Blood Bowl 3 was released on February 23 and has been receiving heavy criticism. Cyanide, the developers, describe the game as “A turn-based strategy game inspired by American football in the Warhammer fantasy world where elves, humans, orcs and other creatures fight for the ball with shoulder charges, kicks, punches and weapons of varying degrees of lethality (and legality by the ref).”
However, the game has been criticized for heavy monetization and bug issues. One reviewer states, “This is not a full launch. This is not even a fully functional launch. This is a glorified open beta ONE AND A HALF-YEAR LATE.” Blood Bowl 3 was supposed to be released in 2022. However, due to the pandemic, the publisher, Nacon, had decided to push it back a year.
The developers address this topic in a Steam community forum by stating, “We’d like to talk about monetization and appreciate this is a sensitive topic among the community. This is something we tried to communicate ahead of the launch, but we intend to implement features allowing players to be rewarded either with cosmetic items or Warpstone through play as well as purchase.” They continue, “We know that we will probably not be able to convince all of you but we truly believe that our system is fair, rewarding and optional and that’s understandable.”
Another issue that players face is bug issues. A reviewer mentions that the negative sides of the game are “Various broken skills and issues, missing skills, and wrong implementations of the rules, most of which were given as feedback during the various betas…and skills that freeze the game.” Cyanide addresses this in their statement, “The functionality of the game is our main priority and rest assured we will do our best to address any bugs or broken elements as soon as we can.”
The developers released a road map for future changes to the game. However, some players believe that the replay mode and spectator mode should have already been implemented in the game during the initial launch and not be scheduled to be released in August.
Blood Bowl 3 is currently out on Nintendo Switch, PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X|S.