Zenless Zone Zero coming to Steam later this 12 months

Zenless Zone Zero, a recreation I primarily affiliate with the neologism “gooner 9/11,” is lastly en path to PC’s largest digital storefront. This recreation produced a headline on this very web site containing the phrases “divine domain,” “jiggle physics,” and “cat balls” all one proper after the opposite. It received a glamorous 55% from reviewer Kerry Brunskill, who known as it a “shallow, polished front for a relentless online store.” In different phrases, it’s going to match proper in.

You can check out the sport’s new Steam page, which reveals a launch window: Q2 2026. Prospective gamers can join pre-release tests and safe unique rewards for the complete launch. A “milestone event” will let the entire neighborhood unlock rewards by getting the sport’s wishlist numbers up, with the ultimate purpose being 300,000 wishlists. I can not say developer MiHoYo does not have these things all the way down to a science.

What’s maybe shocking is that that is coming earlier than the studio’s different gacha hits, Genshin Impact and Honkai: Star Rail. These games have had no trouble attracting an audience on PC without Steam (ZZZ alone had raked in 50 million downloads less than a week after launch), so it will be interesting to see if ZZZ’s contemporaries follow suit.

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Back in 2024, PC Gamer news writer Lincoln Carpenter predicted that the HoYoverse games had around a 40% chance of eventually landing on Steam. He reasoned that Steam’s notorious 30% revenue cut was slightly more likely than not to dissuade MiHoYo from casting a wider net than the Epic Games Store can offer, and maybe that’ll remain true for Genshin and Star Rail.

I imagine these games have enough cult appeal to where they don’t strictly need Steam to stay afloat. The rub, of course, is that the Epic Games Store sucks. It sucks so bad that EGS vice president and general manager Steven Allison told Eurogamer it “sucks.”—though the publisher is trying to be better. Maybe this release is to test the waters for MiHoYo’s other live service titans, to see if they’ll attract players who only try games on storefronts that don’t suck.

If you’re just itching to play, check out our tips to get started and prepare yourself for all the glorious grinding that awaits you.