In a rarity, Sega has pulled a PC game from sales after the title received backlash for apparently using AI, but to sloppy effect.
This morning, Sega announced it had removed Total War: Shogun 2 – Complete Edition from sale, including on Steam, following criticism over the AI use. The title is a remaster of the original Total War: Shogun 2 from 2011. The new Complete Edition arrived on Tuesday, boasting “4K UI scaling,” enabling fans to enjoy the strategy game at a far higher resolution.
But to pull this off, it looks like the developers resorted to AI upscaling, which involves using AI techniques to convert the lower resolution images to 4K by filing in the details. In this case, the upscaling was applied to Shogun 2’s hand-drawn unit cards, which beautifully depict the samurai and other warrior types you can control.
Unfortunately, the AI upscaling ended up mangling the hand-drawn unit cards to bizarre effect by removing or adding details. For example, the human faces on at least a few unit cards can look more like soulless robots. In other cases, the warriors look unrecognizable, and more like odd scribbles.
(Reddit user b1g_n0se)
Reddit users have been posting about the problem, and condemning Sega and the game’s developer, Creative Assembly. “It genuinely hurts seeing timeless masterpieces like Shogun 2 get treated like a quick asset flip by outsourced third-party teams who clearly don’t understand the original art direction at all,” wrote one user. Others have wondered why the upscaling was so poor when the latest AI image generators have shown they can pump out professional-looking images.
An original illustrator for the game, Roland MacDonald, also reportedly told a user in an email: “This is very lazy. Obviously no human has looked at or cared about the editing of these images. These look terrible. It is a bit of a disgrace for such a beloved game that was originally made with such great care by the whole original team. They shouldn’t be charging money for this.”
Sega didn’t elaborate on what went wrong with the upscaling. But in response to the backlash, the company said: “We’re aware that Total War: Shogun 2 – Complete Edition has fallen short of both your expectations and our own standards. We’ve seen your feedback, comments, and reviews. We agree that the current experience is not where it needs to be.”
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Sega has yanked the game pledging to fix the issues when the Complete Edition was facing “Overwhelmingly Negative” reviews on Steam. In the meantime, existing owners can still access and play the remaster. The original 2011 game has also been reinstated while Sega addresses the problems.
“We are working closely with our development partner to identify the causes of these problems, deliver improvements, and ensure Shogun 2 – Complete Edition meets the quality standards players expect from Total War,” Sega’s statement adds.
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I’ve been a journalist for over 15 years. I got my start as a schools and cities reporter in Kansas City and joined PCMag in 2017, where I cover satellite internet services, cybersecurity, PC hardware, and more. I’m currently based in San Francisco, but previously spent over five years in China, covering the country’s technology sector.
Since 2020, I’ve covered the launch and explosive growth of SpaceX’s Starlink satellite internet service, writing 600+ stories on availability and feature launches, but also the regulatory battles over the expansion of satellite constellations, fights with rival providers like AST SpaceMobile and Amazon, and the effort to expand into satellite-based mobile service. I’ve combed through FCC filings for the latest news and driven to remote corners of California to test Starlink’s cellular service.
I also cover cyber threats, from ransomware gangs to the emergence of AI-based malware. In 2024 and 2025, the FTC forced Avast to pay consumers $16.5 million for secretly harvesting and selling their personal information to third-party clients, as revealed in my joint investigation with Motherboard.
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