This once touted ‘Genshin-killer’ open world gacha game is finally out on Steam

For any gacha gaming players and fans of Genshin Impact-like games, Steam finally has one of the biggest open-world RPG gacha titles on the market, a year after its debut—and it’s already rising up through Steam.

Wuthering Waves, once touted as a ‘Genshin killer’, has launched on Steam after only being available via its own launcher or the Epic Games Store since its release last year on May 24, 2024, and is already sitting at a comfortable 10,000-plus players within the first few hours.

What’s even more remarkable is that Genshin Impact is still not on Steam, giving any Steam gacha lovers a huge new game to join in and try ahead of its 2.3 update, which adds a host of new characters and things to do.

Wuthering Waves, like other gacha games with an open world, has the player explore a massive universe, taking part in missions, and grinding to get the resources to upgrade their team. It’s set in a futuristic, post-apocalyptic world where most of humanity has been wiped out, and you uncover secrets about the survivors and the world as you play through the main story.

I liked the game when it was initially released last year and enjoyed its monster-catching format of getting extra stats and abilities. Unlike Relics in Genshin Impact, players instead fight monsters and have a chance to acquire them randomly when defeated to get abilities to boost their characters’ base stats and moves. It was a fun concept, and for a month of release, I was trying to catch ’em all to get the best team possible.

Other than that, though, it plays the same as other gacha games, with you having to open up RNG crates to try and get the best weapons, characters, and materials, alongside the usual daily login quests and things to discover. It can also get a bit grindy at times, but it can still be enjoyable in short bursts if you don’t want to rush through the story or seek out every hidden collectible like I did.

And now that it’s on Steam—and free to play—there’s no real reason not to give it a try and see if it truly deserved the ‘Genshin killer’ title that it tried, yet obviously failed, to deliver on.