Creative Assembly launching Total War Saga: Troy for free on the Epic Games Store

Creative Assembly has announced that Total War Saga: Troy will be launching for free on the Epic Games Store. 

It's a rather novel move that will allow customers to claim and keep the title without spending a dime, as long as they grab it within its first 24 hours on the Epic Games Store. After that, shoppers will be asked to hand over actual cash, which doesn't sound quite as appealing. 

The Total War spinoff is due to launch exclusively on the Epic Games Store on August 13, 2020, before eventually heading over to Steam in August 2021.

Creative Assembly explained it decided to make the title free at launch as a gesture of good faith to those who might feel cut adrift as a result of its timed exclusivity deal with Epic. 

"While we know that some of you won’t like the Epic Games Store exclusivity, we feel like this is a great opportunity for us in a lot of ways, and we’re hoping that you’ll take some time to hear us out and for us to answer what some of the questions we think you might have," wrote the studio in a blog. 

"First of all: this is an opportunity for Troy specifically, and we have no plans for future games to be Epic exclusives. As developers we truly value our existing fans, but at the same time we want to reach new audiences and have as many people as possible experiencing the thrill of Total War for themselves. 

"As a business that means putting Total War onto new platforms so that it can reach more players. This is part of that and in principal we’d like future Total War titles to be simultaneously available, from launch day, on as many store fronts as possible."

The studio emphasized that it's only able to make the game available for free because of its deal with Epic, and that the cash from the agreement will allow it to diversify its business and ultimately "get a feel for the development required to expand to other platforms."

"This opportunity allows expansive back-end infrastructure development that will allow us to expand into multiple stores. That means we can have more resources, push ourselves further, be more creative, make more Total War," added the studio, offering a fair bit of insight as to the benefits of the Epic deal. 

"We’re always looking to evolve and improve on our games and this deal gives us a lot of ways to do that -- as we said, fresh perspectives, money that we’ll be putting back into the studio, new ways to expand."