Upcoming world war 2 RTS (real-time strategy) game Men Of War 2 has been delayed amidst the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Development of the game was put on hold on February 24 as developer Best Way, based in Severodonetsk, Ukraine had to relocate. Despite Best Way continuing to work on Men Of War 2 after leaving the city, playtests of the game have led to the team deciding on a delay.
The game was originally scheduled for this year and will now be releasing 2023, although there isn’t a specific date noted.
A post from the developer via Steam reads, “Realizing this vision will require more development time, but both Best Way and Fulqrum Publishing agreed that it would be well worth it to make the best and biggest Men Of War game yet.”
The post continues: “This extra development time will allow the Best Way team to add a lot of new content, such as the much requested standalone campaign for the Third Reich and new missions for other factions, improve upon many gameplay features such as the Dynamic Campaigns, significantly upgrade the user interface, and much more.”
The delay was accompanied by a brand new trailer for the game, showing off nearly two minutes of in-game footage. Men Of War 2 will launch with two primary single-player campaigns, Allies and Soviets, as well as both PvP (player versus player) and co-op multiplayer modes.
The original Men Of War released back in 2009 and subsequently received five standalone expansions, with the last, Assault Squad 2: Men of War Origins, releasing in 2016.
In other news, 11 Bit Studios has announced it will no longer be giving keys to Steam curators due to a resell controversy. The developer stated that “Based on our and other devs’ experiences, most of the requests come from fake accounts used to gather and resell the keys and the published reviews don’t seem to bring any value for the community anyway.”