaoh at launch, but those players should receive a partial refund, if they haven’t already. Creative Assembly also published a guide on how to get a refund on physical copies of Total War: Pharoh from selected retailers.
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“We don’t think it’s fair that our fans, who put their trust in us on Pharaoh, should in any way feel disadvantaged for buying the game at the previous price,” says Collum. “We’ve also removed the higher priced editions of the game, the Deluxe Edition, and Dynasty Edition. There’s now only one edition of the game available for purchase.”
Its DLC plans have also been scrapped… sort of. While there won’t be any paid expansions, Creative Assembly will keep supporting the game with free content updates. In fact, the first paid expansion is being repurposed into one of these free updates and will launch in early 2024.
“Whilst we have removed the Dynasty Edition of the game from our lineup and have internally changed up our plans for what we go on to do next, we’ll still be releasing incremental updates to the game that help to bring fixes and changes to the core experience along the way,” continues Collum. “One plan that we’ve always had since the early stages of development on Pharaoh is to expand the size of our campaign map as a free update, and to introduce even more factions and cultures to the game.”
It’s not just Pharaoh that’s undergoing changes either. Creative Assembly hopes to improve things for Total War: Warhammer 3 following fan feedback to the Shadows of Change DLC: “… we are enhancing our offer for everyone who purchased Shadows of Change with more content and a commitment to ensuring that we better meet your expectations going forward.”
As for why the studio is going to such lengths, it’s simply because there’s been a lot of fan discontent over these two games. Steam user reviews for Total War: Pharaoh and Warhammer 3 are quite mixed, with more than a handful of negative comments on both games. The former proved incredibly underwhelming among fans while the latter has been blasted for its Shadows of Change DLC being too expensive for what it offers.
“We again apologize for the missteps we’ve made. The mistakes of Total War are a shared responsibility by all the leaders of the franchise, and while it may not seem like it at times, we are listening,” says Collum, while also promising to keep listening to player feedback.
Published: Dec 15, 2023 06:09 am