The Returnal PC port could be close, as the roguelike title was recently part of a Game Developers Conference talk from Housemarque that appears to show the game running on the platform, although there’s still no official confirmation of the port itself.
Talk of Returnal coming to PC has been making the rounds for some time, as a number of Returnal PC Steam localisation updates appear to have surfaced on the storefront this year. Codenamed Oregon, one localisation string is called “Tower of Sisyphus,” which could be a reference to the endless game mode of the same name added after Returnal’s initial launch.
Following the discovery of this backend Steam page, an official Game Developers Conference talk was uploaded to YouTube on September 2, with Returnal developer Housemarque’s lead VFX artist Risto Jankkila talking about how the studio used its own programmable particle system to create certain VFX features in the game.
Whilst the entire talk provides some excellent insight into Retrunal’s development and is worth checking out in its own right, some hints towards the potential PC version of the game come in at the 13:35 mark.
On the right hand side of the screen there’s some information about how the game is running, with a section labelled “output” saying the footage is coming from a PC. On top of that, Digital Foundry’s own Alexander Battaglia tweeted out that this presentation once again confirms a PC version of the game.
The same information on the screen also mentions a GPU being used for the footage, which further points towards Returnal successfully running on a PC, and thus potentially coming to the platform at some point in the future.
The Returnal PC port could also be Steam Deck playable, as a value change for “steamdecktouchscreen” was found in the Steam backend as well. As other PlayStation PC titles like Marvel’s Spider-Man, Days Gone and God of War have all seen the coveted “Verified” Steam Deck badge” it wouldn’t be a surprise to see Returnal get the same treatment.
At present there’s still no official confirmation of Returnal coming to PC, but it doesn’t sound surprising that PlayStation could be bringing it to the platform along with a large number of its other top-tier first party offerings.
In the meantime, Valve has brought Steam Deck reservations forward yet again, and if you get yours soon we even have a list of the most secure VPN providers of this year for anyone concerned about internet privacy.
