Ubisoft used Gamescom Opening Night Live 2026 to announce a remake of Heroes of Might and Magic 3, the 1999 strategy classic long considered one of the best entries in the series. The remake is being built in Ubisoft's Snowdrop engine, converting the original's 2D world into a detailed 3D one with shifting seasons and weather effects, new animations, and a range of quality-of-life improvements. It's set for release on PC, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series S/X sometime next year and will include the two original expansions, Armageddon's Blade and The Shadow of Death, along with a new three-mission prologue designed to teach players the game's systems before dropping them into the original campaigns.
Alongside the remake announcement, Ubisoft shadowdropped the Complete Edition of the original 1999 game on Steam, marking the first time the full package — including both expansions — had been available on that storefront. Previously, the only version on Steam was a 2015 HD re-release developed by Dotemu, which lacked the expansions and other features, leading fans to recommend buying the Complete Edition from GOG instead.
The Steam launch did not go smoothly. Players who paid $10 for the re-release found that the download was only 23.49 KB, consisting of a dummy executable that produced an error message when launched — the actual game files were missing entirely. The release quickly earned a negative user rating on Steam, with reviews warning others not to buy it and pointing them toward the working GOG version instead. The Might and Magic Twitter account acknowledged the issue, thanking players for reporting it and apologizing for the inconvenience while a fix was prepared.
According to player reports, Ubisoft resolved the problem roughly 10 to 11 hours after the initial release by pushing a 770MB update that added the missing game files. Some players noted that even after the fix worked, they intended to leave negative reviews over the botched launch, while praising the underlying game itself.
Previews of the upcoming remake, playable at Gamescom, described the experience as staying very close to the original's gameplay while updating its presentation. The remake supports custom maps and campaigns created by players over the past 25 years, with a map creator capable of importing old map files and rebuilding them with modern visuals. Quality-of-life changes include the ability to set build queues in towns, recruit units in bulk, view a hero's arrival into town via a short cutscene, and hold a key during battles to see movement and attack ranges for both sides. Multiple previews described the core turn-based strategy and city-building systems, including limited weekly unit recruitment and hex-based combat, as essentially unchanged from the 1999 original, with one preview calling it 'almost one-for-one' with the original game while another said the changes were designed to appeal to both newcomers and longtime fans.