Ubisoft Removes Upcoming PC Games From Steam [UPDATED]

NICE!!! thank you ubisoft, you just forcefully made me save like 120 bucks!!!

So does this mean that Ubisoft games are being pulled off other online store fronts?

I know hating EA and loving Valve is a thing but with this weird push to be independent(aka have your own platform) by developers, steam must not have an adequate policy. I might brush up on some Industrial organization literature and make a post on GB, though I am not sure if anybody would be interested.

@av_gamer: Has the series been worth playing? Is it even Assassin's Creed any more than it is Nautical Combat Simulator 2014?

Ubisoft keeps on digging.

i got black flag for free when i bought a new graphic card, it requires me to have uplay installed to use it, needless to say, i haven't played the game.

It's another inconvenience which i'd rather do without, this is another point for the console gamer that just needs to press a button for the games they want to play, while pc gamers have to install all sorts of proprietary nonsense to get to their games.

This bums me out in a big way

Nah, it's like refusing to sell your product all Wallmart because if you sell it out of your own garage you get to keep all the money. The problem is the extra money per copy doesn't compensate for the much lower traffic overall.

It really feels like Ubisoft is just looking for another reason to stop making PC versions. It felt like this back during the DRM debacle. I never really planned on buying either of their upcoming games but a lot of PC gamers probably did.

Patrick suggested on Twitter that people should probably speak with their wallets on the matter, but I feel that would just fulfill what I fear. That being that Ubisoft would use the lower PC sales as a reason to just stop making PC games, stating that its not worth the resources or whatnot. It really feels like a catch-22.

I'd really prefer not to have to keep track of purchases on yet another digital distribution platform. I hope it turns out for the best for my fellow PC gamers who enjoy the Ubisoft games, either uPlay becomes a better application or they see the light and offer the games on Steam again.

@patrickklepek I'm not saying that Uplay or Origin are services that are as good as steam (because they aren't) but this is definitely a good thing in that it gives Steam competitors. Having one company be the sole distributor of all digital PC games, and basically have a monopoly can end up being really messed up and detrimental. Right now, people are good with steam because they for the most part agree with the way the service is run. However if tomorrow Valve made some drastic decision that you don't like, it's good to know that there are alternative methods and sources to get your digital games.

I have always hated uPlay. I used to hate Origin too, but lately the service have actually become quite good. Though, I would prefer that all the games came out on steam, so I dont have to split my library.

This wouldn't be a problem if Uplay wasn't a steaming pile of dogshit. I can't even run half the games I own on that idiot platform.

Oh they'll lose sales, and then they'll blame PC gamers all being pirates for it and then stop porting their games all together or some dumb shit.

It amazes me that companies are willing to lose sales removing them from the #1 online pc game retailer. If I sold games I'd be devastated if dropped from Steam, to actually choose to do so and think you'll come out ahead is amazing. I was actually thinking of paying $20 extra to get FC4 on Steam vs. Ubi reseller because last time I didn't buy from steam I later regretted it, that price difference would've worked out in Ubis favor even when losing money to steam (heck they gotta lose money to other resellers as well and amazingly it's always cheaper to buy from reseller then direct).

I fucking hate Uplay... Origin is light years better.... and that's saying something...

If Ubisoft wanted to stop selling PC games, they simply would. This is their way out of the cut Valve takes from every game they sell on steam.

I wouldn't care if Uplay didn't have terrible download speeds. My downloads suck to begin with, I cap out at 150 kb/s, but for some reason I don't even get that with Uplay.

They want to keep the profits in house, it makes sense, kinda sewks but makes sense. If you want ACU, Far Cry, Dragon Age or Battlefield you'll buy it anyway why should we share revenue with Steam. It's the same handcuff we see with Tv/Movie streaming apps. While it sewks for month to month services since only 1 or 2 makes sense, it's good that Steam doesn't get everything it stops what could be an all too powerful force.

Considering the steam games from Ubi have also a Ubisoft login, this is rather silly.

Um.. bye I guess? Between this and the generally very shitty PC ports, I don't really see this as a loss. I'm more astounded that they even have the audacity to do this considering how shitty Uplay is.

At least Origin works well enough.

When launching FC3 from Uplay, it would straight-up forward you to Steam to open it there. Ubisoft has never really pushe Uplay seriously; I wonder why they're doing it now.

I've used Origin and Uplay for a long time, they're not inherently bad or that much different than Steam. The only inconvenience here is the decentralization of my content. Otherwise, it's fine.

I'm kind of glad. I've been buying all the Assassin's Creed games the last few years more out of habit than anything else, and I have been completely unable to build up any kind of excitement for Unity. I don't like UPlay, but it's not like I feel like boycotting it or anything, it just the bar for me buying games through it is a bit higher than for say Steam and Origin. And it feels like this move sets the bar just high enough for me to not bother getting this year's iteration. Maybe I can finally break the habit. :)

FC 4 I wasn't planning on getting anyway.

Only further cements the fact that I will never buy anything from them on the pc again, unless they remove Uplay. Even as a launcher.

Like I said in another thread, it wiped my Blacklist saves - about 20 hours of campaign and coop progress. Even disregarding that it's unreliable in too many ways. It's also yet another wasteful app forced on customers.

... and then the PC sales arent as great so they delay the next one six months to focus on console DLC and patches? (cynical i know but hey)

Darn. I was hoping to play some of those games. I guess I won't now- if this is actually a move to get off steam.

In a lot of ways many, including myself, made the necessary switch for one thing or another simply because they packaged Uplay clients within Steam ones so this is just them getting on with it. This is a calculated move that they saw EA make rather successfully and rather than give up the 30% cut to Valve on sales for games they're hoping to position as big titles like Unity, they'll pay for the service overhead.

In principle this isn't necessarily a bad thing but in going for exclusivity, it brings along with it issues of convenience, splintering the userbase, and points of failure. And certainly one consequence that doesn't get as much attention is the fact that being removed from the Steam ecosystem and community means less precedent for Steam's characteristic sales. It seems that EA still hasn't placed any of the Mass Effect 3 DLC (just as an example that totally doesn't bother me personally one bit, no sir) on sale on Origin. The same content on consoles, which are inherently not just EA's platforms, has gone on sale at least three times since the DLC launched. Ubisoft could have been better about that when I wasn't looking and so I'll avoid making the false equivalence without knowing more myself.

This is a long game though and stuff that for years has been assumed left behind or exclusive comes to Steam. I'm not particularly worried if Ubisoft decides this isn't worth it for them anymore and they pull the plug because even though it's not a day's work, Ubisoft itself will foot the effort to port that stuff over to Steamworks. Where things got busted last time was smaller studios who had publishing deals with Microsoft for a given game which included requirements for GFWL integration and now might not have the budget to revisit the game and put in Steamworks with necessary testing. The issue being that Microsoft felt no obligation to help former partners whereas the stuff that's exclusive is largely their own studio's games.

Now that I'm thinking about this my mind is going in different directions. Like what if Ubisoft suffers the same fate as THQ and gets split up? What might happen to Uplay in that situation? Weird stuff.

Is Ubisoft really this fucking stupid?!

Don't they know that Uplay is the biggest most pathetic pile of fucking garbage that ever called itself a gaming platform?! Did they not fucking learn anything, ANYTHING from the last few years about the correlation between how shitty Uplay is and how much piracy affects their games?!

I'm not to hot on Origin, but hey, it works. It's functional. It's not annoying as shit. Origin has a right to exist on its own. But if Ubisoft thinks they can pull an Origin with their PooPlay dog shit software, then a whole lot of executives need to be thrown out on the street with no jobs.

I mean, FUCK, man! This is so stupid!!!

@humanity: But can you prove that's true? Seems kind of harsh to lump everyone who complains about the service into a group labelled "hate bandwagon" or something. It should be possible to pick out the people who have had actual issues with the service.

Personally, if I were to rank the services from the most/biggest problems I've had with them to the fewest/smallest (relative to the amount of time spent/games played) it would be GFWL, then Uplay, then Origin and then Steam.

Ugh, that's annoying. I've said it before and it still holds true: If I'm playing PC games on the couch using my TV I don't want to have to worry about logging in and out of multiple .exe's for every publishers games. This just makes life less convenient by taking away choice.

Ubisoft PC games have always been awful; I'm getting Far Cry 4 on the PS4.

I don't know what people have against uPlay honestly. I actually like several of their features. They do great controller integration, automatically switching to controller inputs for uPlay games when you have a controller turned on. And they notify you when you start the game that the service detects a controller. Makes playing some of their very controller focused games very simple. And while people hate on their points system, I like the concept of cross game unlocks. It basically means that if I don't want to unlock anything within the game I am playing with my points I can just save them for another game that might have stuff I want to unlock. Compared to charging $1-$4 for this stuff like most companies do, I can't argue with it. And despite people claiming the service is unreliable I have never had a single issue with it.

Now Ubisoft's PC games themselves are often terribly optimized and super buggy, but the uPlay service has always worked well for me and outside of Steam cards I think the uPlay points are my favorite "achievement" like thing on any service or console.

EDIT: Also, if they are taking a page from Origin's book then they will likely put keys on sale on Amazon and GreenManGaming, both of which have prices equal or lower to what you can get on Steam.

Cool, got it, never buying Ubisoft PC games ever again!

No longer getting Far Cry and the new AC then. gg

I think its totally understandable that Ubisoft would want to cut Steam out of their profits. Sure, they have to make UPlay better. But now Origin works okay, and I have faith Uplay can be fixed as well. Other than UPlay not being as reliable as Steam, this is not an anti-consumer move. Ubisoft wants to sell their games directly to their customers w/o paying Steam, is that so bad?

I dont see why Steam deserves to have a user base that demands they are cut in to every sale on the PC.

This will go well.

I really like all the comments saying that the requirement for buying the games straight through Uplay makes people not want to play Ubisoft games anymore. Overreacting much? I mean, it's not like you can't just link the game exe to Steam anyway...

Honestly though, good on Ubisoft - i don't know if this will pay off in the long run, but i guess they know what they are doing. This might be temporary, but we'll see.

The one thing that i'm curious about all this is what's going to happen to people who managed to already pre-purchase these games on Steam? I'd say Ubisoft will still give these games to them, but through Uplay instead of Steam.

Well I guess they made it easy for me to say no to Ubisoft games for forever now. Shame, and I really wanted to play The Division.

To be honest with Ubi games on Steam you still had to run Uplay so the change is not as big as with EA titles. Still I find it weird.

Are we going to get the same narrative last time this happened? Steam basically said fuck off to EA when they wanted to have some more rights to their own games along side steam. So because of that EA ended up moving everything to Orgin. But of course everyone's ignore that it's basically Vales fault we can only get most EA games on Orgin, and blames EA.

I can only assume Giantbomb and everyone else will do the same this time, and blame Ubi.

Who to blame? GamerGate? The Feminists? Ubi?

Ah, sorry that was dumb, the answer is EA!

I have no issue with Uplay, I actually kind of like it, but I won't be buying any games there, I like my games in one spot and Steam is that spot.

Makes it easier to avoid Uplay games i guess. Origin is mostly, "ok" and Uplay is pretty shitty but as there are only a handful of games that come out from EA and Ubisoft that i'd want to play, i'm okay with using their services only every now and again. They really need to release some phenomenal games before i bother, iterative sequels probably won't be doing it for me.

Okay fuck you, then.

I don't see what the big deal is, just add AC or whatever as a custom game into your steam library so you'll see it there and clicking on it launches the .exe

Oh get fucked. Does this really make them any more money? All the cash they've spent on implementing Uplay, working on the software, servers, user accounts. And now they'll be losing sales by not putting their games in the biggest marketplace in the world.

I wouldn't have a problem if Uplay was decent software, or that they kept the games on Steam until Uplay was up to the level of Origin, at least. But it really isn't.

Also when you open Uplay and click 'Visit Shop' it opens up Steam with a search for 'Publisher: Ubisoft'. As usual, got their shit together then.

@jeffsekai: I don't think you have the necessary information to make such claims. (And neither do the people who support Valve at every turn without so much as a critical thought.)

What we do know is the track records of these developers/publishers. Valve didn't get all those fans for free. Steam was a pile of garbage when it was first released and I refused to install it until it got to a certain level of quality (which took quite a long time). I wouldn't go on blindly believing EA or Ubisoft's explanations for starting their own competitors if I were you.

Sorry, just the fact that Ubi's games USED Uplay rendered playing them a complete hassle. Every single console version is worth more for that reason alone. Never buying another PC Ubi game...

At this point, I can't imagine ever installing Uplay. I guess that means I won't be buying Ubisoft games on PC, and I'm less likely to buy them on any platform.

Glad I'm not interested in either of these games anyways. Ubisoft seems to be struggling somewhat with PC ports lately, and while forcing the use of uPlay isn't really that big of a deal to me, it's just kind of an added nuisance that makes me want to stay away from picking up either title in the future.