Total War: Warhammer 3 Devs Are Done With Unconstructive Criticism; Apologized for Recent Statement

Creative Assembly, the studio responsible for the Total War series, has issued an unfortunate statement regarding the moderation of the Steam forum of their recent Warhammer game. This is in response to comments from players who, according to the developers, are „sowing confusion.”.

Source: Creative Assembly.

Things are not good at Creative Assembly. Recently we wrote about the poor launch of Total War: Pharaoh, which couldn't even get 6,000 simultaneous players on Steam on the launch day, and alleged layoffs at the British studio. CA's practice of cutting content and offering expensive DLCs is also known, leading higher profits by increasing individual player spending. Recipients are not indifferent to this.

Unconstructive criticism?

A few days ago, the developers of Total War: Warhammer 3 referred to the review bombing that has been taking place recently on the game's Steam profile. Last month, the community of players who did not like the price ($24.99) for the DLC called Shadows of Change, expressed their dissatisfaction, giving the base game bad ratings. Recent reviews on Valve's platform are mostly negative, and the overall rating is mixed. Also the DLC gets mostly negative reviews.

Creative Assembly has therefore issued a statement, which was meant to call for "healthy discussion" and explain why some users are being banned on the game's Steam community forums.

In their statement, the developers pointed out that recently some part of the game's community, instead of focusing on constructive criticism of the game's mechanics and gameplay experience, has been engaged in calling for boycotts, causing disputes and attacking studio staff. In doing so, they asked people to follow the guidelines, which can be summarized as follows:

don't interfere with a constructive exchange of opinions - approach the other person with empathy, and base your opinion on your gaming experience;
don't criticize other players for enjoying the game - express your opinion without undermining the enjoyment the others get from the game;
calls for boycotts and the spread of misinformation must not take place - official communication channels are used to build a better future for the game;
the forum is for discussion of Total War Warhammer III - refer to studio's other games, as long as it relates to this game. Other circumstances are unrelated to the topic.

The developers stressed that the consequence of not following these recommendations could be removal from the Steam community. They also mentioned that criticism "will always be welcome." However, the message was not well received by the community - CA had to close the thread and issue a correction along with an apology..

Fan reaction and apology from the studio

Later that same day in the evening Adam Freeman, the Head of Community of Creative Assembly, reacted to the community response triggered by the said statement and apologized to the fans.

In the latest and still open thread on the Steam forums, he pointed out the mistakes his team had made in issuing the announcement on the game's latest community standards.
Among the most important were noted unfortunate language and wording that did not correctly reflect the intentions of the developers and made fans of the game feel excluded and their opinion of the game irrelevant.

Freeman stressed that the decision to ban a user is never taken lightly and is always the result of multiple violations, which involve numerous warnings from moderators, or is simply a reaction to a violation of official rules of Valve's platform.

The head of the community department also announced that in the coming week the team will return with a new statement, which will take into account the mistakes made and fan comments.

Why don't players like the price of the DLC?

Total War: Warhammer gets expansions of various sizes. A good example of this is the DLC called Forge of the Chaos Dwarfs, which, compared to the boycotted Shadows of Change, offered much more content, and their price on Steam is the same - $25.

Accusations about the excessive price the developer is asking for its product are therefore probably correct. Players simply want the price to be adjusted to the amount of content that is included in the DLC, and previous expansions can be a good reference point.