Creative Assembly, the studio behind the behemoth hit game Total War: Warhammer III, has announced it will be changing up the way it handles DLC, following a large backlash against the previous DLC package.
News in brief:
- Creative Assembly will now offer DLC for Warhammer III in separate chunks or a single whole
- Starting with Thrones of Decay and will continue for the rest of the planned DLC
- This change comes thanks in large part to fan backlash over previous DLC value
In a community post titled "Looking ahead to Warhammer III: Thrones of Decay", Head of Community, Adam Freeman, lays out a new approach to DLC, which they hope will tackle complaints about price structures in the past. Rather than paying a single place for the entire DLC, Warhammer III DLC will now be able to be purchased as single race packs.
For example, the upcoming Thrones of Decay DLC will add new content for the Dwarf, Empire, and Nurgle (evil plague demons) races. If players have a particular interest in just one of these races over the other two, they'll be able to purchase just the updates for that race for $8.99, with a discount of 15% for later purchasing further packs from the same DLC. Completionists will still be able to purchase the entire DLC for a discounted cost of $22.92.
It's not hard to see this as a result of the enormous fan backlash against the previous content pack, Shadows of Change. This DLC was the first release in a new roadmap of content for Warhammer III, and it focused on adding new content for three existing races — a departure from the previous approach. Unfortunately, a number of players thought the price was too high for the amount of additions on offer, and loudly boycotted it. To Creative Assembly's credit, it issued an apology and delayed further DLC while it pushed out more content for that DLC, and promised it would add even more to planned future releases.
The reaction from the community so far seems to have been broadly positive, which bodes well for Creative Assembly, which still has a lot of DLC planned for the final game in its Total War: Warhammer series.