Posted in: Games, Paradox Interactive, Video Games | Tagged: Double Eleven, Prison Architect 2

Prison Architect 2 Has Been Pushed Back… Again… To September 2024

Paradox Interactive has again pushed back the release of Prison Architect 2, as the game will now come out in September 2024.

Paradox Interactive and developer Double Eleven have revealed today that Prison Architect 2 will not be coming out in May, as it has been pushed back for the second time. The team revealed the details on their latest blog, which we have the full rundown of it for you below. The TL;DR is that while the game appears ready to go, they put the breaks on it after running into spec and memory requirement issues, and thought it should be easier for anyone to play without having to cut corners. So, in order to do that, they're taking extra months to address those issues and their own standards. The new release date (for now) will be September 3, 2024, with a special livestream happening on April 25 to take a deeper dive into the game.

While we currently have builds certified on all platforms and are ready to release, some issues regarding memory usage and minimum spec configurations experiencing more failures have emerged. Considering the legacy of Prison Architect, and you – our passionate community, we want to ship the best possible sequel to such a beloved game, without cutting corners to do so. 

With the release date getting closer, we carried out further testing on the final build using multiple configurations to verify its stability. These tests result in a MBTF (mean time between failure) report, the method used to get this result is playing the game until a failure arises. A failure can mean a variety of things, for example, a crash, freeze, or other play-halting issues. In this report, we noticed that on specific configurations the game was not hitting our MTBF target, with this being particularly true for minimum specs configurations.

Once the issues were identified, we started working on improving Prison Architect 2's memory usage to mitigate the situation. Overall, the work has been successful, and we have reached a satisfactory level of performance on lower specs. Unfortunately, with such a rework some new technical challenges emerged, as the number of crashes increased noticeably. 

In light of the memory usage issue, and minimum spec configuration failures, we therefore made the decision to postpone the game. This extra development time will make sure we can: 

• Raise the MTBF to make sure the game is more stable.

  • This includes focusing on resolving crashes, freezes, and other play-halting issues.

• Share more of the development with you, our players, through streams and additional developer diaries.

• Put more time into further developing some of the existing features that we know can be improved. 

  • We'll be telling you more about this in an upcoming stream on the 25th of April at 16:30 CEST /10:30 EST.

Additionally, console players will receive an automated refund  – as per platform policy. Pre-orders will still be available, but you will need to purchase the game again to secure the pre-order bonus. Steam players who wish to refund their game can use the refund option via Customer support.

We know this is a long wait but we'll be with you all the way to release and we know this will give you a better game experience in the end. 

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