Civilization 7 has been profitable despite design missteps

Firaxis was brave with Civilization 7, altering the basic structure of the decades-old grand strategy series in ways that were bound to be controversial. I liked some things about Civ 7's new "Ages" system, which requires players to swap to a new civilization twice over the course of a campaign, but it hasn't been especially popular: Over a year after launch, Civ 7 is less played on Steam than either Civ 5 or Civ 6.

Despite that, Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick said in a recent interview with Stephen Totilo at Game File that Civilization 7 is "a profitable enterprise."

The executive admitted, however, that things could have gone better. With each new Civ game, Firaxis aims to "push the envelope" enough to justify a new purchase, Zelnick said, but the trick is doing so without alienating fans of the series, and in this instance, they "got it wrong."

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It's no huge surprise to hear that mea culpa from Zelnick (except in the sense that we don't hear from him much in general), because Firaxis has also acknowledged the need for changes in Civ 7 by making them. A big update coming later this month will give players their "most-requested addition": the option to revert to a more classic Civ structure.

"The game is a really good game," Zelnick told Game File. "And it's certainly a profitable enterprise for us. But this is one where I think what we tried to do was a bridge too far, from the consumer's perspective."

Knowing that Midnight Suns didn't sell as well as hoped (despite also being a good game), I've been a little nervous about the future of one of my favorite studios, so it is reassuring to hear that Civ 7 hasn't been a total disaster, despite its obvious struggle to compete with its own siblings.

I don't totally hate Civ 7's age transitions myself, but I have to admit that I haven't played much of it since launch. I'll give the incoming Test of Time update a spin later this month to see if it reinvigorates my desire to kill an entire Sunday pointlessly building walls around half a continent to the dismay of my hungry citizens.