Total War made by Creative Assembly might be very niche but the fanbase is extremely loyal and dedicated. So you might not have heard about this big win!
Last year Creative Assembly (the guys who had Hyena’s cancelled) decided to increase their regular DLC price approx. 250% while only adding 50% citing only inflation. The fanbase reacted poorly. In response the leadership put out this article in Aug 2023 basically threatening the fanbase:
[https://www.totalwar.com/blog/dlc\_statement/](https://www.totalwar.com/blog/dlc_statement/)
Well guess what the fanbase did? The fanbase barely purchased the DLC and gave it the poor ratings it deserved.
[https://store.steampowered.com/app/2325830/Total\_War\_WARHAMMER\_III\_\_Shadows\_of\_Change/](https://store.steampowered.com/app/2325830/Total_War_WARHAMMER_III__Shadows_of_Change/)
Also, their new game Total War Pharaoh sold very poorly. It was also priced as a full game, while being a 2/3 game size.
What happened when the money stopped flowing? Creative Assembly completely backed down and is adding significantly more content to the DLC to make it meet the price expectations in Feb 2024:
[https://www.totalwar.com/blog/wh3-soc-update-cathay/](https://www.totalwar.com/blog/wh3-soc-update-cathay/)
They also dropped the price of Pharaoh and refunded those who purchased at full price and gave out the first DLC for free.
Don’t give in to greedy monetization. vote with your dollar and connect your fanbase together.
We love Total War and want to buy their products, when they are worth the money and we’re not disrespected.
\- Love Total War community
10 Comments
When you vote with your wallet you’re bound to be heard.
Glad this happened and I hope other gaming communities do the same.
People are voting with their wallets for years. People love loot boxes, skins, mtx, battlepass, p2w..
There is a reason why we see them everywhere
I used to really love total war, played a lot of medieval, viking conquest, Rome, and medieval 2 when in school. I was thinking about trying the more recent entries a while back and saw the price for the “complete” version with dlc was astronomical even with the steam summer sale. Seemed like they copied Paradox’s pricing model where you get the base game for $30 or whatever and then all the dlc costs costs well over $100.
I voted with my euros
This is what happens when people *actually* vote with their wallets
Too bad it takes several monumental mistakes for it to actually happen – how many huge gaming companies deserve utter failure after the amount of mistakes they’ve made in recent times? It’s ridiculous.
Now I just really hope they actually learn from that for future Total War games and DLCs.
Pharao was the first Total War I didn’t buy early on in a LONG time (I waited until the price drop). And it’s a very meh Total War game even for the lowered price.
I’ve been doing this since Rome:TW2. The amount of factions available at launch was shit, but they were very quick to introduce dlc to add more.
CA are scumbags and I made a point not to give them any money since. Plenty of other good games out there.
If you pay for slop, you shall receive slop in the future. This says a lot about the current state of MP games, people clearly love gambling and slop.
You love to see it