UbiSoft pulls new releases from Steam

[Syt]

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2014/11/07/steam-ubisoft-assassins-creed-unity/

Update: "We are looking into it at the moment," an Ubisoft representative has told us about the later vanishings outside the UK. Meanwhile, two dear readers in Finland and Germany comment that the games have disappeared from Steam for them too.

When Ubisoft's Assassin's Creed Unity, The Crew, and Far Cry 4 all vanished from Steam in the UK earlier this week, the publisher made cryptic mention of being "in discussions with Valve". What's so weird or special about the UK that our Steam wouldn't get Ubisoft's big fancy Christmas lineup? Turns out, we're not so special any more. These games are vanishing from the US and Australian stores too, VG247 noted, suggesting something bigger than a regional quirk is afoot.

Exactly what that's going on is a mystery at this point. I'm getting flashbacks to when EA started pulling games from Steam and went Origin-only, but that's only speculation.

Ubisoft's vague story yesterday was that they were chatting with Valve about something, but that it might only be a temporary vanishing.

"We've been in discussions with Valve about Assassin's Creed Unity but for the time being the game is not available via Steam in the UK," they told PCGamesN. "In the meantime, UK customers wishing to purchase the game digitally can do so by visiting the Uplay store, our retail partners or other digital distributors."

We've shot Ubisoft a line to see what they say now. To half-blindly draw comparisons, the problem EA had with Steam was wanting to "establish an ongoing relationship" with players, which they say was about providing updates and services themselves but rumour says was also about selling DLC directly without going through Valve – and Valve wouldn't allow that. I do hope we won't end up with Ubi's new games only available in the Uplay client and store; it's simply not as good as Steam.

For several years, Ubisoft games on Steam have required a Uplay account and launched the client anyway, but a few recent Uplay updates have deepened the connection. One in September let folks link Steam and Uplay accounts, "in order to seamlessly start your games from Steam." Another this very week (as LewieP points out) makes it so launching a Uplay game through Steam will show all your other Steam-bought Uplay games in the Uplay client, "making it easier to find the content you own." Which seems a bit like making it yell "Hey! Over here! Look! You can use this thing! It has games!"

The most recent update also added features one would expect from a client Ubisoft would want people to have open all the time, like minimising to the task bar tray and background autopatching (which can't be disabled). They're sensible things to add anyway, of course, but Ubisoft haven't seemed too serious before about making Uplay usable or desirable. Perhaps they are shoring it up to try ditching Steam and going their own way.

But this is, of course, all speculation and line-drawing.

UK, US, Canada, and posters confirms additional countries (Germany, Switzerland, Finland ...). That mostly means Far Cry 4, Assassins Creed 4, and The Crew.

Guess they want to pull an EA and try to make their UPlay store relevant?

[garbon]

UPlay is the worst

[Grey Fox]

Anyway buying Ubi games on PC is a recipe for disappointment.

My H-Brother works on Far Cry 4, game is fun but the pc version will be a disaster, as usual.

[Razgovory]

UPlay is the worst

Very true.

[Scipio]

UPlay is the worst

UPlay caused the Russian Revolution.

[Caliga]

UPlay doesn't care about black people.

[The Brain]

They kind of lost their way after Pro Tennis Tour 2.

[Neil]

You know, I can't think of the last time I played an Ubisoft game.  I don't think this is a loss for me.

[Razgovory]

I really enjoyed Far Cry 3.  Still I did have to log into Ubisofts stupid front end to get the game to work.  Why can't they take a page from Microsoft and just kill that service like Microsoft did with Games For Windows Live.

[Neil]

Once a game company gets to a certain size, they like to make the idiotic decision of trying to make their own Steam.

[garbon]

UPlay doesn't care about black people.

Do you care about black people?

[viper37]

Once a game company gets to a certain size, they like to make the idiotic decision of trying to make their own Steam.

Like EA?  Yeah, stupid move.  I hate Origin.
I wish they moved back to Steam, where I can get all my games.

[Sheilbh]

Apparently their latest game is also Royalist

They're being criticised in France - thank the Supreme Being!

Assassin's Creed: Unity 'makes travesty of the French Revolution'
Jean-Luc Mélenchon claims video game misrepresents 'cretin' Marie-Antoinette and the 'treacherous' King Louis XVI as upstanding people
By Rory Mulholland, Paris3:20PM GMT 14 Nov 2014



Popular video game Assassin's Creed: Unity has become the unlikely target of an attack by a French firebrand politician who argues that the blockbuster video game makes a travesty of the French Revolution.

Former French minister Jean-Luc Mélenchon has said the game feeds on the same anti-republican sentiment that fuels the far-right extremists of today.

Assassin's Creed outrageously presents people like the "cretin" Marie-Antoinette and the "treacherous" King Louis XVI as fine upstanding people, while it portrays the French masses, the sans-culottes, as bloodthirsty savages, Mr Mélenchon said.

Worst of all, it depicts Robespierre as a monster when in reality he said he was initially a hero of the 1789 Revolution who gave the vote to Jews and wanted to extend it to women, said Mr Mélenchon, a former minister who left the mainstream Socialists to form his own far-left Front de Gauche party.

Unity is the latest video game to be released in the Assassin's Creed series created by French publisher Ubisoft. It was launched on Tuesday and was immediately criticised by players, the media and its own investors after it was found to contain wide-ranging glitches.

But the latest attack is one of the first times it has been criticised for its content, which had thus far been praised for providing a vivid portrayal of Paris during one of the most tumultuous periods in the city's history.

The game, one of the most anticipated launches of 2014, is set at the height of the French Revolution which saw the sans-culottes rise up against what they saw as the heartless King Louis XVI, who was later guillotined.

Its hero is Arno Victor Dorian, a young French nobleman whose adventures take him across the rooftops of Notre Dame cathedral, through the skull-filled Catacombs and among the angry mobs rampaging through Paris.

But its portrayal of the politics of the Revolution has infuriated Mr Mélenchon, who denounced the game in a lengthy tirade in an interview with France Inter radio.

"It is propaganda against the people, the people who are (portrayed as) barbarians, bloodthirsty savages," he said.

"In 1789 there were the poor aristocrats, and they are presented as fine upstanding people."

He noted that the king had tried to get foreign armies to come to France to save him, and that his wife Marie-Antoinette, "that cretin, who is celebrated as a poor little rich girl" had tried to buy off politicians to save her skin.

"And the man who was our liberator at a certain moment of the Revolution – because the Revolution lasted a long time – Robespierre, is presented as a monster," said the politician who got 11 per cent of the vote in his failed bid for the French presidency in 2102.

Robespierre was one of the best-known and most influential figures of the French Revolution.

He is seen by many as dictatorial and fanatical and is associated with the mass executions of "enemies of the Revolution". But his supporters praise him as a spokesman for the poor and oppressed and a guardian of the French Republic.

Mr Mélenchon concluded his tirade against the game by saying that it "presents an image of hatred of the Revolution, hatred of the people, hatred of the republic which is rampant in the far-right milieux (of today)." 

My favourite bit, 'this denigration of the great Revolution is a smear campaign to instil more self-loathing and self-vilification in the French.'

[Neil]

My favorite part is that he failed to get elected president in 2102.

[Valmy]

Marie Antoinette was a traitorous reactionary (I mean if you consider her French at all).  Louis XVI was a vacillating incompetent bumbler.  I think he got his labels backwards.