Kingdom Hearts games are coming to Steam!?

Games from the dearly beloved game series have finally made an official appearance on PC (March 30th, 2021) which has been long awaited by fans of the franchise. Originally being released on PlayStation 2, the series has taken a long journey with the games being released across various consoles like the PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch and more! Although they were playable on PC through the use of emulators, it has now become possible to buy them and play an official version released by the developers.

The games: Kingdom Hearts 1 and Kingdom Hearts 2 Remix editions, Kingdom Hearts 3, and the rhythm game Kingdom Hearts: Melody of Memory were at first released on the Epic Games Store (EGS) platform (known for games like Fortnite, Rocket League and Sifu). However, like many other games released exclusively on EGS, such as Borderlands 3, Control and Metro Exodus, were later available elsewhere, such as Steam.

The EGS exclusive release was rather controversial, as many gamers are against the company for their practices of securing exclusivity for popular game releases, as well as their marketing tactics of frequently giving away free games on their platform. As a result, there have been a number of gamers who have boycotted buying games on the EGS store, or even using the platform at all. EGS has a dedicated subreddit forum with almost 39 thousand followers who post negative news involving the company as well as posts you might call “hate posts”.

Fans across different online platforms such as Reddit and Steam discussion forums have mentioned waiting patiently for an announcement from Square Enix, the games series publisher. As the 1 year exclusivity period to EGS has now ended since March this year, there is high speculation that the games will soon come to the more popular PC gaming platform, Steam.

Another thing that needs to be taken into account with the potential release on Steam, is that it will hopefully be tested and ready to be played on the Steam Deck, which is the new gaming console from Valve, the creators of Steam. The rollout of the “console” is still taking place, with orders being backordered through 2023. Whilst the appearance and usage is that of a gaming console similar to the Nintendo Switch, it is in fact basically a compact computer which uses the Linux operating system.