Recently, Veterans: Napoleonic Wars, a real-time wargame being developed by Tactical Boar, has been involved in quite a pickle. Hailed as one of the most anticipated strategy games of the latest Steam Next Fest, the game disappeared from Steam suddenly, leaving players wondering what had happened and sparking a lot of online commentary about it.
Given the apparent interest in the topic and the game, I reached out to the Tactical Boar team to ask them for details on what and why this happened. I also asked them about the commentary floating online about the usage of AI-generated assets, and how this whole situation has affected the game’s momentum going forward. Let’s go and have a read at what the developers had to say!
Sir Nuno: Recently, Veterans: Napoleonic Wars has the center of a massive controversy in the strategy gaming sphere, after being pulled from Steam right on the cusp of Steam Next Fest. What can you tell us about what happened?
Tactical Boar: It was a DMCA strike. Since then we’ve communicated with the other party and working to address their concerns, which we’ll achieve through the Egyptian campaign release and the new UI. At this moment that’s all we can share.
Sir Nuno: The game has been restored. Does that mean that the DMCA wasn’t legitimate, or did the time-limit for it just expired?
Tactical Boar: Our legal team responded in a fast and appropriate manner. After 10 days, with no further action from that company and the game was restored.We have never used any other IPs in our work, and I believe that’s becoming clear through the updates we’re making.
Sir Nuno: Online, players seem to be divided on the game. Some are supportive, but others consider it to be a bit too close to some existing games. What is your take on this?
Tactical Boar: Veterans is a Napoleonic-era real-time tactical game featuring formations, morale, terrain, and no base building. That’s a genre with a long history, going back through Total War, Scourge of War, Sudden Strike, and Sid Meier’s Gettysburg in the late nineties. When you build in that space, you inherit a shared visual and functional language: unit cards, formation icons, command panels, morale indicators. Those conventions exist because they work, and they’re used across dozens of titles from completely unrelated studios.
Our game is built entirely from scratch in 3D on Unity 6. Every asset, system, and line of code is ours. Sharing a genre isn’t the same as copying, and we’re happy to be as transparent as people want about how the game is actually made. That’s part of why we’ve been publishing dev blogs showing the raw process, with our level designers and artists building maps from a blank canvas. I truly don’t understand how a fully 3D game can be a rip-off of a 2D game, that just doesn’t work out in real life
Sir Nuno: There had been some comments about the game using AI art and assets. Is this true, and do you plan on changing them as development goes on?
Tactical Boar: We don’t use AI to create any in-game content. Our art team creates all assets, art, animations, models, and environments through the traditional pipeline.
There’s one thing I want to be transparent about, because players were right to call it out. At one point our main menu had a poorly done art piece. That was a temporary placeholder while our art team worked on the proper version, and it’s already been replaced in the current build. It shouldn’t have been left up as long as it was. If someone remembers seeing that image, that’s what it was.
The other thing worth mentioning: the marketing agencies we work with sometimes use AI for promotional material outside the game itself. Nothing produced that way goes into the game. But I’d rather say that out loud than have someone find a promo image later and assume we were hiding something.
Our recent dev blog on the Montenotte map rework shows the real process in timelapse. That’s how our content actually gets made, and we plan to keep showing it.
Sir Nuno: Missing Steam Next Fest due to the delisting had to be a major setback. How do you plan to rebuild community trust and offer players hands-on access to playable builds moving forward?
Tactical Boar: Missing Next Fest hurt, there’s no way around it. That week was the centerpiece of our entire pre-launch plan, and losing it cost us wishlists, press momentum, and the goodwill of people waiting to try the game.
Our approach to rebuilding is simple: put builds in people’s hands and keep talking openly. We’re continuing to ship dev blogs that show real work in progress rather than polished marketing, including the map rework and our upcoming Egyptian campaign. We’ve resumed our campaign with an updated build, and we’re being upfront about known issues rather than quietly patching around them. Early Access is coming with substantially more content, more maps, towers and destruction mechanics, refined balance.
We’d also rather be honest about the rough edges than oversell. If someone plays a build and finds a bug, we want to hear it and see it fixed in the next update. That’s the only way trust actually gets rebuilt by shipping and by not hiding anything.
Sir Nuno: Thank you for your time!
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