Gloomwood Launched a Day Early Because Devs Were Afraid of Cyberpunk 2077
We found out why Gloomwood debuted a day earlier than planned. It turns out that the reason was a stream by the CD Projekt RED dedicated to Cyberpunk 2077.
On Monday the early version of Gloomwood, a stealth game with horror elements inspired by the first two installments of the Thief series has launched in Steam Early Access. The release of the game quite unexpectedly took place a day earlier than planned. It turns out that the reason was Cyberpunk 2077.
- Originally Gloomwood was scheduled to be released on September 6. However, CD Projekt RED has announced a stream about the future of CP2077 for that day.
- Developers and publisher of Gloomwood realized that the Polish studio's broadcast had a good chance of completely overshadowing the release of their game. They feared that CD Projekt might release a DLC on September 6 and disocunt CP2077.
- Therefore, they decided to release Gloomwood a day earlier, on September 5. In the end, some of the concerns of the developers turned out to be unfounded, as no discount was organized on Cyberpunk 2077, and the DLC was only announced, not released. Nevertheless, the avoidance of the release on the day of the Polish studio's stream probably helped the stealth game anyway. On its debut day, it was the biggest bestseller among games on Steam.
- The people behind Gloomwood contacted CD Projekt RED, by the way, and as a result of these social media conversations, the Polish developers helped advertise the release, which was a nice gesture to the much smaller company that is the publisher of this stealth game, New Blood Interactive.
The game met with a very warm reception. At the time of writing this news, 96% of user reviews on Steam praise the title, which is categorized as "overwhelmingly positive" reception.
The concerns of Gloomwood's developers were not unfounded.
Gloomwood is a game belonging to a rather niche genre, referred to as immersive sim. How much launches of this type can be harmed by larger projects was painfully shown last year by the developers of Filcher.
This exquisite stealth game was released on September 14, 2021, exactly on the same day as Deathloop. In this case, the authors of the smaller of game were doubly screwed, since the larger game appealed in part to the same group of players. As a result, despite its high quality, Filcher turned out to be a huge flop - a year after its release it has a mere 94 reviews on Steam.
