The Creative Assembly is a British video game developer established in 1987 by Tim Ansell and based in the West Sussex town of Horsham. An Australian branch is also operated from Fortitude Valley, Queensland. In its early years, the company worked on porting games to DOS from Amiga and ZX Spectrum platforms, later working with Electronic Arts to produce a variety of games under the EA Sports brand. In 1999, the company had sufficient resources to attempt a new and original project, proceeding to develop the strategy computer game Shogun: Total War. Shogun: Total War was highly successful for the Creative Assembly and is regarded as one of the benchmark strategy games. Subsequent titles in the Total War series built on the triumph of Shogun: Total War, increasing the company's critical and commercial success.
In March 2005, the Creative Assembly was acquired by Japanese giant Sega as a European subsidiary. Under Sega, further Total War titles were developed, and the Creative Assembly entered the console market with action-adventure games such as Spartan: Total Warrior and Viking: Battle for Asgard. The company's most recent products are Shogun 2: Total War and the real-time strategy title, Stormrise.
Creative Assembly Sofia[]
Creative Assembly acquired Crytek Black Sea studio in March of 2017 and renamed it to Creative Assembly Sofia. Going forward, the studio worked on Empire Divided and Rise of the Republic DLCs for Total War: Rome II. Creative Assembly would hand over the reigns of Total War Saga spin-off to CA Sofia while they focused on Total War: Warhammer III. CA Sofia's first full title A Total War Saga: Troy was released in August 2020 to generally positive reviews.
In October 2023, CA Sofia would release Total War: Pharaoh to mixed reviews, with the principal concern being that the game was overpriced.