Wildstar could be coming to Steam as a free-to-play game

Cheerful MMO Wildstar could be coming to Steam, and could be free-to-play if it does. That's a lot of coulds for one news story, but that's because this information is being pulled from changes to the Steam database—as caught by SteamDB. It's unconfirmed, but certainly possible.

The SteamDB entry lists the billing type as "Free on Demand"—the same status given to Steam's other free-to-play games. It suggests Wildstar's eventual future isn't as a Guild Wars 2-style "buy-to-play" release.

Wildstar isn't even a year old yet, but a free-to-play switch certainly isn't outside of the realms of possibility. It's struggled to attract new players, or even maintain its original playerbase. NCSoft's recent first-quarter earnings call made for grim listening, with Wildstar bringing in just a quarter of the revenue of the publisher's second-lowest performing game, Lineage II, between January and March 2015.

Phil has been writing for PC Gamer for nearly a decade, starting out as a freelance writer covering everything from free games to MMOs. He eventually joined full-time as a news writer, before moving to the magazine to review immersive sims, RPGs and Hitman games. Now he leads PC Gamer's UK team, but still sometimes finds the time to write about his ongoing obsessions with Destiny 2, GTA Online and Apex Legends. When he's not levelling up battle passes, he's checking out the latest tactics game or dipping back into Guild Wars 2. He's largely responsible for the whole Tub Geralt thing, but still isn't sorry.