Lionsgate, the film production company behind the Hunger Games and Saw franchises, is offering a large portion of its catalogue to rent and stream through Steam.
You know, that storefront that you buy games from.
In a rather sparse “Lionsgate Announcement” press release you can read on Steam, you’ll find out that the partnership will be launching with “over 100 Lionsgate feature films… from the company’s blockbuster Hunger Games, Twilight, Saw and Divergent franchises. More titles will be added as the partnership continues to expand worldwide.”
That last part is particularly interesting for us in South Africa, because we have nowhere close to 100 titles. If you have a local account on Steam, and you browse by “Developer: Lionsgate” you’ll come across a bounty of… 11 movies.
This may be a case of Steam itself being updated and more movies are to be added soon, or we could be locked out by international content laws. Regardless, here’s what’s on offer if you want to watch some of the movies right now:
- Leprechaun 4 Film Collection
- Leprechaun 3
- Leprechaun
- Natural Born Pranksters
- Leprechaun 2
- Leprechaun 4: Lost in Space
- Blue Mountain State: The Rise of Thadland
- Return of the Living Dead 3
- Two Family House
- Deck the Halls
- Russkies
The price for these titles range from R29.99 to R87. You don’t own the title, mind, you rent it. You’ll be able to pay for it and then watch it anytime in the next 30 days.
There’s also a stipulation about a 48-hour rental time. We assume this means that, when you rent a movie, you’ll be able to watch it for a total playtime of 48 hours. We haven’t tested it yet, however, because we really don’t feel like spending any money at all on “Blue Mountain State: The Rise of Thadland“.
It’s still a good sign to see production companies making their content available on more platforms. Paramount pulled a similar move when they uploaded a lot of their older titles to YouTube and this is just another avenue to legally watch your movies.
Now we wait for more titles to be added and the inevitable sales.
[Source – Steam]
My editor insisted I work in a pun somewhere about Steam’s logo being a crank and the rather excellent movie from Lionsgate, Crank, hopefully being offered on Steam at some point. Does this count, Nick? [you’re fired – ed]
