
The game revealed a roster of 136 superstars consisting of current superstars, legends and NXT superstars. On August 10, the WWE 2K official site released a minigame that consisted of spotting the announced superstars of the WWE 2K17 game on a picture of Brock Lesnar's Suplex City. On August 2, 2016, IGN announced the roster would be revealed every Tuesday for 5 weeks, along with in-game videos and screenshots, concluding on August 30. On July 26, 2016, IGN announced that the McMahon family will be playable characters, which will include Stephanie McMahon, Shane McMahon, and Vince McMahon. At the event, John Cena, The Ultimate Warrior, and Sasha Banks were the first three names revealed.

On June 15, 2016, WWE announced that at E3 2016, the first roster reveal would be announced at 2K's booth by portrait artist Rob Schamberger. On August 8, 2016, 2K revealed the official soundtrack for WWE 2K17, which features thirteen songs from a variety of genres, curated by Sean Combs. The set includes NXT wrestlers such as Apollo Crews, Nia Jax and Shinsuke Nakamura as playable characters as part of the NXT Enhancement Pack, a lithograph designed by Rob Schamberger and signed by Shinsuke Nakamura, an 8-inch collectable action figure of "The Demon" Finn Bálor, trading cards, actual ring canvas from the NXT TakeOver: London event, 50% more points in NXT for M圜areer Mode, as well as the Goldberg Pre-Order Pack. On July 14, 2016, WWE announced an NXT Collector's Edition.

On June 27, 2016, a reveal trailer was released announcing that Brock Lesnar would be the cover star for WWE 2K17. 2K also announced that the game would include the two versions of Goldberg ( WCW and WWE), along with two playable arenas ( Halloween Havoc and WCW Monday Nitro). On May 31, 2016, WWE 2K17 was officially announced by WWE and 2K, when they revealed Goldberg as the pre-order bonus character accompanied by the debut trailer featuring Goldberg.
