Gods-brawling MOBA Smite goes live on Steam

Smite is a MOBA that features gods from various pantheons from throughout history, doing battle with one another for... well, whatever it is that divine beings fight over. Who's got the baddest ass lore, probably. It's a pretty good spin on the genre in our estimation, and today Smite took a big step toward broadening its esports audience further by launching on Steam. Developer Hi-Rez Studios said the release "supports seamless server integration with the game's original PC infrastructure," meaning that both Steam and non-Steam players will be able to queue and play together.

"Steam reaches a huge audience of PC gamers and we want to make it easy for that audience to try out Smite. Certainly we're very pleased with Smite's growth to date—according to game industry leaderboards such as Raptr, Smite is consistently one of the top ten most played PC games even before being available on Steam," Hi Rez co-founder and COO Todd Harris said. "That said, we suspect there are a bunch of PC gamers worldwide who have yet to discover Smite, and Steam will help with that."

Harris said the studio was encouraged by the growth of free-to-play options on Steam, as well as its improved support for F2P releases through the "Discovery" option. The Steam release will also be a boon to gamers who prefer to manage their libraries through Steam, since no transition process will be required.

"Existing Smite PC users who want to play on Steam can do so by simply installing Smite within Steam and then logging into the game with their Hi-Rez account," Harris explained. "There is no account migration required."

Earlier this year, Hi-Rez announced that the top prize at the 2016 Smite World Championships will be capped at $1 million, leaving more money to be distributed among a greater number of players, another move the studio said is intended to help grow its audience.