New World Interactive Delays ‘Insurgency: Sandstorm’ to December 12th

Hyper-realistic, hardcore tactical FPS Insurgency: Sandstorm has been delayed to December 12th in a surprise move from developer New World Interactive. The game was initially penciled in for release next week on September 18th, but a long, heartfelt post on steam revealed today’s news.

Among the chief reasons for the delay is a concern that in its current form the game did not offer ‘the best possible experience’ and wouldn’t match the inherent quality of the first game in the series. The verdict was largely the fruit of feedback received during the Insurgency: Sandstorm

pre-order beta. Complaints centered on performance, hit box, and movement issues. Though hot fixes and patches were released to address the problems, New World felt they weren’t enough and it cannot release the game as it is in good faith.

The hope is by extending the beta, which will now run until release, and shifting the release date, the team is allocated more time to significantly better the game based on ongoing player feedback. The aim being to improve performance, fix bugs, add community features, and finesse many aspects of gameplay.

New World have provided a bullet point list of the work planned between now and release:

• 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.

Pre-order purchases beyond September 18th will continue to grant access to the beta and a 10% discount on the retail price, while owners of Insurgency can benefit from a 10% discount on Insurgency: Sandstorm up until March 2019.

The disappointment is palpable in the announcement and we wish the best of luck to New World Interactive in overcoming these hurdles. Insurgency stands as a beacon of hope in a genre rampant with mediocre objective-based shooters. A reasonable delay to ensure Insurgency: Sandstorm follows in these illustrious footsteps is but a small price to pay.