It’s been a while since Ubisoft released a game on PC via Steam. Starting with The Division 2 in 2019, they’ve stuck with the Epic Games Store on top of their own digital storefront, Ubisoft Connect, while their upcoming free-to-play arena shooter Tom Clancy’s XDefiant is going to be exclusive to the latter. But with the Steam Deck coming up soon, is that going to change?
It just might. Speaking in the company’s recent quarterly earnings call, CEO Yves Guillemot praised the Steam Deck for its innovation in the hardware space. Guillemot says Ubisoft will keep an eye on how Steam Deck performs, and that if it becomes big enough, it might compel the company to start releasing its games via Steam once more.
“We’re happy to see Steam Deck coming to the industry, it shows that it continues a flow of very innovative new hardware coming to the market,” Guillemot said (via IGN). “So we will look and see how big it becomes, but if it’s big we will be able to put our games on it.”
Valve CEO Gabe Newell has said that the company is hoping to sell “millions of units” of the Steam Deck, so they certainly have grand ambitions for the device. Perhaps we might see Ubisoft bringing its games back to Steam in the near future after all. Of course, given Steam Deck’s nature as an open platform where users will be free to download and use other game stores as well, it’s not like players won’t have any way of playing Ubisoft games even if that doesn’t happen.
