Make War Not Love 5, a celebration of SEGA’s RTS titles is in its final hours. Five days of streaming and free games; what’s not to like? While it was a humble event I did have some questions for SEGA and the streamers that took part in the event. Here’s what I learnt from MWNL 5.

The Statistics were most likely rigged

Participants were tasked to play as much as they can from a selection of the following:

Total War: Warhammer

Total War: Warhammer 2

Company of Heroes 2

Dawn of War III

Endless Space 2

Hours put into these games would combine and the goal was to collectively gather 700,000 hours each day of game time. At one point there were just over 2,000 people online yet they were somehow playing 300 hours every 25 seconds and surprise surprise after the 25 seconds passed the hours kept coming in. This seems a little odd but either way it gave us free games.

SEGA like giving out Free Shit

Five days where SEGA gives everyone who connects their Steam account The Revenge of Shinobi, Streets of Rage 2. Binary Domain, Alpha Protocol, Renegade Ops and Company of Heroes not to mention five coupons (50% Bayonetta!). This can’t be real right? Yes, it is.

This isn’t a rare occurrence either; most developers choose to do it through third-party services like Steam and Humble Bundle and its done for a number of reasons. The most common is populating the game servers even if the game is a century old. Another might be that the publisher is preparing/gathering fans for their next big installment.

The whole Event was Poorly Organized

On multiple days streamers and SEGA failed to live stream, usually 2-3 hours late to their Twitch channel and while SEGA actively covered the event on Twitter I couldn’t help but feel it was something that was pushed aside due to the highly anticipated PC Gamer Weekend. Streamers like HelpingHans were left to repair what was left of the five-day ‘celebration’.

Although it was nice to receive a bunch of free shit I couldn’t help but feel sorry for the people who worked day and night to keep the event running. Hopefully, SEGA will learn from this year and build on the 6th MWNL. What do you think? Was it fun to collaborate with the community or did you feel they could have done more? Let me know in the comments.