Ubisoft has ended its dalliances with the Epic Games Store. After several years releasing new games on Epic's Storefront, and not Valve's, the company says it will restart putting new releases onto Steam in 2025.
Ubisoft announced today that Assassin's Creed Shadows will be available for Steam on February 14, 2025. It also added, "The new release will mark the return of Ubisoft's new releases on Steam Day 1." Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot reiterated the same statement in a trading update call that was held with analysts.
A Ubisoft rep confirmed to PC Gamer later that the company intends to launch all future new releases on Steam simultaneously with other online stores.
Ubisoft has made a remarkable turnaround. It released The Division 2 exclusively on the Epic Games Store in 2019 and was so pleased with the results, it extended the partnership almost immediately after. Chris Early, Ubisoft's senior vice president of partnerships and revenue, criticized Steam in August of the same year for its business model and, more specifically, the 30% cut it takes from all sales. Epic, on the other hand, takes only 12%.
In late 2022, cracks began to appear on the exclusivity wall when backend data was discovered that indicated some Ubisoft titles were heading back to Steam. Assassin's Creed Valhalla followed a few weeks later, two years after the original release. Four more games, including Far Cry 6 & Rainbow Six Extraction were announced for April 2023.
Those games were already available on other storefronts before their Steam launch, but new games continued avoiding Steam, including, until today, Assassin's Creed Shadows which was slated for Epic and the Ubisoft Store. Ubisoft's sales have been softer than expected in recent years. The most notable example is Star Wars Outlaws.
This helped Ubisoft release Outlaws on Steam earlier than in the past. It is also likely to have influenced the return of Steam to the mainstream in 2025. It's important to make a great game, but if it's not selling well, you will suffer. Steam is the most dominant platform despite the best efforts from major publishers such as Activision Electronic Arts Rockstar Bethesda and others.
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