Ubisoft returns to Steam

Ubisoft’s flirtation with the Epic Games Store is over. After several years of releasing its new games on Epic’s storefront – rather than Valve’s – the company is announcing that it will once again release its new releases on Steam, starting with Assassin’s Creed Shadows in 2025.

Ubisoft said in today’s announcement about the delay of Assassin’s Creed Shadows that it will be available on Steam on February 14, 2025, adding: “The game will mark the return of our day one releases on Steam.” Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot said the same in a subsequent call with analysts.

A Ubisoft representative later confirmed to PC Gamer that the company does indeed intend to offer all future releases on Steam on release day, simultaneously with other online stores.

This is quite a turnaround for Ubisoft. The company released The Division 2 exclusively on the Epic Games Store in 2019 and was so pleased with the results that it extended the partnership between the two companies almost immediately afterward. In August of the same year, Chris Early, Ubisoft’s senior vice president of partnerships and revenue, criticized Steam’s business model, and in particular its 30 percent share of all sales, as “unrealistic.” Epic, on the other hand, only receives 12%.

But in late 2022, cracks began to appear in the exclusivity wall when backend data was discovered suggesting that some Ubisoft games were heading back to Steam. Just days later, two years after its original release, Assassin’s Creed Valhalla made the move; four more, including Far Cry 6 and Rainbow Six Extraction, were announced for April 2023.

However, these games had already appeared on other stores before their Steam launch, and new games continued to remain on Steam – including Assassin’s Creed Shadows, which was only intended for Epic and the Ubisoft Store, until today. But Ubisoft has struggled in recent years, most recently (and most notably) with Star Wars Outlaws, whose sales were “weaker than expected” today, according to Ubisoft.

That’s what prompted Ubisoft to hit the “release on Steam” button earlier than in the past – Outlaws is due to launch on Steam on November 21st – and no doubt also spurred its wider return to Steam in 2025. Making a great game is obviously a big part of making a hit game (and Ubisoft really needs a big hit right now), but if you don’t sell where people are buying, you’re going to suffer. Despite the best efforts of major publishers like Activision, Electronic Arts, Rockstar, Bethesda and others, not to mention the far better deal Epic gives developers, Steam is more dominant than ever – and in the end, they all came back.

topicnews · September 26, 2024

Ubisoft returns to Steam

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topicnews · September 26, 2024

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