Is Wuthering Waves on Steam?

Wuthering Waves is coming to PC, but will not be available on Steam at launch. It will instead be available via the Epic Games Store, as well as Kuro Game’s official site.

But why is this the case? After the official launch of Steam China in 2021, there are plenty of Chinese and Chinese-focused games on Steam - Naraka: Bladepoint for instance.

One reason could be publisher exclusivity. The store’s parent company Epic Games is 40% owned by Chinese tech giant, Tencent, and has been since 2012. So while it seems like Chinese investment in gaming has ramped up significantly in recent years, with companies like NetEase even establishing US-based studios like BulletFarm, this massive acquisition was well over a decade ago.

Crucially, Tencent is also an investor in Wuthering Waves’ developer Kuro Game, owning just under 15% of the company. Thinking about it from this perspective, Wuthering Waves’ absence from Steam makes a lot more sense. You could consider it essentially a first-party game for Epic, so while other publishers - chiefly Microsoft - are experimenting with allowing owned-studio developed games across the aisle, most tend to keep games they’ve funded themselves away from direct competitors.

But Wuthering Waves isn’t the only Chinese gacha-RPG to follow this distribution model. Genshin Impact for instance (which has had an allegedly antagonistic relationship with Tencent ever since its breakout success) is also only available from miHoYo’s official site and the Epic Games Store on PC.

But to make things much more confusing, another similarly styled Chinese game, Tower of Fantasy, is available on Steam. Its publisher on Steam is listed as Level Infinite, which is an international video game publisher… wholly owned by Tencent.

So really, the takeaway from this tangled web is that Tencent-affiliated games, just like all other games, seem to come and go from Steam and the Epic Games Store on a case-by-case basis.

However, if you’re worried about Wuthering Waves not using Steam and don’t want to install the Epic Games Store, then you can always use its standalone launcher, downloaded from its official site, instead. You can pre-register for extra rewards too. Then, you will most likely be able to add it to your Steam library as a “non-Steam game” anyway and launch it from the same place as the rest of your collection once it drops on May 23rd.