Darwinia coming to Steam Dec.14

Post-genre classic Steam-bound :: November 15th, 2005 :: New products :: 12 Responses

In last week’s Update News Valve spoke of a new game that would be arriving on Steam ‘before the end of the year’. It seem Introversion have let the cat out of the bag early: Darwinia will be available on Steam from December the 14^th.

Darwinia is a modern classic that has suffered from very scrappy distribution outside its native Europe.

This is brilliant news for everyone involved: Introversion, Valve and especially us gamers. Darwinia is a true modern classic, but one that has seen severe distribution problems outside Europe. Steam distribution is a subject that has already been discussed by the Darwinia community, and while for my part I was cautious of offering a wholly single-player game on a platform geared for mutli-player, I’m still delighted Introversion have taken the jump.

“In today’s market, it’s incredibly difficult for an independent developer to secure worldwide distribution for a new property, let alone for one that attempts to blend genres and offer a wide variety of gameplay styles,” said Vicky Arundel, head of marketing at Introversion. “Through Steam, however, we are able to offer Darwinia to millions of gamers and early adopters the world over.”

In fact my only question is the date of mid-December. In a retail environment a Christmas release would make sense, but with the technically infinite shelf-space of digital distribution release could conceivably come at any time, as long as the holiday season was backed up with an advertising campaign. Integrating the Steam code certainly can’t take this long.

But I shouldn’t be moaning. The bottom line is, this news is a win-win for everyone and resolves every petty issue I ever had with Introversion’s handling of digital distribution. If you don’t already have Darwinia, keep your $20 ready for Christmas!

12 Responses to this post:

Comments

November 15th, 2005 at 9:18 pm ::
Andrew Simpson Says:

Wow, that’s unexpected.
November 15th, 2005 at 9:24 pm ::
^Ben Says:

Old demo download link?
November 15th, 2005 at 9:27 pm ::
NeoOfTheSith Says:

Just me or look like a StarGate rip-off?
November 15th, 2005 at 9:29 pm ::
Tom Edwards Says:

It looks like nothing but itself.

They’ve taken the demo offline to ‘encouarge impulse buys for the first month’. Not too sure how that works. Might be something to do with the contract’s exclusivity. You can still download it from FileRush, and there are probably some other links too if you look for them.
November 16th, 2005 at 12:05 am ::
Suede Says:

just cos it has that ring doesn’t make it a stargate rip-off

the game is totally different from stargate, and is actually pretty good..
November 16th, 2005 at 2:13 pm ::
HardRenaLine Says:

yeah darwinia is a cool game, though i think it needs more maps/missions, because it only took me 12 hours to complete it and it feels abit boring when you know you cant lose 😛
November 16th, 2005 at 4:19 pm ::
Wizpig64 Says:

Thats great! I’ve always wanted to try the full version of the game, but I never got a chance. Maybe I’ll buy it at the Steam release.
November 16th, 2005 at 4:37 pm ::
Film11 Says:

Ah! I was a beta tester for this game (find me in the manual at the end credits :o) and I have to say I’m really pleased about this. Things weren’t looking up for IV (Introversion) initially after Darwinia’s launch, but I’m sure that this will definitely boost sales. Good job Valve supporting Indie game developers!
November 17th, 2005 at 6:37 am ::
stick figure Says:

Interesting.
November 17th, 2005 at 12:40 pm ::
Jack Says:

Nicely done Valve 🙂
November 23rd, 2005 at 1:30 pm ::
MArtin Says:

Darwinia is absolutely amazing. SOme people above said you can’t lose but thats not true-the gae gets harder the longer you take doinf alevel so if you take ages the levels become almost impossible.