It"s been a tough day for Ubisoft. The publishing giant just announced a delay that pushed back one of its biggest game launches of the year, Assassin"s Creed Shadows, to 2025, while also revealing lower-than-expected sales for Star Wars Outlaws. Future releases from the company will now go through a different process when hitting PC, too, and it"s good news for Steam fans.
A financial update from Ubisoft has revealed that Star Wars Outlaws, the Massive Entertainment-developed open-world adventure, will be released on Steam on November 21.
“In response to player feedback, Ubisoft’s development teams are currently fully mobilized to swiftly implement a series of updates to polish and improve the player experience in order to engage a large audience during the holiday season to position Star Wars Outlaws as a strong long-term performer," the company added.
Ubisoft originally began skipping Steam launches for its games back in 2019, opting to offer its published titles via the Ubisoft Connect and Epic Games Store platforms instead. The company said then that it wanted to support Epic"s mission to "disrupt the videogame industry" with its bigger revenue share option.
In 2022, Ubisoft quietly started bringing back its missing catalog to Steam. However, the releases were for games that had been out for a while, sometimes years back. The gap has been narrowing slowly, though. For instance, Skull and Bones landed on Steam less than a year after its Ubisoft and Epic Games Store debuts. Star Wars Outlaws" arrival marks the jump to Steam in just three months.
Ubisoft also confirmed today that, moving forward, all of its titles will receive day-one Steam releases. This also applies to the newly delayed Assassin"s Creed Shadows. When it launches on November 21, the game will be released on Steam alongside other platforms. With Steam continuing to break its own user records, with the latest numbers showing 38 million concurrent online users, it"s clear why Ubisoft wants to jump back into the pool as its sales numbers slump.