May 18, 2016

Korean movie "Padak" will be distributed on Steam

Just as exciting as the huge spurt in feature animation production is the emergence of new distribution platforms for all of those films. One of the most recent entrants is Steam, which until now has been known mostly as a game distribution platform.

Owned by game maker Valve, Steam started making films available last year to its user base of 125 million people. The company recently announced a partnership with Lionsgate to distribute 100 films from that studio's library. There isn't a whole lot of animation on the platform, besides a handful of anime titles, but that may be changing. San Francisco-based media publisher EigoManga has announced that it'll release the 2012 Korean CG feature Padak on Steam beginning June 6, 2016. The film will be available to customers on all Steam-supported platforms, including Windows, Mac, Linux, and SteamOS.

Directed by Lee Dae-Hee, Padak follows the lives of fish in captivity in a Korean restaurant. The indie film didn't receive much play outside of the festival circuit, and earned less than $75,000 in its limited theatrical release in Korea, so the Steam distribution deal will make the film available to its widest potential audience to date.