There might be no “major” growth content material for Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War III, Relic confirmed to us at the moment, regardless of intentions on the contrary mentioned final 12 months. The Games Workshop-themed technique sport was met with a divisive response because of its abandonment of real-time technique mainstays in favour of extra of a hero unit strategy, along with an overly-formulaic singleplayer marketing campaign.
DOW’s energetic gamers have slumped within the ten months since launch – to the purpose that there have been, over the previous 30 days, twice as many individuals taking part in the unique, 2004 Dawn of War and its expansions as there have been final Spring’s Dawn of War III.
Relic despatched us this assertion in response to our questions in regards to the sport’s future:
“While Dawn of War III has a devoted participant base, it didn’t hit the targets we have been anticipating at launch, and it hasn’t carried out the way in which we had hoped since. It’s been powerful for us as professionals who need to make nice video games for our gamers, and for us as individuals who care loads about what we do.
When a sport underperforms, plans want to vary. With Dawn of War III, we merely don’t have the muse we have to produce main content material. We’re working in shut partnership with SEGA and Games Workshop to find out one of the best plan of action, whereas shifting focus to different tasks inside our portfolio. “
Project lead Phillipe Boulle informed PC Gamer final March that “we’ll see an expansion of some sort” for DOW3, and that the DOW1/2 pattern of expansions which added new factions and campaigns was “definitely something we’re going to revisit.” The Necrons have been teased for DOW3 in a post-credits sequence, but it surely appears the space-ghouls are actually extremely unlikely to hitch the fray.
The present state of affairs for Dawn of War three actually doesn’t look good. Steamcharts, which makes use of Valve’s personal APIs to measure the concurrent gamers in each sport offered through Steam, reports that, over the previous 30 days, Dawn of War III had an energetic common participant depend of 403 at anyone time. To put that in context, the 100th most energetic sport on Steam, Space Engineers, had a median of two,199 gamers over the previous 48 hours.
Then there’s case of Soulstorm, the 2008 standalone third growth for the unique Dawn of War, which by itself has 541 concurrent gamers. When all 4 variations of the unique Dawn of War are added collectively, the common variety of concurrent gamers over the previous month is 870.
When all three variations of 2009’s Dawn of War 2 are added collectively, their 541 additionally outpaces DOW3’s 403 concurrent gamers.
For a extra modern comparability, there’s Total War: Warhammer 2, a sport which shares a writer, a license and to some extent a style with DOW3. TWW2 boasts a median of 15,700 concurrent gamers over the previous 30 days, once more towards DOW3’s 403.
SteamSpy‘s educated guesses about gross sales figures can differ from eerily near wildly inaccurate relying on who you ask, however for the file, it places DOW3 at 575,000 gross sales, towards 2.7m for Dawn of War II. Not out and out disastrous, maybe, however low for a big-name launch.
Until this week, the final replace for DOW3 was a set of free unit skins launched in November – outdoors of that, there was no DLC in any way, which is uncommon each for such a multiplayer-centric sport and for a Games Workshop-related one.
All patches stalled from then till this Monday, when a 700MB obtain was launched as a “small but important update to some back-end systems“. Though this replace provides nothing seen to the sport, some gamers have speculated that it would lay the groundwork for one thing extra significant, corresponding to new buildings or the addition of Dawn of War II’s in style Last Stand survival mode.
By comparability, stablemate Total Warhammer 2 has seen four rounds of DLC since its September launch, alongside a gentle stream of patches.
The sense that each one was not nicely with Dawn of War three was heightened by the invention that venture lead Phillipe Boulle parted methods in September not simply with DOW3, however with Relic as a complete. According to LinkedIn, he’s now ‘Senior Narrative Producer’ at Capcom Game Studio Vancouver, which has been making Dead Rising video games in partnership with Microsoft since 2010.
