Microsoft forced to add Koreans to Age of Empires 2 — and it cost their employee his freedom

A former game designer at Ensemble Studios told how Microsoft forced Age of Empires 2 developers to add Koreans — and it ended in an arrest.

Imagine that you are quietly developing a game expansion, everything is going according to plan, the team is even ahead of schedule, and then a major publisher comes along and says: «Add Koreans». That’s exactly what happened to the Ensemble Studios team in 1999 while developing Age of Empires 2: The Conquerors. Game designer Sandy Petersen at X (Twitter) told how Microsoft forced him to make changes that he thought were ridiculous. Initially, The Conquerors planned to add four new civilizations: the Spanish, Aztecs, Huns, and Mayans. But then Microsoft decided that Koreans should definitely be in the game.

Petersen said that Koreans were not conquerors in the historical sense, so they didn’t fit the concept of the expansion. But Microsoft disagreed, and their main argument was that StarCraft had sold 3 million copies in Korea. The game designer tried to explain that there were no Korean factions in StarCraft, and thus the success of the game had nothing to do with the presence or absence of Korea in it. However, Microsoft wasn’t interested in that — they just repeated their thesis about sales. As a result, the Koreans had to be added, but there was no time for that.

In 1999, I was assigned to design the expansion pack to Age of Empires 2. I chose The Conquerors as the theme, and wishing to have 4 civs (as we had on Rise of Rome), I chose the Spanish, the Aztecs, the Huns, and the Mayans.

The project went ahead extremely well. We were… pic.twitter.com/b7Af0djI8a

— Sandy Petersen (@SandyofCthulhu) March 18, 2025

Changes to the game had to be made five weeks before the release. Due to such a rush, historical errors appeared in the game (which led to the arrest):

• The Sea of Japan was named the Sea of Japan but in Korea it is called the East Sea (so they were not enthusiastic about it)
• Turkish design for Korean ships
• Mention of the Japanese invasion of Korea (1592-1598) — this topic in 2000 was especially important because of tensions over unresolved historical issues

But the most interesting thing happened after the release of the — expansion pack: a real scandal arose in South Korea because of historical inaccuracies in The Conquerors. According to Petersen, it even got to the point where Microsoft’s representative in Korea arrested. He was held in custody for some time – quite possibly somewhere in a «dungeon» (but not like the ones in games)

As for sales — Microsoft dreamed of repeating the success of StarCraft, but it failed. Although overall sales of The Conquerors were good, the game was not received in Korea the way the company had hoped. Petersen summarized the situation harshly: «When someone simply repeats a previous argument, it becomes clear that it is no longer based on logic or intelligence».

By the way, in 2025, on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of Age of Empires, Microsoft made several announcements related to this series. These included the release of Age of Empires 4 and the updated Age of Empires II on Xbox Series X|S, as well as the mobile Age of Empires.