Whenever a developer goes through Steam, Valve takes 30% of all revenue from the game. Steam is the main competition to Epic when it comes to publishing games, but Wizards comes away with a better deal from Epic in terms of getting the game to Mac. They stated that partnering with Epic was the fastest way to get the game to Mac and still provide the same experience that’s available on Windows. In June 2020, Wizards finally pushed beyond the operating system barrier and MTG Arena was made available for Mac with the help of Epic Games. If you’re a part of that crowd then I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but MTG Arena is already there and isn’t going anywhere.

You could argue that some players would rather see MTGA on Steam than on the Epic Games Store. If you’re having issues accessing MTG Arena on Steam for some reason, here are some other ways to get the game. You can also Draft, play Sealed, and more. On the flip side, MTG Arena offers you every single card released in a set, offering a much more varied meta where you can build a real Standard deck to compete. If you were heavily invested in, say, Duels 2013, there were few people playing the oldest version after the release of Duels 2014. The meta quickly settled, and after a few games you’d rather just buy the next game. The line basically failed because it offered limited decks to build, and you had to either pay for all your cards or grind hundreds of matches to have the full deck. There was a new release each year, and the games cost something between $10 to $15. I’m of course talking about the Duels of the Planeswalkers games. These games actually made me return to Magic after a long break. There’s been ways to play Magic on Steam since 2010, even if it wasn’t Arena. There are lots of people who play games mainly on Steam, and there’s compatibility with platforms like Steam Deck and VR.

MTG Arena being on Steam will almost assuredly increase the player base. From there you can download the game for free, since MTGA makes its money from in-game microtransactions. You need to make an account on the Steam platform if you don’t have one yet. MTG Arena was released on Steam on May 23, 2023. Yes, MTG Arena is officially available on Steam! MTG Arena Steam Release Date

Runaway Steam-Kin | Illustration by Jason Felix

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