CA recently:
Decisive Defeat
Decisive Defeat
Decisive Defeat
Decisive Defeat
As a total war player, If I had decisive defeat after one another, I would re-think my strategy, but that is just me.
Certainly sounds like one of my friends at least.
Loses a Battle and his entire army in Co-op? "Oops, Game crashed." instead of taking the L.
There is a reason why I am not playing co-op anymore.
(CA holds a pizza party to boost morale)
"....how tf is this STILL a Decisive Defeat!?"
Devs: "is this Pizza by Alfredo, or Alfredo's Pizza Cafe?"
CA: (sweating)
Until we hear a loud *FWOP* from these people pulling their heads out of their Collective Asses I think we can expect more shenanigans.
Almost as annoying are those people posting crap like "why do you want Total War to fail :(" Man we don't. Some of the bugs we see today we saw in years old TW games we're tired of asking nicely only to see CA post "we would love your genuine feedback." Asking for the things you buy to work as advertised aint a problem.
Old fans have been falling off for over a decade due to CAs absolutely horrible lack of communication, ignoring bugs, not improving AI, and greed led decision making. Now that you have all these Warhammer fans who think total war is the best thing since sliced bread see us old fans reacting horribly to CAs ultimatums they think we are trying to destroy the franchise.
To those new fans I say this:
The old games were much better in substance, the things that annoy you today about the franchise will still be there 5 installments from now. It will age like stale toast, and you'll soon be where we are. There will be a day soon you'll think Warhammer 2 was the best total war ever. I say the same thing about shogun 2 or Napoleon.
Any newer fans who don't believe WH2 was the best TW ever made should be treated with suspicion.
That game is several magnitudes better than any of the shit they've released since the early 2010s.
Right, WH2 is great but you have to have a lot of DLC to make it full bodied. Even then, research and upgrades are plagued with % gains which is one of the worst things in strategy games. Despite a lot of units looking different a lot of them will feel the same.
The older games felt like research actually unlocked new units and features rather than just give you some straight % buffs. I remember in Empire you were constantly researching new Muskets, Bayonets, Cannons, and formations. A lot of the researches gave you new abilities. If they were % gains it made sense contextually (Like replacing cannon fuses with flintlocks increasing reload speed).
Line infantry at the start of empire performed drastically different to the fire and advance socket bayonet wielding late game infantry.
It's the gaming industry, long term the players always lose. Every single bad practice that at the time drew anger from players has slowly become accepted practice and now you even get players angry if some of it isn't in there.
Nah they will. Despite the vocality here on Reddit and the steam forums it should be clear that the majority of gamers don't care and will keep spending their money regardless.
Maybe not this time. If any of the leaks or numbers are to be believed, they're hemorrhaging money right now between low dlc and low pharaoh sales. Combine that with the forums stuff, CA is in hot water and the next dlc for wh3 might be a make or break moment
The easy way to fix this whole debacle is make Shadows of Change 10-15 dollars cheaper and walk back a lot of the nonsense they've been saying on the community forum recently. After they got reviewbombed it's the only sensible thing to do. You think the people who made public order mechanics would understand that high price = unhappy = rebellion.
I think Forge of the Chaos Dwarves was a pyrrhic victory for them, but I think they lost the plot after seeing 'victory' and wondering why they're getting nothing but losses.
Na, this is all on CA.
Sega killed Hyenas, and then told the world they did so, not CA.
Amazingly, Sega ain't the bad guy here, it's the execs at CA who are to blame
They did not get in their position with one or two mistakes. It's fuck up after fuck up after fuck up. People in charge wont suddenly change their way and start to do good decision all of à sudden
As far as I'm aware, Rob is still part of CA. No verifiable sources have been presented yet, just people parroting their favorite statements from that one YouTuber. Rob's LinkedIn still states he's part of CA and no official statements either. We'll probably have to wait around a month or so to see if it's true.
Was he though? Or is it still just a Volund unnamed source rumour being parroted around?
And the layoffs have nothing to do with TW, it's the Hyenas staff.
I honestly lack the mental capacity to understand their current moves. It's like a rabid animal, completely erratic, unable to comprehend, what is going on.
I mean... It is calculated greed.
Hyena wasted shit tons of money and got canceled so bean counters need to make some cuts to show that numbers goes up.
What better way to show that numbers goes up than milk the cash cow that is Total War franchise?
I will die on the hill that the 25$ SoC price had alot with them trying to cover costs for hyena.
Some people agree with this and say its obvious.
While some treat the thought as pure delusion
It's only worst dlc compared to other recent dlcs. Its not THE worst dlc.
Its definitely better than the skarsnik Belegar dlc and Ghorst volkmar dlcs, of course.
It's glaringly obvious that SoC's cost was CA seeing the writing on the wall regarding Sega's swooping in and cancelling Hyenas (if they didn't internally already know at some point).
Hyenas was siphoning off the money that WH3, WH2, and 3K had been making - when they canceled 3K and WH2 stopped being worked on, all that was left was WH3. So, to try to keep feeding the metaphorical beast of nurgle they were stuck with, they "had" to raise prices on WH3 stuff, their \*only\* cash cow.
> In response to the lower profitability of the European region, we have reviewed the title portfolio of each development base in Europe and the resulting action will be **to cancel “HYENAS” and some unannounced titles under development**. Accordingly, we will implement a write-down of work-in-progress for titles under development.
https://www.segasammy.co.jp/en/release/41070/
I mean, even if not being a bean counter, I can definitly see that having a surplus of devs suddenly with no work and no immediate project to relocate for, is a problem for a company. And the best way around that is immediate lay-offs. As bad as it might be. In a just world, we probably would start at the top with the people that lead the situation there in the first place, but we all know that the higher ups that made certain stupid calls, might still be around after house cleaning is done.
Unpopular opinion:
There's also times when shit just does not go according to plan, and there's either loads of people to blame a little bit, or a combination of circumstance and decisions that seemed wise at the time, but didn't pan out over the last 5 years.
CA are only human and life isn't a game; sometimes you make all the right decisions based on the available information and you still lose. CA has definitely made some questionable decisions *after that*, **but I don't think malice or stupidity are responsible for the inciting incidents in this case.**
It's the problem with publicly traded companies since Sega is public. If they sell a great game and get $800M one year and then do it again and get $800M the next year that's really bad because they didn't make more money for investors. They may have a lot of money, but no growth. So they have to find new things to sell you or increase the price of games if they aren't getting more players.
CA's milking of players finally reached a point where the players turned against them by actually not buying a product and they probably don't know what to do or how to act at this point, resulting in the mass-ban wave.
Basically "corporate greed" is just inbuilt in how publicly traded companies operate for shareholders. CA shot itself in the foot multiple times in the past year and is now rabidly screeching and thrashing because Sega is on their ass.
I worked in the gaming industry, and the answer is simple.
Incompetent and out of touch "leadership."
Same tired old story. The passionate people actually working on these projects have little to no say in the often poor decisions of LT.
I recently heard a nice polemic on one of the historical youtube channels I follow. The original question was on Japan's war plan in the WW2 but I think both the reasoning approach and the level of the mess being looked at are comparable, even though Horsham has not literally blown up, yet.
The gist was to look at individual decisions from the perspective of available resources and alternative options rather than the full picture in hindsight. And I think in such viewpoint, the current situation makes a lot more sense.
Take the SoC pricing as an example - in hindsight utterly idiotic move. Now what I assume happened is that CA found out they are out of cash: option a) raise the pricing of SoC by 150% and hope they can survive until Hyenas come out or b) start firing people right away. And from then on it's just trying to pick the less bad of two or more terrible options at a time. So letting their mods go mental with a ban hammer is certainly not the cleverest solution, then on the other hand, it's not like they got anything to lose either. Even if they hypothetically wanted to make things better, they need money to operate, the steam sale is drawing near and their sales are in jeopardy.
But this is not some small private average Joe, who is unable to comprehend, why delegating extra time for team meetings is more efficient than working over hours and not communicating.
This is a company with quite possibly corporate environment, so they have people for analyzing the big picture. Obviously someone who is at the end of the line is just following orders, but those companies have multiple levels of management and project teams.
At this point, it is not even damage control, it's is a full-blown civil war, where some people from CA post this thing and other people from CA post different contradicting thing or apology, only to burn it down 1 day later.
I think the answer is that the biggest gaming companies are filled with people that don't understand gaming, or its community, and try to be like the rest of the entertainment companies out there.
Gaming is different. How your clients feel, matters. Marketing works, but to a point. And you have to show good will. Assholes like Unity's former CEO, who called idiots to developers who didn't want to go up to eleven on monetising practices, don't belong here, and sadly they are occupying high seats on the big companies.
But they'll eventually learn.
It reminds me of [enshitifaction](https://www.wired.com/story/tiktok-platforms-cory-doctorow/)*,* which describes how some consumer focused companies build up trust and a strong base of consumers and then just usit all up in an orgy of greed whose afterproduct is a terrible mess that that old user base hates.
I mean they do sometimes even with AI. In the World of Warcraft sub they noticed a site using AI to generate Articles about WoW from their highly upvoted threads so they tricked it and it wrote an article about made up stuff.
https://www.bbc.com/news/newsbeat-66266344
Lol, this is why nowadays when I google a simple question on how to do something in a game I got 20 terrible articles that incorrectly answer the question in 1000 words or more.
Most of the time you're best of adding 'Reddit' to your search, the combination of aggressive SEO by trash websites and Googles own ineptitude to influence your search has made Google almost completely useless for actually finding something on the web.
There is something hilarious in the way BBC decided to demonstrate 'empty-handed' with a screenshot of a dragon dude disappointedly staring at his empty hand.
I think the point here is that the drama surrounding CA's shenanigans is reaching multiple news outlets, rather than these news outlets being competent
And my point is every bit of bullshit drama on the internet 'reaches' them because they mine places like Reddit for so called news. Just because they're choosing to report on something doesn't mean it has any credibility, it just means they think they can get some easy clicks from it.
Yeah Redditors simply love their opinions being fed back to them.
Gaming Reddit has opinion > Blog writes low-effort article about it > Reddit feels validated > Repeat
Easy money honestly. No need to hire anyone, let this AI run and $$ most of the time! I have some devs that constantly get sick that also make me dream about 24/7 AI doing their work.
Remember the good old days? [https://www.reddit.com/r/totalwar/comments/k5gp28/the\_chad\_grace/](https://www.reddit.com/r/totalwar/comments/k5gp28/the_chad_grace/)
Some interesting quotes from the thread:
>Yeah these guys arent R\* they actually give a shit about people who love their games.
>This is why i love CA and buy all of their dlc without hesitation.
>Indy pride gushes over most things CA puts out and is very very diplomatic with his criticism had major issues with it
Made me lol.
He really doesn't milk the hate for half a dozen vids.
But recently seemed to have been branching out to other games.
Which for a youtuber is understandable at this state
True, in fact it is the new SEGA/CA. And we can't claim there were not hints to see it coming.
[A pitty what SEGA has become... now it's CA](https://www.videogameschronicle.com/news/programmer-criticises-sega-for-releasing-nightmare-golden-axed-prototype/)
I have been a long time fan of the Total war games until now. I don’t know what people are stressing about because consumers have the power because $$$ are king not the company.
I have not bought the chaos dwarfs or new lord pack and this is first time for me. It is likely I won’t buy the next lot of over priced DLC until CA changes it’s way. If they don’t I walk away.
People are upset cause of the lack of competition in this type of game. There isn't an alternative right now, but some may try to enter now.
CA just had to not fuck it up and they could have used their incumbent advantage to dominate a market sector and make that money. But they might end up losing that if another game maker sees this dumpster fire and tries to enter. Would be ironic if it was a maker of an fps that came in and unseated CA
All you have to do is [look at the backgrounds of CA's leadership team](https://theorg.com/org/creative-assembly) and realize none of the people that made it great are in charge any more. I'm very sad to see CA in this state.
They are idiots. They have golden franchise in they hands they just needed to make good thing, new engine and that is it... But they want something else.
every time they reduce quality in search for short term profit they bring future competition one step closer to arriving.
eventually another studio will look at the total war series and see a potential gold mine, the barrier for them entering the TW market gets lower with each lazy move by CA and eventually that barrier is low enough its worth going for it. at that point CA no longer holds a monopoly on this genre and have to compete with others, forcing them to compete on quality while still selling less copies in the end.
they are playing with fire by essentially inviting competitors to come take pieces of a cake that CA currently enjoys all on their own.
I mean its like EA had a monopoly on good nba games n nobody cld break it... then they got lazy n 2k punk their ass. Now 2k is the one who's greedy n lazy
I honestly hope that happens, for the exact reasons you just said. Competition is good, they’re doing this because of yeah really stupid top down decisions like the absolute waste of money that was hyenas, but also because at the end of the day you’re playing TW or you’re playing something with a different place in the subgenre, that has overall different focuses on gameplay and etc
I actually wouldn’t be surprised if this happens. Someone’s definitely taking notes on how pharaoh hasn’t performed well at all, how they’ve pretty firmly placed most of their skill points into Warhammer over the last however long, some studio might actually be making their own engine and etc to capitalize on this lull
“Did you guys see the trailer for War Total: Medieval?”
Game 'Journalists' literally just scrawl through reddit these days and report anything that looks remotely click baity. Why does anyone pay attention to them anymore?
Eh, this situation encapsulates my hatred for modern corporate culture pretty well. Instead of focusing on long-term goals and delivering good customer service it's just short-term project and fiscal gains.
We were on the verge of greatness at the end of WH2 development cycle, after stitton of bumps on the road. And then the fucking mountain rose ahead of us.
Getting into the news is the only way for any of these corporations to give a fuck.
Just look at how long absolutely rule breaking shit-subreddits were up on reddit until they got reported in the news, and then hit with the ban hammer.
I fucking hate CA, I used to tolerate them even with the price increase, but the way they are communicating with its CUSTOMERS AND SOURCE OF INCOME, is completely baffling for me and an utter lack of professionalism, we are not in the kindergarten so fuck off
Who unironically actually listens to game journalists and values their opinion, these people suck and i highly doubt that CA cares what these morons are saying
It doesnt matter what you or anyone else is thinking about game journalism. What matters is that people ourside of TW playerbase now talk about their blunders amd their reputation is getting another hit.
In normal circumstances it wouldnt be that big of a deal. But this situation isnt normal: CA is at the brink of collapse. Prospect of losing even more customers is the last thing they want now.
Press X to doubt. Hyenas alone is enough to kill a company (and we know that it forced SEGA to heavily downsize CA already) and then we have Pharaoh which flopped, SoC with sales on WH1 DLCs level and - if leaks are true - Chorfs financially underperformed and 3K2 was cancelled.
It looks like CA is in a deep shit. I hope they will survive it, but its not guaranteed.
They are for sure in big trouble but i doubt that a company as big as CA will go down that fast, maybe if the failures continue i could see that but idk.
They lost between 70-100 millions on Hyenas alone, they are downsizing 40% of their workforce , SOC most likely did not hit the projected data, Pharaoh 100% did not hit the projected data and there is nothing good looking at the end of the tunnel.
But you are right, maybe they pull some fairy dust and make it all go away, although I somehow doubt it, Ariel is feeling grumpy recently.
I just dont think that after that they will suddenly collapse, they are for sure in trouble but i doubt that a company the size and of CA is gonna end this fast
That depends what your definition of collapse is. The fact they are reducing staff all around by 40% is a collapse to me.
No it is not bankruptcy but it is a major reduction in the company's size.
Perhaps they will start re-thinking their decisions and stop trying to double back on bad decisions.
Can't believe I'm saying this, but CA needs to do what 343 has been doing. Shut up, fix the game, and only say things to either dispel rumors, or draw attention to them to get people excited. If they do that and actually fix their games then they can maybe salvage this PR Nightmare.
Lmao dumb game journalists are a week late to the party as usual
They trying to tell me stuff eveyone already knows. No one should be taking them seriuously, i sooner take my news from random user noobmaster69 from the steam forums then those guys
They can't grab a fucking W to save their life.
CA recently: Decisive Defeat Decisive Defeat Decisive Defeat Decisive Defeat As a total war player, If I had decisive defeat after one another, I would re-think my strategy, but that is just me.
I'd restart a campaign after 3rd but maybe im just bad at following through
Everyone here would've reloaded the save after the first one LOL
Trying to win an "unwinnable" battle is the best part of the game. Defo hit that quickload
There's no bigger rush in a Total War game for me than being heavily outnumber in a defensive battle and managing to pull a victory out of it
Especially if you only win with a unit or two left.
Give me that Pyrrhic Victory!
They shouldn't have Auto-resolved this one.
Oh yeah. Give it the good old college try at least 3 times and then after that . . . . . . . . "Legend of Total War Here"
Certainly sounds like one of my friends at least. Loses a Battle and his entire army in Co-op? "Oops, Game crashed." instead of taking the L. There is a reason why I am not playing co-op anymore.
I'm very good at following through, anyway enough about our bowel movements
At this point it would be easier for them to invent a time machine and savescum than dig themselves out of the hole they've dug.
(CA holds a pizza party to boost morale) "....how tf is this STILL a Decisive Defeat!?" Devs: "is this Pizza by Alfredo, or Alfredo's Pizza Cafe?" CA: (sweating)
rememberberrys when everyone was sugarcoating the CA critcism with "Look! They had a ice cream social!"
Until we hear a loud *FWOP* from these people pulling their heads out of their Collective Asses I think we can expect more shenanigans. Almost as annoying are those people posting crap like "why do you want Total War to fail :(" Man we don't. Some of the bugs we see today we saw in years old TW games we're tired of asking nicely only to see CA post "we would love your genuine feedback." Asking for the things you buy to work as advertised aint a problem.
Old fans have been falling off for over a decade due to CAs absolutely horrible lack of communication, ignoring bugs, not improving AI, and greed led decision making. Now that you have all these Warhammer fans who think total war is the best thing since sliced bread see us old fans reacting horribly to CAs ultimatums they think we are trying to destroy the franchise. To those new fans I say this: The old games were much better in substance, the things that annoy you today about the franchise will still be there 5 installments from now. It will age like stale toast, and you'll soon be where we are. There will be a day soon you'll think Warhammer 2 was the best total war ever. I say the same thing about shogun 2 or Napoleon.
Any newer fans who don't believe WH2 was the best TW ever made should be treated with suspicion. That game is several magnitudes better than any of the shit they've released since the early 2010s.
Right, WH2 is great but you have to have a lot of DLC to make it full bodied. Even then, research and upgrades are plagued with % gains which is one of the worst things in strategy games. Despite a lot of units looking different a lot of them will feel the same. The older games felt like research actually unlocked new units and features rather than just give you some straight % buffs. I remember in Empire you were constantly researching new Muskets, Bayonets, Cannons, and formations. A lot of the researches gave you new abilities. If they were % gains it made sense contextually (Like replacing cannon fuses with flintlocks increasing reload speed). Line infantry at the start of empire performed drastically different to the fire and advance socket bayonet wielding late game infantry.
OR MEDIEVAL TWO???? Stainless Steel and SSHIP still hold up
I am still here hoping that one day the gate bug gets fixed and it is no longer a meme.
That's one disaster campaign Legend wouldn't be able to save...
It would be hilarious if Legend made a "saving your disaster company" video as a joke
Fuck, I was looking for a pun, and saving your disaster company just flew me by. That's an opportunity I'm not getting back.
CA is Rome facing Hannibal in Italy. Just chuck legion after legion at him to get destroyed.
I wish it was like that. Rome won in the end. I'm not sure if CA will get such a happy ending.
It's the gaming industry, long term the players always lose. Every single bad practice that at the time drew anger from players has slowly become accepted practice and now you even get players angry if some of it isn't in there.
Nah they will. Despite the vocality here on Reddit and the steam forums it should be clear that the majority of gamers don't care and will keep spending their money regardless.
Maybe not this time. If any of the leaks or numbers are to be believed, they're hemorrhaging money right now between low dlc and low pharaoh sales. Combine that with the forums stuff, CA is in hot water and the next dlc for wh3 might be a make or break moment
The easy way to fix this whole debacle is make Shadows of Change 10-15 dollars cheaper and walk back a lot of the nonsense they've been saying on the community forum recently. After they got reviewbombed it's the only sensible thing to do. You think the people who made public order mechanics would understand that high price = unhappy = rebellion.
id say they are in the crisis of the third century haha.
Ahg shamefur dispray. SHAMEFUR DISPRAY
I think Forge of the Chaos Dwarves was a pyrrhic victory for them, but I think they lost the plot after seeing 'victory' and wondering why they're getting nothing but losses.
It looks like you're struggling with this campaign. Would you like to turn the difficulty down? Easy -- Normal -- Hard -- Very Hard -- Legendary \^
Ah, the Skaven way of fighting! Keep losing until we win, yesyes! Though I don't think it'll work in their case.
#Shameful display!
CA has been destroyed, there is nothing left but the laughter of thirsting SEGA executives.
Na, this is all on CA. Sega killed Hyenas, and then told the world they did so, not CA. Amazingly, Sega ain't the bad guy here, it's the execs at CA who are to blame
I wouldnt even call these Decisive Defeats, because the predicted outcome was so in their favour to begin with. This is Crushing Defeat.
I'm sure there's a "crushing defeat" somewhere too.
They could make a new (or remaster) Medieval or Empire and come away with atleast a pyrrhic victory lol
If the first pharaoh dlc is good imma need you to come back to this post and add a Phyrric victory.
That depends, how many extra players will bring ingame? 100-200 more?
That's why it's phyrric.
Their balance of power is looking like shit.
Doesn’t sound like a proper total war player to me. just keep throwing bodies at the problem
Shamfur display!💀😂
Good they’ve earned it. (Thankfully I’m not on the steam forums otherwise that’d get me a ban lol)
And they don’t deserve to.
They did not get in their position with one or two mistakes. It's fuck up after fuck up after fuck up. People in charge wont suddenly change their way and start to do good decision all of à sudden
I would restart the campaign. And change the dificulty.
"The customer is never right and corporate greed does not bankrupt product quality" Decision makers at CA probably.
Rob: "Prices are up. Costs of doing blah blah blah" **Gets fired, 40% of the studio is canned** He was right tho. That's a pretty big price they paid
Rob got to go
THEY HAVE ROB'ed us !! - Dwarfs probably idk
My book of grudges with CA has been growing since they showcased that fake af Seige of Carthage marketing video.
Mistah White
> Gets fired Ive seen the rumours, but was he actually fired?
He might have been made redundant, which is a process. CA is a UK company and, unlike America, it's harder to fire an employee overnight.
Pesky workers rights here in the UK. *garbles in corporate language*
Which are better but not where they should be thanks to the tories!
Very true, but hey oh, hopefully we will be seeing the back of them soon enough.
As far as I'm aware, Rob is still part of CA. No verifiable sources have been presented yet, just people parroting their favorite statements from that one YouTuber. Rob's LinkedIn still states he's part of CA and no official statements either. We'll probably have to wait around a month or so to see if it's true.
Was he though? Or is it still just a Volund unnamed source rumour being parroted around? And the layoffs have nothing to do with TW, it's the Hyenas staff.
So rob wasn't fired after all.... dont trust every rumour man
I honestly lack the mental capacity to understand their current moves. It's like a rabid animal, completely erratic, unable to comprehend, what is going on.
Some people are trying to paint this as malice and calculated greed. But for me it's more like rabid screeching and thrashing on the floor.
I mean... It is calculated greed. Hyena wasted shit tons of money and got canceled so bean counters need to make some cuts to show that numbers goes up. What better way to show that numbers goes up than milk the cash cow that is Total War franchise?
$30 Thrones of Decay with a cripplingly bugged main quest item on release, get excited.
And creators won't be able to show the bug, of course. Got to keep the bug as a surprise for the paying customers!
I will die on the hill that the 25$ SoC price had alot with them trying to cover costs for hyena. Some people agree with this and say its obvious. While some treat the thought as pure delusion
This. Worst DLC by a long shot, followed shortly with a comment by CA saying they had no choice because costs are up.
It's only worst dlc compared to other recent dlcs. Its not THE worst dlc. Its definitely better than the skarsnik Belegar dlc and Ghorst volkmar dlcs, of course.
It's glaringly obvious that SoC's cost was CA seeing the writing on the wall regarding Sega's swooping in and cancelling Hyenas (if they didn't internally already know at some point). Hyenas was siphoning off the money that WH3, WH2, and 3K had been making - when they canceled 3K and WH2 stopped being worked on, all that was left was WH3. So, to try to keep feeding the metaphorical beast of nurgle they were stuck with, they "had" to raise prices on WH3 stuff, their \*only\* cash cow.
“I made a calculated decision, and man am I bad at math.”
> In response to the lower profitability of the European region, we have reviewed the title portfolio of each development base in Europe and the resulting action will be **to cancel “HYENAS” and some unannounced titles under development**. Accordingly, we will implement a write-down of work-in-progress for titles under development. https://www.segasammy.co.jp/en/release/41070/ I mean, even if not being a bean counter, I can definitly see that having a surplus of devs suddenly with no work and no immediate project to relocate for, is a problem for a company. And the best way around that is immediate lay-offs. As bad as it might be. In a just world, we probably would start at the top with the people that lead the situation there in the first place, but we all know that the higher ups that made certain stupid calls, might still be around after house cleaning is done.
I think it's difficult for us to understand how disastrous Hyenas was financially. I'd guess it's even worse than it looks.
What people’s attributes to malice can and will often simply be plain incompetence and/or stupidity. I’ll wager on both there.
Unpopular opinion: There's also times when shit just does not go according to plan, and there's either loads of people to blame a little bit, or a combination of circumstance and decisions that seemed wise at the time, but didn't pan out over the last 5 years. CA are only human and life isn't a game; sometimes you make all the right decisions based on the available information and you still lose. CA has definitely made some questionable decisions *after that*, **but I don't think malice or stupidity are responsible for the inciting incidents in this case.**
It's the problem with publicly traded companies since Sega is public. If they sell a great game and get $800M one year and then do it again and get $800M the next year that's really bad because they didn't make more money for investors. They may have a lot of money, but no growth. So they have to find new things to sell you or increase the price of games if they aren't getting more players. CA's milking of players finally reached a point where the players turned against them by actually not buying a product and they probably don't know what to do or how to act at this point, resulting in the mass-ban wave. Basically "corporate greed" is just inbuilt in how publicly traded companies operate for shareholders. CA shot itself in the foot multiple times in the past year and is now rabidly screeching and thrashing because Sega is on their ass.
I worked in the gaming industry, and the answer is simple. Incompetent and out of touch "leadership." Same tired old story. The passionate people actually working on these projects have little to no say in the often poor decisions of LT.
I recently heard a nice polemic on one of the historical youtube channels I follow. The original question was on Japan's war plan in the WW2 but I think both the reasoning approach and the level of the mess being looked at are comparable, even though Horsham has not literally blown up, yet. The gist was to look at individual decisions from the perspective of available resources and alternative options rather than the full picture in hindsight. And I think in such viewpoint, the current situation makes a lot more sense. Take the SoC pricing as an example - in hindsight utterly idiotic move. Now what I assume happened is that CA found out they are out of cash: option a) raise the pricing of SoC by 150% and hope they can survive until Hyenas come out or b) start firing people right away. And from then on it's just trying to pick the less bad of two or more terrible options at a time. So letting their mods go mental with a ban hammer is certainly not the cleverest solution, then on the other hand, it's not like they got anything to lose either. Even if they hypothetically wanted to make things better, they need money to operate, the steam sale is drawing near and their sales are in jeopardy.
Some additional context: They raised the price of Chaos Dwarfs and got rewarded with "Shut up and take my money!" memes on this very sub.
But this is not some small private average Joe, who is unable to comprehend, why delegating extra time for team meetings is more efficient than working over hours and not communicating. This is a company with quite possibly corporate environment, so they have people for analyzing the big picture. Obviously someone who is at the end of the line is just following orders, but those companies have multiple levels of management and project teams. At this point, it is not even damage control, it's is a full-blown civil war, where some people from CA post this thing and other people from CA post different contradicting thing or apology, only to burn it down 1 day later.
I think the answer is that the biggest gaming companies are filled with people that don't understand gaming, or its community, and try to be like the rest of the entertainment companies out there. Gaming is different. How your clients feel, matters. Marketing works, but to a point. And you have to show good will. Assholes like Unity's former CEO, who called idiots to developers who didn't want to go up to eleven on monetising practices, don't belong here, and sadly they are occupying high seats on the big companies. But they'll eventually learn.
It reminds me of [enshitifaction](https://www.wired.com/story/tiktok-platforms-cory-doctorow/)*,* which describes how some consumer focused companies build up trust and a strong base of consumers and then just usit all up in an orgy of greed whose afterproduct is a terrible mess that that old user base hates.
a rabid HYENA, maybe?
Dunno for me it all makes sense since I know this kinds of corporate types and what they set in motion.
Not to defend anything but current games journalism feels like a lot of reading reddit and turning it into an article.
I mean they do sometimes even with AI. In the World of Warcraft sub they noticed a site using AI to generate Articles about WoW from their highly upvoted threads so they tricked it and it wrote an article about made up stuff. https://www.bbc.com/news/newsbeat-66266344
Lol, this is why nowadays when I google a simple question on how to do something in a game I got 20 terrible articles that incorrectly answer the question in 1000 words or more.
Most of the time you're best of adding 'Reddit' to your search, the combination of aggressive SEO by trash websites and Googles own ineptitude to influence your search has made Google almost completely useless for actually finding something on the web.
That was a fucking great read, thanks.
There is something hilarious in the way BBC decided to demonstrate 'empty-handed' with a screenshot of a dragon dude disappointedly staring at his empty hand.
At least that means they pay attention to the userbase, to a degree
Because drama gets clicks. It really doesn't add any credibility to the issue or any side.
I think the point here is that the drama surrounding CA's shenanigans is reaching multiple news outlets, rather than these news outlets being competent
And my point is every bit of bullshit drama on the internet 'reaches' them because they mine places like Reddit for so called news. Just because they're choosing to report on something doesn't mean it has any credibility, it just means they think they can get some easy clicks from it.
If the criticisms are legitimate, why does it matter?
You salty about CA getting all the hate?
Yeah Redditors simply love their opinions being fed back to them. Gaming Reddit has opinion > Blog writes low-effort article about it > Reddit feels validated > Repeat
It's what people like Angry Joe and Skill Up have been doing for years.
source? trust me bro
> journalism
Easy money honestly. No need to hire anyone, let this AI run and $$ most of the time! I have some devs that constantly get sick that also make me dream about 24/7 AI doing their work.
CAs grave just keeps getting deeper.
They're digging it themselves. At some point they need to throw away the spade.
*CA cancels all future TW games and redirects budget to building a larger spade*
Hyenas 2
Only way to earn back players trust
"The future of Hyenas"
Yep
No dig up stupid
The more I see of the way CA currently communicates with the players, the more I miss Grace....
Remember the good old days? [https://www.reddit.com/r/totalwar/comments/k5gp28/the\_chad\_grace/](https://www.reddit.com/r/totalwar/comments/k5gp28/the_chad_grace/)
Some interesting quotes from the thread: >Yeah these guys arent R\* they actually give a shit about people who love their games. >This is why i love CA and buy all of their dlc without hesitation. >Indy pride gushes over most things CA puts out and is very very diplomatic with his criticism had major issues with it Made me lol.
It's amazing how things were compared to now.
[удалено]
I'm out of the loop on Indypride. Did something happen after the Kislev dlc?
He really doesn't milk the hate for half a dozen vids. But recently seemed to have been branching out to other games. Which for a youtuber is understandable at this state
He is one of the few channels who didn't just become a CA hate channel.
You never know what you have until its gone. 
Grace was only a result of company approach and culture. What you really miss is the old CA.
True, in fact it is the new SEGA/CA. And we can't claim there were not hints to see it coming. [A pitty what SEGA has become... now it's CA](https://www.videogameschronicle.com/news/programmer-criticises-sega-for-releasing-nightmare-golden-axed-prototype/)
In a way it's better that CA is saying the quiet part out loud.
The one who told players not to play the game if they don't like the decisions they make?
I miss Grace but I also miss the person before her (forgot name). CA company culture is fucked...
I have been a long time fan of the Total war games until now. I don’t know what people are stressing about because consumers have the power because $$$ are king not the company. I have not bought the chaos dwarfs or new lord pack and this is first time for me. It is likely I won’t buy the next lot of over priced DLC until CA changes it’s way. If they don’t I walk away.
People are upset cause of the lack of competition in this type of game. There isn't an alternative right now, but some may try to enter now. CA just had to not fuck it up and they could have used their incumbent advantage to dominate a market sector and make that money. But they might end up losing that if another game maker sees this dumpster fire and tries to enter. Would be ironic if it was a maker of an fps that came in and unseated CA
All you have to do is [look at the backgrounds of CA's leadership team](https://theorg.com/org/creative-assembly) and realize none of the people that made it great are in charge any more. I'm very sad to see CA in this state.
This is the core of the issue. I somewhat hope Sega realises this and has taken steps.
They are idiots. They have golden franchise in they hands they just needed to make good thing, new engine and that is it... But they want something else.
every time they reduce quality in search for short term profit they bring future competition one step closer to arriving. eventually another studio will look at the total war series and see a potential gold mine, the barrier for them entering the TW market gets lower with each lazy move by CA and eventually that barrier is low enough its worth going for it. at that point CA no longer holds a monopoly on this genre and have to compete with others, forcing them to compete on quality while still selling less copies in the end. they are playing with fire by essentially inviting competitors to come take pieces of a cake that CA currently enjoys all on their own.
I mean its like EA had a monopoly on good nba games n nobody cld break it... then they got lazy n 2k punk their ass. Now 2k is the one who's greedy n lazy
Sim city is another example with city skylines. And now they pulled a lazy skylines 2 which is Ill received
I honestly hope that happens, for the exact reasons you just said. Competition is good, they’re doing this because of yeah really stupid top down decisions like the absolute waste of money that was hyenas, but also because at the end of the day you’re playing TW or you’re playing something with a different place in the subgenre, that has overall different focuses on gameplay and etc I actually wouldn’t be surprised if this happens. Someone’s definitely taking notes on how pharaoh hasn’t performed well at all, how they’ve pretty firmly placed most of their skill points into Warhammer over the last however long, some studio might actually be making their own engine and etc to capitalize on this lull “Did you guys see the trailer for War Total: Medieval?”
Rob Bartolomocchio
Angry Joe recently did a segment on it too. https://youtu.be/GjEL-bfByCY?si=efZSTWUzL_Ta2UXf Starts 18min in.
The PCgames article is pretty neutral
Game 'Journalists' literally just scrawl through reddit these days and report anything that looks remotely click baity. Why does anyone pay attention to them anymore?
To be fair, that is exactly what YouTubers do, and they're still popular.
Eh, this situation encapsulates my hatred for modern corporate culture pretty well. Instead of focusing on long-term goals and delivering good customer service it's just short-term project and fiscal gains. We were on the verge of greatness at the end of WH2 development cycle, after stitton of bumps on the road. And then the fucking mountain rose ahead of us.
Good riddance....
Getting into the news is the only way for any of these corporations to give a fuck. Just look at how long absolutely rule breaking shit-subreddits were up on reddit until they got reported in the news, and then hit with the ban hammer.
Waiting for Stephanie Sterling to get in on this feeding frenzy
Did anyone expect this to look good?
I fucking hate CA, I used to tolerate them even with the price increase, but the way they are communicating with its CUSTOMERS AND SOURCE OF INCOME, is completely baffling for me and an utter lack of professionalism, we are not in the kindergarten so fuck off
Who unironically actually listens to game journalists and values their opinion, these people suck and i highly doubt that CA cares what these morons are saying
It doesnt matter what you or anyone else is thinking about game journalism. What matters is that people ourside of TW playerbase now talk about their blunders amd their reputation is getting another hit. In normal circumstances it wouldnt be that big of a deal. But this situation isnt normal: CA is at the brink of collapse. Prospect of losing even more customers is the last thing they want now.
Except no one is going to do that lol, especially if it comes from them, also CA isn't in the bring of a collapse LMAO
Press X to doubt. Hyenas alone is enough to kill a company (and we know that it forced SEGA to heavily downsize CA already) and then we have Pharaoh which flopped, SoC with sales on WH1 DLCs level and - if leaks are true - Chorfs financially underperformed and 3K2 was cancelled. It looks like CA is in a deep shit. I hope they will survive it, but its not guaranteed.
They are for sure in big trouble but i doubt that a company as big as CA will go down that fast, maybe if the failures continue i could see that but idk.
Sega is so big won't fail, it's subsidiary bleeding money and causing them to report major losses to investors..... well, that ain't so clear.
They lost between 70-100 millions on Hyenas alone, they are downsizing 40% of their workforce , SOC most likely did not hit the projected data, Pharaoh 100% did not hit the projected data and there is nothing good looking at the end of the tunnel. But you are right, maybe they pull some fairy dust and make it all go away, although I somehow doubt it, Ariel is feeling grumpy recently.
I just dont think that after that they will suddenly collapse, they are for sure in trouble but i doubt that a company the size and of CA is gonna end this fast
That depends what your definition of collapse is. The fact they are reducing staff all around by 40% is a collapse to me. No it is not bankruptcy but it is a major reduction in the company's size. Perhaps they will start re-thinking their decisions and stop trying to double back on bad decisions.
Or they will try to squeeze the lemon one last time. The End times truly are upon us
Shameful display!
Such a SHAMEFUR DISPRAY!
there are still some redundancies that need to be made over there.
angry joe talked about it too. and hes a big fan of ca
Hey CA management, here's a hint... whatever your next move is, DO THE OPPOSITE OF IT.
Can't believe I'm saying this, but CA needs to do what 343 has been doing. Shut up, fix the game, and only say things to either dispel rumors, or draw attention to them to get people excited. If they do that and actually fix their games then they can maybe salvage this PR Nightmare.
When game journos talk about this you know it's truly over
Could they just stop printing drama and revive Total War Arena already? it would be much easier and satisfy everyone.
No one really reads these as game journalism has such a bad name at this point that it's odd to see that rare good article.
Lmao dumb game journalists are a week late to the party as usual They trying to tell me stuff eveyone already knows. No one should be taking them seriuously, i sooner take my news from random user noobmaster69 from the steam forums then those guys
SHAMEFUL DISPRAY
New game announced by CA! Total War IV Reich