769 concurrent players. 91% positive reviews. Six dollars and change.

Steam’s Featured Win doesn’t always nail the landing, but BiteMe Games’ MMO98 looks like a solid call. Released today, the incremental sim drops you onto a Windows 98 desktop and tasks you with running an MMO studio during the genre’s golden age. Server crashes, bug fixes, player complaints — the whole ugly beautiful cycle of late-90s online gaming, distilled into clicker mechanics.

Except that’s not really what it’s about. According to coverage from Chasing Dings, the game pulls a sharp bait-and-switch: you’re not building a beloved classic. You’re cranking out shovelware, harvesting player data, and cultivating “True Believers” who will buy whatever you ship next. It’s a satire wearing nostalgia’s skin — and players are here for it.

The numbers back that up. Forty-seven reviews at time of writing, only four negative. The loudest complaint isn’t the concept or the polish — it’s the runtime. One player with 3.6 hours logged called the price steep for roughly an hour of meaningful content. “You are pretty much done after like an hour,” they wrote. “The auction house is basically useless.” Another at 4.5 hours flagged balancing issues where certain prestige upgrades render others pointless.

But the positives carry the day. The Windows 98 aesthetic is tight. The original soundtrack fits. And the in-game chat — a simulated IRC-style window where your fictional players complain in real time — is the kind of meta-detail that elevates a clever concept into something genuinely charming.

BiteMe Games, a Japan- and Belgium-based indie studio, previously released Unicycle Pizza Time and Kyoto Anomaly. MMO98 launches at $6.29 with a 10% discount, localized into 15 languages, Twitch integration included. For six bucks you get a tight, cynical love letter to an era when MMOs felt like the future — even if the game knows they were always someone else’s business model.

Sources