Ubisoft's creep back onto Steam continues with Immortals Fenyx Rising
"Coming soon" to Valve's platform.
Ubisoft's gradual tiptoe back onto Steam is set to continue, with the publisher's enjoyable 2020 action-adventure Immortals Fenyx Rising now confirmed as heading to Valve's platform.
Launched at the tail-end of 2020, Fenyx Rising followed the same pattern as all new Ubisoft PC releases since 2019, skipping Steam in favour of a dual launch on Ubisoft Connect and Epic Games Store - where Epic was, perhaps not coincidentally, wooing publishers and developers with a 12% revenue cut compared to Valve's 30%.
However, it appeared Ubisoft's position on its preferred storefronts was about to shift in November after listings for a Steam version of Assassin's Creed Valhalla were discovered, and the move was confirmed by the publisher itself in December, when Valhalla, Anno 1800, and Roller Champions were all announced to be heading to Valve's platform.
That line-up has now expanded by one, after a store listing for Immortals Fenyx Rising also appeared on Steam earlier this week, albeit without a release date beyond "coming soon". Ubisoft has yet to confirm whether its new distribution stance will apply to all future games or if Steam releases will be selected on an individual bases.
Immortals Fenyx Rising, for its part, is a decent bit of fun, taking Zelda: Breath of the Wild's free-form open-world exploration, infusing it with some wonderfully silly Greek mythology flair, and Ubisoftifying it up to the nines, with so many mini-map icons that the notion of exploration feels a bit moot when you can't move three feet without stumbling over another puzzle.
"I feel for Immortals a bit," wrote Eurogamer's Christian Donlan in his review back in 2020. "It's a skilful, lovingly made product, but it is unmistakably a product, and the best games in this genre all feel like genuine adventures."