A Total War Saga: Troy is coming to the Epic Games Store on 13th August, but in a pretty unique marketing move, Creative Assembly and Sega have now announced that it will be completely free to download and keep within its first 24 hours on the store.
The game will be a timed exclusive to the Epic Games Store for 12 months, after which it will spread to Steam and other PC gaming storefronts, but making it free to download and keep is a pretty big step. From Sega’s statements, Epic have simply plunked down enough cash to make it happen, with CA and Sega deciding that if they were able to offer the game for free for a time, celebrating the series’ 20th anniversary, it was worth forgoing the diehard Steam users for a time.
Tim Heaton, Chief Studios Officer at Sega Europe said “Thanks to Epic, we’re able to offer a Total War title for free on its launch day. It’s a hugely exciting thing for us to be able to do for our players. Not only does this mean that we can bring the tales and legends of TROY to a wide audience through Epic’s massive platform, but it also means new players will get to try Total War for the first time, experiencing the unique gameplay that the series is famous for.”
Within a blog post explaining the situation, the team also asked for potentially angry fans to remain levelheaded about the decision:
“We’ve got just one favour to ask – however you feel about this, please keep any criticism to the studio as a whole, and don’t take it out on individual employees that you might find on various social media platforms.). We get it. It’s unexpected. But they’re not going to be able to change anything, and probably weren’t the ones who made the decision regardless.”
It’s sad that they even feel that they have to ask, but there it is. Hopefully getting the game for free will placate the less reasonable out there.
A Total War Saga: Troy is the franchise’s second release in the Saga spin-off series, which focusses on smaller regions and periods than typically found in the mainline historical series. This drops players into the Trojan War, a conflict that saw Achilles, Hector and others make an indelible mark on history with the battle to defend or raze Troy to the ground.
The first was A Total War Saga: Thrones of Britannia, starting in 878 AD, when Britain and Ireland were still divided up by by vying rulers and their kingdoms, under the looming shadow of Viking invaders from the seas. In our review we said:
“While Total War has often focussed on the big picture, Thrones of Britannia shows there’s plenty of scope for a series of Total War Saga offshoots to explore the smaller conflicts and civil wars through history. It’s also a great place for Creative Assembly to experiment with gameplay, and the changes to recruitment, tech trees and story elements give us a glimpse of what the series might hold in future.”
Will Troy give us a similar peak into the future of the franchise?
Source: Creative Assembly