Today, Creative Assembly published a message about the Total War: Shogun 2 – Complete Edition debacle.
The message, signed by Total War franchise vice president Roger Collum, clarified that Creative Assembly did not develop the game, but is obviously still taking responsibility for the state of its release.
To make things right, a small team of veteran developers has been assembled to work with Sega and the external developer that worked on Total War: Shogun 2 – Complete Edition (Warsaw-based Mataboo) on fixing things, although details about these fixes have not been shared yet.
Collum also repudiated the use of generative AI for the creation of art assets, which is one of the issues with the Complete Edition, although he did not completely exclude the use of the technology in other ways that “help our craftspeople do their best work.”
Below you can read the message in its entirety.
Hi everyone,
I’m here to talk about Shogun 2: Complete Edition. You haven’t heard from me yet, and I want to step into that void and clarify a few points from our team’s perspective that are the cause of a lot of your discussions.
I get many of you are angry and disappointed about the state of the Shogun 2: Complete Edition release. We are too – especially the team members who have put everything into Total War games for years, some even decades.
This was not a Creative Assembly developed game. It wasn’t subject to our same internal reviews and quality assurance. We took our eyes off its external development, with all our teams focused on our next big projects. However, whatever the development arrangements, Total War is our franchise and our name is on it.
The studio is full of craft people who care deeply about the experiences we give to our players. Shogun 2 – CE did not meet that bar. We have to own that and we have to fix it.
We’ve pulled a small team of senior developers together to work with SEGA and the external developer on the next steps. I don’t have the details on what that is yet, but we’ll come back to you when we do.I want to be very clear on the studio-wide stance on generative AI, because I know there are many questions about where we stand. We are a craft studio. Our games are made by incredibly talented people, and we do not believe in a world where technology replaces the creativity of humans.
At Creative Assembly we do not use generative AI to create game assets, including AI-generated art. We demand the same of any external developers we work with. The situation with Shogun 2: Complete Edition is being investigated.
We use AI tools where they help our craftspeople do their best work, as part of a continual evolution of how we use tools and technology in an evolving and competitive space. For me, the principle is pretty simple: AI can support the creator. It shouldn’t replace the creator. I don’t believe that AI can replace the human experience, judgement and creativity that awesome experiences come from. Can AI tools help with analysis, debugging, or speedy prototyping so our experts can focus on making incredible games? Absolutely.
I’ll end my message today with an ask of you all. I understand your anger, but don’t direct that to individuals on our teams. Our community teams, QA, designers, and everyone in between are doing their job, as asked by the company. Their safety is our priority. They do not deserve, and we will not tolerate, harassment or being singled out online and personally criticised.
As a team, we want to be transparent with our communications as much as possible, but that cannot be at the expense of the safety of our people. Please help keep Total War’s community spaces constructive and safe for everyone.
I’ve said it before: when the team does well, it’s all about them. When we get it wrong, it’s on me. You absolutely have the right to be mad, and to criticise us, but direct it at me. We know we must earn your trust by making good games, and crucially, by how we respond when we get things wrong. We’re human, we will get things wrong, and I promise as long as I’m here, when that happens, we’ll hold our hands up and try to make it right.
We’ll talk to you again when we have something meaningful to tell you.
Rog
If you’re not familiar with the situation, Sega recently released Total War: Shogun 2 – Complete Edition for PC, a remaster of one of the most beloved games of the series.
The publisher was then forced to remove it from sale temporarily due to heavy backlash sparked by low quality and the use of generative AI on the artwork by Mataboo. The game is still not available, while the original has returned to the storefronts.
