FromSoft’s Switch 2 Exclusive The Duskbloods Pushed to 2027

FromSoftware’s The Duskbloods – a game best described as Bloodborne meets Sekiro meets Oscuro Souls, with jetpacks and dinosaurs thrown in – has been pushed back from its 2026 launch window into an unspecified time in 2027.

“While development of The Duskbloods is at the final adjustment stage, we have made the decision to move the launch window to 2027,” says a tweet from the game’s official Twitter account. “We apologise to players who have been kindly awaiting the release of this title and thank you for your patience and support.”

A follow-up message continued: “During the network test, we saw active interest in the core concepts of the game, including combat, strategic depth, and player expression. To further enhance these aspects, we have decided to move the launch, allowing time for final adjustments to game rules and balancing.”

There was a suggestion previously that the title may have launched in September, but the prospective date for the unannounced release came and went without ceremony. Many consumers were uncertain whether the game would ever make its vague ‘2026’ release window, given we’ve heard nothing from either publisher Nintendo or developer FromSoft since August’s playtests.

Appetite for the game is ravenous, it seems: in the aforementioned closed network test, more people applied to try the game out than Elden Ring Nightreign – and that’s an impressive stat, considering The Duskbloods is only launching on Switch 2.

But maybe a bit more time in the oven is a good thing for this peculiar, experimental title: the network test hasn’t been without problems, as the first session ended abruptly following major connectivity issues. Though these were ironed out by the later sessions, here’s hoping a full launch will be a little more stable than that.

Mentioned in this article

Also mentioned

Last week, EA announced it’s laying off 400 workers across multiple studios, cancelling projects and refocusing on its biggest money-makers. As part of that, EA closed down the iconic BioWare studio, letting go of most of its remaining staff of around 50 people.

The mood inside EA is, unsurprisingly, low. Speaking to Vertical Slice, a number of current and former staff revealed a culture of secrecy surrounding layoffs, and a lack of clarity on who, exactly, is affected and how their teams are meant to move forward without them.

One former employee said her colleagues only discovered she’d been laid off through LinkedIn, despite working directly with her. According to the report, that’s part of EA’s policy to “protect the privacy of anybody impacted”, but workers see it differently.

“My suspicion is that it is done to isolate the people laid off,” one source said. “Depending on how large a layoff it is, it can take us a week or two or more to get our bearings back under us and figure out what we’re doing.”

This also affects the work itself, since in-progress projects become the responsibility of the fewer remaining members of the team. But a source revealed that it can take weeks for EA to communicate those specifics to staff and to chart a path forward.

EA’s approach to telling affected employees they’re being let go is one that should sound familiar to anyone who knows the modern corporate world. According to multiple sources, staff are invited to a Zoom call with chat disabled and the other participants hidden. They’re then told they’re being laid off, without being given the chance to ask any questions or say goodbye to their colleagues.

“You’re getting laid off because you’re just numbers on a list,” one source said. ” There’s never an understanding of the actual project [you’re working on].”

Sources also said EA is prioritising profits over the wellbeing of its people, now more than ever. As a result of EA’s $55bn acquisition by a consortium of investors – chiefly Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund – EA is saddled with $20bn of debt it has to find ways to recoup.

“Morale has been terrible,” another source said. “The line we kept hearing is ‘do less, better’ but it just felt like we were doing the same amount with fewer people. Upper management was very excited about Claude and the possibilities of [generative] AI, much to the chagrin of my team.”

For the largest game publisher in the western world, all of this is unfortunate to see. But for many within EA, the decline has been seeping in for a while.

Meanwhile, elsewhere in the games industry, the Xbox division is suffering through multiple waves of layoffs, all with the cumulative aim of removing 3,200 people from their roles. Raj Patel, who has been tracking games industry layoffs, recently revealed on Bluesky that 2026 is on track to be the worst year on record in terms of the number of people laid off.

Mentioned in this article