For anyone who see the preview back in February, this is not exactly surprising, but it certainly brings home the reality of the situation—that the preview did not unfairly represent the actual game.

This deeply upsets me, because the Age of Empires franchise is one I really care about. 1, 2, 3, 4, and Age of Mythology are all excellent games, and every one of them belongs in the top 20 RTS games of all time. Microsoft might not be developing this game (that's getting outsourced to Chinese company TiMi with a history of producing trash mobile games), but they are tarnishing their brand by allowing it to be associated with this game.

But it gets worse. They are apparently also silencing critics of it. Back when February's announcement came out, some select few creators were allowed to put out videos about the game using exclusive footage of the game, and were told they'd be paid for their role in promoting the game. But they retained editorial control over the videos. YouTube channel Age of Noob put out one such video, and while tempered in its tone, it was largely negative.

Yesterday, the YouTube channel Age of Noob put out a video saying he never got paid, as well as more specifically saying how bad the game was. Today, he put out another one saying he was forced to take down that one (in vague terms—it would not even be clear he was talking about AoE Mobile, if you hadn't seen the first video). In a pinned comment he also said that after making the second video, he found out he had been removed from the Age Franchise Partners programme.

If this is how Microsoft is willing to treat their biggest game franchise (well, biggest one that they didn't buy after it was already huge), and the creators that help promote it, that is incredibly disappointing.