Ubisoft will release games on Steam again, starting with 'Assassin's Creed Valhalla'
Ubisoft will start bringing its games to Steam again, nearly four years after it turned its attention to the Epic Games Store and its own Connect launcher. First up is one of the publisher's biggest games of the last few years, Assassin's Creed Valhalla, which will be available on Steam on December 6th. City builder Anno 1800 and the free-to-play Roller Champions will hit Steam at a later date.
"We're constantly evaluating how to bring our games to different audiences wherever they are, while providing a consistent player ecosystem through Ubisoft Connect," a Ubisoft spokesperson told Eurogamer. "Assassin's Creed Valhalla, Anno 1800 and Roller Champions are among the Ubisoft titles that will be releasing on Steam."
Assassin's Creed Valhalla will land on Steam just as Ubisoft releases the game's last content update. The Last Chapter, which will also arrive on December 6th, will bring about the conclusion of Eivor’s story and tie up some storylines. However, Ubisoft confirmed that it will not add a New Game+ mode, as it "realized that the depth of the game gave us limited options to make replayability unique and rewarding."
Ubisoft previously said that abandoning Steam was a business decision. It was one that led to pre-orders for The Division 2 increasing by six times on Ubisoft's own PC storefront (where it doesn't have to pay Valve a 30 percent cut of sales). However, it appears the extensive reach and popularity of Steam was ultimately too hard to ignore. Perhaps Ubisoft sees the value of making its games more readily available on Steam Deck too.
Meanwhile, Valve is preparing for Steam's autumn sale, which starts on Tuesday at 1PM ET and runs through November 29th. The event will be live during Black Friday and Cyber Monday, and it will include discounts on tens of thousands of games. In a trailer, Valve suggested that you'll be able to score deals on the likes of Hitman 3, Stray, Hades, Deathloop, Cyberpunk 2077, God of War, Disco Elysium,Yakuza: Like a Dragon and many, many more.