MechWarrior Online heading to Steam in December

It took nearly two years for MechWarrior Online to get European servers, but the journey from there to Steam will only take around six months. The stompy free-to-play mech combat game is coming to Steam on December 10; nothing says Christmas like people clobbering the heck out of each other in power armour.

Here's Piranha Games announcing the move on its site, while noting that there's a bit of a shindig going on in Vancouver to celebrate it, which 50 people will be able to win tickets, and the air fare, too. There are no details of the Steam version that I can find (will the non-Steam version continue, or will MWO fully migrate to Steamworks?), but an influx of new players probably won't hurt.

In further mech news, Harebrained Schemes are bringing back Battletech. Their Kickstarter did pretty well.

Tom loves exploring in games, whether it’s going the wrong way in a platformer or burgling an apartment in Deus Ex. His favourite game worlds—Stalker, Dark Souls, Thief—have an atmosphere you could wallop with a blackjack. He enjoys horror, adventure, puzzle games and RPGs, and played the Japanese version of Final Fantasy VIII with a translated script he printed off from the internet. Tom has been writing about free games for PC Gamer since 2012. If he were packing for a desert island, he’d take his giant Columbo boxset and a laptop stuffed with PuzzleScript games.