For a while, Valve’s Steam was one of a kind. Then, EA decided to jump on board with Origin. Now, it seems that Ubisoft wants to join the party with Uplay (not to be confused with its former Uplay service, which was primarily a community and didn’t act as a client for gameplay).
Uplay is not simply a Steam clone however. Ubisoft’s client will be available on a variety of platforms: PC, mobile, and console. This is something that EA announced it was doing just two days ago with Origin. Cloud saves will ensure that players are able to pick up playing where they left off – across platforms.
There will of course be a shop where users can buy games and then download multiple times. Uplay does support an offline mode as well, for games that enable that, and will also have a variety of free-to-play games. There will of course be a friends system: chat with friends and join together to play multiplayer games.
Perhaps what’s most interesting is the mention of a rewards system, whereby players will gain points for playing games, which they can then use to unlock rewards for that game and others. The rewards looked like DLC items, such as skins. For more details and an explanatory video go here.
If you’re already interested in what you’re reading, you’ll be glad to know that Uplay is launching with a few days of deals – $1 deals to be exact. Some titles on sale today (for $1!) include From Dust, Driver San Francisco, and Silent Hunter 5.
With the recent security issues surrounding the former Uplay service, however, let’s hope that Ubisoft’s new Uplay has a little stricter security measures. What do you think? Excited? Annoyed?
Sounds basically like their old service but with the ability to purchase games and cloud saving. If anyone read by Bad DRM column, you know my feelings toward Uplay.
This doesn’t sound like a good idea. Unless Ubisoft is offering a superior service to Steam (or Origin, if you actually use it), they’re much too late to the game. Steam already has a good deal of the market share.
This is slightly off-topic, but…
I am firmly of the opinion that we need to separate the idea of a digital game marketplace from that of a cross-game chat program. A lot of people used third-party chat clients with overlays before the advent of Steam in ’06-’07, but Steam quickly demonstrated that their implementation of a cross-game chat and community program was superior.
While this was nice at the time, and is still a great feature, I really don’t think that it’s fair for this to be a selling point of a platform. I don’t want to be stuck buying Steam (or Origin, or UPlay) versions of games (essentially giving Valve 30% of the purchase price) in situations where developers have a self-published digital download offering, just because my friends and I chat using Steam.
I found myself doing exactly that when I decided to purchase Guild Wars 2. My first instinct was to look for the digital-only version of the game on the Steam store, not because I think Valve deserves a 30% cut for distributing the game but because I want to use the Steam Overlay and community features with it. Does anyone else see a problem with this?
Consumers don’t seem to be harmfully affected by this (at least in the immediate sense), but developers just might be, especially since the PC platform has the potential to be far more profitable per game. According to various statistics I’ve seen (and mentioned here in the comments section before), developers typically pocket about 30% of the purchase price of games on Consoles, and closer to 70% through Steam, the Apple App Store, or Google Play. Direct digital downloads can potentially allow developers to keep even more by cutting out the middle man, and I don’t want to deny them that opportunity just because my favorite game marketplace is also my favorite chat client.
Why is Steam your chat of choice for games? Is it because it blends in seamlessly with most of your preferred PC games? It’s pretty much inside of your Steam game as you said (with the overlay).
Moving away from convenience is hard. Ask anyone who runs out of batteries for their remote.
The only thing now that I think would really trump the Steam overlay is yet another overlay that offers even more advantages. But that’s difficult when it’s so easy to see your Steam friend playing a game and instantly join or chat with him/her.
Defeating Steam chat then is just synonymous with defeating Steam in general; developers have to fight the urge to put their games on Steam. That’s very tough to do right now and I can’t say that I like the idea.
Steam is notorious for building up a PC gamer’s library with its sales. It’ll be hard to leave all those games behind for another platform just because I want the developers to get a bigger cut.