Ubisoft Shakes Up Assassin's Creed Shadows Launch With Day 1 Steam Release and No Season Pass

[Cpt.Jank]

There have been a slew of changes for the upcoming Assassin's Creed Shadows launch, and the latest announcement out of Ubisoft promises some serious changes to the game's launch strategy. Not only will the game be delayed by almost four months, but it will now launch on PC via Steam at the same time as PS5 and Xbox consoles, and Ubisoft is apparently ditching the season pass model that it previously resorted to for major game launches.

In a previous article, we detailed the delays to Assassin's Creed Shadows, but further information was revealed in a Ubisoft trading update (PDF):

We are departing from the traditional Season Pass model. All players will be able to enjoy the game at the same time on February 14 and those who preorder the game will be granted the first expansion for free.

Previous Assassin's Creed games generated a bit of backlash from players over the Season Pass model, likely prompting Ubisoft to already start ditching season passes in the most recent installment in the franchise, Assassin's Creed Mirage, in favor of discrete DLC packs exclusively.

In the financial update addressing the upcoming Assassin's Creed Shadows launch, Ubisoft also credits the poor performance of Star Wars Outlaws for both the Shadows delay and the changes to its approach to game launches and monetization. The company's CEO and co-founder, Yves Guillemot, said in the update that Ubisoft is pivoting to a player-first and gameplay-first approach to gaming, at least in the short term, but it still seems intent on creating open-world adventure games with live-service games-as-a-service monetization strategies going forward. Perhaps this is an indication that Ubisoft will be more careful about balancing monetization and player satisfaction in future game releases.

Our second quarter performance fell short of our expectations, prompting us to address this swiftly and firmly, with an even greater focus on a player-centric, gameplay-first approach and an unwavering commitment to the long-term value of our brands.

Although the tangible benefits of the Company's transformation are taking longer than anticipated to materialize, we keep on our strategy, focusing on two key verticals - Open World Adventures and GaaS-native experiences - with the objective to drive growth, recurrence and robust free cash flow generation in our business.

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