11 Bit Studios, the creators ofFrostpunk 2andThis War of Mine, have just announced that their next title,The Alters, will be delayed and not released this year.
The Altersdelay will cause11 Bit Studios' game to be released in early 2025, during the first quarter, instead of this year. Theannouncement was made in Poland todayand we’re relying on machine translation of the press release to convert it from Polish to English.
11 Bit Studios published an Englishannouncement on Steamon October 2nd, at 9 AM, confirming the delay.
Why isThe AltersDelayed?
In the announcement, President Przemyslaw Marshall discusses howThe Altershad a tight production schedule and how they wanted to make sure the developers had the time to deliver what they were envisioning, which they weren’t sure they could in the current time frame. That wasn’t the only factor, however, as Marshall also mentions how tough it is for games to launch these days, and wanting to devote more resources toFrostpunk 2’s marketing and release. WhileFrostpunk 2received good reviews, some players were disappointed with the changes in the game compared to its predecessor, as it backs out from the intimate and almost village size of the first game to a wider perspective.
Frostpunk 2while it had strong reviews, and sold 350k copies in a week to make back its budget, caused 11Bit Studios stock to drop because investors expected even better sales, prompting caution from the studio, especially when combined with some negative player feedback.
By delayingThe Alters, they give themselves more time to work on issues onFrostpunk 2, as well as communicate those improvements to players. 11 Bit Studios is treating this as an opportunity to gather more data about the current market andThe Altersso that they don’t miss any marks on launch as they did onFrostpunk 2, where the negative feedback surprised the studio. 11 Bit Studios will use the time to do additional differentiated tests to better understand what response players may have, or what pain points may annoy them, particularly in the blind spot thatFrostpunk 2revealed to them.
In June,The Alterswas part of Steam Next Fest where it was highly successful, being one of the more talked about games in the festival and picking up over 10k followers on Steam during June. The choice-centric gameplay, focused on ‘what if’ and the idea of alternates of a person seemed to connect with players, leading to it being in Steam’s top fifty wishlisted games today.
One final point that they want to use the extra time for is to marketThe Altersmore to let it reach the biggest audience it can, possibly avoidingshareholder complaintslike they saw withFrostpunk 2.Frostpunk 2, while receiving strong reviews and selling 350k copies in a week to make back its budget, caused 11Bit Studios stock to drop because investors expected even better sales, prompting caution from the studio, especially when combined with some negative player feedback.
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We’ve reached out to 11 Bit Studios for more information aboutThe Altersdelay and will update this article when we learn more.The Alterswill be releasing in Q1 2025 for PC and consoles, and will be on Game Pass for both Xbox and PC.
