SAW: Genesis Early Access Slips to Q1 2027 as Bloober Team Cites Feedback and Performance Notes

By CriticalPixel · 2026-09-25

SAW: Genesis just missed its window, and Bloober Team is not dressing it up. On Thursday the official SAW: Genesis account posted a letter to the community announcing that the game's Early Access release is moving to Q1 2027. That means anyone hoping to get locked in a Jigsaw trap maze before the end of this year is out of luck. The letter carries the logos of Bloober Team, Broken Mirror Games and Anshar Studios, and it pulled in more than 170,000 views and roughly 3,000 likes by Friday morning. GameSpot boiled it down with a sarcastic headline: the best news for SAW: Genesis is that players have to wait longer to play it. It is a snarky line, but it lands because plenty of horror fans were already skeptical of what this project turned out to be.

Official Steam screenshot from SAW: Genesis, the 3v1 multiplayer horror game

What the Letter Says

The letter opens with the usual promise that the team wants a SAW videogame worthy of the franchise's legacy and wants to give it the time it needs. Then it gets to the point: the studios decided to move the Early Access release to Q1 2027. The stated reason is feedback. The team says it has gathered a great deal of it in recent months, tested the game under a variety of conditions, and received a lot of positive comments alongside specific notes on improving parts of the game and its performance. That last bit matters, because performance is the only concrete problem named anywhere in the message. There is no list of changes, no roadmap, no exact date and no price, and the Steam store page still shows the release date as to be announced. It is a polite letter that answers almost nothing.

What SAW: Genesis Is Supposed to Be

For anyone who lost track, SAW: Genesis is a 3v1 multiplayer horror game. Per its Steam listing, three Accused have to work together to escape a labyrinth of traps while a Judge orchestrates their so-called rehabilitation, and the pitch is set a century before Jigsaw, when survival already demanded sacrifice. Steam lists Broken Mirror Games and Anshar Studios as developers, credits Bloober Team on the page as well, and tags the game for Early Access, multiplayer, horror and co-op. So this is an asymmetric multiplayer game built around a licence, not the story-driven single-player Saw adventure some fans keep asking for. The 3v1 split makes the Judge the hook, one player pulling the strings instead of a scripted villain. That kind of design lives or dies on matchmaking, balance and having enough people online on day one, which is why performance notes from playtests are not a small thing.

Official Steam screenshot showing SAW: Genesis trap maze gameplay

How the Community Took It

Reaction is mixed, and we only read a handful of replies, so treat this as a sample and not a verdict. Some people were happy to give the studio room: one reply under the announcement just said to take your time, and another under the GameSpot post said an extra few months are fine if the game launches stronger. Others were harder on the project itself. One player told the team to make the game more Saw and less Outlast Trials, a shot at how much the concept leans on the familiar co-op trial formula. Another said this is not what fans wanted when it was announced, and that they wanted a story-driven game based on the series rather than whatever this is. That last complaint is about the concept and not the delay, and it tells you audience patience here is conditional.

The CriticalPixel Take

A delay for an Early Access game reads strange on its face. Early Access exists so a team can put an unfinished build in players' hands and keep improving it in public, so pushing the start of that process back to make it better is a little backwards. It reads like a team that did not like what its tests showed and did not want the first paid impression to be a rough one. I would rather see that than a launch with shaky performance and empty lobbies, because asymmetric multiplayer horror rarely gets a second first week. A quarter is also a wide window, and Q1 2027 could mean January or the last week of March, so nobody should treat it as a date. What would help is a specific changelog from the playtests, a price and a firm month, and none of those are in this letter.

Official Steam screenshot of the SAW: Genesis horror multiplayer setting

For now the practical takeaway is simple. If you have SAW: Genesis wishlisted on Steam, expect early next year at the soonest and keep an eye on the official account for the next update. Horror fans who never warmed to the 3v1 concept lose nothing today, and the ones who did get a longer runway to hope the studios use it well. A polished Early Access launch would prove the delay was worth it. A vague one would confirm the worst reading of that GameSpot headline.