A Total War Saga: Troy was claimed for free by 7.5 million players yesterday

Oh my Zeus

As it turns out, free stuff is your Achilles’ heel. Enough people claimed Creative Assembly’s A Total War Saga: Troy yesterday to fill 25,000 of Leonidas 300-man Spartan armies. That’s a lot of people dining in hell. Make a reservation.

Sega has revealed that A Total War Saga: Troy was picked up by 7.5 million players yesterday. In case you missed it (and we did our best to remind you!), Epic worked out a deal with Sega where Troy would be free on launch day as part of the Epic Games Store exclusivity. A whole lot of you took them up on that offer.

In a press release, Creative Assembly’s Rob Bartholomew said “We were optimistic but we couldn’t have predicted this level of excitement.” He added “Now we get to welcome so many strategy players — new and old — to experience this incredible saga. We’re very happy.”

It’ll be interesting to observe the trickle-down effect of this marketing stunt. A few years ago, the Total War series was at 20 million lifetime sales across all games. It just added 7.5 million to the tally (albeit with no increase in revenue). That’s a huge, new userbase that might feel compelled to pay for the next game. You gotta think this will turn out as a positive for Creative Assembly and Sega, especially considering that Epic has already covered the development costs of Troy.

Anyone who missed out on yesterday’s offer will have to feel compelled to pay for this game to play it. It has now reverted to its full, normal price of $50.