After months of community blowback and debate over the expectations and pricing for DLC, the developers of Total War: Warhammer 3 have vowed to make things right by pumping more free content into the strategy game's latest $25 add-on, which the devs now admit "didn't give you enough."
In a recent update, the Total War: Warhammer team, and especially game director Richard Aldridge, extended an olive branch to the Total War: Warhammer 3 player base, which has besieged Shadows of Change DLC with "mostly negative" reviews on Steam since its release in August 2023, leaving it with a 22% positive score. Aldridge jumps right in: "I’ll cut straight to it, we didn’t give you enough new characters and units to play with at the original release of Shadows of Change.
"We believe we can put this right for you, having listened to your feedback these past months to provide you with better and more varied options for your armies," he continues. "We know that you, our community, are as passionate about the game as we are, and we’re pleased to say that many of your suggestions are being enacted upon. Not all ideas and requests are possible, though. The Era of Karl Franz is, as you’ve come to expect, a rich and exciting setting for Total War, and we work closely with The Warhammer Studio to ensure that the content for this era of Warhammer is as faithfully represented in our game as possible."
Shadows of Change is getting several changes in a free update coming in patch 4.2. In total, 14 new pieces of content are coming to the DLC, split between new lords, heroes, and other units, which the dev team hopes will "add both lower tier troops and big centerpiece monsters and start to fill some of the gaps and needs of the races in the game that you have asked for." For a cherry on top, there's also a reserved space for "some much-requested FREELC where it makes sense," with Aekold Helbrass coming to Shadows of Change.
The devs also commit to delivering better updates in the future, as they still "plan to make many more DLCs." After this whole saga, now-delayed DLC Thrones of Decay will match the revised scope of Shadows of Change while working to "add to and develop three existing races from across the Warhammer world."
The post notes that, to ensure time to get things right, patch 4.2 may end up slightly missing its initial release window for "the middle of the month." To tide you over, you can read the post's full, incredibly in-depth breakdown of some of the new units and heroes coming to the Grand Cathay race.
Total War has quietly come to exemplify the sort of debates that pervade many modern games. Suffice it to say, this Warhammer 3 DLC hasn't been the only point of contention across the franchise. Indeed, Creative Assembly VP Roger Collum admitted in December that "we recognize that we have made mistakes when it comes to our relationship with you all."
Last December, Total War: Pharoah saw a permanent price drop, partial refunds for all, and gifts in the form of once-paid DLC as the devs reasoned that "this is a fairer cost of the game for players." But the fuse was truly lit even earlier in August, in a now-notorious post about the increased price of Warhammer 3 DLC, including Shadows of Change. See, up until Forge of the Chaos Dwarfs in April 2023, DLC packs had been priced at $11.99, $3.49, and then $15.99, but they suddenly jumped to $24.99.
"To get right into it: our costs are up," Creative Assembly CPO Rob Bartholomew said at the time. "Unfortunately, that means that prices have to rise. We know any increase is going to be tough, which is why our prices have remained fairly stable over the past few years. The downside is that any increase today is going to be more noticeable.
"There’s no good time to increase prices, and we have not taken this step lightly. However, this is the business reality of supporting Warhammer 3 and ensuring we’re able to offer the years of extra content that are currently planned.
"That said, we do need to challenge ourselves to ensure that this cost still offers good value. Ultimately, that’s up to each of you to decide and we’ll keep trying to balance that."
As you may have deduced, people decided. Fans decided they didn't like the new cost-to-content ratio, and now here we are, with many trumpeting Creative Assembly's admission as a win for players who vote with their wallets (and their reviews, which I'm sure the devs are hoping to improve). The responses over in the r/totalwarhammer community have been generally positive, too. The war may not be over, but this battle looks won.
Last year, the Total War studio’s zero-gravity extraction shooter Hyenas was canceled out of nowhere.
