Wasteland 2 dev: Valve took PC gaming out of the dark ages

Valve’s digital distribution outlet, Steam, guided PC gaming out of its “dark ages”, Wasteland 2 developer InXile Entertainment has said.

InXile received almost $3 million in crowdfunding for the RPG on Kickstarter in 2012. Wasteland 2 arrived on Steam Early Access last December.

Studio head Brian Fargo told Eurogamer that the fact that developers can bring unfinished titles straight to interested players is a credit to Valve, a company that “has all this power but they don’t wield it. They let us all work in an open system”.

Fargo said PC developers now have more choices than they did before Steam, which a launched in 2002, and more freedom than they do on consoles.

“[Valve have] been great," he added. “You think about where we all were, kind of in the dark ages, when there was nothing. There was just Flash. There was no digital distribution. They’ve opened up a way to get directly to the audience in a way that isn’t politicized, or forces us to do exclusives or all the other things the console guys do.”