Over the last few years, players have gotten used to many big video games getting delayed at least once.Cyberpunk 2077fans developed a Pavlovian response to seeing a certain shade of neon yellow after CD Projekt Red’s open-world RPG got pushed multiple times. During the early days of COVID, delays became increasingly common as studios adjusted to working from home. But delays are still hitting three years on.Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League,The Last of Us’ multiplayer game,Dragon Age: Dreadwolf,andStar Wars Jedi: Survivorare just a few of the games that have been pushed in this year alone.
But in the past few months, two games moved in the opposite direction. In June, Larian announced that it was bringing the PC release date forBaldur’s Gate 3forward by more than a month, from September 6 to August 3.As reported by Bloomberg’s Jason Schreier, this change was to avoid clashing with Bethesda’sStarfield, another huge RPG and the most anticipated game to hit the genre in years. That reasoning makes sense andLarian’s Steam blog post about the changebasically acknowledges it: “This means the PC version of Baldur’s Gate 3 will be released at a time where you’ll have more time to play it." In other words, at a time when players aren’t spending 100 hours on another massive RPG.
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This was interesting enough on its own, but it’s even more so now that Ubisoft has pulled the same maneuver forAssassin’s Creed Mirage. Originally slated for October 12, the game will now release a week early, on October 5. That game, similarly, was dealing with stiff competition. Had it kept the later date, it would have been released a day beforeLords of the Fallen, eight days beforeMarvel’s Spider-Man 2andSuper Mario Bros. Wonder, and 12 days beforeCities: Skylines 2. It’s still releasing during that same stacked month, but now it gets a solid window as the biggest multiplatform game.Detective Pikachu Returnsis out a day later andForza Motorsportfive days later, but those are console exclusives for Switch and Xbox.
I’ll be interested to see if Assassin’s Creed Mirage launches in a technically solid state. Game releases often come in hot. Earlier this year, we had two very messy launches back-to-back with Arkane’sRedfallat the beginning of May andThe Lord of the Rings: Gollumat the end. Neither game would have been saved by an extra week or month, but a later date would have given their developers a little extra time to squash some of their worst and most widespread bugs. If moving games up becomes common practice, it will likely mean buggier games at launch.
Take Baldur’s Gate 3 for example. The long-awaited sequel is excellent and has been a huge critical and commercial success. Where I’m at — about a dozen hours into the first act — I haven’t seen many bugs, though I know other players have. But I’ve heard that the experience gets rockier as you get further along, beyond the part of the game that was available during early access. Larian has been working tirelessly to address those bugs, and has already put out multiple hotfixes that have made the game more stable. I’ve never been especially bothered by jank, so it’s a worthwhile trade to get the game now whenStarfieldisn’t sucking up all the oxygen in the room. But, for other players, it isn’t worth it.
Whether you’re bugphobic or crashgnostic, it seems unlikely right now that release dates moving up is going to be a huge trend. 2023’s release calendar has been abnormally stacked and the trade off of moving forward likely won’t even be worth considering in a sparser year. But, it is interesting to see two games do this so close together. If a third follows, maybe it’s a trend that’s here to stay.
