The Sinking City 2 launches at $49.99 — Frogwares deliberately undercuts the $60 survival horror standard

Frogwares has priced The Sinking City 2 at $49.99 / £41.35 for its PS5 launch in August, positioning it below the current standard for premium survival horror releases. Pre-orders are now live on the PS Store.

Publishing director Sergiy Oganesyan was direct about the reasoning: "While most survival horror games today launch at $60 or more, we're launching at $49.99 because we want to be fair and give as many people as possible the chance to step into Arkham with us." The studio framed the decision as giving back to its playerbase rather than chasing maximum revenue at launch.

Frogwares is a Ukrainian studio best known for its long-running Sherlock Holmes adventure series and the original The Sinking City, a Lovecraftian open-world investigation game that had a complicated publishing history involving a dispute with its former publisher Nacon. The sequel returns to the flooded, Cthulhu-mythos-soaked city of Arkham, and the studio is self-publishing this time around. Pricing a game below the market norm is a notable move, especially as the industry pushes toward $70 as the new standard for major releases.

With pre-orders open now and an August PS5 release window confirmed, the main question is whether the lower price point translates into a broader audience — and whether other platforms follow after launch.