The last full Ubisoft game released on Steam was Trials Rising in 2019. Since then, the publisher has released its new PC games exclusively on the Epic Games Store and Ubisoft Connect, and has not said if or when it will start releasing on Steam again. However, if data collected from Ubisoft's client backend is any indication, Ubisoft may be knocking on Gabe's door again.

Ubisoft games that have recently skipped Steam releases include 2020's Assassin's Creed Valhalla and this year's Roller Champions; a SteamDB (open in new tab) equivalent to Ubisoft Connect is in development The YoobieRE (opens in new tab) Github organization recently pulled some notable new sets of product information from the Ubisoft Connect database.

Also of relevance: in 2021, SteamDB noticed that a version of the Ubisoft Connect client has appeared in Steam's database (opens in new tab).

The theory behind this speculation is that if there are Steam versions of these games, they still need the Ubisoft Connect client, and we are seeing the first steps toward its integration. new Ubisoft games on Steam will not have Ubisoft Connect version up and running would not be at all surprising; Ubisoft's Epic Games Store release includes Ubisoft Connect integration, and the Steam version of Rainbow Six Siege is heavily dependent on Ubisoft's account system and heavily relies on the client; EA does the same thing, and launching many games via Steam launches a mini-version of the EA app (formerly Origin).

Another reason to think Ubisoft might return to Steam is that returning to Steam is a fad among major publishers: EA, Microsoft, and Activision have all released games on Steam again after retreating to their own clients for a time. games on Steam. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2's PC sales were double that of any other Call of Duty game in its class, largely due to the presence of Steam releases. Despite the temporary exit of companies like Activation over the past few years and Epic's lightly disruptive presence, Steam remains the center of the PC game distribution universe.

Since launching the store in late 2018, Epic has tempted developers to put Steam releases on the back burner in favor of Epic Games Store releases by guaranteeing them a certain amount of revenue; Epic has released games like "Far Cry 6" and "Assassin's Creed Valhalla," but we do know that Epic guaranteed $115 million to secure exclusivity for "Borderlands 3," although it is not clear how much it paid upfront to Ubisoft for games like "Valhalla.

Most Epic exclusives have a one-year term, after which the developer releases the game on Steam, raking in sales from some users who do not want to use Epic's store. "Borderlands 3" was released on the Epic Games store Borderlands 3 was released on Steam just six months after the release of the Epic Games store. So far, Ubisoft has been an outlier in this regard. The company's games have remained on the Epic Games store and Ubisoft Connect.

Epic CEO Tim Sweeney is adamant that the Epic Games Store's 12% cut is fairer to developers and better for consumers than Steam's 30% cut (currently 20% for the most profitable companies), and and Ubisoft was on his side early on in this debate; in 2019, Ubisoft's vice president of partnerships and revenue told the New York Times that he believed Steam's business model was "unrealistic."

That may have something to do with Ubisoft's seeming reluctance to slide back to Steam, as Valve does not appear to be pressured to match Epic's 12% cut, and Ubisoft's Steam-only audience It feels like they are just leaving money on the table by not selling their biggest games to the The back-end Ubisoft Connect data found by the YoobieRE project is not an absolute certainty that Ubisoft will come back to Steam, but it already I would bet on that possibility, as it seems highly likely. Likely, if Ubisoft does resume releasing games on Steam, they will continue to place a gap between releases on the Epic Games Store and Ubisoft Connect and releases on Steam.

We have reached out to Ubisoft for comment and will update this article if we hear back.