Creative Assembly, the developers of the much talked about Total War: Warhammer 3 and many other games recently decided to make the player experience of their Games Workshop licensed product more authentic to the experience of buying products from Games Workshop by delivering a DLC with less content at a whopping 150% markup.
Such a markup of course enraged the game’s community who had already seen one DLC release for their game with increasing prices and worse content. So what is the appropriate action to take when the public order of your fanbase is at an all time low? Do you:
A: Lower the price?
B: Ignore them?
C: Guilt trip players concerning ‘increased costs’ citing you might not be able to continue supporting the game if they don’t buy the DLC?
If you guessed C, you’re correct. Some muppet over at Creative Assembly or SEGA decided that telling the community they might put down their golden goose of a game if people didn’t buy this DLC probably seemed smart at the time to some suit at SEGA. I pity the community manager at Creative Assembly who has to sit on the subreddit and scroll through countless memes calling them greedy bastards, but this is the reality they live in.
In a rare act for a community centered around total war, the community largely unified, breaking down the barriers and past transgressions between the historical fanbase and the fantasy fanbase. All acknowledged that a 150% markup on a DLC which is subpar to many mods you can find for the same game, was the straw that finally broke the community’s back.
In addition to all these shenanigans, the developers have also referred to the new DLC as “PREMIUM DLC”. What’s so premium about it you might ask? Well it has less content than DLCs released for the previous game at 150% the price. The free additions and bug-fixes in the patch are basically non-existent. Race updates? Sorry I thought you meant gently tweaking some numbers and not actually updating anything of note.
The parent game now sits at a solid overwhelmingly negative review score on steam. Showing real signs of a community who has finally had enough of being treated like walking wallets for DLC with no support given for their game outside of DLC releases.
So what can be done? Nothing but sit back and enjoy the flames, enjoy Sengoku Jidai: The era of a community in Total War with its developers. Just play Total War: Shogun 2 or Total War: Rome Remastered. Three Kingdoms was also really good.
Oh and don’t buy the Shadows of Change DLC for Total War Warhammer 3. Consider Buying some miniatures from Games Workshop instead, at least those won’t need bug-fixes.
