UPDATED: Ubisoft has apparently reversed its policy, at least in the US. The company hasn't issued a formal statement, but the games in question are now back on Steam.

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Less than a week before the launch of Assassin's Creed: Unity, Ubisoft has quietly started removing its upcoming games from Steam. The move was first noticed in the UK, but the US storefront shows the games have disappeared, as well.

Assassin's Creed: Unity, The Crew, and Far Cry 4 are no longer featured on Steam, despite being on the service not long ago.

"We’ve been in discussions with Valve about Assassin’s Creed Unity but for the time being the game is not available via Steam in the UK,” Ubisoft said in a statement to PCGamesN. "In the meantime, UK customers wishing to purchase the game digitally can do so by visiting the Uplay store, our retail partners or other digital distributors.”

Ah, Uplay. It's likely Ubisoft's making the same move as Electronic Arts, and pushing its highly anticipated new games onto its proprietary platform. Old Ubisoft and EA games are still on Steam, but new ones are not. Want Dragon Age: Inquisition? Download Origin. Want Assassin's Creed: Unity? Download uPlay.

Unfortunately, it's hard to see how this benefits the consumer in any way.

Ubisoft has not responded to my request for comment.

This and origin is what make pc gaming great....

No thanks Ubisoft.

This is such a quiet change unlike origin that i dont know how they expect to make any sales due to this. Maybe some bad shit went down suddenly between them.

This isn't really a "Use Uplay pretty please" it's more of a "get fucked boi".

Luckily, I have little to no interest in their disgusting "service" or 90% of their committee designed games.

I'm not a huge fan of steam, mind you, but it's the standard, and I'm not about to start installing various glorified ad-wares for their convenience.

They can't honestly expect people to willingly use UPlay, a service and platform which has historically been INCREDIBLY unreliable, can they? I mean, they're not really that dumb, right?

Ubisoft must hate money right? Why else would this make any sense?

I'm glad they are making it easier for me to not buy AC:U nor FC4, I only purchased Black Flag and FC3 because they were on steam sale and lots of people seem to like them. I ended up being disappointed with both. NEVER AGAIN!

They really want the consumer to not buy games on pc

Games cost more on Uplay. They manage to shove all their launch week sales to that service on the PC, they get more money. They'd already get more for all uPlay-sales, since they own the platform, but since everything costs more there, double the profit almost.

I don't like how they advertised it for sale using Steam's platform them pulled it. That's an unbelievably dirty move no matter how much competition and diversity in PC platforms might be necessary.

Uplay isn't that bad people, settle down. You press play game and it launches the game, last time I checked it doesn't sodomize you each time you turn it on.

I used Uplay extensively for a while and apart from the Watch Dogs release never had any problems with it.

Aside from being a nuisance having to have 3 store front clients installed, and your library spread across them, I really don't get bothered with that much. Also when it comes to problems with the services, I have to admit that I have more problems with Steam as with the other two, but those are all minor and Steam works perfectly fine for the most part.

So yeah, whatever.

Doesn't Warner Bros. have WB Play or whatever? I hope this doesn't work out for Ubisoft, I want to see most games come out on Steam. Having everything under one hood is so convenient. And the publishers are trying to segment the marketplace on consoles as well. EA started it of course, but not too long till Ubisoft starts their promotion. You can still buy their games there of course, but I doubt we'll ever see an EA or Ubisoft game on Games with Gold.

Makes the decision to not buy either game pretty easy for me!

Titanfall/BF4? Get fucked origin, you aren't worth my money

That's not a very united thing to do.

@vierastalo: I meant it more in the sense that most people will just refuse to buy the game at all if it's not on Steam.

Well, I don't necessarily think competing services is a bad thing. I just hope they learned from their rootkit error in the past. If the game is good I will at least check out the service it is hosted on.

I guess this makes my decision on whether or not to pick up Far Cry 4 that much easier :/

Makes pirates want to pirate their games more, and Ubi will blame not making money from being on Steam as to why the PC ports will get worse and worse.

Well I was already starting to bail on the series. They started earlier but looks like they are making a point of burning all good will.

Not that it matters. It was gonna be a rental anyway. :/

I had so many issues with Uplay just trying to play FarCry 3 with friends that I haven't bought a Ubisoft game since. I'm relatively fine with Origin, at least it works.

To be fair PC gamers were already stuck with Uplay for Ubisoft games. It's just that now they won't even allow people to buy the games on Steam.

Ubisoft's been on a real tear recently. A mission to piss off their customers...

Doesn't bother me at all.

That's weird considering I pre-ordered and paid for a copy of FarCry 4 on Steam.

Am I getting a refund? I'd sure like a refund.

"it's hard to see how this benefits the consumer in any way."

Had me laughing out loud. It's not supposed to, obviously.

so what happens if you already pre-purchased in steam?

Well it looks like the piracy numbers for AC: U PC just went way up.

Have fun going out of business Ubishit.

Patrick, it might be worth pointing out that the current Ubisoft catalog is still available on Origin.

They should understand it's not what people want... It's not even a "it's what you want, you just don't know it" kind of thing.

"Unfortunately, it's hard to see how this benefits the consumer in any way."

Yeeeep. I'd much prefer to have everything linked to my Steam account at this point, instead of multiple stupid services.

Uplay is so broken I cant play Far Cry 3 or Blood Dragon unless I manually unplug my PC from my modem.

No thanks, Ubisoft.

Granted Uplay is terrible, but I would argue that attempting to challenge Steam's monopoly is beneficial to the consumer.

Was on the fence about Far Cry 4, but this settled me not buying it.

I don't care so much that their games won't be on Steam anymore, but asking £50 for their upcoming games on Uplay is just taking the piss.

Good luck with that, Ubi.

I'm sure it's been said, but we've already been using Uplay even when purchased through steam. It launches their client along with the game. Removing their catalog will only make it more up front.

Ironically you can currently preorder DA Inquisition from Uplay.

As a consumer I hate this decision, but it's not surprising. Most digital services still rake 30% on all sales, and even if less people buy Ubi games, it's probably more money for them in the long run. The reason we don't see digital games cheaper than retail, is because service provider commissions hit about as hard as physical manufacturing and distribution costs. This is not a justification for Ubi's decision, just trying to offer some context.

Well that's one way to loose a bunch of sales.

Nice timing: so they got the publicity by being in the steam frontpage and then a week before release they pull out and go uplay-exclusive. I imagine people at valve being veeeery happy with ubisoft behaviour

Of course! Why sell games on the service that has close to 80 million users? Makes perfect sense!

Making us use Origin for EA games was annoying enough, Origin at least turned out to be a decent service these days. Uplay is a straight up embarrassment.

I'll probably stick to consoles for now with Ubisoft games, especially since the last couple of games they've also released on PC were pretty bad ports (Assassin's Creed 4).

seems like bad business they are only going to sell less copies because of this,

my total bs assumption is its all about the money $$$
ubi wanted a bigger cut from steam sales, steam said uh...no, ubi said, screw you guys im going home
(to uplay)

Ubisoft? Ubidumb!

Okay, I didn't have as much of a problem with Uplay launching from Steam because it didn't seem too bad. It's basically a splash screen in my opinion. Like all games back in the day used to have. But if you're just going to straight up remove it from Steam and only make it downloadable through Uplay and make me launch Uplay manually then I'm done.

Yeah it might seem silly, but in my head it seems like extra work. And I don't like extra work when unnecessary.

You challenge their monopoly by doing what they're doing - offering a wide variety of games with better service - not creating your own monopoly on your own titles.

Also there's a reason why steam has such a massive lead in the market, and it isn't due to underhanded tactics.

I would have had the exact same attitude a bit ago. I've played all except the most recent AC on PC with the unity launcher and never had an issue. Then, about a month ago I got an urge to 100% Revelations (yeah, weird, I know) and Uplay crashed on every launch. There are now some files that I can't uninstall, even after using command line wizardry, which means I can't play any Ubi game I own, let alone a new one.

I'm sure there must be some eventual convoluted fix for my specific problem, but forcing PC users to use any secondary software is just needlessly inviting problems like mine for no benefit other than Ubi's. Especially in light of CDProjectRed's upcoming GOG Galaxy, which will provide multiplayer support, automatic updates, and social stuff, while still never being required to launch any game you've bought from them.

Ubi is possibly my favorite "AAA" dev right now, but this tone deaf bullshit makes it hard to root for them.

That's disappointing. Far Cry is a PC game to me. Really tired of these alternate software platforms. UPlay has never been very good.

No thanks, I'm good. For me it's not just about not wanting to have to go to three separate stores to download my games across three different programs and all of that (though that certainly doesn't help any.) But by pulling their games from Steam they give consumers fewer choices about where to buy products from, which in my book is bad. Obviously it benefits EA and Ubisoft more for people to buy directly from them, but corporations shouldn't take priority over consumers as far as I'm concerned and there's already too much of that in the world as it is.