Fans of Creative Assembly’s Total War series are used to launch-day issues, but the latest remaster of one of the studio’s most beloved games has crossed a line for many. Players are in an uproar over Total War: Shogun 2 – Complete Edition, which is full of bugs and apparent AI-generated slop.
In response to the overwhelmingly negative feedback, Sega and Creative Assembly are promising to reverse course and remove the new version of the game from storefronts until these problems are fixed. “We’re aware that Total War: Shogun 2 – Complete Edition has fallen short of both your expectations and our own standards,” Sega and Creative Assembly wrote in a statement posted on X. “We agree that the current experience is not where it needs to be. As a result, we are working with platform holders to temporarily remove the game from sale and to reinstate the original game while we investigate the issues.”
Mataboo, a porting-focused company whose previous credits include The Blood of Dawnwalker and Gotham Knights, helped Sega with the remaster. In the statement, Sega explained that it is working closely with its development partner “to identify the causes of these problems, deliver improvements, and ensure Shogun 2 – Complete Edition meets the quality standards players expect from Total War.”
Sega and its controversial delisting policies
In recent years, Sega has had a nasty habit of replacing some of its older games on digital storefronts with new versions that many fans think are worse. Last December, the company replaced the beloved Yakuza 0 on Steam with a director’s cut that includes divisive new scenes that changed the story and brought characters back from the dead.
Sega’s Oct. 13 re-release of Total War: Shogun 2 currently has an Overwhelmingly Negative user rating on Steam, with only 17% of players approving of the game. Players say this new version is rife with visual and gameplay bugs that weren’t in the original, and appears chock-full of ugly AI-generated visuals. One Steam review claims characters in new cutscenes are missing digits and limbs, a classic sign of gen AI use, while others criticize the new textures as a blurry mess. The most popular user-defined tags for the remaster are currently “Artificial Intelligence” and “Psychological Horror.”
The Complete Edition was supposed to be a 64-bit upgrade with “improved visuals, updated lighting, shadows, and textures,” plus 1440p and 4K UI scaling. The Steam description also promises modernized controls, Japanese and Chinese voice acting, and newly playable factions. While Sega has said it will address fans’ issues with this re-release, it didn’t specify whether it will remove the game’s apparent AI-generated art (which isn’t disclosed on the Steam page), or if it will allow users to keep purchasing the original version of the game once the remaster returns to the store. Hopefully, this incident will encourage Sega to stop replacing its old games with “improved” versions that some players don’t want.
