Moon Studios has delayed the 1.0 launch of No Rest for the Wicked from October 2026 to March 2027. The full version is still aimed at PC and PlayStation 5, with Xbox Series and Nintendo Switch 2 versions coming later.
The studio posted the news on September 1 through Steam, its official site, and a video from CEO and creative director Thomas Mahler. October was the window Moon revealed in June after more than two years of Early Access. That date is gone with a little over a month of notice.
"The honest truth is that we're a small team, and we're holding our games to a standard we won't compromise on," the studio wrote. "We're close, but close isn't good enough for our full 1.0 launch. The extra time will help us improve performance, tighten the class system, and polish the whole game to the standard you all deserve. We'd rather take a few more months than ship something that we know isn't quite perfect yet."
Mahler opened his video with an apology. He said a lot of players had already been counting down to a 1.0 build only a couple of months away. After shipping the co-op update, No Rest for the Wicked Together, earlier this year, the team went on what he called a mad dash to add more content, pull in the remaining 1.0 work, and get the class system in. Internal playtesting is what stopped the October plan.
No Rest for the Wicked Together went live on January 22 with a free Steam weekend and a sale attached to it. Persistent private realms, the world changing while you are offline, and co-op without a pass were the pitch. From that point the studio tried to stack the rest of 1.0 on top: new regions, the final story arc, endgame activities, and the class overhaul players have been waiting on since Early Access launched with a soft stat-and-weapon setup instead of formal jobs.
That class work is one of the three jobs Moon listed for the extra months, next to performance and general polish. Performance has been a live issue since the game first hit Steam on April 18, 2024. Early patches targeted frame rates, loot, harvesting, and blockers, and the studio has kept talking about optimization as the PC build grew. 1.0 is also the PlayStation 5 debut, so the same pass has to hold up on a console SKU, not only on the machines that have been in Early Access.
December is the next public look at the game. Moon will run more closed tests first, then an open beta that Mahler described as the last time players will touch a test build before March. He said that session will show a lot of the new features and some of the new content already in place, including the class system. The studio had gone quiet on public test realms for a stretch. Mahler said that silence was because the build was not ready to put in front of people.
A Wicked Inside developer diary is also coming soon for fans. Moon Studios has used that series for design talk, co-op showcases, and progress reports, and the team said it will keep sharing details in the format that matches whatever the build is doing that week.
The October window had been sold as a large jump, not a coat of paint. In June the studio said 1.0 would expand the game to around a hundred hours, with more than 60 hours of new content, 15-plus hand-crafted regions, a new horde mode, new weapons, bosses, and enemies, endgame activities, and the closing story players have been guessing at since 2024. Full crossplay and cross-save between PC and console were part of that same launch list. The class and progression rewrite was framed as the change that would let two Cerim using the same weapon play nothing alike.
Mahler put a longer clock on the project in the delay video. First prototypes date to late 2016. Moon Studios is still best known for Ori and the Blind Forest and Ori and the Will of the Wisps, and Wicked has been the studio's swing at a grim isometric action RPG with some Soulslike combat, gathering, housing, and a story set on Isola Sacra. Calling a five-month slip a small ask after a decade of prototypes is easy in a statement. It is still a slip that lands right as people had already cleared October on the calendar.
Xbox and Switch 2 were never in the October lineup. Moon has said those versions will follow once they are in shape, and Series S optimization has been the public snag on the Xbox side for months. That schedule did not get a new date in the September 1 post. PC Early Access remains on sale while the 1.0 build cooks.
The Founders Pack cutoff moved with the delay. The original Steam deadline was July 10. Anyone who buys on Steam before January 1, 2027 now gets the pack, and purchases made after July 10 are included retroactively. PlayStation 5 pre-orders open in January 2027, which is also the window for console buyers to pick up the same rewards.
The pack is a Spirit Cavern hideout Moon describes as a hand-crafted home that ties the studio's older work into Wicked, the Sayer's Vow sword that only early buyers can pull in the world, a custom Founders tag, and access to an exclusive public beta test realm that stays open for those players even after 1.0 ships. Those items were supposed to unlock with the full launch. They still will. The date just moved.
Will you jump into the December open beta to see the class system, or are you waiting for the March 1.0 build on PC or PS5? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.