Overview
- The remaster, Total War: Shogun 2 – Complete Edition, launched on October 13 and quickly accumulated overwhelmingly negative Steam reviews that cited worse performance, new and long-standing bugs, and visual faults.
- Community image comparisons and posts, including criticism from the original portrait artist, highlighted artifacts consistent with generative-AI upscaling, and the game's Steam page did not carry a required disclosure about AI use.
- On October 15, Sega and Creative Assembly said the release “fell short,” began working with platform holders to temporarily remove the Complete Edition from sale, and announced they will reinstate the original 2011 game while they investigate.
- The publisher named Mataboo as the development partner being engaged to identify and fix the problems and confirmed existing buyers will retain access to the remaster, but offered no timeline for fixes or a return to sale.
- Beyond immediate fixes, the episode raises questions about outsourcing, QA and compliance with platform AI-disclosure rules and risks further eroding trust among a large modding community that relied on the original version.