Sega and Creative Assembly have temporarily pulled Total War: SHOGUN 2 – Complete Edition from sale and reinstated the original 2011 game, two days after the remaster launched on Steam. The companies said in a joint statement posted on X on October 15 that they are working with platform holders to remove the game from sale and reinstate the original while they investigate the issues.
“We’re aware that Total War: Shogun 2 – Complete Edition has fallen short of both your expectations and our own standards,” the statement reads.
The unit cards with six fingers
What set the backlash apart from a rough launch was the art. Players accused the developers of using generative AI or AI upscaling on unit cards and interface icons without disclosure, pointing at flaws such as six-fingered hands and missing limbs. The complaints spread across Steam reviews and X within hours of the October 13 launch, alongside reports of desynced cinematic audio, broken hotkeys and frame rates below what players see in much newer Total War games.
“Did Creative Assembly really just lazily throw Total War Shogun 2 into an AI-generated upscaler for the unit cards and forget the human hands only have five fingers?” asked X user Arc Hammer in a post on X.
The Complete Edition’s Steam page reportedly carried no declaration of generative AI use, which reportedly runs against Valve’s requirement that developers disclose such content on the store. Sega and Creative Assembly have neither confirmed nor denied that AI touched the game’s art: the October 15 statement does not mention the allegations at all.
A rare walk-back, and an open question
The reversal came fast because the reaction did. The Complete Edition earned Steam’s Overwhelmingly Negative rating almost immediately, and by October 17 about 15 percent of its more than 4,000 user reviews were positive. The original Shogun 2, by contrast, held a 91 percent Very Positive rating across more than 22,000 reviews before it was delisted on October 13 to make the remaster the only purchasable version, a move that also cut off Steam Workshop access for the game’s modding community.
Existing owners of the Complete Edition will keep access to the game while it is off sale. Sega said it is “working closely with our development partner to identify the causes of these problems, deliver improvements, and ensure Shogun 2 – Complete Edition meets the quality standards players expect from Total War,” but named no partner and gave no timeline for the remaster’s return.
