‘Outriders’ release date: PC version won’t go live at midnight on launch day; developers explain why

“Outriders” may be a new IP but it is one of the most anticipated games launching this year. While games usually become available at the stroke of midnight, that will not be the case with the upcoming co-op role-playing title.

‘Outriders’ release date and times for PC, consoles, and cloud services

With only a week left before the official release of “Outriders,” developer People Can Fly and publisher Square Enix confirmed the exact times when the game goes live on different platforms. PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S players can start accessing the game’s full version at midnight on their local time on April 1.

The same goes for Xbox Game Pass subscribers. It can be recalled that Microsoft announced “Outriders” will be available through the platform on day one at no additional cost for its members.

Meanwhile, players on PC will have to wait a few hours before they can start playing “Outriders.” The game will go live on PC on April 1 at 9 a.m. PDT / 12 p.m. EDT / 5 p.m. BST. Before PC players get disappointed over the game's exact release time, People Can Fly has a good reason for launching the game a few hours after it goes live on consoles.

Responding to a fan on Twitter, “Outriders” developers explained that the release time for PC was chosen to make sure they have enough staff available to support the influx of players on day one. “A PC launch however always comes with extra complexity because of the huge amount of user device variances that can throw up new issues. There are only a few console types,” the developers said.

Can PC gamers pre-load ‘Outriders’ before April 1?

The full version of “Outriders” is expected to be around 70GB, so it is understandable for PC fans to also want to know when they can start to pre-load the game. However, in an update posted on Steam, it was mentioned that the options and timing for this activity are still being determined. Fans are advised to wait for further announcements next week.

“Outriders” will also be released on April 1 on Google Stadia and Nvidia’s GeForce NOW platforms. Based on this countdown, which was also shared by the developers, the Stadia release time is listed the same as the standard PC launch schedule.