Olden Era Hits 1 Million as Teamplay Still Waits

Heroes of Might and Magic: Olden Era sold 1 million Steam copies in 28 days, then posted a public Early Access plan that still has teamplay due later in September.

The prequel opened on April 30, 2026 on Steam, the Microsoft Store, and day-one PC Game Pass at $39.99. Unfrozen, Hooded Horse, and Ubisoft now have to ship the systems that crowd actually asked for.

A 50-Person Studio Walked Into Ubisoft With a Demo

Unfrozen did not inherit this franchise from a Paris war room. The Limassol studio, founded in 2016 and grown to about 50 people, spent 2020 pitching Ubisoft as fans with a demo in hand, after shipping Iratus: Lord of the Dead.

Iratus, a grim tactics game, sold more than 500,000 copies with a Steam rating above 85%, according to Unfrozen’s own FAQ. The studio funded Olden Era internally, with almost no outsourcing, and treated Early Access as a way to tune a rules-heavy strategy game in public.

Ubisoft kept the IP and blessed an indie-made Heroes game “with and for the fans,” in Unfrozen’s telling, as a first step to relaunch the series. Hooded Horse joined on July 1, 2025 to handle marketing reach. Jon Van Caneghem, who created the original Heroes games, joined Unfrozen on the project in January 2026.

That stack is the bet. A small studio that already knew the hex map, a strategy publisher that lives on PC, an IP holder that had left the series idle for over ten years, and a Game Pass slot on day one.

This is a childhood dream come true for the whole team and we promise to use this opportunity you’ve given us to the best of our abilities!

Unfrozen, Steam news post, May 1, 2026

Tim, CEO of Hooded Horse, said Heroes was a huge part of how he fell in love with strategy games. The publisher’s job was to get a $39.99 turn-based prequel in front of people who still remember Heroes III, including on Xbox’s PC app.

250,000 Copies Covered the Whole Budget

Unfrozen’s first-day note is the cleanest scorecard the studio has published. In 24 hours the game sold 250,000 copies on Steam, sat at number 1 on the Top Sellers chart, and, the studio said, broke even on development costs.

Players posted over 3,000 Steam reviews in that window, more than 90% of them positive, and more than 50,000 people were in the game at once. Two days later Unfrozen said sales had passed 500,000 Steam copies in less than 72 hours, with over 6,000 reviews, 25,000 Discord members, and almost 60,000 players online on SteamDB’s charts.

On May 28, four weeks in, the studio said Olden Era had sold 1 million copies on Steam. That same note counted nearly 17,000 reviews and 33,000 Discord members. “These numbers are beyond our wildest dreams,” the studio had already written after the 500,000 mark.

LAUNCH SCORECARD

SteamPulse logged 5,543 people in-game on September 7, 2026, against that early May peak. A drop like that is normal after a launch spike. It is also the number the next patch has to move if alliances are going to mean anything.

Reviews cooled from that opening 90% to 87% Very Positive, still a strong Early Access hold. The complaints that stuck are the ones the roadmap already named: thin campaign, hungry multiplayer, and systems Heroes III veterans can recite from memory.

What Stage 1 Still Owes in Q3

The May 28 plan is a four-stage Early Access roadmap, and Unfrozen warned that items can slip. Stage 1 was Q3 2026. On September 3 the studio was still previewing it as a patch due later in the month.

THE FOUR-STAGE PLAN

Teamplay is the line that keeps coming back in feedback. Unfrozen described it as playing together versus AI or versus another human team. Until that ships, Olden Era’s multiplayer is still a set of opposing seats, not a shared war.

The September 3 preview also pulled in matchmaking and ranked-reset work that the May plan had parked in Stage 2. Hero skills, listed as a Stage 1 rebalance, showed up in the later note as a “major balance overhaul” plus new units. The studio is bundling the first public milestone rather than shipping the Q3 list as a museum label.

Fourteen Patches Filled the Summer

Unfrozen did not go quiet after May. The studio has been pushing numbered patches, hotfixes, a necromancy UI pass, and PvE maps while the big systems cooked. That is the other half of the bet: keep the 1 million owners in the client until alliances exist.

FROM LAUNCH TO PATCH 14

1. April 30, 2026: Early Access opens on Steam, the Microsoft Store, and PC Game Pass, with Act 1 of the campaign and six factions.
2. May 1, 2026: 250,000 Steam copies, development costs covered, number 1 on Steam’s Top Sellers chart.
3. May 3, 2026: 500,000 Steam copies; Unfrozen cites almost 60,000 players online.
4. May 28, 2026: 1 million Steam copies and the four-stage roadmap.
5. June 15, 2026: Papyjama, a Heroes III mapmaker, joins as a level designer; The Mysterious Island is queued.
6. August 1, 2026: The Alvari Cup, the first official tournament, runs 16 players in a best-of-three single-elimination bracket with Behemoth’s Lair, Ubisoft, and Hooded Horse.
7. August 20, 2026: Patch 13 ships The Mysterious Island, a giant map built for this game by Papyjama.
8. September 3, 2026: Patch 14 (v0.80.49) adds Prisoners and Broken Alliance and previews the Major Roadmap Patch for later in September.

Broken Alliance is the first of those new custom maps Unfrozen said would run in custom lobbies and hotseat, a former-allies fight painted in your faction’s colors. That is PvE and hotseat doing the work teamplay has not done yet.

Regular content sits beside the stages: new neutrals, heroes, artifacts, spells, map objects, and scenarios, plus the usual bug and UI grind. The summer was not empty. It was also not Stage 1.

PC Game Pass Put a Hex Map on Day One

Olden Era is a Windows PC game, not an Xbox console SKU. Unfrozen’s FAQ still treats mouse and keyboard as the native layout and calls gamepad support a hard, later problem. The Microsoft angle is the storefront mix, not a living-room port.

Hooded Horse, Unfrozen, and Ubisoft opened the game on Steam and on an Xbox PC Game Preview listing at the same $39.99 price, with a 25% launch discount that ran through May 13, 2026. PC Game Pass carried it on day one, which is how a lot of people took a $40 turn-based prequel for a spin without paying that sticker.

A few hours in Game Pass is enough to feel the Heroes III loop of towns, armies, and hex fights, which is why a paid Steam copy still happens after a free sample. Hooded Horse has used that PC Game Pass on-ramp for strategy before, including Fogpiercer on Game Pass at launch.

Stage 4 still splits the stores. Unfrozen’s 1.0 list includes more Steam perks with a blunt aside that those perks cannot be added outside Steam. Game Pass and Microsoft Store players get the same map and the same patches. They will not get whatever extra Steam wrapping Unfrozen hangs on 1.0.

The Early Access build already has Classic, One-Hero, and Arena modes, matchmaking and leaderboards per mode, hotseat, a random map tool, and a pre-release map editor. Launch day advertised six playable factions in Early Access: Temple, Dungeon, Schism, Grove, Necropolis, and Hive.

Heroes III Classics Arrive After the 1.0 Gate

The features that make a Heroes map feel finished are the ones Unfrozen parked in Stage 3 and Stage 4. Underground is a second map layer with its own terrain, objects, and music, running at the same time as the overworld. The Thieves’ Guild is the classic scouting board for enemy towns and the wider war.

New tier 8 neutrals are on that same later list, with Lich Dragons named as the company already in the build. Ironman locks the campaign to one save. Spell mastery is slated to rise from a cap of 4 to 5. That has not a calendar date, only “the road to patch 1.0.”

The campaign is the other open bill. Early Access shipped Act 1 of a non-linear story on Jadame, in the world of Enroth, with a demonic threat and a Dungeon plot to force an alliance. Acts 2 and 3, Unfrozen said, land when the game leaves Early Access. So does map sharing, and a PvE roguelike mode the studio has not detailed.

That split explains the $39.99 argument. Multiplayer, Arena, and random maps are already a full evenings-long game. The story is not. Anyone who bought for a finished campaign is waiting on Stage 4, and Unfrozen has not named a 1.0 day.

Later in September, Alliances Finally Land

Patch 14 on September 3 was the tell. Unfrozen shipped two maps the same day it asked for more Steam reviews and walked through a video with Ana from Heroes Take Turns about PvE and the Roadmap Patch still ahead.

https://x.com/Unfrozen_Studio/status/2095525522725830673

WHAT THE SEPTEMBER PATCH LISTS

• Alliances: Teamplay / co-op, the Stage 1 headline, versus AI or another team.
• Random maps: Advanced in-game controls for size, player count, and other setup that used to sit outside the client.
• Emotes: A clearer wheel with more replies, the smallest item on the original Q3 list.
• Matchmaking: System changes plus ranking updates and a ranked reset, work the May plan had in Stage 2.
• Balance and units: A major overhaul and new units, Unfrozen’s September 3 wording for the skill pass players have been poking since launch.

If that bundle actually lands before September is over, Stage 1 is late but inside its own quarter. If it slips into October, the first public calendar Unfrozen posted after a million Steam copies has missed its first dated window.

The studio still has no 1.0 date. Underground, the Thieves’ Guild, and campaign acts 2 and 3 remain on the far side of that gate. The next number that matters is whether alliances show up on the September patch notes, on Steam and on Game Pass, while those 21,322 reviews are still being written.