The Guild 1 Remake: Europa 1410, what is known and what is not

The Guild 1 Remake: Europa 1410 goes into Early Access on Steam tomorrow. That makes today the useful moment to write about it: the store page is up and the developer has published both its Early Access answers and a roadmap, but nobody outside the studio has played the shipping build. This page sets out what THQ Nordic and Ashborne Games have actually said, quoted where the wording carries weight, and what they have not said. Every fact below comes from a page in the Sources list, read on 16 September 2026.

Key art for The Guild Remake Europa 1410: three figures in medieval dress, a young man in a red cap, a hooded woman with a braid and a bearded older man in a red robe, lean over a candle-lit table in a town hall, studying a painted map of a walled city, with scrolls, a quill, a ledger, coins and goblets around it — The key art THQ Nordic added to the kit after the August name change, with the logo reading The Guild Remake Europa 1410. Image: THQ Nordic press kit, provided for editorial use; fetched 2026-09-16.

The date, quoted

THQ Nordic's announcement of 20 August 2026, datelined "Brno, Czech Republic / Vienna, Austria", states it plainly: "medieval tycoon game The Guild is stepping into Early Access on 17 September 2026 - and it's doing so with a new title." Steam agrees. The store page carries a coming-soon flag with the date Sep 17, 2026 on the US storefront and 17 Sep, 2026 on the UK and German ones, under a header reading "Coming Soon To Early Access". Read at about 14:10 UTC today, the page also printed a countdown: "This game plans to unlock in approximately 22 hours." The game's own site says "Coming to Early Access on September 17, 2026" in two places.

Two sources, three storefront regions and the developer's own roadmap post of 11 September all give the same day, so as of today the date holds. It is also a date that has moved once before, which is its own section below.

Who is making it

Steam credits Ashborne Games as developer and THQ Nordic as publisher, and the legal line names the entity: "Developed by Ashborne Games s.r.o, Czech Republic." The studio's home page describes itself as a "Game development studio with roots in Brno, Czech Republic, that grows the Strategy / Management genre", and its About page places it in Brno, in South Moravia, listing prior work by its people on the Arma, Mafia and UFO series, Vigor, Silent Hill: Downpour, Shadowgun Legends, Fish Fillets and Dark Train. In a post of 17 June the studio wrote that "Our game has been in development for 2 years with a small team". The publisher's showcase recap of 7 August credits the game to Ashborne Games as well.

It is a Windows game and nothing else. Steam's platform flags list Windows only, with macOS and Linux both off, and the official site's store panel offers one Standard Edition, on Steam, for the region it labels International. No console version appears on any page we read.

What Early Access means here, in the developer's words

Steam requires a developer to answer six questions before it will list an Early Access game, and those answers are the most specific commitments on the page. They are worth reading in full rather than summarised.

On why: "The Guild was always at its best with the community involved, now more than ever. The earlier we hear your opinion on our ideas and our concept the better a game we can deliver."

On how long: "We aim for a final release of the game in the summer of 2027, but ultimately, the duration of Early Access depends heavily on player feedback."

On the difference between the two versions: "The full game is planned to have more and better visual representation of character actions for an immersive gameplay experience. Additional professions and maps, along with multiplayer for up to 12 players, and many more languages will be supported during the Early Access period."

On the current state: "The Early Access version allows you to experience the core gameplay of The Guild 1 Remake: Europa 1410. At the start of the Early Access period, you can choose from 6 cities and 8 professions. Many features are in an early state of development and will improve greatly during Early Access."

On price: "Yes, during Early Access, we will offer the game at a discount. The price will increase for the final version of the game."

On the community: the studio says the demo "already gave us a head-start" and points players at the Steam forums and its Discord server.

Summer 2027 is a target, not a promise, and the answer says so in the same sentence. The multiplayer answer is the one to hold on to, because multiplayer is not in the launch build.

A medieval town seen from above in The Guild Remake Europa 1410: timber and stone houses with shingled roofs along a river, a stone bridge, stacked logs and a cart in the foreground, and a walled inner city with towers and a large church rising behind it under a blue sky — A city view from the kit's Screenshots folder, filed under the name Nuremberg. Image: THQ Nordic press kit, provided for editorial use; fetched 2026-09-16.

What is in tomorrow's build

The roadmap post of 11 September is the detailed inventory, and it names things exactly. The eight professions available at the start are Smith, Tailor, Joiner, Stonemason, Priest, Innkeeper, Alchemist and Perfumer. The six cities are Kuttenberg, Graz, Nuremberg, Wrocław, Freiburg and Landsfort Herle, the last of which Ashborne calls "our tutorial city". The studio notes that the starting set skews to crafting on purpose, and that the missing professions are gated on systems that are not finished: "Robbers, Thieves and Guards will join the list together with the combat update, while the Moneylender and the Trader will be added once our work on Economy is done."

Three other statements in that post set expectations. Automation exists but barely: a family member can be made master of a business and run production, and the studio warns that "this feature is still a very early version" and to "Expect your masters to interfere with your plans by using funds or carts that you might've needed for other things." The complaint that the demo hid everything in menus is being addressed gradually, with "only a small number of these interactive scenes" available at launch. And unfinished systems are labelled in the game: "Most of these work-in-progress features are marked with a symbol to make you aware that we are still working on their final form."

Steam's category list matches a launch build without multiplayer: Single-player, Steam Cloud, Family Sharing, Adjustable Difficulty, Save Anytime, plus a set of accessibility entries covering camera comfort, colour alternatives, custom volume controls, a mouse-only option and playable without timed input. The Content box on the store page reads "Includes Interactive Elements - Online interactivity", which is the flag a game carries when it has some form of online contact rather than a rating board's judgement.

The roadmap, and what it does not carry

Ashborne's plan runs through three named updates. The Stabby Update covers combat and the combat professions, adding the Thief, Robber and Guard, reworking duels, and bringing dynasty customisation and more languages. The Backstabby Update brings multiplayer for up to 12 players in total, dynasty rivalries and alliances, co-operative and competitive challenges, an economy overhaul built around the city's needs, and a new city chosen by a community vote. The 1.0 release adds the Moneylender and the Trader, guild gameplay, improvements to crime and punishment, family interactions, a new map and another city voted for by players. Between those, the studio promises monthly updates. The roadmap image in the press kit puts the 1.0 profession count at 13.

What the roadmap does not carry is a single date. The image's own footer says the plan "will be shaped by your feedback - dates and details are subject to change", and the only timing anywhere is the Steam answer's summer 2027 aim. Treat the order as the commitment and the timing as an intention.

A city management screen in The Guild Remake Europa 1410: panels headed Old Town Level 3 and Island Outskirts Level 1 list quarters such as Rynek and Nowy Targ with rows of Build buttons for pillories, wells, a rostrum and a fountain, and a tooltip for the Fountain shows minus 5 Unrest every turn, plus 1 energy regeneration, an office requirement and a cost of 5,000 — The district and city-building panel, from the screenshot the kit files as District overview. Image: THQ Nordic press kit, provided for editorial use; fetched 2026-09-16.

What it costs

Nothing on any official page states a price. Steam's data for the US, UK and German storefronts returns an empty package list, so there is no figure and no purchase option on the page today, only a wishlist button. The official site's store panel lists a Standard Edition on Steam with no number beside it. The only pricing statement that exists is the Early Access answer above: a discount during Early Access, a higher price at 1.0, with neither amount given. A price will presumably appear when the game unlocks, and anyone planning to buy it should look at the number rather than at this paragraph.

Languages and age ratings

Steam lists two languages, English and German, with the asterisk that marks full audio attached to English alone. The studio filled in the detail on 15 September, explaining that only what ships at launch may be listed: "We are therefore happy to confirm that the game will have German text localization and partial voice-over localization from the start." It adds that some strings will still appear in English, and that the German narrator is "the series' original actor, Aart Veder". Six further text languages are named as confirmed but not dated: French, Spanish, Czech, Polish, Russian and Simplified Chinese.

No rating board has published anything for this game. The ESRB's database returns no certificate for it, and PEGI's search returns "Found 0 results from your query" for both the full title and "europa 1410". What Steam shows instead are its own generated regional ratings, each flagged in the data as generated rather than assigned: 12 for Brazil with descriptors for improper language and criminal acts, 12 for Germany with crime, alcohol and tobacco, and bad language, and 15 for Indonesia adding online interaction. Those are Steam's labels, not a board's, and the game is PC-only, which is the usual reason a European title never reaches PEGI's database.

Running it

The minimum specification asks for 64-bit Windows 10 or 11, an Intel Core i5-10400 or AMD Ryzen 5 3600, 16 GB of RAM, an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 or AMD Radeon RX 5700 XT, DirectX 12 and 20 GB of storage. The recommended specification raises the processor to an Intel Core i7-12700K or AMD Ryzen 7 5800X and the graphics card to an RTX 4070 or RX 7800 XT, and keeps memory and storage where they are. A 20 GB install is small for a 2026 release, and the fact that the recommended tier does not ask for more RAM suggests the graphics card is the part that matters.

Where it sits in The Guild series

The renaming is the clearest thing the publisher has said about lineage. THQ Nordic describes the new title as "the spiritual heir to the original Europa 1400: The Guild, not a follow-up to the life-sim adventures of The Guild 2 or 3", and says the change came from feedback: players who arrived through the later games expected something else. Ashborne's own post of 20 August puts it in mechanical terms, describing the game as "an economic simulator set in medieval times, focusing on managing your business, dynasty, and politics from a strategic perspective, rather than by directly controlling your characters". Its first dev diary, from November 2025, says the original "was released in 2002".

The older games are all still on Steam, all published by THQ Nordic, and their credits show how far the series has travelled between studios.

Title on Steam	Developer credited	Steam release-date field	US price today	Metacritic score on Steam
The Guild Gold Edition	4HEAD Studios	9 September 2014	$9.99	82
The Guild II	4HEAD Studios	24 June 2010	$9.99	61
The Guild 3	Purple Lamp, GolemLabs	14 June 2022	$29.99	65
The Guild 1 Remake: Europa 1410	Ashborne Games	17 September 2026, planned	not set	none

Those Steam dates are Steam's own listing dates, not original releases. The Gold Edition's Metacritic link points at a page named for Europa 1400: The Guild, and the ESRB's oldest record in this family is certificate 9731 for Europa 1400 Gold, published by Encore Software and rated Teen for Mild Violence. The Guild 3, for its part, spent years in Early Access of its own before the 2022 date on its page.

The date has already moved once

On 3 June 2026 Ashborne announced Early Access for 16 July. On 9 July, a week before that date, it wrote: "In light of the feedback we've received on our demo, we have decided to move our Early Access release date, originally set for July 16, to September this year." The post listed what the extra time would buy, starting with "One new city that acts as a tutorial area", and that city, Herle, duly arrived in the demo on 22 July. The delay came after a demo that launched on 15 June for Steam Next Fest, placed 25th in that event's fifty most-played demos, and drew enough criticism about expectations that the studio wrote two long posts about it before renaming the game.

Wishlists are the only public interest figure, and the studio has posted three of them: more than 100,000 on 19 December 2025, more than 150,000 on 4 March 2026, and "over 300,000 outstanding wishlists" in the roadmap post of 11 September. Those are the developer's numbers, not an independent count.

What is not known

The price, in any currency, on any storefront.
Any date for the Stabby Update, the Backstabby Update or 1.0, beyond the summer 2027 aim.
Which of the six cities are large and which small, beyond the dev diary's descriptions of four of them.
How much of the demo's content the launch build shares, since the demo is updated on the same day.
Whether the six confirmed extra languages arrive together or separately.
Anything from a rating board, and any independent review: there were none before launch.
Whether the game will appear on any storefront other than Steam.

Before you buy in

This is an economic and political simulation seen from above, not a life sim with a character you control. Both the publisher and the developer have gone out of their way to say so, twice, including by changing the name.
Multiplayer is not in tomorrow's build. It is in the second named update, with no date.
Eight of a planned thirteen professions are in, and the five missing ones depend on combat and economy work that has not shipped.
The price rises at 1.0 by the developer's own statement, which is the case for buying early, and the flip side is a build the studio itself describes as early in many places.
There is a free demo, and it is being updated to match the launch build on the same day, which makes it the cheapest way to answer the question.
Dates have moved here before, from 16 July to 17 September, and a roadmap without dates can move quietly.

Two recent pages on this site are worth a glance next to this one: Gothic 1 Remake, another THQ Nordic revival of an early-2000s German-language classic that shipped in full rather than in stages, and Joe & Mac Retro Collection, where a stated date has already slipped by a year.

The row in the dataset

The dataset records The Guild 1 Remake: Europa 1410 with Ashborne Games as developer and THQ Nordic as publisher, a first release of 17 September 2026 from the store page and the press release, the platform Windows PC, the genre "Economic simulation" from Steam's Simulation and Strategy tags and the publisher's own description, the era upcoming, and the Steam page as the source URL. The first-release date is the Early Access date, which is the day the game becomes buyable; the 1.0 release, whenever it lands, is a different event and is not in the row. If tomorrow's unlock slips, the row gets corrected against the same pages.