Released around a year ago, Firaxis’ Civilization 7 didn’t quite turn out to be the critical and commercial success that the devs have hoped for and although the game received a lot of new additions and improvements through multiple patches, it still didn’t manage to soar as well as it’s predecessors. The newly introduced features in the title which are drastically different than anything there has been in the series such as the Age Transition mechanics among others, weren’t enough to make the game a hit with the players as evident from Civilization 7’s ‘Mixed’ review ratings on Steam and average player counts that are well below of both Civilization 5 and 6.
And in a recent interview with Game File’s Stephen Totilo, Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick has opened up on the shortcomings of the game and where it possibly went wrong:
“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 Civ VII, but it wasn’t for want of trying. And again, I take responsibility for it,” Zelnick said.
“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.”
Also, seven months after Civilization 7’s launch, developer Firaxis Games held layoffs which according to Take-Two, were for restructuring purposes and aimed “for adaptability, collaboration, and creativity.”
Civilization 7 was released on February 11 for the Playstation 4, Playstation 5, Xbox One and Series X and S, Nintendo Switch, and the PC platform (which includes both macOS and Linux).
