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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replyOzzie Mejia posted a new article, Report: Ubisoft fall lineup pulled from Steam
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It's here in Canada too.
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:(
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Ubi's been acting like a bunch of shitheads as far as the Wii U is concerned, so this just makes it easier for me to completely ignore everything they're doing. YMMV.
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argh, though it does sound a litlte better, they arent trying to go exclusive necessarily just a contract dispute.
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They wont get off the ground. All the steam machines will have is indie games and free-to-play games. It'll fail Ooya-style.
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This is a pretty weird thing to do so close to the holidays. I know you could just but them off of Uplay, but Steam makes everything so much more convenient.
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With that, I pulled all my Ubisoft games from my steam wishlist.
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Yea, steam is what made the pc market, specially the digital one, what is today. They would be selling way less copies if not for them.
But hey, its Ubisoft, they make a great game and then they pull the middle finger to make us way less likely to buy them; its not the first time, sadly. -
its true I own two asscreeds BECAUSE of steam sales, I just wont buy them on Uplay I have too many other games that hit what I want on Steam.
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I feel the same way. I love Steam and own far more games on it than any other service, but I would hate for Steam to be the only one doing it. They need competition to stay on their game.
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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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This exactly.
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will Valve games be available on their competitors digital platforms?
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I wouldnt mind competition, but I hate exclusion. A true competitor where all titles where available could be a great thing, but that's not how it is now, the other digital distributions services are built based on an idea of exclusivity, not better software.
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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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I wonder how much of an impact this will actually have on sales.
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im sure most people dont actually care
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That sucks
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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. -
All of you saying that you want all your games from steam only, are you saying that you want Steam to have a monopoly on digital stores? Because that's what it is, one sole provider is the definition of a monopoly.
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They could make it available on multiple digital distribution platforms. If they want to entice people to use their store over steam, reduce the price or something.
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This really isn't rational, it doesn't benefit us for Steam to have a monopoly. For instance, have you noticed that Steam's UI is terrible and has been terrible for 10 years? Maybe if they had a real competitor they would do something about that. But they've never had one in all that time.
I agree that being forced onto another platform to play a game sucks. Nobody has yet solved the problem of how to get people off Steam without doing that though. I think these publishers instead need to honor Steam libraries - link to a Steam account and unlock all the matching games on your platform for free.
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frankly it wouldnt bother me no, They've virtually had a monopoly before this happened and it's been great for PC. I dont thinka monopoly is always bad. I say I wouldnt mind competition but if we could have one service where all PC games were played I'd really be all about that, 100% playbase inclusion. etc. Steam has given me no reason to think they'd do something crazy and if they did then I think a true competitor would sweep in.
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I want the option to have it on Steam.
Ubi can sell it on whatever they want, but I hate that exclusivity defines the criteria upon which I, as the consumer, can purchase the product from.
If Ubi wants me to buy the game on their digital platform/storefront, then make a compelling product. -
No, that does not make it a monopoly. In my opinion, Steam has the best product offering. Competitors are more than welcome to create their own digital distribution platforms, but Steam is the bar. So far, I have no found a single one that I would rather use than Steam, and that's why I use it.
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It's not just about product quality though, you have to admit that there's a tremendous amount of inertia in the market. A big reason why no one wants to give the other platforms a chance is because they have a vested interest in keeping all their stuff in one place, and Steam came first. When it first came out though everybody thought it was terrible.
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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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GOG and Humble Store are decent stores. They are DRM free too, so people like me, who care about that stuff, support them when they can.
So Steam doesn't have zero competition. Uplay is kinda half assed, even compared to Origin. -
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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First choice: all games are offered on all distribution platforms
Second choice: Steam gets a monopoly
I don't mind either -
Steam is a platform like any other. And you can buy Steam games and keys from sites and stores beyond just Steam. Amazon, GMG, keys attached to discs in retail stores. And they often have sales and prices better than Steam which is always having great sales. It's not a monopoly because of that alone and that's showing no signs of going away.
Publishers doing their own digital services and forcing them on everyone just makes things worse for the user with multiple logins and launchers and DRM hoops to jump through. Consoles aren't perfect with that either with some games requiring an extra account for online games. Rockstar, 2K, EA, etc all have that bullshit loaded in their products.
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People buy the games digitally through the likes of Amazon. They won't notice who's hosting the game or likely not care either.
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They are really doing people a favor with this, having two forms of DRM for one game is just stupid with Steam + Uplay on top of each other. I don't know why anyone would deliberately opt for that. The few Ubi games I have on Steam are real dumb when I click play and it loads steam and then loads another service instead of the game itself. I wish Valve would start a policy denying 3rd party DRM games on Steam altogether. It would be a much better service, and then all the multiplayer games on Steam would be steamworks / steam friends list compatible and not the grab bag of bullshit it currently is.
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People made the same argument when Origin launched. Origin has not introduced any real competition, the only reason people use it is to buy EA games and not much else. Claiming that Origin competes with Steam is like saying ISPs compete.
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