Civilization 7 Made Too Many Big Changes, Take-Two CEO Reflects

Civilization 7 hasn't exactly withstood the test of time in its first 15 months on the market. It's consistently eclipsed in Steam CCU numbers by not only its predecessor, but even Civilization 5. By fairly wide margins, at that. It maintains a "Mixed" user score on Valve's PC platform, and there's really no data whatsoever to suggest that things are much brighter on consoles.

Of course, the hard-working team at Firaxis has been all-hands-on-deck attempting to turn things around. Plentiful free updates have made ample concessions, and the biggest yet is en route—one which will allow players to complete full campaigns with the same civ. Which is to say, Civilization 7's far-and-away biggest change will be scaled back, maintained as its own game mode, but no longer the sole way to play.

With all these alterations in mind, Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick openly recognizes that the publisher took things too far.

"We Got It Wrong"

As part of a wide-ranging interview with Game File, which also covers some interesting ground regarding the long-in-development fourth BioShock game, Zelnick addressed the launch of Civilization 7. While noting that the game is "a profitable enterprise" for Take-Two despite its fumbles, he speaks to the delicate balance of creating something new that still upholds the Civilization series' DNA... and understands that said balance wasn't met here.

“Every time there’s a new Civ, the team at Firaxis thinks about... ‘How do we push the envelope far enough that it makes sense to buy this new game? And how do we preserve what people love enough so that they’re not disaffected?’ And we got it wrong with [Civilization 7], but it wasn’t for want of trying."

Zelnick takes direct responsibility for that. Fair enough. If that were all he'd said, Civ 7 might risk truly being left behind in the years to come. But, indeed, Firaxis continues to crank out updates as best they can to pull back on what Zelnick calls "a bridge too far," with 'The Test of Time' en route for May 19. In additions to permitting one-civ runs, The Test of Time will also dramatically rework the Victories system; the current iteration hasn't won many fans, suffice it to say, and I'm excited to see the revamp.

“So we’ve made a bunch of fixes. We’ll continue to make fixes. The game is a really good game. And it’s certainly a profitable enterprise for us. But this is one where I think what we tried to do was a bridge too far, from the consumer’s perspective.”

I got a pre-launch code for Civilization 7 to assist in the guiding process, so I suppose I'm technically not "the consumer" here. But I can tell you, I have many friends who refrained from purchasing the latest mainline installment in the strategy franchise because those big changes just didn't appeal to them. Perhaps some will come around. It sure could use their help. 25,518 people are currently conquering the world in Civilization 6 on Steam, whilst Civilization 7 is booted-up for 5,430.

Civilization 5, by the way? 14,415.