Paradox Development Studio announced today that the Royal Court expansion for Crusader Kings III has been delayed until 2022. Among the many, many, delay notices we’ve gotten for games this year, this one is not surprising. Back in August, the developer mentioned the expansion is “going to take longer” than expected. To be frank, the team wasn’t set on a concrete release year, but the expansion was somewhat expected to release in 2021. That won’t be the case, however, and you’ll have to wait to entertain/poison the guests of your court next year.
The developer didn’t cite the pandemic in the original message. Instead, the team noted that the Royal Court expansion is “very technically challenging,” and they were “doing things we’ve never done before from the ground up.” The developer said it has a “grand” vision for the expansion, which suggested there was going to be a lot of work and tweaking.
Holding the court
That older message is reflected in today’s announcement. Paradox Development Studio revealed the news in the game’s forum, saying it’s not “entirely satisfied with Royal Court‘s progress.” The expansion needs more work, “especially regarding its stability.” There are also bugs to iron out before release. As such, there will be more news on the game in 2022.
“All of our team is hard at work following their projects through to completion and making sure that all the tasks that they started are fully realized and supported,” the team wrote. “This means they are going to keep up their hard work and make sure that Royal Court is the success that both their efforts and your expectations deserve.”
The Royal Court expansion hasn’t been the only thing delayed this year, oh no. Shadow Warrior 3 was delayed just yesterday. Even the highly anticipated Elden Ring wasn’t powerful enough to prevent getting pushed for a month. The year isn’t over yet, so I expect we may hear about more delays in the coming weeks.
