The Medium Will Have to Wait Until January

The developer team known for Layers of Fear, Observer, and Blair Witch has pushed the release of their latest project. The Medium has been delayed by over a month. According to an announcement posted to Bloober Team’s Twitter account, the initial December 10th release date has been postponed to January 28th, 2021. The decision has been made in response to COVID-19 realities in Poland in addition to “the current schedule of other games on the market.”

No doubt the COVID-19 considerations are a significant part of the decision, and — if it means better worker protections and (one hopes) an avoidance of crunch — I’m all for it. Similarly, the comments from players looking forward to the game on the initial announcement are largely positive and patient.

To put it mildly, this is a breath of fresh air when gamers elsewhere have felt so entitled as to sling death threats at the Cyberpunk 2077 developers over their own delays. It is especially upsetting when you know, those folks are the ones that have already probably been pressured to crunch since January

Still, it doesn’t take much thinking to conclude this is also a marketing move. This move clearly follows on the heels of Path of Exile‘s forthcoming expansion and Everspace 2 taking similar steps to get out from under the long shadow of Cyberpunk 2077‘s now-delayed December 10th release date.

We have important message to share with you#TheMedium #Blooberteam #XboxSeriesX #XboxSeriesS #PCgame #STEAMgame pic.twitter.com/XbpQUOyJj3

— The Medium Game (@TheMediumGame) November 6, 2020

Maybe a little curiously, this is the second time The Medium has made gaming news this week. Just two days ago, the Australian Classification Board — a governmental statutory body responsible for classification and censorship of various forms of entertainment media in Australia — told PC Gamer that the game had been refused classification by the International Age Rating Coalition Tool based on Australian standards.

It’s unclear at present exactly what content in the game has been deemed inappropriate. However, it’s been suggested that while it could indeed be the result of an image or plot point in the game, it could also simply be a data entry slip-up in the process of applying for classification. Either way, the Australian Classification Board has stated in no uncertain terms that Bloober Team can choose to patch the offending content out and reapply for classification, or have the game banned in Australia altogether.

It’s doubtful that the announced delay has much, if anything, to do with this hiccup, as it’s not mentioned in Bloober Team’s initial tweet. Still, with the expressed interest in using the “additional development time […] to add further polish,” it might be worth trying to kill two birds with one stone and looking more closely into what caused the game to be (however temporarily) banned for Australian audiences.