Valor Mortis Asks $39.99 After a Year of Price Fear

Valor Mortis will cost $39.99 when it launches on October 13, a $40-class sticker One More Level spent a year fearing would cheapen a 20-hour new series. The Krakow studio says the first-person Soulslike can stand next to full-price games, then chose not to charge like one.

Blake Rochkind, who runs publisher Lyrical Games, said the call still made him nervous. “My biggest concern was that it would send the wrong message about the game,” he told interviewer Chris Dring, before arguing the cheaper tag is a show of confidence, not a verdict on quality.

Valor Mortis Will Cost $39.99 on October 13

One More Level and Lyrical Games posted the number on September 17. The Steam note lists the base game at $39.99, €39.99, and 149.99 zł, and it is launching on October 13 at $39.99 on PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X/S. Sterling was not in that post.

Valor Mortis will be $39.99. Here’s why. pic.twitter.com/uzm520sFz1

— Valor Mortis (@ValorMortis) September 17, 2026

The studio’s own words do two jobs at once. They claim AAA craft, then admit autumn will not pay AAA prices for a new name.

We have had many discussions over the past year about the price of Valor Mortis. We believe the game has the quality, fidelity, and playtime in its 20-hour story to go toe-to-toe with many “full price” titles. Still, this Fall is stacked and there’s high demand for your time and money.

One More Level and Lyrical Games, Steam news post, September 17, 2026

You play William, a Grande Armée soldier pulled off a European battlefield and handed plague-born powers. Combat mixes sword work, a strange pistol, and plasmid-style gifts that read closer to BioShock than to another third-person Souls clone. Vincent Cassel voices Napoleon. The team went gold in August and already shipped a Steam demo. None of that changed the sticker.

Ghostrunner 2 Already Sold at This Price

The autumn speech sounds like a markdown from $70. The studio’s last two games tell a quieter story. Ghostrunner launched on October 27, 2020 at $29.99. Ghostrunner 2 launched on October 26, 2023 at $39.99 for the standard edition. Valor Mortis, three years later, lands on the same $39.99 line.

THE STUDIO’S OWN PRICE BAND

Video Game Insights estimates Ghostrunner sold 5.6 million copies, so the $30-to-$40 band is not a hobbyist experiment. What changed is the shelf around it. Full-price console games still sit near $70, and Rockstar has already put Grand Theft Auto VI’s standard edition at $79.99. Rochkind’s year of meetings was about whether a new IP with a 20-hour story could join that shelf, not about cutting a $70 SKU the studio never listed.

That is the bind they cannot advertise cleanly. Charge $70 and a Napoleonic first-person Soulslike looks late to a season of sequels. Charge $39.99 and the same game looks, to a certain kind of buyer, like a budget object. They picked the second risk and wrote a letter so nobody would miss the first claim.

An And Game Beside the Fall Blockbusters

Rochkind’s working phrase is “and game.” He wants Valor Mortis in the same basket as a $70 or $79.99 sequel, not instead of it. “The worst thing we could do is not push our chips in and say, ‘We want this to be a game that you can pick up alongside these other great games,’” he said. A peer who priced around $30, which he translated as $40 now, told him they never regretted being the extra purchase.

We find ourselves as one of the only new IPs launching in what is objectively the craziest fall in the history of this business. Not only do you have GTA looming large in November, now you have the Zelda remake, Control coming out in a couple of weeks, Silent Hill: Townfall, Phantom Blade Zero, Gears of War, Call of Duty.

Blake Rochkind, head of Lyrical Games, on The Game Business

Rockstar’s November 19 launch date for GTA 6 is the gravity well everyone else is orbiting. Insomniac’s Marvel’s Wolverine is dated September 15 on PS5. Remedy’s Control Resonant and Konami’s Silent Hill: Townfall both sit on September 24. Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve is October 2. Gears of War: E-Day and Star Wars: Galactic Racer share October 6. Final Fantasy Resonance follows on October 22, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 on October 23, and Phantom Blade Zero on October 29. Valor Mortis is the new name in that pile.

The first replies under the $39.99 post did not treat the number as a quality knock. They read it as a studio leaving money on the table on purpose. Rochkind’s fear is a publisher’s fear of the $70 shelf. The people who wanted a mid-tier game at a mid-tier price heard the honesty he was afraid to signal.

September 24 Was Already Too Packed

The $39.99 note is the second time this team has flinched at the calendar. Lyrical locked September 24 during an Xbox partner showcase, then watched Control Resonant and Silent Hill: Townfall land on the same Tuesday, with Onimusha: Way of the Sword the next day. Rochkind said that as soon as Control took September 24, they knew they were moving. “Candidly, I think Control looks like it might be a Game of the Year contender.”

HOW THE DATE AND PRICE MOVED

1. June 7, 2026: Lyrical announces a September 24 launch on PS5, Xbox Series, and Steam, with Game Pass on day one and a demo already live.
2. June 11, 2026: The studio moved the release date to October 13, 19 days later, after September 24 filled up.
3. August 19, 2026: The team says the game has gone gold.
4. September 17, 2026: Base price lands at $39.99, with no pre-orders and a $59.99 Deluxe Edition.
5. October 13, 2026: Launch on PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X/S.
6. 2027: A still-unnamed major story DLC is due with the Deluxe Edition.

The June note put it in plain language: September had become stacked, partner-showcase dates get locked weeks ahead, and they wanted “Valor Mortis (and your wallet) some room to breathe.” October is not empty. It is only less crowded than the Tuesday they abandoned.

Game Pass Carries It on Day One

Xbox and PC Game Pass subscribers will not pay $39.99. The June announcement put the game day one on Xbox Game Pass, and later calendars still list October 13 on Ultimate and PC Game Pass, including cloud. That split is the quiet half of the pricing story. PlayStation and unpaid Steam buyers get the speech about confidence. Game Pass players get William for the monthly fee.

Rochkind has said the Game Pass deal did not set the $39.99 tag. He also described a mature audience of “Game Pass gamers” who were unlikely to buy day one anyway, and said he is not worried about cannibalization because word of mouth from the service can replace a lost sale. Both things can be true, and they still leave PS5 as the platform where the $39.99 argument has to work without a subscription floor.

For a new IP, that is a hedge dressed as nerve. Microsoft’s pipe puts the combat in front of people who will never open the Steam page. The paid SKU has to look cheap enough to add on, and expensive enough not to look slight. That is a narrow ridge, and they spent a year walking it.

Players Cannot Pre-Order the Base Game

The same post that set $39.99 closed the usual cash window. “Many of you have also asked us about pre-orders, but we want to let the completed version of our game do the talking.” You buy it when you can see the thing, which is a rare line in a season of $79.99 sequels that have been taking money for months.

WHAT THE $59.99 DELUXE ADDS

• The gap: The Deluxe Edition is $59.99 / €59.99 / 199.99 zł, $20 above the base game.
• The 2027 DLC: A major story add-on, still unnamed, is promised for the next year.
• The cosmetics: Several weapon-skin packs ship between launch and that DLC.
• The free track: Separate updates are planned in the weeks and months after October 13, with no extra charge.

Holding pre-orders while selling a Deluxe SKU that includes unmade 2027 story DLC is an odd pair. The base game has to prove itself on disc, or the digital equivalent, before anyone pays. The $59.99 bundle asks for faith in a second campaign that does not exist yet. If the 20-hour story lands, the cheaper sticker will look generous. If it does not, $39.99 will be the number people remember, not the letter about fidelity.

Lyrical Games Caught a Studio That Nearly Self-Published

The price fight sits on a funding fight that almost ended the project. Ghostrunner and its sequel went out through 505 Games. Valor Mortis first signed with Private Division, then lost that deal when Take-Two pulled back from mid-tier work. Strauss Zelnick’s line at the time was that the company wanted big hits. One More Level looked at self-publishing, then decided the quality bar they wanted still needed a publisher’s money.

Radosław Ratusznik, the game director, said the studio had about 40 to 50 people while it hunted for that money and used its own savings rather than cut staff. Lyrical Games, started in 2025 by Rochkind and Roger Kurtz after they left Private Division, picked the game up. The company has since grown past 70 people, with some already on an unannounced second project. Almost all art is in-house. Outside help is mostly QA and trailers.

We had this enormous success of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, but still publishers find the AA segment quite risky. We probably need a few more Expedition 33s to just prove them wrong.

Radosław Ratusznik, game director, One More Level

That is the ground under the $39.99 speech. A mid-size Polish team already lost one publisher, kept the payroll on savings, and now has to open next to Control Resonant, a new Silent Hill, Gears, a Call of Duty, and GTA 6 at $79.99. They could have asked for $70 and dared the calendar. They asked for $39.99 and wrote a note so the number would not look like a shrug. October 13 will decide which reading sticks.