Guilty Gear developer reveals the real reason why Venom was delayed

Arc System Works’ CTO of Product Development revealed the true reason why Venom’s release was delayed to March 24 after he was initially slated to arrive in Guilty Gear Strive in early 2025.

Venom is officially back in Guilty Gear Strive as the latest character to join the game’s Season 4 roster. Unveiled at the Arc World Tour Finals on March 23, Venom was initially supposed to release in early 2025… but a few things on the development side at Arc System Works put his big return on pause.

Dexerto got the chance to sit down with Hideyuki Ambe, the Chief Technology Officer of Arc System Work’s Product Development Department, who let us in on a few things behind the scenes that were responsible for Venom’s delay.

ArcSys CTO says Strive’s Team of 3 mode delayed Venom’s release

According to Ambe, the reason Venom’s release got pushed back was due to the development team’s focus on finishing their ‘Team of 3’ 3v3 player mode, something that impacted nearly everything for Strive until it was done.

“ One of the reasons for Venom’s delay was the Team of 3,” Ambe admitted with a laugh. “ It’s not just Venom, but basically the entire roadmap was affected just because, we were working on the Team of 3 with very limited resources. So, that had an impact on not just Venom, but everything else that went after that.”

That’s not all; Ambe reminded us that, compared to other massive developers like Capcom or Bandai Namco, ArcSys is relatively small — something that also has a big impact on a product’s timeline if someone integral to the project gets sick, for instance.

“ As you may know, we are a very small studio compared to guys like Capcom, right? We’re a very small team, so if one person gets sick, it’s like we’re doomed, right?

“Things like people getting sick, and sometimes we have to tune the game or make adjustments — sometimes, we get too over-focused on something, or we get a little bit too impatient. We want to really hammer down on something. But when we’re doing that, we start to ignore all the other stuff that has to be done, and it gets delayed.”

Luckily, he’s in fans’ hands now — and there’s more to come, with Dual Rulers’ Unika and Cyberpunk: Edgerunner’s Lucy set to join the fray in mere months in an ambitious timeline. In our previous interview with Guilty Gear Strive’s producer, Ken Miyauchi, it was revealed that players almost got The Witcher’s Ciri instead of Lucy.