THQ Nordic Cuts Deal to Distribute Microsoft Games on Steam, Disc

By Brian Crecente

LOS ANGELES (Variety.com) – Microsoft teamed up with THQ Nordic to distribute five games on Steam and bring them to PC on disc, the company announced during its Gamescom press conference Tuesday.

The games coming to and PC disc are “ReCore: Definitive Edition,” “Super Lucky’s Tale,” “Disneyland Adventures,” “Rush: A Disney-Pixar Adventure,” and “Zoo Tycoon: Ultimate Animal Collection.” All five hit on Sept. 14. All five are also Studios published games made exclusively for the company’s platforms.

The announcement is part of a publishing deal that has distributing some of Microsoft’s titles to Steam and physical retailers. It’s unclear if this will expand to include further titles.

The news is interesting because of the long-brewing, though mostly quiet, distribution war between Microsoft’s Windows 10 Store and Valve’s Steam. Over the years, both ’s Gabe Newell and Epic Games’ Tim Sweeney have called out Microsoft for creating a wall-garden digital store for its Windows 10 operating system.

Meanwhile, the Windows 10 Store still struggles to pull in the sort of numbers that have made Steam the default online retailer for most PC games. Recently, a number of other game developers and related companies have either rolled out their own stores or announced plans to.

Most recently, game-chat service Discord announced the beta roll-out of an indie game store.