Relic Abandons Major Dawn of War 3 Expansion Plans After Poor Performance
The game has fewer concurrent players than its RTS predecessors.
Real-time strategy games tend to have long lives on PC, largely due to dedicated communities and mod, but official support for Dawn of War 3 is ending prematurely. Relic Entertainment announced that they don't have the foundation for major expansion content for Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War 3 due to poor performance and is discussing a plan of action.
Whether reviewed by critics or fans, Dawn of War 3 wasn't the most well received. It sits at "Mostly Negative" on Steam currently has largely negative user ratings that offset the modest 77/100 score on Metascore.
RockPaperShotgun reached out to Relic Entertainment about the game and received this statement:
“While Dawn of War III has a dedicated player base, it didn’t hit the targets we were expecting at launch, and it hasn’t performed the way we had hoped since. It’s been tough for us as professionals who want to make great games for our players, and for us as people who care a lot about what we do.
When a game underperforms, plans need to change. With Dawn of War III, we simply don’t have the foundation we need to produce major content. We’re working in close partnership with SEGA and Games Workshop to determine the best course of action, while shifting focus to other projects within our portfolio.“
The outlet also reports that the most active gamers seen in a day over the past 30 days came up to 403, which is pretty underwhelming when you consider that just the original Dawn of War's Soulstorm expansion has 541 concurrent players at this time (870 across all Dawn of War versions). Dawn of War 2 also topped 3's performance with 541 across all versions. The last update for Dawn of War 3 included free unit skins and it's likely the similar small additions will be made, but it's unfortunate that the game won't be receiving more major support going forward. Before it launched, there were rumors that Dawn of War 3 would be free-to-play. Maybe Relic will turn to that model in the near future as the player count falls.
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replyCharles Singletary posted a new article, Relic Abandons Major Dawn of War 3 Expansion Plans After Poor Performance
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Disappointing, but not really surprising. I felt like DoW3 had lots of cool ideas, but basically offered the worst aspects of DOW1 and 2. The tactical play wasn't to the level of of DoW2, and the base-building was little more than a nod to DOW1 and "standard" RTS play. The SP campaign was decent, but the DOW2 campaigns offered way more replayability (regardless of version).
Also, not a fan of upkeep systems at all.
