by Since early 2019, Ubisoft has made a point of moving its PC releases away from Steam and towards the Epic Games Store and its own Ubisoft Connect platform. That year-long experiment seems to be coming to an end now that Ubisoft has confirmed that at least three recent PC releases will be getting Steam versions in the near future.
A page for 2020 Assassin’s Creed Valhalla was officially added to Steam on Monday, listing a December 6 launch date on the platform. Ubisoft has told Eurogamer this for 2019 as well 1800 and Scooter Champions will come to Steam and confirms previous rumors in this direction.
The upcoming Steam releases are Ubisoft’s first non-DLC releases on the platform since 2019 exams rise and Starlink: Battle for Atlas launched on Steam. Since then, publications by Far cry 6 and Watchdogs Legion to Immortals: Fenyx Rising and Ghost Recon: Breakpoint were all unavailable on Valve’s industry-dominant PC storefront.
“We’re constantly evaluating how we can bring our games to diverse audiences, wherever they are, while providing a consistent player ecosystem through Ubisoft Connect,” said a Ubisoft spokesperson in a statement released to press .
That statement, however, is a major reversal from 2019, when Chris Early, Ubisoft’s vice president of partnerships and revenue, told the New York Times that Steam’s business model — and its 30 percent commissions — is “unrealistic” and “isn’t reflecting where the world is today in terms of game distribution.”
Steam’s lavish publishers
Ubisoft’s return to Steam comes after Activision Blizzard ended a similar year-long absence from Steam for the ultra-popular call of Duty Franchise. those years Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 was the first serial game to appear on Steam since 2017 Call of Duty WW2with intermediate releases only available in Activision Blizzard’s Battle.net launcher.
In 2019, EA also ended its years-long effort to avoid Steam releases in favor of its own Origin storefront. That’s if Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order became the publisher’s first Steam release since 2012.
While Ubisoft voluntarily refrained from Steam releases, Epic continues to pay huge amounts of money for certain high-profile games to be released as timed exclusives on the Epic Games Store. This includes a $146 million upfront payment against royalties borderland 3, whose exclusive launch on the Epic Games Store in 2019 attracted 750,000 new users to the Epic platform, according to company documents revealed during the Epic vs. Apple trial. When borderland 3 Joining Steam months later, Take Two CEO Strauss Zelnick said that sales on Valve’s platform “have exceeded our expectations.”
