The third Warhammer installment entered the top 10 currently playing games on Steam, however, the negative reviews are pouring in, mainly from China.
In early January of 2022, Early access to Total War Warhammer III has been given to reviewers, journalists, and some other "relevant" people in the gaming community.
Some of them were partners in the Creative Assembly program, who started previewing the game on their channel for the entirety of last month and up until the game's launch.
What angered the Chinese player base was the selection process in the distribution of the Early access, as the streamers who actually play the game got snubbed in favor of other more popular streamers who do not usually play Warhammer games.
That got on the nerves of Chinese players who actually play the game and are regular base Warhammer players, as they had to watch random streamers who don't know more about the game beyond the basics, play the game and play it badly and without any knowledge of the tactics - according to them.
Courtesy of twitter user Daniel Ahmad
Another major issue was a lack of regard for spoilers, as some streamers spoiled the ending weeks before the game's release. Whether SEGA, who was in charge of the game's promotion, did not give any embargo for the players, or they simply ignored it, is unknown.
The latter is a possible reason as most of the people in question do not stream Warhammer usually and SEGA's threats wouldn't have that much of an effect on them as this was a one-time deal for most of them.
As a response to that, Chinese players decided to review-bomb the game to voice their frustration. And considering that most of them either already pre-ordered the game on Steam or just acquired it, it had a noticeable effect on the score and a strong echo among the Warhammer community, even beyond the Chinese borders.
There is still no official announcement response on the issue.
