PC gaming platform BlueStacks has launched BlueStacks Inside, which enables mobile game developers to publish their games on Steam with no porting to the PC required.

 

BlueStacks is the emulator of choice for people wanting to run Android games and apps on PC. The team behind the emulator has delivered plenty of features with its last update, but its latest initiative promises to bring loads of games to Steam. It allows mobile games to launch on Steam and route all in-game transactions through the platform’s Steam Wallet.

 

BlueStacks investors include Ignition Partners, Radar Partners, Andreessen-Horowitz, Samsung, Redpoint, Qualcomm, Intel, Presidio Ventures (a Sumitomo Corporation Company), Citrix, AMD, and Helion Ventures.

 

 

BlueStacks inside has a one-step software development kit (SDK) that lets developers take existing mobile games to Steam and Discord. Games introduced to Steam through SDK run under their own game brand Windows, without any additional BlueStack brand, and can use native Steam features. BlueStacks allow developers to publish their own built-in games on Steam, but the company charges a percentage of in-app purchases and a separate fee for their use.

 

Inside is currently only in soft launch, but BlueStacks says it's already used the SDK to bring games like Pirates Outlaws from mobile to Steam.  Mobile developers have started allocating large budgets to game development, and that means mobile games can be competitive on Steam without a ton of modification. With games like Lineage 2: Revolution and PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds, graphics and gameplay push the limits of what a mobile device can do.

 

The initial launch will include several high-profile developers like KOG, Funplus, Fabled Game Studio, and many others whose games will be available directly on Steam.

 

 

On the other hand, gamers are caught in a struggle to maintain devices that can keep up with demanding games. BlueStacks Inside gives developers an opportunity to reach a much wider and valuable PC-based audience without the need to hire a separate PC development team.

 

"We see a nearly 80% overlap between high-value mobile gamers and high-value PC gamers," said Mike Peng, head of global operations at Funplus, in a statement. "Developers can not only reach more people, but the people they reach on Steam are much more likely to play the game for longer and spend more than the average mobile gamer. This is amazing news for our user acquisition team."

 

Players can use their PCs to do the heavy lifting for games their phones would otherwise not be able to run well.

 

"What we see is that the BlueStacks and Steam audiences overlap almost completely. So the partnership gives gamers access to the entire Android gaming library right on their PCs," says Rosen Sharma, BlueStacks CEO, in a statement. "We eliminate the need for separate development teams just to bring mobile games to a PC audience. When published with BlueStacks, a player downloading the game through Steam gets the full game experience. It isn’t BlueStacks. It isn’t Steam. It’s a PC game."

 

BlueStacks Inside for Steam will give developers access to a spectrum of features from a simple and mandatory payments integration, replacing traditional app stores, to Steam’s Community Hub, promotions, curators, and collections. The Steam Wallet will process all in-game purchases in the same way as a traditional app store.