The Sinking City 2 Release Time: Steam Unlocks at 4 a.m. ET, and Premium Access Is Live Now

The Sinking City 2 release time on Steam is 08:00 UTC on 18 August — 4 a.m. ET, 1 a.m. PT, 9 a.m. BST and 1:30 p.m. IST — according to the countdown running on the game's own store page. Frogwares' Lovecraftian survival horror launches on PC, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X and Series S, and anyone who bought the Premium Edition can already play it today, a full day early.

The Sinking City 2 release time, and who is already playing

The 24-hour advance access attached to the Premium Edition went live on 17 August, so the game is playable right now for that tier on all three platforms. Everyone on the Standard and Deluxe editions waits for the 18 August unlock.

Steam is the one storefront publishing an exact moment, and its countdown lands on 08:00 UTC. The PlayStation Store and Xbox store both list 18 August without surfacing the same universal timestamp, and published reports have pointed at a 08:00 to 09:00 UTC window on console. If you are on PS5 or Xbox, the store page's own countdown is the number to trust on the day.

How big is the download

• PlayStation 5 — 48.23GB, per the store listing reported ahead of launch
• Xbox Series X and Series S — roughly 50.24GB
• PC — Frogwares lists 70GB of SSD space in both the minimum and recommended specs

Pre-loading opened on 15 August for Premium buyers and 16 August for everyone else, and the Xbox install has been available for some time. That matters more than usual here: a 70GB PC download finished at 4 a.m. is not a download you want to start at 4 a.m.

PC requirements are steeper than the genre usually asks

The minimum spec targets 1080p at 30fps and asks for Windows 11 64-bit, an Intel Core i7-8700K or Ryzen 5 3600X, 16GB of RAM and a GeForce GTX 1070 or Radeon RX 5700 with 8GB of VRAM. The recommended spec targets 1440p at 60fps on a Core i5-14600K or Ryzen 5 7600X, 32GB of RAM and an RTX 4070 Ti or RX 7900 XT.

Note the SSD requirement is not optional in either column. Frogwares lists solid-state storage at minimum, which rules out running this from a mechanical drive.

Editions and what the extra money buys

On the US PlayStation Store the Standard Edition is $49.99, the Deluxe Edition is $54.99 and the Premium Edition is $59.99. Prices in other regions are set by each storefront, so check your own listing rather than converting.

• Standard — the base game plus the Chthonic Arsenal weapon set: the "Shale Mary" handgun, "The Breakwater" shotgun and "Tektite Tommy" SMG
• Deluxe — adds the Arkham Field Kit, which bundles three outfits, three Dream Essence and a resource pack
• Premium — adds the 24-hour advance access and The Holloway Manor, a haunted-house side mission with an optional ritual investigation and the "Bucking Bronco" revolver

Which platforms get it, and which do not

The launch platforms are PC, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X and Series S. On PC it is sold through Steam, the Epic Games Store and GOG. There is no PS4 or Xbox One version, and Frogwares has not announced a Nintendo Switch or Switch 2 release — not at launch and not as a later port. Anything you read claiming a dated Switch 2 version is unconfirmed.

The game itself is a third-person survival horror set in 1920s Arkham, and a genuine shift for the studio: the first Sinking City leaned on open-world detective work, while the sequel is built around resource scarcity, inventory pressure and unlocked shortcuts back to safe ground. Frogwares Ireland is credited as developer.

If you are lining up the rest of your week

This is a busy stretch for launch timings. Mortal Shell 2's advance access unlock time lands in the same window, and we broke down the single global unlock for Hell Let Loose: Vietnam across PC, PS5 and Xbox last week. If storage is the constraint, our figures for the DayZ download on Switch 2 are a useful comparison for how much these mid-August releases actually want from your drive.

For horror players deciding what to install first, the recent Silent Hill 2 patch 1.07 on PS5 and PS5 Pro is worth reading before you go back to that one instead.