Discussion Thread here.
When is Episode Two: Brave New World out on Steam?:
- 12:01 EDT / 9:01 PDT / 17:01 BST. Note that this is 24 hour time format, so 12:01 is not midnight.
Important: It may take up to 5 minutes to propagate worldwide. If it doesn't start downloading on the dot, just sit tight for a couple of minutes.
Where it out for me?:
Click here
Why isn't it out at midnight in my timezone for Steam? Why can't you do midnight releases?
Steam runs off a global launch time for the store page, so one single time has to be set. Additionally, when we launch on Steam, we want to ensure that we are in the office to handle any problems that may arise.
Console stores run of local times and thus can do rolling midnight releases.
What about preloading?
We know preloading is important and we have discussed the matter on our side. The reason that we are not able to make preload available on Steam is because Valve have advised us that for titles of this size (~5GB is relatively small), the Steam un-encryption process at launch actually takes almost everyone longer than if they would just download the game normally (the unencryption process requires Steam to download additional files). So by enabling preloading, most people would have to wait longer, not shorter to play the game.
Why do Consoles get to preload?
Preloading is available on Xbox and PlayStation as it is offered through Sony and Microsoft based on their own policies and which use different processes at launch.