Dreamhaven has scooped up the publishing rights to turn-based strategy game Mechabellum after being introduced to it by fans of StarCraft 2.
Dreamhaven is the new publisher by Blizzard co-founder Mike Morhaime, and the firm revealed two new games today.
The big reveal was for Wildgate, which is a shooter where players crew-up, take control of a spaceship and hunt for treasure. A bit like a Sea of Thieves in space. It’s being made by Dreamhaven’s owned studio Moonshot Games.
The second game it revealed was Mechabellum, which was first released last year and developed by third-party Chinese studio Game River. We asked Morhaime how much did his (and his team’s) history with Blizzard have to do with signing a turn-based strategy title, which is a genre his former house is famed for.
“Several folks from the StarCraft 2 community actually had recommended it to me. And we just thought it was so well made, well designed… just a really fun game,” Morhaime told TGB.
“But they were locked into a publishing deal. We talked to them, we met them, but there really wasn't a clear way that we could work together. And then a couple months ago they reached out and said: ‘Hey, we're basically getting out of our publishing deal and we want to know if there's something you guys want to do?’
“We just jumped on it and are so excited to pick this game up and have Dreamhaven become the publisher. It did release in September. A lot of people have asked me: “Why would you want to publish a game that's already out?” And I've talked to a lot of people. People have either heard of this game and love it or have never heard of the game. I think there's just a lot of people that don't even know that Mechabellum exists and we'd like to spread the word.”
The two new games join Sunderfolk, which was announced last year, and Lynked: Banner of the Spark, which was released in Early Access last year. We asked about the initial launch of Lynked, which will receive its full launch in May, and Morhaime says it’s been a learning curve getting to grips with Steam.
“That's really our first game that we've launched on Steam,” he tells us. “If you think about it, my whole career at Blizzard, we started putting our games on Battle.net a very long time ago. My experience was really focusing on our own platform that we owned and controlled. And so Lynked is really the first time that we're going and launching on Steam. So we're learning a ton about that.”
The game industry has shifted significantly since Dreamhaven was formed in 2020. At the time, there was an abundance of investment money in the market, and game sales were growing strongly during the COVID-19 lockdowns. But since then growth has stalled, investment has dried up and success is proving hard to come by.
“We just saw the latest report from Steam,” Morhaime says. “19,000 games released last year on Steam. But the number of games that are selling over a hundred thousand units each year has actually not been increasing each year. Gaming has always been a very competitive environment. We know this. It’s always been the case that the top games account for the vast majority of the revenues. But the level to which that has continued to be the case is surprising.”
He adds: “It just puts even more emphasis on needing to have games that stand out in some way. If you're going after a particular genre, then you have to be one of, if not the, game to play in that genre in order to be successful.”
And when it comes to potentially signing more games, Morhaime says that Dreamhaven is seeking games that differ from what everyone else is doing.
“In this environment it's not enough anymore just to have a good game,” he concludes. “Your game has to offer something new to the genre, something special, something unique.”
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