I’m glad it’s highlighted on Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown in particular, because that was the first game I’d bought from Ubisoft in years, and the extra launcher deterred me from considering buying any of their other games for a long while still. EA still has launchers on older games like It Takes Two and A Way Out and Dragon Age II and Inquisition that create obstacles for LInux compatibility and offline play, but newer titles like Split Fiction and The Veilguard no longer have the extra launcher problem. It’s good to see Ubisoft following this trend, and hopefully they can stop standing in the way of their own success.
Which is exactly why companies like Ubisoft are so dead set on forcing 3rd party launchers down everybody’s throats. They want to drag you out of the Steam ecosystem so they can pocket a bigger piece of the pie and infect your computer with god knows what.
Yeah, which is why I think it doesn’t make sense that Steam allows it in the first place. Like, it’s actively letting a direct competitor use your platform. You get none of the benefits and all of the upkeep.
They get a 30% cut of every sale and also get to say “we’re not a monopoly.” In the business world, that’s a win win.
I kinda get that for premium games but, huge offenders of this are free to play gatcha style games. Which all transactions are off platform via their own launcher system. I don’t think steam gets a cut on those. The monopoly thing has merit though, they have been super concerned about that ruling the last few years.