Kingpin: Reloaded delayed into 2021 as it plans to reverse engineer the original

Kingpin: Reloaded, the upscaled remaster of 1999 PC criminal FPS Kingpin: A Life of Crime will miss its originally intended 2020 release and has been pushed into next year, as per an announcement on the game’s Steam page.

The reason given for the delay by developer Slipgate Ironworks is apparently due to a major shift in how the team is making the remaster; having earlier intended to recreate the game in a modern engine, as the source code for the original game no-longer exists.

However, according to the statement, the team decided to change tack earlier this year, ultimately deciding “a better approach would be to reverse engineer the original game and engine completely, essentially re-creating the missing sources from scratch.” So that’s what the team has been up to for most of 2020, although the studio says it’s close to being done with recreating every texture from scratch in high resolution. Development is set to continue into January, where the team say they’ll be putting it all together and will be able to share more detail then.

Kingpin: Reloaded was first revealed back in January (as reported by XboxAchievements), where new features were said to include a ‘No Violence’ mode and multiplayer modes, as well as a console release on Xbox One, PlayStation 4 and Nintendo Switch alongside the PC version.