Relic just announced that they will be leaving Dawn of War III due to its underperformance, and I, for one, am not surprised. Come find out why I think it failed.
Relic announced recently over on Euorogamer.net it has left Dawn of War 3 to shift their focus on more promising games within their portfolio.
While Dawn of War 3 has a dedicated player base, it didn’t hit the targets we were expecting at launch, and it hasn’t performed the way we had hoped since. It’s been tough for us as professionals who want to make great games for our players, and for us as people who care a lot about what we do.
When a game underperforms, plans need to change. With Dawn of War 3, we simply don’t have the foundation we need to produce major content. We’re working in close partnership with Sega and Games Workshop to determine the best course of action, while shifting focus to other projects within our portfolio.
This honestly doesn’t come as a surprise, the peak players charts on Steam have been showing us how the gaming population has been with DOW 3, and they haven’t looked good since the release, dying down faster than anyone thought it would.
That’s just under a 10,000 player drop within the first month, to another almost 13,000 player drop in the second month. In the first two months, they lost 23,000 players, and I was one of them.
Not surprising, but still kind of upsetting. The hype was definitely there for Dawn of War III from the time it was announced, and I think the community was more hopeful than anything. Besides Total War: Warhammer II there isn’t really any other GW game out there that has lasted that long, let alone been worth it to keep playing for longer than a week or two IMHO.
First, let’s look at why Total War: Warhammer II was a success. Total War: Warhammer II was produced by SEGA and it’s a turn-based strategy game with real-time tactics, keeping with the same theme and play style that Warhammer Fantasy felt completely familiar with. Many say it was everything fans wanted in a digital version.
And for the most part, it seems to be doing well still, if not growing, months after it’s release according to the Steam Charts.
But that’s not the case with Dawn of War III, and many of the other games that have been made by different companies for Games Workshop. It has been said more than once that it seems every time you turn around Games Workshop is selling their IP to video game companies. Shortly after there’s a new game on the way, and Games Workshop has little to no involvement in the production of the game.
This creates a major issue in expecting the producers of said game to create the game that fans want, and NOT a knock-off reskin or under budgeted nightmare.
We’ve seen a long list of names from Dawn of War, to Eternal Crusade, and a countless amount of iOS and Android app related games. But they all seem to die down fairly quick. Why is that?
We hear announcements all of the time about who Games Workshop has sold their IP to this time, and their plans to bring Warhammer to a different platform. That’s great and all, but if everyone has a different vision for the same game then fans aren’t going to be as receptive to them. We started on the tabletop and the video games better play into it. You can’t just reskin a game with a Warhammer theme and expect it to be successful.
One major game that proved this to us was Warhammer 40K: Storm of Vengeance and the overwhelming feel of Plants vs. Zombies. Recently, Warhammer fans have been pointing out how much DOW III resembles the Starcraft 2 gameplay.
I had really high hopes for Dawn of War III, I even went out and pre-order the $130 collectors edition that came with a ton of awesome additions to my hobby room.
- Gabriel Angelos’s iconic “Godsplitter Daemon Hammer” replica (14.2” x 4.2”)
- 3 cloth faction banners mounted on wooden poles with custom artwork and slogans (25” x 15.2”)
- “Master of War” bonus digital content pack with exclusive skins; Solaria’s “Dark Queen”, Taldeer’s “Ghost Seer” and the Morkanauts “Big Kustom” sets.
- Premium Disc Book
- Official game soundtrack with 18 epic tracks composed by Paul-Leonard Morgan
- Lenticular Art Card which rotates between the 3 race masks (5.7” x 6.7”)
I got the box in the mail, ripped it open, started installing the game, set up the Godsplitter Daemon Hammer on the top of my display case, and waited for the install to finish completely eager to put my fingers on the keyboard. A few moments later I was diving into what I thought was going to be the redemption game of all previous Warhammer games I had played. Sadly, that was not the case. I played the game for a couple hours over the next two weeks and had lost interest in the first week, but I couldn’t bring myself to just quit playing after spending that much money. I don’t think I’ll be making that mistake again…
But what is it that is causing all of these games to fail? Is it producers just reskinning previous games with the GW name? Funding problems? Lack of capital to do the title justice? Lack of expertise in development? Or something else entirely? With so many failed IP’s, and few actual winners, will players embrace future titles based on the GW IP? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.
Maybe it just time to go back to how things were in the past and get a finished game from day one, with no additional promised content or DLCs. Should we start expecting to pay MORE upfront for a quality innovative game that is actually finished? Only time, and of course the almighty Steam charts will tell.
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About the Author: James Rodriguez
