Ubisoft remembers it owns Splinter Cell, patches Steam achievements into Blacklist 12 years after it first came out

After a brisk 12 years, Ubisoft has suddenly remembered it apparently owns some kind of series where you do war crimes for the NSA. The company has just added Steam achievements to Splinter Cell: Blacklist, the 2013 stealth-action game that marks the last time Sam Fisher was seen alive in a videogame of his own.

This is part of Ubi's ongoing quest to add Steam cheevos to its voluminous back catalogue of games on Steam, the same one that's seen games like Assassin's Creed 3 and Watch Dogs 2 suddenly sprout achievements after years on the platform. I poke fun, but it's a genuinely good thing, and a sound bit of customer relations by Ubisoft. Some people care way too much—which is to say, at all—about Steam achievements. Also, I am 'some people.'

Like with other Ubisoft games that have gotten this treatment, you won't have to go and earn all the ones you earned on Ubisoft Connect again. "Achievements will be retroactively earned for the accomplishments already completed in your game," says Ubi. You just have to launch the game once and any cheevo you got on Ubisoft's platform will trigger on Steam.

As an added bonus, the studio's even killed off 19 achievements that you needed online services to get. Those online services don't exist anymore since the game's official servers got zeroed back in 2022, so to better enable you to get that coveted 100% achievement ribbon, Ubisoft yanked the relevant achievements out.

All well and good, but hey, Ubi, since I have you: please remember Splinter Cell some more. I know you've got that remake of the first game coming, at least notionally, but we never got Pandora Tomorrow or the superior Xbox version of Double Agent on PC and, frankly, everything from Double Agent back could do with a patch or two to make it a little easier to play on modern machines.

I've always had a soft spot for the old Splinter Cells. If the remake sparks a neuron in Yves Guillemot's brain that leads to the original series getting patches that do more than just activate achievements? I'd be a very happy man.