Ubisoft's return to Steam continues today with the release of store pages for four games scheduled for release this summer ("Far Cry 6," "Rainbow Six Extraction," "Riders Republic" and "Monopoly Madness").

In early 2019, Ubisoft announced that "The Division 2" (opens in new tab) would be sold exclusively on the Epic Games Store and, of course, Ubisoft's own store, beginning the transition from Steam for PC releases. A few months later, the company extended this agreement (opens in new tab) with Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time Remake, Far Cry 6, Rainbow Six Extraction, The Settlers, and Riders Republic. Epic announced plans for Epic exclusives; while most Epic-exclusive game releases are time-limited, committed to EGS for a certain period of time, such as 90 days or a year, Ubisoft's releases were open-ended.

However, in November 2022, three years after the last full Ubisoft release on Steam, back-end data indicated that Ubisoft games were about to be revived. Sure enough, after the store listing appeared in November (open in new tab), "Assassin's Creed Valhalla," "Roller Champions," and "Immortals Fenyx Rising" all debuted on Steam. in January, "Scott Pilgrim vs. The World," "The Division 2," and "Watch Dogs: Legion" will follow, with four more on the way. Here are their distribution dates:

None of these games have an apparent exclusivity period: "Far Cry 6," for example, was released on October 7, 2021, and "Rainbow Six Extraction" on January 20, 2022. The exclusivity deal is for one year, and Ubisoft may have left it until now to milk a little more of the big profits from Epic Store sales: the 20-30% cut that Valve claims on Steam (previously a flat 30%, but Valve will be offering a sales-based tiered system (open in new tab)), while Epic takes just 12% of sales through the storefront, which adds up. However, given that all of these games are older and presumably slowing sales as a result, Ubisoft may have decided that Steam's much larger user base outweighs the benefit of Epic's relative generosity.

So far, Ubisoft has not commented on why these games have now moved to Steam. We have inquired about the timing and whether this is an indication that Epic's exclusive PC releases may end in the future.