"Thief with guns" FPS Gloomwood tops Steam after shifting launch plans to dodge Cyberpunk 2077 showcase

Gloomwood is the latest retro shooter from Dusk and Ultrakill publisher New Blood Interactive, and after the team moved its Early Access launch up a day hoping to get ahead of this week's Cyberpunk 2077 news, it's quickly become a top seller on Steam. 

New Blood head Dave Oshry discussed the decision to advance Gloomwood's launch in a recent Twitter thread. The short version, as Oshry explains, is that after seeing CD Projekt Red's announcement, the team at New Blood wanted to avoid overlap with Tuesday's Cyberpunk 2077 showcase and the potential updates and/or sales it could bring, as a big turnout for Cyberpunk would make it much harder to fight for rank on Steam. 

"If you drop DLC on Tuesday and put the game on sale, we're fucked, there goes our number one," Oshry says of the Cyberpunk showcase. After speaking to some folks at CD Projekt Red about the studio's Tuesday plans, and obviously confirming the state of Gloomwood, New Blood floated the idea of launching the game a day early on September 5. The benefit of hitting the quiet period of US Labor Day helped push the decision through. 

"The top 10 of Steam is dead; if we release today, we're going number one," Oshry says. "And we did! It turned out to be a really good decision. We got to launch the game a day early, which made everybody happy. And it turned out Cyberpunk didn't go on sale, so we stayed at number one for 24 hours." 

"That's the benefit of being an indie game," Oshry adds. "We saw something that we needed to get out of the way and we pivoted. We thought, being on September 6, we were already good, but you never know, AAA could fly in and fuck your shit up at any time." 

Rather than stepping on Gloomwood's toes, the official Cyberpunk 2077 Twitter account even shared its launch announcement:

There's no telling exactly how Gloomwood's launch would've gone if New Blood had stuck to its original plan, and this wouldn't necessarily be the right decision for every game or studio – New Blood has a pretty devoted and sizable following compared to many indies, for one – but it is an interesting example of how industry news and Steam's structure can influence development decisions.

Gloomwood's explosive launch has slowed a bit, but it's still sitting in the top 10 Steam sellers at the time of writing. Thanks in part to the fervor around its surprise kickoff, it's also racked up over 1,000 user reviews averaging to "overwhelmingly positive." 

Pitched as "Thief with guns" by a custom URL linking to its Steam page, Gloomwood combines the retro shooter sensibilities of much of New Blood's stable with "the immersive sims and survival horror greats of the late '90s and early 2000s." 

Cyberpunk 2077's first expansion, Phantom Liberty, was the headliner at CD Projekt Red's event.