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Remember how in November 2022, Ubisoft made this big return to Steam? Since the initial release of Assassin's Creed Valhalla on Valve's platform, Ubisoft released several other newer titles. It looked like Ubisoft was playing a bit of catchup with releases on Steam after several of these titles enjoyed long exclusivity periods on the Epic Games Store and Ubisoft's own storefront, Ubisoft Connect.
With this trickle of Ubisoft releases finding their way to Steam over the past several months, you kind of got the feeling like Ubisoft was back on Steam for good. You also expected that Ubisoft's future PC releases wouldn't be locked to just one PC storefront for any amount of time.
How stupid we all were.
According to a new report from DSOGaming.com, several upcoming Ubisoft titles will be sold exclusively through Ubisoft Connect or through both Ubisoft Connect and Epic Games Store. The struggling studio is once again ignoring the largest PC-focused storefront when it comes to day-and-date releases of its newest titles.
The report from DSOGaming says that both Star Wars Outlaws and Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora will be completely exclusive to the Ubisoft Store. They cite the official websites for both of these titles where only Ubisoft Connect is listed for the PC platform.
Similarly, it was also noted that both The Crew Motorfest and Assassin's Creed Mirage will be sold only through Ubisoft Connect and Epic Games Store.
DSOGaming's report suggests that these games may hit other storefronts at a later date. That is to say that Star Wars Outlaws and Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora will be timed exclusive releases on Ubisoft Connect. And that The Crew Motorfest and Assassin's Creed Mirage will be timed-exclusive releases on Ubisoft Connect and Epic Games Store before possibly coming to Steam months or years later.
Whatever the case ends up being, this whole exclusivity thing is BS. Releasing only on your own platform? Fine. That makes sense. But to continue releasing on your own platform and Epic Games Store but not also on Steam at the same time? Inexcusable.
Say these games are timed exclusive, right? Say they release them later on Steam at a severely reduced price as they have with pretty much all of their recent Steam backlog releases. I mean, Rider's Republic and Rainbow Six Extraction just hit Steam this month and they're each still 75% off.
Most nobody double-dips on PC releases. So they're almost assuredly not getting added sales from that. They're selling the games at a massively reduced cost for weeks at a time when they do eventually hit Steam.
If they released day and date on Steam at full price, there's no doubt that revenues would be way way higher than just releasing through their own storefront or EGS, even if they're getting a bigger cut of each unit sold when compared to Steam.
Nobody outside of the very few absolutely fanatical fans will install Ubisoft Connect and make a release day purchase for these games. I can see the argument being made for buying through EGS and I am willing to bet more people regularly use EGS compared to Ubisoft Connect. Yet they still ignore the largest PC storefront all the while the company continues to struggle year after year?
Make it make sense, Ubisoft.
It's embarassing for Ubisoft though, one of the big gaming publishers feeling like they need to penny pinch in order to survive.
I wonder if XDefiant will release on Steam, that's a game that requires players to exist and... that's where the players are.
So no, it probably won't be on Steam.