Even less likely considering how strong PC is for Ubi.
-
Hey Guest. Check out your NeoGAF Wrapped 2025 results here!
Will Ubisoft abandon Steam in the next year?
- Thread starter Stumpokapow
- Start date
Even less likely considering how strong PC is for Ubi.
ebullientprism
Member
Why? You are still dealing with Uplay. If anything, its an extra step to take.
cyberheater
PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 Xbone PS4 PS4
I can live without Ubisoft.
Blackage
Member
It really depends on if stores like Origin or UPLAY have enough of those outside people who actually buy other 3rd party games on those services.
I can't imagine any scenario where pulling their games from steam is profitable given steam's exposure, even if they're really taking 100%. But when you take into account those people who buy other games outside of that first party line up, then maybe it is making them more money.
I can't imagine any scenario where pulling their games from steam is profitable given steam's exposure, even if they're really taking 100%. But when you take into account those people who buy other games outside of that first party line up, then maybe it is making them more money.
It was such a joy to have the South Park game and Grow Home without Uplay. Those were the first Ubi games I bought in quite a few years. If they leave Steam I am not going to bother with Ubi games - then again I haven't bought games from Ubi recently to know if the Steam Refund policy will work with Ubi games. If they do work with the refunds, I'd at least buy the new South Park game. Them leaving Steam though would have no affect, I'd just not purchase their games. There is so much amazing content that it really is no loss.
John Harker
Definitely doesn't make things up as he goes along.
naw, they like money. Likely negotiation tactics with Steam, which are notorious for being very one-sided with publishers.
I used the same justification with Grow Home and South Park as well. I buy Ubisoft games, just not with Uplay integration. It helps immensely that I have little interest in their modern AAA output.
To be frank, when I see intrusive DRM I start to look at comparable products that are more consumer friendly.
GhostTrick
Banned
Huh, didn't know this happened. Which games were removed?
So they aren't available anywhere, unlike GRAW 1 and 2?
SmokedMeat
Gamer™
I don't think I'd have a tough time ignoring UBI Soft's library.
dgrdsv
Member
All Ubisoft games are DRM / region / language locked in Steam here in Russia for more than a year anyway. As I don't plan on paying for this stuff I've been buying them as Uplay activation codes all this time. This way I'm getting full uncut versions for lower prices usually. So for me Ubisoft has already abandoned Steam a long time ago.
Downloading from steam is infinitely better than downloading from uplay.
Gentleman Jack
Member
I would be very, very surprised if Ubisoft took all its new titles off Steam and then refused to change their refund policy going forward. GOG? Refunds. Origin? Refunds. Steam? Refunds. Ubisoft being the sole holdout would be a very bad look.
The Technomancer
card-carrying scientician
Can I say fuck uPlay in general? I've lost access to my copy of Settlers 7 because I redeemed the code on my Steam account and now when I try to boot it up it forces me into uPlay where its not in my library and I can't redeem the code again
Their help line wasn't very helpful about the matter either
Their help line wasn't very helpful about the matter either
Devilgunman
Member
Their loss. I stop buying Ubisoft games on PC because of Uplay. Tbh, I stop being excited about most of their games (with South Park as the only exception) for a while now.
Suzushiiro
Banned
The two reasons you put your game on Steam are:
A) Exposure- being on the same storefront as everyone else means people are more likely to find your game than if you're just selling your shit directly, which is good if you have little to no marketing budget
B) Cost- building and maintaining your own digital storefront costs money, so it's cheaper to just use someone else's.
If you're a big publisher, you clearly don't need Steam for the first purpose. As for the second purpose, it comes down to if you get enough money from sales of your games on PC to justify bringing the storefront piece in house vs. just letting Gabe take a cut of the revenue. EA clearly gets enough money to justify it, which is why Origin is a thing. Ubi probably does, which is why they're probably making that move too. Activision is sort of half and half here in that the Blizzard half has been doing direct digital sales since day one while the Activision half only has one franchise that has any real presence on PC at all (CoD,) so it's probably not worth building out their own storefront just to sell that.
A) Exposure- being on the same storefront as everyone else means people are more likely to find your game than if you're just selling your shit directly, which is good if you have little to no marketing budget
B) Cost- building and maintaining your own digital storefront costs money, so it's cheaper to just use someone else's.
If you're a big publisher, you clearly don't need Steam for the first purpose. As for the second purpose, it comes down to if you get enough money from sales of your games on PC to justify bringing the storefront piece in house vs. just letting Gabe take a cut of the revenue. EA clearly gets enough money to justify it, which is why Origin is a thing. Ubi probably does, which is why they're probably making that move too. Activision is sort of half and half here in that the Blizzard half has been doing direct digital sales since day one while the Activision half only has one franchise that has any real presence on PC at all (CoD,) so it's probably not worth building out their own storefront just to sell that.
2K removed Mafia 1 and 2 from digital stores, does that mean that 2K will abandon Steam? Both games were removed silently and without press releases as far as i know.
D
Deleted member 125677
Unconfirmed Member
How has pulling away from Steam worked out for EA? If it works for them, then I could perhaps see Ubisoft thinking they're large enough to rock their own boat, and take those final 30% for themselves.
First reaction though is an immediate thought that they'll miss out on a lot of sales. I'm not the biggest Ubi fan to be honest, but I still buy most of their stuff when it reach steam-sale level prices.
First reaction though is an immediate thought that they'll miss out on a lot of sales. I'm not the biggest Ubi fan to be honest, but I still buy most of their stuff when it reach steam-sale level prices.
Bolivar687
Banned
I would hope that they're of a mind with Valve in thinking that the consumer is best served by having Uplay as an option rather than a separating wall.
The PC community is too big and too smart to play games like this anymore. Just look how Activision irreparably torpedoed the CoD community after Modern Warfare 2.
The PC community is too big and too smart to play games like this anymore. Just look how Activision irreparably torpedoed the CoD community after Modern Warfare 2.
I bought Splinter Cell Conviction on a summer sale. Thanks to the fucking terrible Uplay client, I couldnt get the game to even boot for three months.
Fuck Uplay. Its a terrible client , with not a single noteworthy feature, and that took several years to get even their patching system to get out of the Stone AGS.
Its a redundante, useless piece of shit. The sooner they get rid of it the better. EA with Origin at least try, and do have a decent client, and put good features in even if its at a somewhat slow place.
PetriP-TNT
Member
I don't even think that uPlay is that bad. Other than occasional connection problems it is pretty smooth. Miles better than say, Origin.
What's wrong with it is how unnecessary it is. My uPlay usage has been quitting it with B after playing a game and that's it. Trying to launch a game from the client launches it on Steam (well, at least games bought from Steam will).
That said, if Ubisoft decides to leave Steam, then good riddance. I guess the only winner there is the one who really, REALLY hates Ubisoft.
What's wrong with it is how unnecessary it is. My uPlay usage has been quitting it with B after playing a game and that's it. Trying to launch a game from the client launches it on Steam (well, at least games bought from Steam will).
That said, if Ubisoft decides to leave Steam, then good riddance. I guess the only winner there is the one who really, REALLY hates Ubisoft.
derExperte
Member
Their client doesn't have a way to buy something through it like Origin or Steam, not even a link to the Ubishop webpage. That's right, you can not buy games directly through the Uplay client. In the past some links even lead to Steam. The whole shop system is a big mess and would need a complete overhaul.
Ah, thought that even more were removed. The other Tom Clancy games are still available, probably they lost the licenses to the planes.
Amazon, they were on nuuvem and gamersgate recently but just checked and they are no longer available, so I'd guess amazon might be removing them soon as well.
They all still do. E.g. Clicking the "Buy Far Cry 4 now" ad leads to http://store.steampowered.com/app/298110/ and the button to install the trial version of The Crew is linked to steam://install/366310.
Code:
11 Sep, 2015 The Crew Trial Remove ComplimentaryEA has The Old Republic which basically prints money at this point, and Battlefield generally sells very well, if not the best, on PC. Though that gravy train may have ended with Battlefield 4's abysmal launch, proliferation of Counter-Strike, and continued homogenization with COD.
Ubisoft doesn't really have any huge PC franchises. When they leave Steam, will a substantial amount of people follow? Doubtful.
J
Jotamide
Unconfirmed Member
I don't understand this poll, where is the joke option?
Gentleman Jack
Member
'Ubisoft will do more to support Steam, like add community features to their games'
CosmicQueso
Member
Well, you'd have to sell 43% more units on STEAM to meet the revenue you'd generate on your own client (given the 30% fee). And since that 30% would be assumed profit (assuming you'd already covered your costs with the smaller percentage), then you'd need to sell even more units on Steam to get to the same profit on your own client.
Extend this out to all the DLC, etc, loss of control regarding feature placement during sales, and there's probably some luddite who thinks that digital sales are eroding price strength...
I'm sure someone over there has a spreadsheet showing that that Steam providing +43% base lift over sales on uplay alone is potentially false.
The spreadsheet would also very likely be wrong, but I'm sure one exists somewhere.
In a lot of cases, sure.
But the question of "how has pulling away from Steam worked out for EA" and trying to understand why EA would keep going with Origin and not Steam, then you have to assume that someone at EA has a spreadsheet that shows that Origin is a more profitable enterprise than being on Steam. This is how the math works, so someone over there has to believe that they can't get the incremental sales on Steam to cover the gap. Ubi would have to think the same to pull out of Steam. So far they haven't, so perhaps they don't believe they could maintain sales high enough to make up for the loss of Steam sales.
Or some exec with political power has pushed for Origin to succeed or has a bonus target against it, so they keep going with it. Who knows.
It's likely in the hundreds of percent above Uplay sales.
Backlogger
Member
Sorry, I probably skewed the results of the poll by choosing: No. Ubisoft will totally abandon UPlay and shut it down.
Of course, I don't believe they will do this, but this is what I want them to do.
I am all for choice of launcher and store front, but ultimately I own nearly 1500 games on Steam so given the option that is where I want to buy my games or at least house them. I hate having to have logins to all these different launchers.
If Ubisoft wanted to compete with Steam in terms of sales they would sell Steam keys of their major titles on their own store front. Give people the choice of redeeming the game on Steam or uPlay (or why not both?). Give us reasons to use Uplay rather than forcing us to use it.
One more point. I know PC is an open platform and isn't just Steam, but if you applied EA and Ubisoft's mentality towards Steam as a game console when why do they sell games on Xbox and Playstation? Why don't they just make their own consoles? Obviously a horrible comparison, but just like I have the choice of platform to buy Ubi and EA games when it comes to consoles why do I not have a choice when it comes to PC? Steam, Origin, Uplay, and I guess now the Windows 10 store should all sell eachothers games. Whoever has the best platform for cloud and other community features should win in the end.
Of course, I don't believe they will do this, but this is what I want them to do.
I am all for choice of launcher and store front, but ultimately I own nearly 1500 games on Steam so given the option that is where I want to buy my games or at least house them. I hate having to have logins to all these different launchers.
If Ubisoft wanted to compete with Steam in terms of sales they would sell Steam keys of their major titles on their own store front. Give people the choice of redeeming the game on Steam or uPlay (or why not both?). Give us reasons to use Uplay rather than forcing us to use it.
One more point. I know PC is an open platform and isn't just Steam, but if you applied EA and Ubisoft's mentality towards Steam as a game console when why do they sell games on Xbox and Playstation? Why don't they just make their own consoles? Obviously a horrible comparison, but just like I have the choice of platform to buy Ubi and EA games when it comes to consoles why do I not have a choice when it comes to PC? Steam, Origin, Uplay, and I guess now the Windows 10 store should all sell eachothers games. Whoever has the best platform for cloud and other community features should win in the end.
demosthenes
Member
I still haven't purchased a game on Origin or used a game on it (f2p). I will reluctantly cave when I get around to play Mass Effect 3 next year. Hoping EA will come back to Steam and sell their games on the platform by then :lol
I want all my games on one platform. I don't want uPlay, I don't want Origin.
I want all my games on one platform. I don't want uPlay, I don't want Origin.
TouchMyBox
Member
Uplay and Ubisoft games are barely worth installing even when I get them for free.
Grow Home was sort of neat though!
Grow Home was sort of neat though!
dgrdsv
Member
This makes no sense at all. Why would you want to be tied to one service provider only?
convenience? its not too difficult to work out
MiguelItUp
Member
I can see them attempting to pull an Origin and just pulling everything off of Steam. Who knows though, they may just put new stuff on Uplay, or maybe just continue to use both. I'm not a huge fan of their games, but from what I've experienced Uplay is awful. They should just stick to Steam.
Stumpokapow
listen to the mad man
No, I don't think a publisher who is notable as a huge supporter of Steam on a current and ongoing basis removing two titles in one series about 3-4 years apart (both of which have licensing issues) while simultaneously adding the upcoming instalment of that same series to Steam really signals a worry the same way Ubisoft's record with Steam might.
Most Uplay games don't support Steamworks, Steam Cloud, Steam Achievements and Steam Trading Cards. What other use do you have for a Uplay based game if not for those features.
Why ask for convenience when those games are still going to likely force you to download their clients to play their games in the first place?
These comments about 'convenience' seem incredibly contradictory considering EA and Uplay still have clients to push regardless if they sold their products on Steam or not. You're better off just...not buying the games then if you want to maintain your idea of 'convenience' of keeping all of your games to one client.
Now THIS, is a good reason. UPlay's downloader is fucking awful, and that says a lot. Launch-era Steam is better than Uplay circa 2015.
chaosblade
Unconfirmed Member
They are obviously going to shut down Uplay and try to forget it ever existed, and not abandon Steam.
This is totally not wishful thinking on my part. Not at all.
This is totally not wishful thinking on my part. Not at all.
I don't think I'm ever going to own Rayman Legends.
I don't think so... it's reasonable to expect they'll be pushing Uplay to the front more and more, but I don't see them fully abandoning Steam or removing older titles. Steam will take the backseat as far as their releases are concerned, but generally it'll still be there as an option.
In any case, whatever happens, I'm fine with it. Even though I'm not an Uplay fan, to me its an inconvenience at the worst and definitely not a deal breaker.
In any case, whatever happens, I'm fine with it. Even though I'm not an Uplay fan, to me its an inconvenience at the worst and definitely not a deal breaker.
Nostremitus
Member
Hmm, every time I think I may want to buy an AC game I decide against it because I refuse to have another client on my PC and don't want them to randomly drop support for a Steam version.
I primarily use Steam but keep Origin around strictly for Bioware games. IMO, none of Ubisoft's franchises are strong enough to warrant a separate ecosystem.
I primarily use Steam but keep Origin around strictly for Bioware games. IMO, none of Ubisoft's franchises are strong enough to warrant a separate ecosystem.
False equivalency.