Video Games

Marvel actor Simu Liu wins playtest of upcoming RTS game Stormgate

Game by former Blizzard devs expected to see beta stage in 2023

Marco Wutz

Marvel actor Simu Liu wins playtest of upcoming RTS game Stormgate
Marvel actor Simu Liu wins playtest of upcoming RTS game Stormgate /

Simu Liu is probably best known for his role as Shang-Chi in Marvel’s ever expanding cinematic universe, winning several awards for this achievement. Perhaps a little less known is the fact that the Canadian actor is a huge fan of real-time strategy games, specifically of genre classic StarCraft.

It’s no surprise then, that Liu’s pretty damn good at playing RTS games as he recently showed at a closed playtest for Stormgate, the upcoming and highly anticipated free-to-play RTS title by developer Frost Giant.

Dubbing Liu a “future Stormgate esports superstar”, the company tweeted a photo showing the lead co-op designer and former Hearthstone pro gamer Kevin Dong handing him a trophy, which reads “Simu Liu, First Asian Man to beat Stormgate” in a reference to an older SNL skit in which Liu got a trophy jokingly naming him the “First Asian Man to beat StarCraft 2”.

It seems like Stormgate, which is being developed in a heavily modified version of Epic Games' Unreal Engine 5, is coming along pretty well, if Frost Giant is willing to invite big names like Liu to a closed playtest.

The game was announced at The Game Awards 2021 and will be Frost Giant’s debut work. The studio largely consists of former Blizzard employees who worked on WarCraft 3 and StarCraft 2 with CEO Tim Morten and President Tim Campbell, both genre veterans, leading the development themselves.

Reaching full funding status shortly after announcing its first project, Frost Giant received big investments from industry players like Riot Games as well as South Korea’s kakaogames. Co-founder and former President of Blizzard, Mike Morhaime, also partnered with Frost Giant, supporting it through his own new publishing company, Dreamhaven.

Stormgate is an ambitious project, featuring an ongoing single-player campaign, a co-op mode, and a multiplayer mode with a focus on esports in 1v1 as well as an emphasis on casual play in its team-based modes. Frost Giant is planning to launch a beta test in 2023 and is hoping to captivate the audience of Blizzard’s two neglected RTS series.

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Marco Wutz
MARCO WUTZ

Marco Wutz is a writer from Parkstetten, Germany. He has a degree in Ancient History and a particular love for real-time and turn-based strategy games like StarCraft, Age of Empires, Total War, Age of Wonders, Crusader Kings, and Civilization as well as a soft spot for Genshin Impact and Honkai: Star Rail. He began covering StarCraft 2 as a writer in 2011 for the largest German community around the game and hosted a live tournament on a stage at gamescom 2014 before he went on to work for Bonjwa, one of the country's biggest Twitch channels. He branched out to write in English in 2015 by joining tl.net, the global center of the StarCraft scene run by Team Liquid, which was nominated as the Best Coverage Website of the Year at the Esports Industry Awards in 2017. He worked as a translator on The Crusader Stands Watch, a biography in memory of Dennis "INTERNETHULK" Hawelka, and provided live coverage of many StarCraft 2 events on the social channels of tl.net as well as DreamHack, the world's largest gaming festival. From there, he transitioned into writing about the games industry in general after his graduation, joining GLHF, a content agency specializing in video games coverage for media partners across the globe, in 2021. He has also written for NGL.ONE, kicker, ComputerBild, USA Today's ForTheWin, The Sun, Men's Journal, and Parade. Email: marco.wutz@glhf.gg

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