Warhammer: Man-o-war: Corsair to be removed from Steam soon

[JasonPratt]

The dev's license agreement with Games Workshop is running out, so Man-o-war won't be available to buy from Steam soon.

I don't understand why the developer abandoned the game post-release -- it's still far from feature complete and essentially counts as a good though still problematic late alpha -- but I see they're focusing on their own IP instead, the Victory at Sea series (with Ironclads on the way).

What this means for the Man-o-war game, I don't know. I'd like to see GW hand it over to a new dev team for completion and fleshing out, which could happen. It has tons of potential, being practically Sid Meir's Pirates design, implemented with the ship sailing of AssCreed pirates, plus Warhammer fantasy.

But then again, Sea of Thieves may have solidly conquered that position in the market already.

The game will of course still be available to play from Steam for anyone like myself who owns it.

[Gusington]

I never did get around to picking this up :/

[Destraex]

Are you saying the gw license for this game ran out before they finished it, so it can never come out of early access?

[JasonPratt]

To be clear, the game is technically in full release, and has been for a while; it's just still feature incomplete, though very playable. It's baaaarreelly complete as a game. ;) Still lots of fun, sometimes in a seriously-wtf-ish-really??1? sort of way.

The game can still be bought for its usual $30 right now, though I don't know I'd recommend that compared to the value of other games.

The dev was not clear in the slightest about what losing the license implied. I'll see if I can copy-paste...

It is with a heavy heart, we must announce the end of Man O' War: Corsair on the Steam Store. The game is going to be discontinued on the Steam Store due to changes in the the license agreement with Games Workshop.

I for one will still be playing it in my Steam library and it won't affect anyone who has purchased the game on Steam. The game was released on Early Access in 2016 and as Man O' War and GW fans it was amazing to work on our own little pocket of Warhammer.

I want to thank the community for their support and hope you are all ok during what is a difficult time. One day soon I hope we can all come together again at gaming events, whether video games or battling on the tabletops!

Emphasis added. Double-the is original.  ;)

The devs have done well with Victory at Sea, and all things considered I agree they should part company with the license to focus on their own intellectual property.

[Destraex]

Since when does a game company with a finished game lose the right to sell that game because it loses the license after release? Seems like a strange agreement to me.

[al_infierno]

Sounds like a pretty Games Workshop-y thing to do, imo.   

[Bardolph]

If yer interested its on sale cheap for $2.99 at Indie Gala:

https://www.indiegala.com/store/game/man-o-war-corsair-warhammer-naval-battles/344240

Its a Steam key.

Not sure if they will have a final Steam sale or not.

[Gusington]

^Thanks man.

[JasonPratt]

I've been having a lot of fun recently with revisiting this game. It has a decent tutorial start, but you can also just ignore that and start wherever with only a little (or a lot of) gold. The coastline map is huge, and every port has at least one story of its own. As typical for Pirates-inspired games, you can be a trader, a merc for hire, an outright pirate, or a soldier for any number of nations and factions, including a whole other campaign branch for Chaos pirates (all four standard Warhammer chaos flavors). You can capture or commission new ships and hire crews and captains for them, building your own fleet.

The titular Corsair ship you always start with is flexible and expandable enough to run for most of all of your game -- it packs so very many guns (more than the ten or so visible up on deck) that its limited crew (only 15) which seems reasonable for a ship this size seems un-reasonably poor for good cannon management! And yet with some practice you can rip apart two or three times your weight in other ships.

Often you can tell this isn't a triple (or even single)-A budget, but the devs have included lots of subtle touches to the visual design, including the blocky port cities all having unique designs not always visible from the sea, and then once getting into the limited trading-port areas to walk around, there are hints above and beyond the walls about city design corresponding to what you can see from the water.

The game's controls are a bit clunky (I don't recommend using a controller, though that's an option), and the game can easily throw you into a game-ending unwinnable disaster situation (not a particular one, just generally built-up) without warning. So save early, save often! But the game is stable, and any few bugs I've run into have been so small that I've forgotten any details. It may not be worth the full $30 price point compared to other somewhat similar options, and considering that the development was halted before being feature complete, but it's worth practically any sale price if you're interested in a fully 3D Warhammer-fantasy variation of the "Pirates" game genre.

As I said in a recent review, I thought I had played twice as long as I actually did (the night before writing the review), and I meant that in the best possible way!  O0