One point of friction with games on Steam is that, if the game was released by a publisher that has its own launcher, playing it on the Valve launcher still means having to install the publisher’s launcher. One such publisher is Ubisoft, but the good news is that the French company is looking to change that. As part of an update note for Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown on Steam, the company said that it’s testing a new tool that would make the Ubisoft Connect PC launcher unnecessary.
The note reads “starting with Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown, we are testing a new Ubisoft Connect Services Steam tool that keeps Ubisoft game features such as cross-progression, cross-play, player safety, challenges and rewards, among others, without requiring the Ubisoft Connect PC launcher to be installed or launched”. This tool will be iterated on and improved over time, while keeping the experience of starting up a game as seamless as possible.
Also in the note is the publisher saying that this tool will “progressively evolve and roll out to more Ubisoft games on Steam in the future”. There’s no timeline for when the next game is getting the same treatment. But the fact that it is happening at all is good news for those who are getting tired of having a game on Steam but still needing another launcher to play it. It’s worth noting as well that whatever telemetry and other processes needed for all the aforementioned functions will still be part of the Connect Services tool.
All that being said, it’s likely that you will still need a Ubisoft Connect account, and will need to log in the first time you launch the publisher’s game on Steam, even after the launcher itself is removed from the process in the future. And for games by other publishers with their own launcher, such as EA or Rockstar, that friction will continue to exist until they announce similar measures.
(Source: Steam)
