The recently announced Warhammer Classics project brings many beloved Warhammer video games back to Steam, while making several available on the platform for the first time. The initiative encompasses more than 20 games from the massive Warhammer franchise, including the Space Hulk and Warhammer Quest titles, as well as Warhammer: Dark Omen, Warhammer 40,000: Fire Warrior, and many, many more. Publisher SNEG is thrilled to be bringing these titles to a modern audience, hoping to both bring in longtime fans nostalgic for their favorite titles and entice Warhammer newbies to explore the setting with so many games now available to try out.
GameObserver spoke with SNEG co-founders Artem Shchuiko and Oleg Klapovskiy about the Warhammer Classics release and the importance of preserving and re-releasing classic games in the modern era. In a time when more and more old games are becoming unplayable due to missing source code, hardware changes, and more, they believe Warhammer Classics and similar projects are more crucial than ever before. Warhammer is a vast world with hundreds of games, books, tabletop games, comics, and more, and the Classics titles represent key pieces of Warhammer history that will now gain a brand-new audience via their availability on Steam.
Preserving Games Is Becoming More And More Crucial
“I would not say there is one perfect moment for [preservation and re-release of classic titles,” said Klapovskiy, “but I do think it is more important than ever now.” He pointed out that many old games have gradually become more and more difficult to access as limited copies are available, and hardware is constantly changing and being updated. In 2026, some games can be argued to have become entirely inaccessible, or accessible only to a few lucky collectors.
Gamers have seen this happen with the rising prices of classic titles, especially those limited to specific vintage consoles. Even those still available on PC can be difficult or impossible to play without significant updates, due to incompatibility with modern hardware. Initiatives like Warhammer Classics are crucial to keep these titles from disappearing entirely – otherwise, they might vanish “from the players’ memory altogether,” in Klapovskiy’s words.
“We strongly believe that video games should be preserved in the same way as other cultural works. Modern consoles are an important part of that, because for many players they are the most natural and accessible way to experience games. If classic titles only survive on old hardware, then a large part of the audience simply loses access to them. Preservation only really matters if people can still play the games.”
Re-Releasing Old Games Comes With Unique Challenges
Re-releasing 20+ Warhammer titles for Steam was a major undertaking, Klapovskiy revealed. “Every older game breaks in its own way,” he explained, “and there is never one universal solution.” The SNEG co-founder shared one of the greatest difficulties that his team experienced while working on the project: “how differently games from the same era were built, and how many hidden dependencies or assumptions they have about old operating systems, installers, hardware, or file structures.”
The team’s hard work paid off – the Warhammer Classics library was successfully released on Steam, alongside a sale event to celebrate its launch. The games have received generally positive reviews, particularly those that had not been available on Steam prior to the Classics initiative. Fans of the Warhammer series have expressed the nostalgia they feel when getting to replay classic titles that they haven’t touched in years, but the games have definitely drawn in some new fans as well. Personally, as someone who is relatively new to the Warhammer franchise, I’m going to be starting with Dark Omen (at Klapovskiy and Shchuiko’s suggestion!) because of its dark and moody tone and embodiment of classic 1990s Warhammer style.
The SNEG Team Hopes Others Will Follow In Their Footsteps
Since its establishment, SNEG has been a trailblazer in the preservation of classic games. The publisher’s catalog on Steam includes beloved titles from the Dungeons and Dragons, Warlords, and Close Combat series, among others — even the original Star Command. Dozens of titles from the 1980s and 1990s are available on Steam for modern gamers to enjoy thanks to SNEG, and Klapovskiy and Shchuiko hope that other developers and publishers will follow their lead. Shchuiko says:
“Our advice would be simple: please let your IPs live. If you do not have the internal resources to support an older title or bring it back yourself, then be open to working with partners who genuinely care about it. And if that is not possible, at least leave room for the community to help keep it alive. Also, preserve your source code. Future generations will thank you for it. In our experience, the lack of preserved source code is still one of the biggest obstacles in this kind of work.”
I hope that the release of Warhammer Classics is only the start of a major push towards the preservation of iconic video games from decades past. As someone who didn’t get into gaming until the late 00s, I am thrilled that these titles are becoming available to play once again (although it does mean that my backlog of “to play” games is getting bigger and bigger pretty much every day). I hope that more and more developers and publishers will take Shchuiko’s advice to “let their IPs live,” and that the preservation of video games will become a major priority throughout the industry. Video games are important cultural artifacts just as much as great books or classic paintings, and their preservation becomes more and more important with each year that passes.
You can purchase all of the titles in the Warhammer Classics lineup on Steam. Which ones are you most excited to play? Which one will you be playing first? What other classic titles would you like to see re-released on Steam and other platforms in the future? Comment below and let us know!
