You need engaged people who are your fans and biggest critics
From a small Czech studio comes a quiet lesson in what sustainable creative success actually looks like: not the pursuit of millions, but the cultivation of the few who care deeply enough to demand better. Warhorse Studios, makers of the medieval RPG Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2, have demonstrated that a niche vision, when genuinely refined through honest community dialogue, can find its way to a broader audience without losing its soul. In an industry that often mistakes scale for significance, their approach suggests that loyalty, earned through listening, may be the more durable foundation.
- When Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 was passed over at The Game Awards 2025, its fanbase erupted — a flash of collective outrage that revealed just how personally players had taken ownership of this game.
- The tension at the heart of the story is a familiar one: a small studio with an uncompromising vision navigating an industry that rewards spectacle and scale over craft and patience.
- Warhorse's communications director openly rejected the logic of mass player counts, arguing that a smaller, more engaged community provides the precise, actionable feedback that actually makes games better.
- Lead designer Prokop Jirsa points to polish — not compromise — as the mechanism of breakthrough, citing Death Stranding as proof that unconventional visions can reach mainstream audiences when given the care to fully become themselves.
- The sequel lands as the most approachable version of a still-uncompromising game: its edges haven't been sanded away, but its systems now feel like consequence rather than cruelty — a distinction that has made all the difference.
When Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 was passed over at The Game Awards 2025, its fans were furious. Warhorse Studios said nothing. That contrast — player outrage met with developer calm — reveals something essential about how this Czech studio understands success.
Communications director Tobias Stolz-Zwilling has been direct about the studio's philosophy: you don't need tens of millions of players. You need the ones who care enough to argue, to report bugs with precision, to articulate exactly where the experience broke down and why. That kind of engagement, Warhorse believes, is what makes a studio genuinely better over time.
The original Kingdom Come was punishing in ways that sometimes felt arbitrary — a bad apple could kill you, a missed marker could unravel a quest entirely. It demanded mastery and patience, and many players never made it through. The sequel doesn't abandon that difficulty, but something fundamental has shifted. The systems feel less like punishment and more like consequence. Lead designer Prokop Jirsa calls it polish — not compromise, not simplification, but the patient work of refining an original idea until it functions the way it was always meant to.
Jirsa points to Death Stranding as a model: a game about delivering packages that had no business becoming a cultural touchstone, yet did, because Hideo Kojima had the space and resources to develop an unconventional vision until it gleamed. Warhorse appears to have absorbed that lesson.
What makes the sequel remarkable is that it remains, unmistakably, a game for people who want something different — a hardcore historical RPG that still refuses to hold your hand. But it's also the most welcoming version of that vision the studio has ever made. The frustrations that made the original feel obtuse have been addressed without erasing what made it distinctive. That's not luck. That's what happens when developers listen to the people who care enough to complain, and give themselves the time to respond honestly.
When Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 didn't win at The Game Awards 2025, the game's fans erupted. Warhorse Studios, the Czech developer behind the medieval RPG, stayed quiet. That gap between player outrage and developer restraint tells you something important about how the studio thinks about success.
Tobias Stolz-Zwilling, Warhorse's communications director, put it plainly: you don't need tens of millions of players to move forward. You need engaged ones. The people who will argue about your game in forums, who will report bugs with surgical precision, who will tell you exactly what broke their immersion and why. Those are the people who make a studio better.
The first Kingdom Come was punishing in ways that felt almost arbitrary. Eat the wrong food at the wrong moment and you'd die. Miss a quest marker and the whole thread unraveled. It was a game that demanded something from players—mastery, patience, a willingness to fail repeatedly. Some people loved it for exactly that reason. Many others bounced off it halfway through, frustrated by systems that seemed designed to frustrate.
The sequel doesn't soften those edges. You can still die from a bad apple. The game still refuses to hold your hand. But something shifted in the execution. The systems feel less like punishment and more like consequence. The world feels less hostile and more alive. Prokop Jirsa, the lead designer, credits polish. Not compromise, not dumbing down—just the work of taking an original idea and refining it until it actually works the way the creators intended.
Jirsa pointed to Death Stranding as proof that niche concepts can break through to mainstream audiences if they're given the resources and care to become what they're meant to be. A game about delivering packages shouldn't work as a blockbuster title. But Hideo Kojima made it work because he had the space to polish an unconventional vision until it gleamed. Warhorse seems to have learned that lesson.
What's remarkable about Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 is that it still feels like a game made for people who want something different. It's still a hardcore historical period RPG. It still doesn't pull punches. But it's also the most approachable version of that vision the studio has made. The frustrations that made the first game feel obtuse have been smoothed away without erasing what made it distinctive. That's not luck. That's what happens when developers actually listen to the people who care enough to complain.
The lesson Warhorse seems to have internalized—and the one their fans were trying to communicate at The Game Awards—is that you don't need to chase scale. You need to earn loyalty. Build something that matters to the people who find it, listen when they tell you what's broken, and give yourself the time to make it right. That's how a niche medieval RPG from a small studio becomes the kind of game people will defend passionately, even when the industry's biggest awards overlook it.
Citações Notáveis
You don't need tens of millions of players to move forward. What you need is a bunch of really engaged people who are your fans and biggest critics.— Tobias Stolz-Zwilling, Warhorse Studios communications director
Original ideas that are given a chance to be polished can reach mainstream audiences, just like Death Stranding did.— Prokop Jirsa, lead designer at Warhorse Studios
A Conversa do Hearth Outra perspectiva sobre a história
Why do you think the fans cared so much about the Game Awards snub when the developers themselves seemed unbothered?
Because the fans understood something the awards didn't—that this game represented a kind of success that doesn't fit neatly into blockbuster metrics. They were defending not just a game, but a philosophy about what games could be.
But if Warhorse doesn't need millions of players, why does the sequel seem to have reached more people than the first game?
Polish. The first game had brilliant ideas but rough execution. The sequel kept all the uncompromising parts—you can still die from eating the wrong thing—but made the systems actually work the way they were meant to. That's not selling out. That's finishing the job.
So community feedback was essential to that polish?
Absolutely. The developers listened to what frustrated people about the first game and addressed it without changing the core vision. That's the opposite of what most studios do when a game underperforms.
Do you think other indie developers are watching this and learning?
They should be. Warhorse proved you don't have to choose between artistic integrity and accessibility. You just have to care enough to get the details right.