Stampede: Racing Royale, the 60-player battle royale kart racer from the team at Sumo Leamington will now be arriving on Steam Early Access in the first half of 2024.
This news follows the successful completion of Stampede: Racing Royale’s third public playtest, and the development team at Sumo Leamington has released the following message regarding its updated release plans:
Why is this change being made?
Firstly, we’re making this change to bring you a game that we feel aligns with what you want to see.
Many additions and improvements that are key to Early Access are in development right now, and some of it isn’t quite at the level we want it to be, or you folks deserve. Our team has put so much love into Stampede, and we see how excited you are for it. We’d hate to have it fall short of what’s needed and expected from all of us.
Secondly, this is the best decision for our team. We are a studio that seriously cares about the well-being of our people. We will not force anyone to work in an unhealthy way to hit targets and deadlines. Shifting Early Access ensures our amazing team remain healthy and supported, to do what they do best.
This change means there will be even more to enjoy in Stampede when we go live – and after hearing your feedback from EGX and Steam Playtest 3, we know it’s stuff you’ll be excited for!
When is the new Early Access launch date?
We’re now aiming for Early Access to launch in the first half of 2024 – so that’s between January and June. We know that’s vague. We’ll share a specific date as soon as this is locked in.
We confirmed previously that console versions of the game are planned for 2024, featuring cross-play capability. This news does not change that, and we plan to provide more updates on this next year.
What will be going on between now and Early Access?
As more work is completed, we’ll share content that gives you a closer look at how Stampede is transforming for Early Access. We’ll get into the nitty-gritty details on new stuff like Special Events, deeper kart progression, Seasons and Challenges, so you can feed back with thoughts and ideas for our team.
We’ll continue to chat with the community and gather your thoughts via our channels, keep updating our Trello board with the status of known hot topics, and keep providing Dev Logs, so you’re up to speed on what we’re doing. The official Discord server will be live closer to Early Access, too.
Regarding additional playtests, we will keep looking at opportunities to run these, whilst also ensuring we don’t take focus away from creating the best game possible for Early Access.
The studio would also like to thank its growing Stampede community, who have already provided so much support and guidance, and send apologies for the change in plans but can’t wait to continue building the game alongside them. Watch this space for more updates!
Keep up to date with all things Stampede: Racing Royale on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and TikTok.
