this post was submitted on 27 Oct 2023
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Creative Assembly's Statement on Steam Forum Bans and Criticism (steamcommunity.com)
submitted 1 year ago by nanoUFO@sh.itjust.works to c/games@sh.itjust.works
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[–] NOT_RICK@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Can someone explain what’s going on? Is this related to the cancellation of Hyenas and the layoffs at CA?

[–] BudgieMania@kbin.social 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

There's been a lethal combo of the latest Total War title (Pharaoh) being perceived as very underwhelming, the title before that (Warhammer 3) having significant issues that haven't been fixed at the pace that the community demands, and a steep increase in pricing for the most recent additional downloadable content for the series, and all the factors that you already mentioned.

So because of those issues, negative sentiment in Steam forums of the series has reached stratospheric levels (and in case you don't know, Steam forum users are not the most diplomatic people to begin with) so this prompted moderators of the company to instate more restrictive moderation against negative posts and discussions. This has, of course, spun into its own controversy as it is perceived that they are trying to censor negative criticism to cover the most recent issues in the series.

[–] Rampsquatch@sh.itjust.works 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Didn't they also threaten to basically abandon WH3 if Pharoah didn't sell well? I could be misremembering, I haven't followed things too closely.

[–] BudgieMania@kbin.social 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Well it wasn't exactly like that, but I think I know what you are referring to.

After the launch of the latest DLC for Warhammer 3, that had a significantly worse value-per-content-offered than the DLC that had been launched previously, Creative Assembly issued an statement to explain the new pricing model in response to the negative reception. In that statement, amongst other things, they said:

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.

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. Of course, we want more people to play, we want to continue to deliver content you’re excited to see, and we want to do that for as long as we can.

and

To wrap up, I can’t stress enough how much the team and I want the best for the game, and to provide you with fun and memorable experiences. Changing the content formula, and making other improvements behind the scenes, is designed to help us to do exactly that. We’ll keep assessing and iterating as we stay on this path.

Which the community interpreted as "keep buying the DLC despite the pricing changes or we will stop patching and supporting the game".

Which, well, I guess it is implying that, but I don't see it so much as a threat rather than them being (maybe excessively) open about the reality of the current situation, which is SEGA tightening the belt after the Hyenas fiasco and intending to pull the plug on any project that doesn't make financial sense (and, as it always is with public companies, financial sense doesn't mean profitable, it means a ratio of performance per cost of a fuckton).

[–] Rampsquatch@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 year ago

That's was exactly what I was thinking of

[–] NOT_RICK@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago

Thanks, sounds like a shitty situation all around