Relic: Steam exclusivity important for Dawn of War II Retribution

Relic's Jeff Rydell has said an exclusivity deal with Steam did wonders for Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War II - Retribution's sales.

"Going exclusive through Steam helped drive awareness with their millions of users by way of banners and message support," the producer told Industry Gamers.

"So by the time we opened the beta up to all Steam customers, we had a huge number of people playing."

Steam's marketing hold over PC and strategy gamers is inarguable, but dropping support for Games for Windows Live had other advantages, too.

"One of our goals when making expansions to our games is to address problems in the original,” Rydell explained.

“The combination of requiring both a Steam account and a Games for Windows Live account had been a source of frustration for many of our players, so we took the necessary steps to fix that.

"We also got to take full advantage of the Steamworks SDK features like cloud saving.”

Rydell said the expansion makes use of multiple Steam capacities, and has improved matchmaking and rankings.

"There was a lot of concern the move away from our previous expansion strategy would fragment the community. Looking at the numbers, it's clear most active players have moved over to Retribution, and the total hasn't gone down," he added.