As is the case every year, Valve's market for PC games Steam has given gamers an extra holiday gift with its Winter Sale, one of the many major sales that occur throughout a given year. The Winter Sale has granted solid deals on a huge variety of PC games, rewarding those patient enough to not immediately buy the biggest releases as soon as they are out. Despite the huge discounts gamers can get through the Winter Sale, the king of Steam sales this week is none other than Ready or Not.
The tactical shooter Ready or Not, which is of a similar vein to the hugely popular Rainbow Six games, allows a team of players to take on the role of SWAT members in various missions. There's a single-player mode which promises to be a story-rich campaign, and a "competitive multiplayer environment" which appears to be similar to the multiplayer of games such as Rainbow Six: Siege. At the time of writing, Ready or Not has an Overwhelmingly Positive rating via Steam's user review system, with many citing the game's mechanics, movement and weapon handly as "superb."
With rave reviews and plenty of hype around Ready or Not, the game soared to the top of the Steam Global Top Sellers list, while only being released on December 17. Close behind Ready or Not was Five Nights at Freddy's: Security Breach, the latest in the famous survival-horror series starring evil animatronics which was also released on December 17. Even with discounted competitors, both games at the top of Steam's weekly top sellers weren't included as part of the Winter Sale.
Ready or Not is also a game still very much in development, and at the time of writing is only available as part of Steam Early Access. Many games have benefitted from being available on Early Access, which allows its playerbase to act almost as game testers for bugs, updates and new features. Through Early Access, games are advertised in their unfinished state, and buyers already know they are buying a product with work that still needs to be done. This has worked wonder for games in the past, such as viking survival game Valheim, one of the most popular Early Access titles of 2021.
Not everything surrounding Ready or Not is inherently positive though. Recently, the game lost its publisher after promising a controversial mission that would feature a school shooter. This proved to be too controversial for publisher Team17, who promptly parted ways with VOID Studios, the developer of Ready or Not. Most of the fanbase though, backed the developers likening the controversial mission to other missions in games that have touched on sensitive topics.
Ready or Not is available now on PC.
Source: SteamDB