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Fans in China are mad at Creative Assembly as Total War Warhammer III launches, due to what they feel was an unfair marketing campaign and have taken it out on the Steam Reviews for the game.
While some complaints about the game’s optimization exist, the audience’s gripe with Total War Warhammer III in China seems to be with the marketing itself- many media were given early access to the game ahead of time, which seems to have upset said fans.
It looks like as of this writing many of the complaints regarding that have been taken down from Steam, but analyst Daniel Ahmad also clarified that to review bomb a Total War game is a pretty big deal in China, given the country’s love for the series.
“For previous 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. Creative Assembly China staff said they were trying to reach a broader audience this time“, he explains.
This was backed up by one community content creator, Serious Trivia. In a post on r/Totalwar, they explained that it was definitely a case of community frustration that seemingly casual players were being treated better than their idea of the core community.
“Therefore, if you are a Chinese Warhammer fan who like you have been waiting for Warhammer III to launch, for the last month, all they had to watch were people who knew nothing about the game or lore play the game”, they said.
“Clearly, there were frustrations in the community and they been posting feedbacks on the Chinese forums, but after what happened with how Three Kingdoms just abruptly ended, they just feel like they are being ignored”, they continued.
“And thus we have the review bomb of Warhammer II before III launches and now the review bomb of III today. Do note, that the people review bombing are true fans of the game as they are the ones who actually own Warhammer II on steam in China and have preordered and bought Warhammer III on Steam. It is just seen as the only platform that they can complain on to try to spark some change”.
The Total War series has done really well for itself in China, with Total War: Three Kingdoms being beloved by many fans there.
These same fans who support Chinese representation in the games would naturally have been looking forward to Warhammer III, since the title contains the obviously-Chinese-inspired Grand Cathay.
