14 DAY TRIAL // The upcoming Total War: Rome 2 will not require an always-on Internet connection to be played but the developer at The Creative Assembly will require Steam to be used in order to cut down on the impact of piracy.
James Russell, who is a lead designer working on the game, has told Eurogamer that, “It’s always upsetting to see your game being pirated. Certainly we do suffer from that. We’ve got a lot of players who haven’t necessarily activated. But at the same time it’s arguable how much that harms sales. We don’t like our game being pirated and so we take steps to try and stop that happening.”
At the same time, The Creative Assembly wants to play fair with its baser and make sure that it never gets into the same position as Ubisoft, which implemented tough DRM and was widely reviled by gamers.
Russell says that, despite piracy, the PC as a gaming platform is now more important than ever. He mentioned Zynga titles on Facebook as, basically, strategy experiences that more than 100 million people are playing on the PC every day.
The lead designer added, “Times are challenging in many ways for boxed products and the way that people are consuming entertainment software is changing. We see very healthy sales on Steam. There’s always going to be place for that big, lean in, epic experience that we deliver.”
The Facebook game trend is influencing the developers working on Total War: Rome 2 and they have plans to make play sessions shorter and to allow players to arrange their gaming around their daily schedule.
Total War: Rome 2 takes players back to Ancient Times and allows them to take control of a variety of countries and try to dominate the Mediterranean.
The game will introduce battles which include land and naval forces at the same time and more of a focus on decisions and characters.
Rome 2 launches on the PC during 2013.