Ubisoft joins Steam! Now the bad news...

Ubisoft is the latest in an increasingly impressive list of publishers to pimp their wares on Valve’s ground-breaking digital delivery platform, Steam. Great huh? Soon you’ll be able to buy classic titles from the Tom Clancy, Heroes of Might and Magic, and IL-2 series as well as the subliminal Far Cry right from the online store. And future title Assassin’s Creed will be there too! You can pre-load it now! Time to crack the champagne, right? Err, no it ain’t.

Some brilliant chap at Ubi has decided that this offer should be for North America only so here in Europe (and the rest of the world) we will just have to stick to discs and shops and daylight and shit. Lame.

Ubi aren’t the first company to do this either. Atari has also signed up for across the pond only. It was originally thought that this might open up to the rest of the world in short order but after weeks of waiting... nothing.

I can only assume that each of these publishers have certain deals with distributors and retailers in other regions that would be affected by a new commitment to a digital delivery platform. Valve itself didn’t exactly win friends with its distributer Vivendi when it first launched Half-Life 2, so it could be a loosely comparable situation here. Either way it’s kind of annoying for those of us who’d prefer to maybe buy some of these games online (not to mention pay the favourable US dollar prices for them).

Source
Gaming Today

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