Creative Assembly has said for the first time what went wrong with Total War: SHOGUN 2 – Complete Edition, the delisted remake: it was built by an outside studio the company did not properly oversee, and the studio is now investigating how generative AI was used on the game’s assets.
Roger Collum posted the message on the remake’s Steam news page on Friday, October 23, 2026. It comes days after SEGA pulled it from sale on October 15, following overwhelmingly negative reviews. TheSixthAxis reported it the same morning.
“This was not a Creative Assembly developed game,” Collum wrote. “It wasn’t subject to our same internal reviews and quality assurance.” He said the studio took its eyes off the external development while its teams worked on other projects, then added: “Total War is our franchise and our name is on it. Shogun 2 – CE did not meet that bar. We have to own that and we have to fix it.”
On AI, Collum said Creative Assembly does not use generative AI to create game assets. It uses AI tools for analysis, debugging and prototyping instead, demands the same no-AI-assets rule of any external developer it works with, and is investigating how the outside studio ended up making assets with it.
A small team of senior developers is now working with SEGA and the outside studio on the next steps. No patch date, fix list or return-to-sale date has been announced.
Edited by Kerwin Stewart, Editor-in-Chief · How we report
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