Publisher Focus Home Interactive has announced that Insurgency: Sandstorm has been delayed to December 12, 2018 from its original launch date of September 18 on PC. Despite positive player feedback from the recent Beta release of the game, the developer New World Interactive wants more time to improve and polish their game. The on-going pre-order Beta for Insurgency: Sandstorm has been extended due to this delay so that the community can continue to enjoy the game up to release. Two hotfixes and a large patch have been implemented since the release of the beta thanks to community feedback.
Over the past few months, the dedicated Insurgency: Sandstorm community have been enjoying the intense, unique action-packed gameplay and have provided valuable feedback en masse. While these beta tests confirmed the high quality of the core gameplay, the decision to delay the release is a direct response to technical feedback, and the desire to refine the game with more polished content and higher performance on PC.
New World Interactive has also detailed their plans on what they will be doing to improve the game due to this delay, with their major goals being:
- Upgrade to Unreal Engine 4.20 and continue optimizing
- Improve the character models, textures, and animations in the game
- Improve the “scoped” experience for both high and low-quality scope settings
- Improve the level visuals, gameplay and optimization
- Add more cosmetic item variations and a new forearm tattoo cosmetic type which can also be seen in first person
- Expand in-game server options to include a server browser, community-run server support, and a custom games system allowing users to specially configure games hosted by our server infrastructure.
- Refine the game to the point it has far less bugs, glitches, visual inconsistencies and other issues.
Up until release pre-orders will be 10% off and those who do will gain instant access to the beta. Those who own the original Insurgency will gain an additional 10% off of the already discounted pre-order price and this discount will be available until March 2019. No word on if this has affected the timeline for the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One versions, though they only have the large window of 2019 for release.