The MMO Albion Online [Official Site] is now officially coming to Steam, but they will not be giving keys to existing owners.
I think it's great it's heading to Steam, opening the game up to a bigger possible playerbase, but honestly not allowing existing owners a key for the game is quite a shame.
Speaking on the forum, they said this about it:
Can I play Albion Online on Steam with an existing account?
In order to play Albion Online on Steam you must purchase the game through the Steam store and create a new account. Once you have done this, you can either play on Steam with your new account, or login via an existing account.
NOTE: While ingame purchases of Gold and/or Premium status will be credited to the currently logged-in account, Epic and Legendary Packs purchased through the Steam store can only be used by the primary Steam account.
I actually find this a little odd, since I've seen hundreds of developers give out keys for existing owners, when purchased directly or on itch.io and other places. It strikes me as very strange that they're not able to do this. They already have their own login system, so it should just be a case of giving owners a Steam key, which is free for developers to generate. There's other games out there that let you easily link an email to a Steam account too, it's not difficult to do. Hopefully they will clear this up a little more.
No actual date is being given for the Steam release yet.
As for me this might get me to try this game. I really don't want to have games outside Steam if I can help it - unless it's something of major interest.
Game is on it is last phase before abandoned and "money-milking" mode is active now.
Last edited by Leopard on 28 March 2018 at 11:27 am UTC
If someone wants to use the game with steam they can use the "Add a Non-Steam game to Steam" feature. The only thing people can't do is buy the Epic and Legendary Packs through steam (and use some other Steam features like achievements if they choose to implement those later).
I can actually understand this decision from a company's perspective since nothing stops people from just giving the Steam key to someone else since they already own a copy of the game.
Quoting: LakortaI can actually understand this decision from a company's perspective since nothing stops people from just giving the Steam key to someone else since they already own a copy of the game.
A key for the client won't do you much good without an Albion account to actually play with.
See more from me