1y ago

Creative Assembly's Statement on Steam Forum Bans and Criticism

steamcommunity.com Steam Moderation Guidelines & Maintaining Healthy Discussion :: Total War: WARHAMMER III General Discussions

Hello everyone! I need to take a moment to clarify some of the recent (and ongoing) actions being taken here on the Steam discussion boards. Steam has long been a space where we’ve allowed people to create the space they want to talk and discuss the game. Unfortunately, over time, discussions have g...

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Calls for criticism to include solutions is just a way to shut down discussions. It's not my job to be a game designer.

I’m not sure who is in charge of community relations over at CA but they probably shouldn’t be lol
unconstructive (critical without offering solutions)
You don’t need to offer solutions when complaining about something not working or feeling right, jfc.
- Aren't finding solutions to criticisms THEIR prerogative? They're the ones selling the product
  
  unconstructive (critical without releasing a mod to fix)
- You don’t need to offer solutions when complaining about something not working or feeling right, jfc.
  In fact, most developers kinda hate when you offer suggestions, because they don't like armchair developers.
  
  Am developer, can confirm.
  What I want is a clear description of the problem (what, when, and why it matters) and ideally steps to reproduce it (how). I'll ignore pretty much everything else you have to say, but feel free to provide it, you never know if it'll be helpful.
  If you want me to consider your solution, provide code.

The thread linked here lasted all of about 9 hours. They already closed and opened a new one. Yikes.
- In other words, they were called out far more than they expected and they lost control. So they created another to try and regain control.

Wow, imagine actually believing and applying this to... Well, anything, really.
"Hey, I found a big in this software that causes a crash."
Banned: Unconstructive, didn't provide a solution

Can someone explain what’s going on? Is this related to the cancellation of Hyenas and the layoffs at CA?
- There's been a lethal combo of the latest Total War title (Pharaoh) being perceived as very underwhelming, the title before that (Warhammer 3) having significant issues that haven't been fixed at the pace that the community demands, and a steep increase in pricing for the most recent additional downloadable content for the series, and all the factors that you already mentioned.
  So because of those issues, negative sentiment in Steam forums of the series has reached stratospheric levels (and in case you don't know, Steam forum users are not the most diplomatic people to begin with) so this prompted moderators of the company to instate more restrictive moderation against negative posts and discussions. This has, of course, spun into its own controversy as it is perceived that they are trying to censor negative criticism to cover the most recent issues in the series.
  
  Thanks, sounds like a shitty situation all around
  
  Didn't they also threaten to basically abandon WH3 if Pharoah didn't sell well? I could be misremembering, I haven't followed things too closely.

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