Ubisoft is one of the major video game developers that have turned their backs on Steam in favor of the Epic Games Store (and their own platform). In fact, her intentions to move away have led her, although she has officially denied it, to consider withdrawing her games from Steam, and not only with regard to their sale, but also to the users who had bought them.
After several years turning its back on Steam and publishing its news mainly on its own platform and on the Epic Games Store (more specifically since 2019), Ubisoft could be considering its return to the Valve platform. The reason was already let slip by the French company itself a year ago, and it is the existence of the Steam Deck. This has been reinforced by the relative success that the console has achieved by exceeding one million units shipped (which, seeing how the console is sold, should be sold as well).
The possible return of the French company to Steam has been revealed in the wake of a project published on GitHub that tracks the startup code of the Ubisoft launcher in search of pieces of information, which has shown alleged Steam versions of Assassin’s Creed Valhalla and Roller Champions. On the other hand, SteamDB recently detected information from Ubisoft Connect.
Apart from the relative success of the Steam Deck, another possible reason is that the growth of the Epic Games Store makes it not such an exclusive place as in times past. There are now a huge number of developers, both independent and large, publishing on the Epic store, so Ubisoft’s titles have been running into competition over the years that they weren’t there before. Seeing the bad reputation that Ubisoft has earned in recent years on various fronts, users of the Epic Games Store are sure to see titles from other companies such as CD PROJEKT RED as more attractive.
Despite the increasing competition, Steam continues to maintain a very solid position among digital video game platforms, and far from taking away a large volume of users, what the majority has done is also have a presence in the Epic Games Store, despite the fact that the latter has earned quite a few detractors with its policies. In the end, the consequence for Ubisoft in distancing itself from Valve’s platform is possibly reaching fewer users.
If the Steam Deck is the reason Ubisoft is considering a return, that would mean Linux users could benefit quite a bitsince, if so, the French company would adapt its games to work through Proton, the Wine-based compatibility layer that makes it easy to run Windows video games on Linux.
We take this opportunity to remember that Electronic Arts decided to return to Steam after being away for several years to enhance Origin, although the person in charge of FIFA, quite possibly in an attempt not to be tied to Valve, also publishes some of its most outstanding titles on Epic Games Store.
