Valor Mortis dev considering shifting its release date out of September: "A lot happened"

September 2026 is perhaps the busiest month I’ve ever seen in terms of videogame launches. Insomniac’s Wolverine. The Blood of Dawnwalker. Dawn of War 4. Silent Hill: Townfall. In the wake of Summer Game Fest and Sony’s State of Play, September is looking wild. As triple-A studios hurry to get their games out ahead of the GTA 6 release date, One More Level’s Napoleonic soulslike, Valor Mortis, is currently wedged in between of Control Resonant and Onimusha: Way of the Sword – not a great place to be in. On the ground at SGF, my colleague Tom asked the team about its current launch date, and it looks like it has the potential to shift.

Now that the dust has (largely) settled, Valor Mortis sits in a precarious place. The Ghostrunner team’s latest is easily one of the best-looking soulslikes I’ve seen in years, with its eerie, allo-historical French setting giving it some serious style. I loved it at Gamescom 2025 – it was one of my top three games of the show – and when I realized that it was launching on September 24, I was pretty sad. Will it get the attention it deserves amid such heavy-hitters? I’m not sure.

Tom posed that question to Game Director Radosław Ratusznik in the wake of the Xbox Games Showcase, which saw Fable get a 2027 launch date. “How do you plan to stand out in what’s maybe the busiest month I’ve ever seen?” Tom asks. Ratusznik’s short answer: “I wouldn’t say it’s [the release date] locked.”

“A lot happened last week, right? We are a part of it, of course. We will be thinking about it during the next few days and I think we will find the right spot for [Valor Mortis].”

Moving the release makes a lot of sense: earlier this week, S-Game’s Phantom Blade Zero was pushed into October which, while formerly a no-go given that it’s ‘Call of Duty month,’ isn’t as disgusting as September. November, at the moment, is an absolute no-go given GTA, and December feels like a rough spot to be in as well; everyone and their dog will – hopefully – be playing Rockstar’s latest over the winter break.

October, then, probably makes the most amount of sense. While Phantom Blade Zero isn’t quite a soulslike, it’s the only real competitor to Valor Mortis, and is currently set for October 29. A slight delay into the middle of the month would push Mortis out of PBZ and Onimusha’s orbit, and given the scepticism around Call of Duty at the moment, I don’t sense that it’ll need to worry too much there.

I suspect that One More Level is just one of many developers considering shifting their launch out of September: the question is, when’s safe to release? If GTA 6 gets another delay, 2027 will be a scary year. If it doesn’t, your own release plans may need to shift into next year. It’s a balancing act that I can’t say I’m jealous of, even if it means I get more games sooner.

Additional reporting from Summer Game Fest by Tom Hopkins.