Assassin’s Creed Shadows, the next mainline game in Ubisoft’s long-running historical fiction franchise, is nearly here after a few delays, a leak, and a lot of online yelling. And if you were planning to play the game on Steam, well, I’ve got some good news and also, some bad news for Steam Deck owners.
On February 28, Ubisoft published a technical-focused Q&A about Assassin’s Creed Shadows. In the post, they answered over a dozen fan questions about how the upcoming open-world stealth game will perform on consoles, specs needed on PC, upscaling and raytracing options, and more. And in this new post, Ubisoft confirmed that Assassin’s Creed Shadows on Steam won’t, like past many Ubisoft PC games, require players to download and install Ubisoft Connect.
So yes, here’s the good news: According to Ubisoft, you won’t need to muck about with a separate launcher when playing Shadows via Steam. The company says that Shadows includes a “lite embedded version” of Ubisoft Connect in it.
However, you’ll still need to link your Steam account to a Ubisoft Connect account to play Shadows. Ubisoft promises this is a “one-time” thing and once you link the accounts you will be good to go, but it is still a weird barrier between Steam users and the game. And for those worried that this means you have to be online to play Shadows, that’s not the case. Ubisoft confirmed you only need an internet connection to install the game. Then you can play offline.
Now for some bad news: Steam Deck users won’t be playing Assassin’s Creed Shadows at launch. In today’s tech Q&A, Ubisoft very bluntly responded to a question about Shadows on Steam Deck with:
At launch, the game will not be compatible with Steam Deck, due to the fact it is below our minimum specs for PC.
This isn’t surprising, as more and more games are struggling to run on the aging Steam Deck. However, the fact that Ubisoft specified it won’t be playable at launch is interesting. Perhaps in a future update the company will add some Steam Deck options to make it playable on Valve’s portable PC. But if you don’t have a computer that can play Shadows and rely on a Steam Deck to play PC games, I’d hold off on buying the new Assassin’s Creed.
Assassin’s Creed Shadows is nearly here. The game launches on Xbox Series X/S, PS5, and PC on March 20.
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