Warhorse says Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 is coming out a week early 'so you can start 2025 with the best game there is,' but I feel like there might be another reason

Just a couple months ahead of release, Warhorse Studios has announced that Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 has a new release date—but don't worry, because it's actually going to show up a little earlier than planned. Instead of arriving on February 11, the big new RPG is now set to arrive on February 4.

The reason for the release date change, Warhorse PR manager Tobias Stolz-Zwilling said, is simple: "So you can start 2025 with the best game there is. Right?"

Well, okay. Kingdom Come: Deliverance, released in 2018, is a really good historical RPG, and hopes are high for the sequel. PC Gamer's Fraser Brown said it feels like the original game "but more" in an August preview: "It's larger, confident and extremely tactile, but maintains the first game's novel juxtaposition of historical drama and slapstick silliness."

That's definitely welcome news for fans, and props to Toby for aiming high, but I suspect there might be other forces at play here. As we said in September, February 2025 is absurdly stacked with games, including Civilization 7, a guaranteed heavyweight, which is also set to drop on February 11. Assassin's Creed Shadows shows up three days later, on February 14, and you know that's going to be big, and four days after that Obsidian's hotly anticipated RPG Avowed finally comes out. Eight days down the road we've got Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii, and two days after that—February 28—Monster Hunter Wilds, another sure-fire hit, lumbers out.

That's a whole lot of gaming going on, and you can understand why Warhorse might want to make a little space for Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2. Going later in the month would put it right in the path of Avowed, but the week-and-a-half window at the start of February is relatively quiet, and it also affords Warhorse the chance to be first. Given the importance of day-one sales, that matters.

That's not meant to be disrespectful of Warhorse, or dismissive of its ambitions: Honestly, I'd love it if Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 rolled out and we all discovered, "Holy cow, this really is the best game there is!" But release date changes to avoid butting heads with big boys is not all that terribly uncommon anymore—Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii moved its own launch date up by a week in October to avoid tangling with Monster Hunter Wilds—and February is, as we said, frightfully crowded. I'm not saying Warhorse bumped up the release date of Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 specifically to avoid throwing hands with Sid Meier and the boys—but if it did, I sure wouldn't blame 'em for it.