A Total War Saga: TROY was downloaded 7.5 million times in 24 hours

Creative Assembly’s A Total War Saga: TROY was downloaded 7.5 million times during the first 24 hours of its limited free release last August 13. The free release, which has continued in the tradition of time-limited free games on the Epic Games Store, has lived up to the hype of fans and captured the curiosity of the Epic Game Stores’s userbase.

For the unfamiliar, Total War is a series of historical real-time strategy games developed by Creative Assembly and published by Sega. The franchise has over 10 titles, with the latest title, TROY taking the series in a new direction by taking inspiration from Homer’s Iliad.

The game follows the events of the Trojan War, which starts after Trojan Prince Paris abducts Helen, the betrothed of King Menelaus of Sparta. When the Trojans refuse to heed Menelaus demands to return Helen to Sparta, he convinces his brother Agamemnon to assemble and lead an army against Troy and to bring back Helen. In response, Paris’ brother Hector, the noble protector of Troy, vows to defend his city from the massed Greek armies.

Creative Assembly chief product officer Rob Bartholomew admitted that while they were anticipating decent reception for their latest Total War game, the figures charted by the game on its release day were beyond their internal predictions.

While the title is the first of its kind in the Epic Games Store, Creative Assembly has clarified earlier this year that the TROY’s timed exclusivity is a one-off deal, mainly focused on tapping into the platform’s audience which has more than 350 million players from Fortnite alone.

In a Total War blog post dated June 2, they said the opportunity afforded by TROY’s reception would allow them to conduct extensive back-end infrastructure development and increase their resources for expanding the Total War series and further improve their future titles.

The post explained that Epic Games initiated the discussion for TROY to be an Epic exclusive. All parties involved eventually settled on a 12-month exclusivity deal for the game. According to the blog post,  Creative Assembly is treating the deal as an experiment to see how the game would do as a timed Epic exclusive.

A Total War Saga: TROY was generally well-received by critics, receiving an average critic score of 75 on Metacritic. Most reviewers lauded the game’s setting—accurately capturing Greek Bronze Age aesthetics and combat tactics—and battle maps design while highlighting its wonky AI as the game’s primary weak point.

A Total War Saga: TROY is currently available as a timed Epic Games Store exclusive for $32.40, or roughly ₱1,600. A Steam release of the game is expected to arrive sometime next year.

In addition to TROY, some of the other free releases in the Epic Games Store include Remnant: From the Ashes, The Alto Collection—both available for free until August 20. While titles such as Enter The Gungeon and God’s Trigger will be for grabs starting August 20 until August 27.