Steam boycotts banned by developer in attempt to win players back

Creative Assembly, the developer behind Total War: Warhammer 3 is wielding a different kind of hammer. A banhammer. Since the Total War community voiced concern over the increased prices on DLC for the Warhammer game, the developer has announced they will be banning users from the game's Steam forum who "come here to be disruptive."

Boycotts were being called for in response to the price hike and now, for some reason, the developers believe that banning those players will somehow help win back the community. Let's see how that's going on Reddit.

Total War: Warhammer 3 initially released to positive reactions on Steam

"That’ll win the community back" says the top reply from HOU52K, which is immediately followed by a lengthy list of the misdeeds from Creative Assembly and SEGA as told by Redditor saru12gal. “Yea let’s keep fighting the player base. Surely that will fix the series” says axethedwarf, echoing the sentiments throughout.

Creative Assembly posted an update saying that "Steam has long been a space where we've allowed people to create the space they want to talk and discuss the game. Unfortunately, over time, discussions have grown increasingly off-topic - unconstructive" The team emphasised their new direction in moderating including "Doomsaying, calls for boycotts".

Back over on Reddit, the community is raising their voices there instead. "CA are making one catastrophic decision after another." says one user while another references Barbara Streisand commenting "How long has it been since Streisand? People never learn."

All of this comes after a string of situations the community has taken umbrage with, as well as a community manager saying "The right to discuss is a privilege - it is not an entitlement you earn by playing the game." Many players are using that privilege to say things like "It's the end of the series basically." Is that classed as doomsaying?