Kingmakers, the game about bringing modern weapons to medieval battlefields, gets delayed just 5 days ahead of launch, and there's no new release date

Kingmakers screenshot - guy on a dirtbike with an assault rifle shooting at a mounted knight

(Image credit: Redemption Road)

Just five days before it was set to launch into early access on Steam, the medieval-modern combat sim Kingmakers has been delayed—and, somewhat worryingly, it doesn't have a new release target.

The delay message focuses primarily on developer Redemption Road's technical ambitions, which are very high: The studio says it "set out to push the Unreal Engine 4 codebase to its absolute limits, while still providing 60fps to midrange PCs, without the need for fake frames."

After describing Kingmaker's mix of massive scale and granular physics and reactivity, all of it built around "full drop-in/drop-out four-player multiplayer support," Redemption Road said it needs "a bit more time on content polish before we feel good about charging money for it."

"So that is what we're doing now," the studio wrote. "We're making sure everyone who buys the game is enthralled and feels like their money was well spent. We want this to be the case whether you have a top-of-the-line rig or a PC that's seen better days."

The delay message makes no mention of a new release target, nor does the Steam page, which now says only that Kingmakers is "coming soon." That feels a little odd for a game that was due to launch in less than a week—typically you can at least spitball how many more weeks or months you'll need when you're this close to the finish line—and it's sparked a certain amount of blowback from some followers, who have accused the game of being a scam of some sort and even made comparisons to infamous survival game flameout The Day Before.

Regardless of what's going on here, I don't think it's reasonable to call the game a "scam" when there's been no crowdfunding, preorders, or other exchange of legal tender for lofty promises. It sucks that we have to wait (especially when the game was so close to release) and Kingmakers may ultimately not live up to its promise, but at this point that's really all it is: disappointing and kind of weird.

Andy has been gaming on PCs from the very beginning, starting as a youngster with text adventures and primitive action games on a cassette-based TRS80. From there he graduated to the glory days of Sierra Online adventures and Microprose sims, ran a local BBS, learned how to build PCs, and developed a longstanding love of RPGs, immersive sims, and shooters. He began writing videogame news in 2007 for The Escapist and somehow managed to avoid getting fired until 2014, when he joined the storied ranks of PC Gamer. He covers all aspects of the industry, from new game announcements and patch notes to legal disputes, Twitch beefs, esports, and Henry Cavill. Lots of Henry Cavill.

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