Creative Assembly’s Total War: Warhammer 3 is being review bombed on Steam by Chinese users unhappy with the game’s marketing.
The game is receiving a large number of negative reviews from Chinese players who felt the marketing in the lead up to Total War: Warhammer 3 was poorly handled and has impacted the experience of playing the game (via PCGamer).
Many of the complaints appear to be aimed at the distribution of early copies to influencers. Access to Total War: Warhammer 3 was given to a large number of content creators, many of whom has little interest or understanding of the game. A tweet from Daniel Ahmad has detailed the situation.
“For previous [Total War] games, the influencer promotions were much more targeted, codes were given to streamers that enjoyed the game and certain parts of the game were locked off to prevent spoilers.”
The mistakes that gamers called out are as follows:
– Early access version was given to too many random streamers, both big and small.
– These streamers knew nothing about the game or how to play, were generally disinterested.
– These streamers spoiled parts of the game.— Daniel Ahmad (@ZhugeEX) February 17, 2022
Ahmad continues, “Creative Assembly China staff said they were trying to reach a broader audience this time. While the overall strategy makes sense, generally speaking, it has upset some of the core fanbase that are now reacting negatively in the reviews for both Warhammer 2 and 3. Many are asking why disinterested streamers that spoiled the game got the codes, while they have to wait.”
Total War: Warhammer 3’s global Steam page currently has the game’s reviews listed as mixed, with many complaining about the game’s optimisation and early bugs.
However, Warhammer 3 has quickly risen to become the second most played Total War game on Steam. Just a few hours after launch, it had reached a peak concurrent user count that placed it just behind Total War: Three Kingdoms.
In other news, Paradox Interactive has released an external report on the studio’s culture following harassment issues, which details the state of the studio.
