Ubisoft recently, and after a long period of reluctance, decided to add Steam achievements to some of its Assassin's Creed games it had launched on Steam. This comes shortly after Ubisoft launched Assassin's Creed Mirage to Steam with achievements already baked-in. Now, Assassin's Creed Unity, Black Flag, Revelations, and Syndicate all join AC Mirage in the Steam Achievements family. Putting the cherry on top of the achievement pie, any achievements already earned while playing the Steam versions of these Assassin's Creed games will retroactively apply to your Steam account.

The recently added Steam achievements are all pretty standard fare, with each game getting in the neighborhood of 50-60 achievements, except for AC Revelations, which only has 48 achievements. Where Ubisoft previously almost spitefully neglected its Steam audience, with many Assassin's Creed and other AAA games only coming to Steam long after their initial launch—largely without support for achievements and other advanced features—the game developer has seemingly realized the value of Steam as a platform.

After the fiasco surrounding the cancelled press previews and delayed upcoming launch of Assassin's Creed Shadows, it appears that Ubisoft is doing something of a redemption tour in order to garner hype for the latest installment in the Assassin's Creed franchise. Previously, news about AC Shadows's simultaneous console and Steam launch was quite positively received. Now, Ubisoft has given us a full overview of what's to come regarding the combat mechanics in Assassin's Creed Shadows. While the weapons and unit types in Shadows are certainly interesting, perhaps the most important take-away is that timing will be an important aspect to combat.

One of the most important mechanics behind Assassin's Creed Shadows's combat seems to be the character and weapon choices. The samurai, Yasuke, and the shinobi, Naoe, will supposedly come with their own versions of stealth, defensive, and offensive attacks, and each will have their own weapons, to bring some diversity to the gameplay of each character. It looks like each of the different weapon classes will be locked to either character and play style. At launch, Naoe will have three weapons to choose from, and Yasuke will have a broader selection of five weapons to choose from.

Assassin's Creed Shadows is seemingly not out of hot water with gamers just yet, although this time, the flak seems to have been mostly unwarranted. Earlier this week, rumors popped up on Reddit claiming to reveal the Assassin's Creed Shadows Animus Hub, which was supposedly the upcoming RPG's dedicated launcher, and a host of in-game season passes and rewards. The leak purports to detail the first free battle pass, which is referred to as "Eye in the Dark" and will consist of 20 reward tiers. Completing the battle pass allegedly rewards 9,050 Isu coins, which can be used to purchase various cosmetics in the form of character, weapon, and mount customization options. Somewhat comically, there appear to be in-game collaborations with the likes of VISA, Red Bull, Intel, BAPE Clothing and Sprecher, although how these will play out in the game is a mystery. This news made quite a stir when it was first announced, since Ubisoft was very clear when it confirmed the game's delay last month that there would be no season passes in Assassin's Creed Shadows.

As it turns out, though, the rumors were kicking up enough speculation about the return of paid subscriptions, battle passes, and season passes that Ubisoft took to its official Discord server to address the rumors directly. Although Ubisoft confirmed that the Animus Hub is a piece of software it has been working on, all the content and rewards offered in the Animus Hub will be free content. Ubisoft was, however, careful with its words, not denying the existence of season passes and battle passes, instead only commenting that those passes will not be paid. Additionally, Ubisoft confirmed that there will be additional in-game content available for free in the Animus Hub.

It looks like the single-platform exclusive era that has plagued the gaming industry since the 2010s is coming to an end. The writing has been on the wall for a while, with Square Enix already previously confirming that its games would be launching earlier on both PC and Xbox, but now, the game studio has confirmed that more of its titles will be launching to more platforms simultaneously. This comes after Ubisoft made a similar announcement regarding the launch of Assassin's Creed Shadows after a delay and a bit of controversy.

The news from Square Enix broke in an interview with Japanese outlet 4gamer.net, with Square Enix's Naoki Yoshida confirming that the strategy has proven beneficial in terms of attracting more players to the company's games, further explaining that PC is the largest audience for gaming. The game Yoshida was specifically addressing in the interview was the upcoming Fantasian Neo Dimension—an upcoming CRPG developed by Mistwalker Corporation and published by Square Enix, with a planned multi-platform launch on December 5, 2024—but Yoshida seems to imply that this new policy will apply to more games going forward. It appears that both the announcement by Square Enix and Ubisoft are driven by commercial motivations.

Assassin's Creed Shadows has had a bit of a rough time of late, with Ubisoft initially pulling out of the Tokyo Game Show entirely and delaying the launch of Shadows to February 2025, attributing its absence at the show to the buggy, incomplete nature of the 2025 entry into the Assassin's franchise. In the announcement confirming the launch delay and the Tokyo Game Show Absence, Ubisoft also communicated that it would be shaking up the Assassin's Creed launch and monetization strategy significantly. Apparently as part of that monetization switch-up, Ubisoft has also changed the price of the Assassin's Creed Shadows Collector's Edition, cutting it by a whopping $50.

Ubisoft confirmed the price change on Discord in an official Q&A, announcing that, due to dropping the three-day early access that Collector's Edition buyers would originally have received, the Collector's Edition would now cost $229.99 instead of the previous price of $279.99. Meanwhile, the Collector's Edition will still include all the other paraphernalia and real-world loot that it originally bundled. The aforementioned delay and changes to the monetization strategy not only saw the cancellation of the Season Pass model previously used by Ubisoft, but it also meant that all Assassin's Creed Shadows players would also get the game's first expansion for free along with the base game.