I am making this post to rile up support from the player base to have Xbox ensure that playerbases are not fragmented on the PC side of the Halo Wars games, whether that be with the recently released Definitive edition of HW1 or with the rumored release of HW2 on steam.
Some folks may not realize but the Steam version and Win 10 version of HW:DE do not share player pools, that is, players who own the game on Win 10 cannot play with players who own it on steam. This isn’t much of an issue for a re-release of a game from 2009 but if the rumors of Halo Wars 2 on steam are true then this absolutely cannot be the case for it.
As it stands now the PC Win 10 playerbase is all but gone, so it makes sense for Xbox to contemplate the sale of it’s first party games on Steam as well as on Win 10 with Win 10 having the play anywhere perk exclusively while still bolstering player population on the games it releases on the PC side since no Windows version will be excluded.
All that said, Halo Wars 2 must absolutely launch with crossplay between steam and Win 10 version of the game if this comes to pass.
We suspect that from a business aspect the sale of 1st party games from Xbox have been released on Steam for a number of reasons (and that’s ok) but folks who forked over the price of admission for the Win 10 version would essentially be punished if crossplay between steam and Win 10 isn’t done for Halo Wars 2 as is the unfortunate case with Halo Wars: Definitive Edition.
For transparency: I play Halo Wars 2 entirely on XB1 but I plan to buy a Play Anywhere copy in order to play on my PC, also I have no issue with Xbox putting it’s games on Steam because Steam is PC as is Win 10.
Not trying to disturb the hornets nest here so keep it clean, just trying to make sure the mistake of previous Steam/Win 10 releases when it comes to crossplay are not repeated with games moving forward, particularly HW2 as it’s the next one rumored to make the jump to Steam.
-F12