The Death of HYENAS

The Death of HYENAS has arrived, it has been unceremoniously cancelled by SEGA, and now Creative Assembly is dealing with massive problems when it comes to Total War, employee layoffs, and a bad financial situation to the tune of 100 million dollars in losses for the fiscal year. Let's talk about it.

The Death of Hyenas and what it means for Total War

[Jonkiller]

They proved the haters wrong. It wasn't dead on arrival, it died before it could.

[SM-pvsn]

Never heard of this game before the cancellation, maybe that says something about why it was cancelled. Looks like it's a combination of a lot of 'safe' ideas, gameplay mechanics that have done well in the past few years with few risks or new ideas. The whole situation reminds me a bit of Battleborn: a lot of safe popular ideas coming out at a time when those ideas are getting stale.

[kilianchx]

This game got more exposure by dying than when it was promoted.

[defrte]

The hyena logo and the dung beetle from pharaoh
The story practically writes itself ...

[nikolaivanov]

if only hyena devs and budget was put to work on TWW or to revive 3 kingdoms, they could have had a nice incrase in profits.

[Thumbdumpandthebumpchump]

For me it's not about pleasure. CA has been heading here for years. I'm not glad they never hit the breaks, but in the end, CA and SEGA never hit the breaks. The company that made Rome 2 simply followed through. I'm not glad, but I'm not sad, I'm dissapointed and mad.

[MollymaukT]

This might be CA's golden opportunity to focus on Warhammer 3 for now while churning out the remaining games. The sad reality is most people in the Hyenas team will take the fall for dumb execs and be fired, but some can be folded into Warhammer 3 and become the custodian team (sending out small patches of easily fixed bugs and increasing the scope as they get used to the code) and any Warhammer alumni that got relocated can rejoin the DLC team. CA desperately needs to regain the fanbase goodwill and be able to make cash, and DLCs are the way for now as Pharaoh will probably not sell a whole lot.

[JizzMasterTheZeroth]

And that's the true reason behind the increased costs of TW DLC. We're paying for the failure of a game nobody asked for.

[lawson_coleman]

As a game developer who was recently laid off at another studio, I really appreciate the consideration and tone in your coverage here. Cancellations like these are never a good thing even if you thought the game was ill-conceived.

[pumukleeONE]

CA or SEGA clearly don't know where to put their resources. They could milk TWWH3 as they would like with content worth their price tag but not... leaving their flagship game on life support and doubling the price tag of the latest dlc ( the only dlc i did not brought yet ). Also developing games on really outdated engines. None of their total wars using any of the latest techs, like dlss, fsr, etc

[dracowar]

they couldn't possibly have LESS people on warhammer 3. its barely hanging on with the absolute minimum staff.

[brianwalsh]

I miss the days where executives like Satoru Iwata (who was an exception, not the rule) would take a pay cut due to a product failure, rather than force the company to let people go.

Long are we past those days, sadly…

[toggle]

Don't want to overreact because we won't see the full ramifications for another 4-5 years but it's not ideal sinking so many resources into something and it blowing up in your face.

[RGARnator]

Pharoah costing 60 bucks is a huge markup already.

[klocks]

SEGA trying to transform CA into a AAA developer by diversifying its genre offerings wasn’t actually terrible idea. Choosing a trendy genre way out of a company’s wheelhouse years and years too late was though.

CA making interim TW titles while focusing on TWWH was a good idea. Never figuring out how to adequately develop, brand, and price them successfully while prematurely pulling the plug on a mainline historical title was not.

TWWHs wild success and attention came well after game 2’s release. Resourcing and maintaining game 3 on release like an exit door instead of your main course was strike 3.

Now we’re all here with a cancelled game no one asked for and a reeling developer who tried (or was forced) to evolve without ever having figured out its core business strategy in a release heavy market. TW is a killer franchise but CA has to figure out how to maintain momentum without constantly killing it with all these poor decisions. They need at minimum a new CMO. Gamers are growing up, their attention spans are vaguely increasing. They can’t keep acting like Wall St and ignoring their last mistake and pretending it doesn’t affect their next decision.

[Hubba]

American Civil War : Total War
Warhammer 40k : Total War

There, I just solved all of CA's financial trouble.

[boozebeard]

I'm an artist in the industry and it feels terrible right now. Layoffs everywhere, I was literally telling my partner how it feels like there is a giant lay off every week at the moment and then CA and Epic announce on the same day... Combine this with the uncertainty around AI and the years of sweat blood and tears it takes to develop these kinds of skills... just feels shit man.

[TheRewasder]

Many people have said this, but I hope this makes CA focus more on W3. More people, more money, a custodian team.

On the other hand, as Legend said, this didn't happen overnight, this things are planned months on advance. If they were to relocate those resources to W3 they would have already and Shadows of Change wouldn't have been laughable. I really hope Shadows failed to sell even more so it made a bigger point.

Time will tell.

[pizzamancarhunting]

It's a sad state of affairs to see CA Fumble this entire situation.

[EmberSynth]

This is really freaking bad because Pharaoh is going to flop immediately after this