Frost Giant Studios, founded by former members of the StarCraft II and Warcraft III real-time strategy game teams at Blizzard Entertainment, today announced that Stormgate, our highly anticipated RTS, will enter Steam Early Access starting Aug. 13, 2024. Players eager to embark on the road to mastery can get a head start and dive into the game on July 30 by pre-purchasing an Early Access bundle, available today on Steam.
Stormgate’s Early Access release date was announced today during the PC Gaming Show, where the game’s previously unannounced third faction–the Celestial Armada–was revealed. Once a tightly guarded secret known only to thousands of our closed beta testers, the Celestials are a race of highly technologically advanced interstellar travelers who have come to Earth to challenge the demonic Infernal Host for control over our planet–with humanity caught in the middle.
For more on the Celestials, which some playtesters have called the most original RTS faction they’ve ever played, visit the Celestials faction page on the official Stormgate website.
Get a Head Start with Early Access Bundles
Stormgate will be free-to-play, but Early Access bundles offer players the opportunity to pick up a collection of exciting new game content to explore once the game is live.
- The Early Access Pack ($25 USD) includes the Amara Human Vanguard Hero, the first Chapter of the Vanguard campaign, and the Gold Vanguard Army Accent.
- The Deluxe Early Access Pack ($40 USD) includes everything in the Early Access Pack plus the Maloc Infernal Host Hero, the Auralanna Celestial Armada Hero, and the Chicken Pet.
- The Ultimate Early Access Pack ($60 USD) includes everything in the Deluxe Early Access Pack plus Chapters 2 and 3 of the Vanguard campaign (available sometime after August 13) and the Firestorm Fog of War Shader.
Each Stormgate Early Access bundle includes preview access to Stormgate on July 30, 2024, two weeks before the official Early Access release date on August 13. Hero progression and leaderboard rankings will not be reset following the preview period.
Early Access: A Partnership With Our Players
“Launching Stormgate in Early Access represents a major milestone for our team and our community,” said Tim Morten, CEO and Production Director at Frost Giant Studios. “We believe Early Access is a better way to make games, as it allows us to form a true partnership with our players. Their feedback and participation have already been invaluable in shaping the future of Stormgate, and we can’t wait to see what future contributions they’ll make as together we forge a bright future for the real-time strategy genre.”
A Global RTS Community
The Frost Giant team developed SnowPlay, a custom layer of technology that transforms Unreal Engine 5 into the most powerful and responsive real-time strategy engine to date. It allows for next-generation improvements for the genre such as the inclusion of rollback netcode–which revolutionized online play in the fighting game community–now in an RTS featuring massive armies. Supported by a globally distributed server network and the improved gameplay feel that results from SnowPlay and rollback, Stormgate makes a truly global RTS community a possibility, with the potential to bring together players around the world like never before.
A More Approachable RTS
Stormgate features a variety of innovative features meant to make this style of game more approachable than ever. The Quick Macro Panel (QMP) puts all of the actions players need to perform to build and maintain their armies at their fingertips while automated control groups make controlling armies a cinch. Stormgate also features a customizable player-assist tool called the BuddyBot that provides varying degrees of automated assistance. Designed for the benefit of new players as well as those with differing abilities, the BuddyBot gives players a helping hand by providing as much or as little help as desired. While it won’t turn a new player into a world champion, the BuddyBot can help anyone dive right into the fun of leading armies in epic battles.
Frost Giant Studios will be self-publishing Stormgate in the West and is partnering with publisher Kakao Games to bring the future of real-time strategy to gamers in Korea–considered by many the birthplace of competitive RTS. Korean gamers can look forward to exciting regional support plans to be announced by Kakao Games in the days ahead. Stormgate will initially be localized in French, German, Korean, Latin American Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese, Russian, Turkish, Traditional and Simplified Chinese, Japanese, Thai, and Vietnamese.
For more information about Stormgate, including details regarding the Early Access Packs and preview period, visit playstormgate.com. You can become a member of the official community on Discord and join the discussion on Reddit. You can also watch streaming gameplay from our most recent Stormgate beta test on Twitch.tv. Be sure to stay tuned for more updates in the months ahead as we approach the official Early Access release.
