Ubisoft's return to Steam continued today, as store pages for four more games slated to arrive this summer—Far Cry 6, Rainbow Six Extraction, Riders Republic, and Monopoly Madness—are now live.
Ubisoft began moving its PC releases away from Steam in early 2019, when it announced that The Division 2 would be exclusive to the Epic Games Store—and Ubisoft's own storefront, of course. It extended that deal a few months later, announcing Epic-exclusive plans for Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time Remake, Far Cry 6, Rainbow Six Extraction, The Settlers, and Riders Republic. Many Epic-exclusive game releases are timed, meaning they're committed to EGS for a set period of time—90 days, a year, whatever—but the Ubisoft releases were open ended.
But in November 2022, three years after the last full Ubisoft release on Steam, backend data indicated that Ubisoft games were about to make a return. Sure enough, after store listings appeared in November, Assassin's Creed Valhalla, Roller Champions, and Immortals Fenyx Rising all made their debuts on Steam. Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, The Division 2, and Watch Dogs: Legion followed in January, and now four more are on the way. Here's when they'll arrive:
- Far Cry 6: May 11
- Riders Republic: June 8
- Rainbow Six Extraction: June 15
- Monopoly Madness: June 22
There's no obvious window of exclusivity that's expired for any of these games: Far Cry 6, for instance, originally came out on October 7, 2021, while Rainbow Six Extraction happened on January 20, 2022. It is possible that the exclusivity deal was for one year and Ubisoft just let it slide until now, maybe to squeeze a little more of the bigger profits it enjoys from Epic Store sales: Epic takes just 12% of sales through its storefront, compared to the 20-30% cut claimed by Valve on Steam (it used to be a flat 30%, but Valve instituted a sales-based tiered system in 2018), and that adds up. But with all of these games getting older and sales presumably slowing as a result, Ubisoft may have decided that Steam's much larger user base now outweighs the benefit of Epic's relative generosity.
So far, Ubisoft hasn't commented on why these games are headed to Steam now—I've reached out to ask about the timing, and whether this signals a possible end to Epic-exclusive PC releases in the future, and will update if I receive a reply.
