“Skull & Bones” is coming to Steam: Publisher Ubisoft announced that the MMO pirate game is set to appear on Valve platforms on August 22. The Steam release comes six months after the original publication.
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Until now, the PC version of “Skull and Bones” was only available in the Ubisoft store. The Steam version can now expand the audience. However, Steam users also essentially need a Ubisoft account to start the pirated game.
Ubisoft and Steam have a difficult relationship: Ubisoft actually prefers to sell its titles in its own store so as not to have to hand over a commission to Steam operator Valve. However, you don’t want to miss out on the Steam audience either.
Temporary exclusivity is establishing itself in the industry as a sensible compromise solution: genuinely interested players purchase the title on the developer’s platform, while a wider audience can be brought on board even later.
Ubisoft’s Steam return
Meanwhile, Ubisoft had turned its back on Steam altogether. In 2019, the French publisher began removing its games from Steam. A change came in 2022, when titles such as “Assassin’s Creed Valhalla”, “Far Cry 6”, “Riders Republic”, “Rainbow Six: Extraction” and “Monopoly Madness” were later released on Steam.
Steam, as the largest PC platform, has the most users, but charges a comparatively high commission of up to 30 percent – an amount that a Ubisoft manager once described as “unrealistic”. However, on the Epic Games Store, Ubisoft only has to give up 12 percent of the sales generated by its games. If the French publisher sells content on its own platform Ubisoft Connect, it keeps the full amount.
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