Steam has removed some Ubisoft games from the UK store because of a local decision made by the publisher.
Steam has removed some Ubisoft-published games from the the UK store recently, namely the controversially DRM-infested
Assassin's Creed 2 and
Silent Hunter 5.
According to
Eurogamer though, the choice to remove the games was not because of Ubisoft's use of
always-online DRM.
Instead, Ubisoft has said that the games were removed because of a local business decision regarding Steam in the UK, not because of Valve's rumoured displeasure with the publisher's new DRM system.
"
The games listed are available for sale in all other countries on Steam. The fact it is not available on Steam UK has nothing to do with the DRM but is linked to a local business discussion between Ubisoft and Steam in UK," said a Ubisoft statement.
A number of other Ubisoft games remain available on Steam in the UK and neither Ubisoft or Valve have commented exactly why the recent games have been pulled, nor why that's only been the case for the UK store.
You can read our
Assassin's Creed 2 review for more information on that game, while our
Silent Hunter 5 review will be online shortly. Let us know your thoughts in
the forums.
24 Comments
Discuss in the forums ReplyI'm currently waiting on official response from the IPO. trading standards are waiting for the opinion of the IPO, however say "The term that you must be connected to the Internet to play the game could potentially be seen as unfair". Not very committal I know, but better than nothing at this point.
http://tinyurl.com/againstdrm
Although i do still think it has something to do with the DRM.
AC2 wasn't released on UK Steam as far as I know, but what else uses it?
Anyway, I hope it was the DRM issues that forced Steam to tell Ubi to shove it.
I like buting games on Steam, I like it when its a seamless experience like L4D or TF2.
I HATE it when crap like GFWL is forced on you.
If they made it optional and incentivised you to use it I could handle that.
Its this behavious of making it so integral to the game that you can't play even single player without it that really narks me off. :(
Only on the Steam UK?
Its related to pricing, then.
ACII
Silent Hunter 5
Settlers 7
C&C 4
so far...
Are you sure that C&C 4 is removed from UK Steam Store?
Of course, they say it's becuase you need to be online to collect achievements or some such, it's up to you if you think that it's worth it, or even worth encouraging.
Any chance of that happening?? :)
Publishers are so horrible, 99% of the time pricing/release date issues etc is due to publishers being assholes
Metro 2033 UK release was a joke entirely because of THQ who pulled it from the steam store a few weeks before release (yes thats right, the publisher stopped a steamworks game from being sold through steam...) and there were all kinds of shenanigans with release countdowns and unlock times
But I have to say, I was very disapointed when assassins creed 2 didn't get released on steam for uk, so I bought a promotion code for it elsewhere for £18, so at least I don't have to bother with a dvd, steam said on their forum it was cancelled for uk steamers for business reasons (but did not say why exactly) they even made a sticky on the forum which is no longer there.
The game works perfectly fine, whenever you make a tiny bit of progress it saves your game, this drm isn't bad at all, far better than activation limit drm's the only people this drm is bad for is people on bad internet connections or don't have internet, really the game is fantastic, the drm is no hassle, I got glued to it for an unhealthy 20 hours lol & without problems, brilliant game.