Ubisoft's reluctant return to Steam continues with Assassin's Creed Valhalla getting achievements two years after its launch.

Is it me or does Ubisoft’s constant crawl back to Steam feel a bit grudging at times? Ubisoft is returning to Steam day-one releases with Assassin's Creed Shadows on February 14. But you'll still have to launch Ubisoft Connect via Steam, in a terrifying ouroboros of constant initialisation.

Ubi seems to prefer that you buy the game directly from its platform, and bypass the middleman. Assassin's Creed Valhalla's delay in getting Steam Achievements could be due to Ubi's reluctance to embrace Steam.

But lo, it has arrived. Ubisoft announced in an earlier update on Steam (and even earlier via SteamDB) that it was tweaking the knobs and dials so that Valhalla has a bevy Steam cheevos. Thrill! It's thrilling to kill an enemy while wearing the full Reaper armor set. Be amazed! Enter the Assassin office in Francia. Gaze in wonder! You can achieve maximum Dublin renown.

You are either normal and the existence or absence of Steam achievements for videogames has no bearing on your life. Or you're a freak, like me, who is having real feelings about it.

Steam's cheevos may be the least valuable of videogame baubles, but I still enjoy the neolithic, stupid thrill of hearing my UI chirrup when I've achieved something. Plus, I enjoy collecting every achievement possible in games that I really like. Is Valhalla included in this list? Well, no. It's probably on .

In an ideal world, Ubisoft would ditch launcher bloat completely. Those of us who purchase our Ubisoft games on Steam could use Steam's services and features exclusively while those 12 people who are still using Ubisoft Connect can do just that. No more nonsense about 'launchers launching other launchers' as we have it today. It's a bit like Blizzard, who doesn't force you to launch Battle.net in order to play Diablo via Steam. I think that the wish may have been the father of the thought in this case. Enjoy your Steam cheevos folks, I'm afraid we're still going to be stuck with Ubi Connect.