Today, during the celebrations for Granblue Fantasy Fes in Japan, Cygames had a surprise to share with the global audience.
The developer announced that the original free-to-play game will finally have its global launch on Steam on March 10. 2026, which incidentally, will markt the 12th anniversarty of the debut of the game in Japan.
This release is explicitly aimed at the international audience and will actually not be available to Japanese players.
The somewhat disappointing part of the news is that the account system will be completely separate from the original mobile game, so existing players won’t be able to use their accounts and will have to start from scratch. This global release will use your Steam account directly.
Of course, this is no massive issue, considering that despite the lack of a global launch, the game has been available in English basically forever, so existing players will likely just keep playing as they have done until now and ignore Steam altogether, unless they’re craving a fresh start.
That being said, it’s a good chance for those who have been interested in the franchise thanks to Granblue Fantasy Relink and Versus Rising, but were discouraged from trying the original game by having to go through loopholes and guides to gain access.
Incidentally, during the event we also got a tease of the 12th anniversary event, which you can enjoy below.
If you’re unfamiliar with Granblue Fantasy, it’s a free-to-play game currently available officially only in Japan on iOS, Android, and browsers, released by Cygames all the way back in 2014.
Despite its free-to-play nature, it’s an extremely accomplished JRPG with a complex story (and plenty of substories), a massive cast of charming characters, and spectacular art helmed by Hideo Minaba, on top of great music by Tsutomu Narita with some tracks composed by Nobuo Uematsu.
The Final Fantasy pedigree is definitely visible thanks to the work of veteran developers of Square Enix’s franchise.
At the moment, we don’t have many details on the Steam launch, including whether it’ll include all the current content from the mobile version, which is absolutely massive considering the game’s 12 years of operation.