Ubisoft Removes Upcoming PC Games From Steam [UPDATED]

UPlay isn't a bad service, but this does decrease the chances of my buying their games. 70% of my games purchases are impulse buys of games that are on sale.

I get that people don't like UPlay and also want all their games in one, already proven, distribution source.

But you can't expect companies, especially bigger ones like EA or Ubisoft, to potentially lose money on their bigger releases because Steam is just the default platform. It makes more sense to track play time, sales, and other player behavior on your own Steam-like platform than take the percentage hit on sales.

This is kind of a relief. I've got a huge backlog of games from this year (Alien, Shadow of Mordor, etc.) So Ubisoft removing the only method I use (besides GoG) to buy their game is saving me some money.

Phewww....man that's too bad.

Internet outrage begins..... NOW!

So... how much does a mainstream publisher putting on a game on steam cost them? Other than pushing their own platforms, I can't imagine anything else that would make them decide to fragment the market like this.

I mean, I personally use steam since I can buy those gift cards so I don't use my credit card for impulse buying, which Origin or Uplay won't let me do to the best of my knowledge. I wouldn't mind Uplay or Origin, outside of the mild inconvenience of having another app taking up space on my PC, if I could do the same with them.

It isn't that odd. Valve games are only available on their platform. Plus Ubisoft and EA games can be bought from a number of sources like GMG, Gamersgate, Amazon and more.

When are they pulling out from amazon and brick and mortar? They seem fine taking as much or more of a hit from them.

Ubisoft is insane. First they make horrible ports of their Assassin's Creed games for PC, then they expect us to use their horrible DRM service. I have no problem using their DRM, if that was at all a pleasant experience. Unfortuneately it freezes up my computer while it opens, a good 5 seconds. I'm fine with DRM, just don't have it get in my way of doing other things.

Furthermore, IF Ubisoft actually patches a game, you have to download it separately and install it manually. Shit, downloading a game through uPlay is pretty hilarious in and of itself because uPlay doesn't install the game for you, that's another step in the process once the game completes downloading. None of uPlay is pleasant or convenient for the user, it's purely there for the Ubisoft execs to sleep better at night knowing people aren't pirating their ga-oh wait....

The year of ubisoft idiocy continues.

That's... silly. Isn't uPlay required to play Ubisoft Steam purchases anyway? So they're not gaining uPlay users, instead, they're just cutting out millions of possible customers to ensure a 100% cut of the sales. I'm sure that looks really good on paper, but they're putting a lot of faith into people to load uPlay (an unreliable and generally shitty piece of software) instead of Steam.

Oh well. I doubt the PC is where they'll make their money anyway. The change in PC sales because of this will be insignificant when compared to the console sales.

@nightriff: Indeed. As if the monstrous requirements for Unity on PC wasn't enough.

Well apart from only being mildly interested in Far Cry 4 before, I've now gone to being totally uninterested in it for the time being. Reminds me of the time Alice: Madness Returns disappeared from Steam for a while.

After hearing that you still need to deal with Uplay to play Ubisoft games you get on Steam... that sounds shitty.

Ubisoft is just helping you make sensible purchasing decisions! No one should be spending that kind of money on a yearly update when there's stuff like steam sales, Shadow of Mordor, and the Witcher III to be had instead. Thanks, Ubisoft! You make it so easy to not buy your stuff! How very thoughtful.

Yeah, I don't get the massive hate.

I've had the same amount of issues with Steam as I do UPlay (or Origin for that matter) - 90% of the problems I experience in general relate to DRM issues - a problem on ANY proprietary platform. From what I see, *some* people have problems with UPlay often - but it honestly seems like most people hate it because its different and fractures their game libraries.

The funny thing is, it's just Steam that Ubisoft is avoiding. You can buy EA games on UPlay and Ubisoft games on Origin.

Incidentally, you can buy Valve games on both Uplay and Origin, so it's not a mutual feud or anything like that.

Steam is #1 because they were there first. There's other companies that offer much better Customer Service (GoG) or more stable clients that are supported better and updated more frequently (Steam is still largely broken on OSX Yosemite even thought it's been in beta for 6+ months).

Personally I welcome any and all challengers for the Steam crown, especially if they're able to force Valve to get their shit together.

@finaldasa: Except for the sales, Ubisoft already had the other stuff since their games on steam already required Uplay.

Also, I think people arguing for more competition should definitely not be supporting a publisher like Ubisoft.

Ubisoft hasn't done anything to warrant our trust in quite a while now. And if they planned this all along, having their upcoming games on steam just to benefit from that exposure only to remove them at the last minute I would say that is an incredibly scummy thing to do.

People who actually want to see a good competitor to steam should probably be looking towards/supporting GoG.

Let's not forget that EA games are on Uplay and Ubisoft games are on Origin.

Et tu, Ubi?

How does this benefit the consumers? Well it probably chips away just a little bit at steam's market dominance. Don't get me wrong, I love steam, and would love to have all my games in one place, but really, it's probably not the healthiest thing for the industry to have all its eggs in one basket like this. Ideally, I feel like there should be some sort of open platform for online purchases that you could access through whatever store front you liked (and a one that didn't take a 30% cut of the price for itself). Perhaps having more competition in the field will get us one step closer to there, even if in the mean time we have to put up with the inconvenience with managing multiple libraries and store fronts.

Bet next year Ubi-Soft will go "PC sales were low due to piracy so we are cutting PC releases from all our games".

I kind of don't want to give them the satisfaction of getting the games through Uplay.

Already wanted to stop buying ubisoft games on steam due to there being too many problems with uplay on pc. Bought a few of them where afterwards I thought oh no, I forgot this was from ubisoft... Atleast now they won't be on steam so I won't accidentally buy while forgetting their drm stuff.

For the moment console versions still seem to be an ok way to go with their games though.

This is going to be the next big thing with these publishers. Curated storefronts built around an ecosystem of their titles is something that Blizzard started with Battle.Net, and EA, WB, and now Ubi Soft are building on. It is just another extension of the whole "games as a service" direction the industry has been moving towards.

This started in 2012 with the release of AC3 and Far Cry 3, Ubisoft at the time had a deal with 'Game', a retailer in the UK to promote physical copies over digital in the first couple of weeks. I believe that Ubisoft released both Far Cry 3 and AC3 later on (December 8th, 2012), so that was one week after the launch of FC3, but a whole month after the release of AC3. From what I can remember this was not the case with Black Flag last year though, so this is especially odd.

in effect Ubisoft are just aiding piracy, price and storage platform are more important than they think.

@joshwent: I've had some Steam horror stories and kinda chalk up to "it's a PC, shit happens."

I mean I feel for your situation, it sounds shitty alright - I'm just a bit tired of this "oh man Uplay? It's the worst thing in the worrrllld" attitude.

EDIT: I mean this is GB and some of these comments are YouTube comments section cringe worthy.

Clearly a selfish business move on the part of Ubisoft, nothing more or less.

@that_lamer: That's slightly different because then you're talking about physical sales of games and I assume digital PC copies are a much smaller %. Ubisoft can't build and open their own brick and mortar stores (though I bet they want you to order stuff online through their company store instead of Amazon) so they just have to bite the bullet.

I'm not saying it's a smart decision or not, it's a business decision. They already have UPlay set up so just feel they can kick Steam aside for big releases.

The odd thing is that EA and Ubisoft sell each others (new) games on their own proprietary bullshit. This stinks of trying to stick it to Valve and Steam specifically. Unlike Origin though, UPlay is actually worse than getting a virus on your computer.

@thatsmytrunks: you could do it without this news, in you're account details there is a big fat refund button.

@hassun: Yep. Though if you wanna start talking about "anti-consumer" all the major publishers have terrible records.

I personally don't think a boycott will change anything, or rather I don't think boycotting over this specific act makes sense. I do agree that more consumers should support smaller and more open channels like GOG rather than cling to much to Steam.

It's annoying in that the games won't be (automatically) catalogued on my Steam game list any more, but aside from that, not much has changed. Ubi games always launched the UPlay service, in all of it's shitty glory, even if you bought through Steam. Ubisoft clearly just want to get rid of Valve's cut off the top, much like EA did.

My only issue with UPlay is that it sucks ass, is bloated, ugly, and unstable. Origin is completely fine to use.

@patrickklepek: This is unprecedented, except for all the other times games have been unavailable for pre-purchase on Steam in the UK before (often up to release date, occasionally just being several weeks behind the rest of Europe or the US pre-purchase availability date) while they were added to all the other regional stores. This is a known issue that some have speculated was a retailer paying to not have pre-purchase option added to Steam but was probably just publisher experiments. I'd love it if someone did a deep dive and actually found all the previous instances of this rather than assuming this is the first time it ever happened.

It's interesting that they've now expanded this experiment to the US store but the original PCGamesN article that triggered this seems to lack the historical context under which this is happening.

@humanity: Then again it's unwise to base the general user experience on a platform or service solely on your own personal experience.

"It's not so bad because I personally haven't had an issue with" it or vice versa is never a very useful claim to make.

People will bitch and cry, but most of those people will still buy the game to have their latest AC experience, and Ubisoft knows this.

Boycott Assassin's Creed (WE WANT DEDICATED SERVERS).

Join my Steam boycott group. This time you won't get caught playing it because it's not on Steam.

@that_lamer: origin from what i hear is getting better with sales and free games and whatnot, but in full disclosure i haven't logged onto it in many a moon. And GOG though maybe not comprable is at least making strides to please its consumer base. So at least there's some decent competition.

I don't feel that comfortable with monopolistic companies personally. I don't like the idea of one major corp in control, and i think it stifles creativity and the job market. I patronize these services cause i don't really have a choice unless i want to do without a lot of creature comforts, but i would really prefer a choice.

Thats sad, im an old fan of Ubisoft :(

Is Ubisoft actively trying to screw up? I can't think of any other possible explanation.

The people who need to contact customer support and use niche beta versions of operating systems that only hold 7% of the total market share to begin with are in the vast minority. Anecdotally I've also never had problems during the few times I've needed to contact steam support, though I also have never needed to contact GoG support since they don't have anything I'd want to purchase and can't already get off steam.

Also steam being around longer doesn't mean much since time in existence does not negate someone else coming along with a better product. I've used origin and uplay - neither are a better product.

I imagine people who are now forced to get ubisoft titles elsewhere also feel as if they would really prefer a choice. That's the major argument I have against people who talk about valve as a monopoly and how they'd like more choices. There are more choices. You can buy most games from a number of different sources. Ubisoft and EA aren't providing more choices - they're providing less by pulling out of markets like steam. It doesn't affect people who don't care for steam, but it's awfully selfish towards those who do.

Amazon provides digital sales as well as physical, and whether you download a video game or buy it on a disk is irrelevant because ubisoft is still the one stamping the CDs and paying for the shipping to retailers. They just distribute it. Like amazon. Like steam. Like uplay. It's still inherent costs related to the medium, not related to the retailer's cut. And again, only one of these sales methods is being shunned. You can also buy ubisoft titles on origin still.

I have not had a good experience with UPlay with Splinter Cell: Blacklist so I stay as far away from it as possible. It's too bad. I loved playing Far Cry 3 on PS3 but have shifted to PC gaming and now won't (because of my own decision) experience it.

@xshinobi: You can actually purchase Valve games on GMG.

@shivoa:

This isnt only in uk or usa. I live in scandinavia and it is also unavailable on steam in here.

Either this is a mistake or Ubisoft has decided to stop selling their games on steam from now on. That is of course if they dont lose too many sales as a result.

thats funny

Seems like I'm about the only person who likes this news? I liked PC games before Steam came along - it was hot, wet garbage at first that was forced onto you if you wanted to play certain games - and at least now it seems like they're getting some competition. EA/Ubisoft teamup gooo!

Well do people dislike the service because they've had actual issues with it or is it because they simply "dislike" it based on some weird group mentality?

To everyone saying that Ubi is screwing up because you and others won't follow them to U-Play....

Patrick already said this on Twitter but it bears repeating: Ubisoft wouldn't be making this move if they didn't have data that told them it is a good long-term strategy. Keep in mind that every sale on U-Play is more valuable to them because they don't have to give a cut to Steam, and recouping that money will help offset the small number of people that are adamant about only using Steam as their digital download platform.

I decided to be done with UbiSoft since the hot mess that was Watch Dogs on PC (and the Assassin's Creed Female character debacle). Decisions like this don't really sway me back. I know they've had a pretty lousy stance on PC gamers in the past, but I'd think ticking off customers is no way to do business.

Eh, not that big a deal. I've sworn off of buying Ubisoft games from Steam anyway, because UPlay games bought through Steam must have the Steam and UPlay clients running simultaneously. I'll just wait for sales on one of the other PC digital stores.