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This massive ‘collection’ of game delay posts is pure art

"Are these not the ultimate, defining artefact of the current videogame era?"

Carrie Talbot

Published:

Cyberpunk 2077 

There are many good reasons why developers sometimes need to push back their games’ release dates, with the ongoing pandemic being the chief example of the past year-and-a-half. While these delays are almost always totally understandable, there’s no denying that, for fans eager to see their most-anticipated games debut, those statement images that pop up on Twitter (you know the ones) are fearful prospects indeed. But, there’s another side to them, too – compiled together into one enormous ‘collection’, they’re kind of pure art.

That’s just what Mark Brown, the creator of a YouTube series on game design called Game Maker’s Toolkit, has done with an impressively extensive, curated series of tweets. “You know, I’m something of a collector,” Brown posts. “What do I collect? Why, the images that publishers tweet when they delay their games, of course.” Starting with one of those immediately recognisable, bright yellow screens announcing a Cyberpunk 2077 delay (the one that pushed it back to September 17, 2020), the series goes on to capture a ton of those ominous image-tweet announcements from the past couple of years.

We can see many of the gaming greats of recent(ish) times, and some of those that have yet to make their glorious arrivals in the mix. We’ve got Deathloop, Doom Eternal, Halo Infinite, Humankind, Total War: Warhammer III, and – well, plenty others in the collection.

“Are these not the ultimate, defining artefact of the current videogame era?” Brown jokes in one, and asks, “is this art?” in another. Well, that’s for you to decide, really. Just spare a thought for your dedicated gaming news writers at sites like this fair orange one right here when these tweets pop up – it’s not easy speed-transcribing the contents of an image when there’s no website blog alternative available. Here’s some of Brown’s impressive collection:

Here’s some more:

Here’s the grand finale:

If you’re keen to see what’s on the horizon, be sure to check out our rundown of upcoming PC games to keep a weather eye out for. Sadly, it was announced that Saints Row has been delayed by about six months this morning but, hey, at least the post makes a nice addition to this collection.

Carrie is an RPG and open-world game fanatic, with more hours in Skyrim, The Witcher 3, and Divinity: Original Sin II than she'd care to admit. She's also pledged her soul to the Fable gods to make Fable 4 arrive quicker. A former PCGamesN news editor, she's off pursuing independent writing projects.