Total War: Rome 2 creative director: launch issues are "totally unacceptable"

Total War: Rome 2 came out last week, but though it was just short of greatness , it has also had a bit of a rough launch. Some players have been unable to login and others are reporting game-crashing bugs. Now Total War creative director Mike Simpson has posted to the game's forums to apologize and lay out the plan for the next few weeks.

“Rome II is a big and complex game and, especially on PC, we are always conscious of the wide variety of different combinations of hardware out there and, while we do test extensively before launch, it is clear that we have failed some of you and we will look at the way in which launch games in the future,” Simpson writes . “Again, I know this is scant comfort to you if you have a set-up that is not performing well, but we do intend to fix your specific problem—whoever you are and whatever it is—as soon as we can.”

According to Simpson's post, about two percent of all players are reporting issues that are preventing the game from being launched. Considering that Rome 2 enjoyed record-breaking amounts of pre-ordering from devoted fans, that two percent is a small fraction of a large number.

Our own review of Rome 2 found the game enjoyable, but hampered by glitchy AI and some faltering political systems. According to Simpson, both the technical and design teams are looking into updates that will overhaul various parts of the game. It's good of Creative Assembly to not leave its fans high and dry, but couldn't this have been cleaned up a bit before launch?