Ubisoft’s return to Steam continued right this moment, as retailer pages for 4 extra video games slated to reach this summer time—Far Cry 6, Rainbow Six Extraction, Riders Republic, and Monopoly Insanity—are actually stay.
Ubisoft started transferring its PC releases away from Steam in early 2019, when it introduced that The Division 2 (opens in new tab) can be unique to the Epic Video games Retailer—and Ubisoft’s personal storefront, after all. It prolonged that deal (opens in new tab) a couple of months later, saying Epic-exclusive plans for Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time Remake, Far Cry 6, Rainbow Six Extraction, The Settlers, and Riders Republic. Many Epic-exclusive sport releases are timed, which means they’re dedicated to EGS for a set time period—90 days, a yr, no matter—however the Ubisoft releases have been open ended.
However in November 2022, three years after the final full Ubisoft launch on Steam, backend information indicated that Ubisoft video games have been about to make a return. Certain sufficient, after retailer listings appeared in November (opens in new tab), Murderer’s Creed Valhalla, Curler Champions, and Immortals Fenyx Rising all made their debuts on Steam. Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, The Division 2, and Watch Canines: Legion adopted in January, and now 4 extra are on the way in which. This is after they’ll arrive:
There isn’t any apparent window of exclusivity that is expired for any of those video games: Far Cry 6, as an illustration, initially got here out on October 7, 2021, whereas Rainbow Six Extraction occurred on January 20, 2022. It’s potential that the exclusivity deal was for one yr and Ubisoft simply let it slide till now, possibly to squeeze just a little extra of the larger earnings it enjoys from Epic Retailer gross sales: Epic takes simply 12% of gross sales by way of its storefront, in comparison with the 20-30% reduce claimed by Valve on Steam (it was a flat 30%, however Valve instituted a sales-based tiered system (opens in new tab) in 2018), and that provides up. However with all of those video games getting older and gross sales presumably slowing in consequence, Ubisoft could have determined that Steam’s a lot bigger person base now outweighs the good thing about Epic’s relative generosity.
To date, Ubisoft hasn’t commented on why these video games are headed to Steam now—I’ve reached out to ask concerning the timing, and whether or not this indicators a potential finish to Epic-exclusive PC releases sooner or later, and can replace if I obtain a reply.
