Creative Assembly says Shogun 2 – Complete Edition was externally developed

Creative Assembly has responded to the removal of Total War: Shogun 2 – Complete Edition from sale. In a post on the Total War subreddit, Total War vice president Roger Collum said the game was not developed by Creative Assembly and was not subject to the studio's usual internal reviews and quality assurance. He said the team had taken its eyes off the external development while focused on its next big projects.

Collum also said the franchise carries the studio's name regardless of who built the game. Creative Assembly has pulled together a small team of senior developers to work with Sega and the external developer on next steps. The game was delisted last week amid concerns about generative AI and other performance issues. Sega and Creative Assembly said in a joint statement that it had fallen short of players' expectations and their own standards.

Collum did not name the external developer. As Rock Paper Shotgun noted, Warsaw-based Mataboo Games is listed as a co-developer on the game's Steam page. Mataboo describes its services as end-to-end development support, covering design, content creation, programming, porting and optimisation. The sources do not say what role it played in the issues, and Creative Assembly says the situation is still under investigation.

On AI policy, Collum said Creative Assembly does not use generative AI to create game assets, including AI-generated art, and demands the same of external developers. He added that the studio does use AI tools where they help its developers, and named analysis, debugging and speedy prototyping as examples. His stated principle is that AI can support the creator but should not replace the creator.

Collum asked players to direct criticism at him rather than at individual Creative Assembly developers. Sega and Creative Assembly say they are working with their development partner to find the cause of the problems and deliver improvements. No timeline for the game's return to sale was given in the sources.