Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 devs may have been gunning for GOTY, but they know you don't need "tens of millions of players to move forward": "What you need is a bunch of really engaged people"

Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 developer Warhorse has an extremely loyal and passionate player base whose crash out over the game's snubbing at The Game Awards 2025 was a lot louder than the developer's own public reaction, and according to communications director Tobias Stolz-Zwilling, that's really all you need to succeed anyway.

"I don't think you need tens of millions of players to move forward, get better, or be successful," Stolz-Zwilling told GamesRadar+. "What you need is a bunch of really engaged people who are your fans and biggest critics, in the most positive and negative ways."

As someone who trudged his way through the first Kingdom Come but gave up about halfway through, I've found that pretty much all of my frustrations have been remedied in the sequel, which is easily my favorite RPG of 2025. To me, that just shows how seriously Warhorse takes feedback from its community. It's also almost certainly the reason Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 managed to break through to the mainstream in a way the first game never really did.

In the same conversation, lead designer Prokop Jirsa suggested the sequel is more successful than the first game simply due to polish, and not because any major compromises were made.

"I honestly believe there's big potential for original ideas that, if they were given a chance to be polished, could reach mainstream," he said. "You can say the same thing about Death Stranding! It's a game about delivering packages, and it's a very successful mainstream game."

Indeed, the thing that impresses me the most about Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 is the way it still feels like a niche, hardcore historical period RPG, and one that doesn't pull any punches as a true sequel to the brutal first game, but which for me feels infinitely more approachable. What I'm saying is, you can still very easily die in the sequel by eating a bad apple at the wrong place and time, but for some reason it's not nearly as frustrating as the first game. Truly, don't ask me why.

Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 devs wanted negative feedback during playtests after deciding players should initially "feel extremely weak": "Then the validation of gaining strength feels earned"