Total War Troy owners on the Epic Games Store may want to avoid the bundles

When Creative Assembly ran the Total War Saga: Troy promotion as it launched on the Epic Games Store, reportedly over seven million people claimed the game for free. With its impending Steam release, the studio is now running bundle promotions on the strategy game and all DLC – including the upcoming Mythos expansion – which means there are more savings to be had. Unfortunately, an undeveloped EGS feature may get in the way.

The Epic Games Store still doesn’t have a feature that allows it to adjust bundle pricing based on what a player already owns. Most bundles on Steam, meanwhile, are recalculated if you own part of the bundle, meaning you only pay for what you don’t have. This isn’t true for every bundle on Steam, and those that don’t do this adjustment are known as ‘hard’ bundles.

If you buy a hard bundle, you will end up with duplicate copies of games and will still be paying for what you already own. The Epic Games Store only does hard bundles, and further to that you don’t get additional copies of already-owned content, something that was confirmed by Creative Assembly community manager Simone Parenti on the Total War discord.

This means that for anyone who picked up Troy for free during the launch window, if they wanted to purchase the ‘Mythic’ or ‘Heroic’ edition – both of which offer discounts on the base game plus differing combinations of DLC – they would end up paying for the game anyway as the cost of buying each DLC individually is still less than the cost of the bundles.

The only downside to individual purchasing is that you don’t get the discounts available via the bundle. This hard bundle issue will also affect anyone who’s bought some, but not all, of the Troy add-ons available – you’d end up re-buying the packs you already own. The upcoming Mythos expansion is retailing for $24.99 / £19.99, while the two smaller packs are $9.99 / £7.99 each. There’s also the standard ‘blood pack’, but this isn’t available in either bundle.

The ‘price adjusting bundles’ feature has been on the EGS’s development roadmap since March 2019, and was last updated on August 4, 2024 with a note stating: “We’ve completed the backend service work for this and are working towards the front-end integration work and data migration.” It was moved from the ‘Future Development’ list to ‘Up next’ in May 2024.

Related: The best Total War games

Total War Saga: Troy’s Mythos expansion will double down on the game’s mythological elements, offering two new game modes that straddle the original ‘truth behind the myth’ setting. Along with a Warhammer-style fantasy mode, there will also be a more historically grounded option similar to Three Kingdoms’ records mode.

The Steam release date and the new expansion is set for September 2.

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