Buying a game on Steam has long ceased to mean that you will play through Steam. Sometimes the path to the main menu involves a second client, a separate account, password recovery, and a sudden reinstallation of a background service that somehow broke again. Many players don’t like this, but nothing happened to the problem. Until recently.
Ubisoft has published an announcement on Steam about the launch of Ubisoft Connect services, a lightweight background layer that replaces the full-fledged Ubisoft Connect PC client.
First to be transferred to the new scheme Prince of Persia: The Lost Crowna metroidvania from Ubisoft Montpellier, released in January 2024. The game can now be launched directly from the Valve library, without installing and launching a separate launcher.
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At the same time, the publisher promises to preserve all the functionality that was previously supported by the client:
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cross-progression between platforms
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cross-play in multiplayer modes
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security and ownership verification systems
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Ubisoft Connect challenges and rewards
All this will work through background services, which are installed along with the game and do not require a separate window with news, banners and an offer to purchase additional currency.
They plan to roll out the system gradually for other titles on Steam, and this is what is currently of most interest to the owners of libraries with Far Cry and Ghost Recon Breakpoint.
The logic of large publishers’ own launchers has always been not so much technical as political: not to depend one hundred percent on Valve, to have their own communication channel with the player and their own statistics.
The community’s complaint, however, never touched on the very existence of the Ubisoft store. One of the discussion participants formulated this very clearly: if the game was purchased from the Ubisoft store, it is logical to install Connect, but if the copy was purchased from Valve, then Valve should manage it, and not a second client on top of the first.
