Paying $5 for a new voice and then hearing your old one cut back in every time you touch an objective is not a customisation feature. It's a broken product. That's the situation Space Marine 2 players are dealing with right now, and r/Spacemarine is not taking it quietly.
The Chapter Voice Pack 1 launched alongside Patch 12.0 on February 26, 2026, which also brought the new Techmarine class into the game. The DLC offers voice options for Blood Angels, Space Wolves, and Black Templars, advertising 450 re-recorded lines and a unique Space Marine head cosmetic for each chapter. In practice, the game defaults back to the original voice whenever it hits objective interactions or mission-specific dialogue that the new pack simply doesn't cover. You're not getting a new character voice. You're getting a voice that occasionally shows up when nothing important is happening.
Steam reviewers have been brutal. The pack currently sits at Very Negative with just under 500 reviews, which is a striking turnaround for one of the most beloved shooters of the past two years. "Imagine bragging about 450 lines of dialogue on the store page and not recording a single one for objectives. Complete buffoonery," one player wrote on Reddit. That's not hyperbole; it's an accurate description of what's happening. The default voice cuts in specifically during the moments that matter most to immersion, which makes the whole thing feel less like a voice pack and more like an expensive skin with occasional audio.
The 450 Lines Problem
There's also serious doubt about what those 450 lines actually represent. Players have speculated that the count includes filler grunts and different language versions, because the in-game result feels thin. Steam reviewers have described the new voices as feeling "less like new personalities and more like alternate voice filters." The pack also ships with missing helmet audio filters and the new cosmetic heads reportedly lack animations. For five dollars, you'd expect at least one of those things to work correctly.
The post titled "I'm just sad" from a player who confirmed their refund has pulled nearly 3,000 upvotes. The original poster put it plainly: "I know they'd have to add voice lines to every new and existing mission, but that's what you should be paying them to do. Why would they not go all the way and just release the pack at a higher price?" That's actually a fair question. A more complete pack at $10 would have been a much easier sell than an incomplete one at $5 that the game itself keeps overriding.
Focus Entertainment and Saber Interactive haven't commented publicly on any of this. Space Marine 2 has had an exceptional post-launch run, and this is the first piece of paid content to generate genuine anger from a fanbase that has otherwise been supportive through a long content roadmap. Whether the issues are fixable bugs or reflect how much content was actually recorded, the answer determines how quickly Saber can turn this around. If half the missing lines simply don't exist yet, a patch isn't going to fix it overnight. The "Very Negative" label will keep sitting there in the meantime, right at the top of the store page, doing exactly the kind of damage a loyal community shouldn't have to inflict.
Want to see more? Catch all the latest gaming news, updates, and patch notes right here at XP Gained!
