Report: Ubisoft fall lineup pulled from Steam
It was reported that Ubisoft would be pulling its fall lineup from Steam in the UK, but now it appears that this is taking affect in all other regions, as well.
Ubisoft and Valve appear to be in the midst of a heated conflict. Negotiations between the two parties have apparently fallen through, meaning United Kingdom customers will not be able to pick up the upcoming Ubisoft fall lineup in that region, including Assassin's Creed Unity, Far Cry 4, The Crew, and others. However, the epidemic may have very well spread to all other regions, as well.
"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," an Ubisoft rep 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."
Since this statement, however, NeoGAF has observed that Steam listings for the upcoming Ubisoft slate appear to have been pulled from the United States, as well. Any of the aforementioned games on a user's wish list now lead to error links.
Shacknews is contacting Ubisoft for clarification, as well as how this will affect those that have previously pre-ordered any of these games through the Steam platform. An update will posted as soon as we get one.
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Ozzie Mejia posted a new article, Report: Ubisoft fall lineup pulled from Steam
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There's two different concepts here:
- whether or not Steam should have competitors
- whether or not Steam should have vendor-specific competitors with exclusivity arrangements
Some people think steam should have competitors but few people want vendor/publisher specific competitors.
All I know is the few games I have on Origin I forget I own because they're not on my Steam list. I didn't realize PvZ:GW was out for months because it wasn't on Steam (as in I knew it was coming but I didn't realize it had been released)
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I agree but really if these services want to compete with steam they should differentiate themselves in more ways than just game offerings.
i mean, tbf EA tries with (allegedly) better service and (I guess) a nicer UI, and GOG has its DRM free thing, but they should do more. in fact if you really wanna go feature for feature steam has them both beat still.
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Sigh I hate gaming company / market politics. I don't know what's going on behind the scenes but it annoys me so much that I can't just load up Steam and play everything out there. I know other companies want their content distribution platform to have a piece of the Steam pie but, as a consumer / gamer, I just want it to be simple. I want to click play inside of my ONE game launcher and go straight into the game. I don't want to have to run the Blizzard launcher, the Ubisoft launcher, the League of Legends launcher, the Origin launcher, the Quake launcher, and whatever else is out there. Just give me the fucking games!
I skipped BF4 and Mass Effect 3 because of EA's Origin bull shit and I'll do it again with Ubisoft. It's not like I'm hurting for games to play anyway. -
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Steam wants people to put their games on their platform to increase their market and also make money on others work even if it's offered on other services. This is essentially rent-seeking behavior by them exerting their influence in the market to get a small developer/self publisher who releases a game on their own (much easier to do nowadays) and have it on steam as well so they take a cut. Steam/Valve didn't do much to help develop the game.
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No but I can count on one hand the number of truly successful indie games that aren't on Steam. Hell, I forget about games on Origin and that's from the huge company EA. Unless you're Minecraft and people talk about you every day on the Shack, I'm probably not going to be aware of you. But I learn about new games on Steam every day. Hell, it's the reason they did the whole "storefront" upgrade on their site.
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I'm pretty sure if Steam was the only service in town that would make it a monopoly, by definition at least. It's not that way because of brutal tactics or takeovers but just because it won.
But really this is no different than owning an Xbone and wanting all games to come out on Xbone and hating companies that score exclusive arrangements with Sony or Nintendo. You don't want to have to buy multiple consoles just to play every game (though some people do), same way you don't want to have to install and maintain multiple digital platforms just to play all the games you want on the PC. The PC you bought for, amongst other reasons, not wanting to have to buy multiple pieces of hardware.
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If the other publishers' digital distribution stores are all only selling exclusive content, then it doesn't really do anything to affect any monopoly that Steam might have.
The only thing in the users' best interest would be if they all sold each other's games and competed directly on price and features.
Gaming is different to a lot of other industries when it comes to competition, because people don't want to just play any game, they want to play a specific game, and if your only option is to buy it on Origin or Uplay for whatever price they feel like charging, then you just have an oligopoly instead.
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