Microsoft to acquire ZeniMax Media and Bethesda Softworks for $7.5B

Re:Microsoft to acquire ZeniMax Media and Bethesda Softworks... by munk-a on Monday September 21, 2020 @03:51PM (#24547674)

I have one particular example of this I love since it happened right on the borderline. I own Anno 1800 on steam, but if you don't you can't (at least for the foreseeable and likely future) - Ubisoft pulled Anno from the steam storefront shortly after launch but! Probably due to some contract shinnanegans with steam, they continue to offer expansions + DLC to users who own Anno already on steam while new users remain locked out from buying it anywhere except UPlay + EGS. Ubisoft has moved a few things over to EGS but I love the Anno example because it landed just as EGS was gaining fame so it sits in the weird middle ground of technically being on steam but not really.

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Re:Microsoft to acquire ZeniMax Media and Bethesda Softworks... by dijit on Monday September 21, 2020 @06:36PM (#24549188)

Be a bit mindful blaming ubisoft for stuff vanishing from Steam.

A significantly large part of why Ubisoft started cozying up to Epic was not because of the 5% stake tencent has in it.

It was because Steam pulls all kinds of nasty shenanigans but ubisoft will not state any of it publicly because it would hurt their relationship.

Steam has outright pulled all ubisoft games before, and ubisoft took the blame. People assumed it was because ubi wanted to push uplay; but it was all about someone at valve deciding that we'd violated some rule about content distribution.

We gave UK players of AC:Syndicate a country specific hat which wouldn't have made sense to the global market.

They didn't warn, we woke up to see that kotaku[0] had run an article about it before we even knew ourselves.

This is not an isolated incident, just a dramatic one that I remember as my own personal shifting point w.r.t. steam, because I'd only just started working at Ubisoft and was hating on uplay and was quite fond of steam.

[0]: https://kotaku.com/ubisoft-pulls-big-games-from-steam-165567...

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Re:Microsoft to acquire ZeniMax Media and Bethesda Softworks... by lmm on Tuesday September 22, 2020 @12:40AM (#24550905)

Having bought a Ubisoft game on Steam and having to sit there for minutes while uplay updates itself when I just wanted to play for 10 minutes or so, I have very little sympathy for you.

> We gave UK players of AC:Syndicate a country specific hat which wouldn't have made sense to the global market.

So Valve makes sure that players from different countries get the same content? As a UK expat that's something I'm glad of.

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