Sources suggest that Ubisoft may be getting ready to launch Assassin's Creed Valhalla on Steam after years of being available via the publisher's own Ubisoft Connect platform on PC. The game received substantial amounts of post-launch content over the past couple of years, and now that the developer seems to have moved on to the next flagship production, the limelight has somewhat moved on from Valhalla as well.
While Ubisoft usually keeps its mainstream releases exclusive to Ubisoft Connect and, in some cases, the Epic Games Store on PC for a while, many of these games end up launching on Steam later on as well. Some of the latest developments suggest that this may soon happen with Assassin's Creed Valhalla and that it could be joining its immediate predecessor, Odyssey, on Valve's own gaming platform.
Even though Assassin's Creed Valhalla skipped Steam in 2020, a ResetEra user called AshenOne came across a number of references to the game on SteamDB's Discord server. These were, in turn, sourced using YoobieRE, which is a special tool that allows for reverse engineering of the Ubisoft Connect game launcher. The latest batch of information uncovered using YoobieRE included specific mentions of Valhalla's Steam version under a new product ID listing. This isn't outright confirmation that Ubisoft may be launching Valhalla on Steam, of course, but it certainly suggests as much.
Another interesting tidbit to reference here is that the infamously accurate Nvidia GeForce Now data leak had references to a Steam version of Assassin's Creed Valhalla over a year ago, suggesting that these plans have been underway at Ubisoft for quite a long while indeed. Odds are good, however, that the hypothetical Steam release of the game has been timed specifically to coincide with the piping down of its development. Now that the game is all done and wrapped up, Ubisoft can give its old flagship a spot on Valve's platform, potentially reaching entirely new audiences.
Assassin's Creed Valhalla recently got its final chapter, which neatly concluded most of its narrative threads and character progression arcs. It's also yet another substantial batch of post-launch content that was added to a game that was already dozens of hours long upon launch. One of the biggest action RPGs of all time, some players may well have been waiting for all of its post-launch chapters to come out before playing it.
If Ubisoft does indeed end up launching Valhalla on Steam, it's all but certain that it will end up being used as a Steam Deck benchmark at some point. With over a million Steam Decks shipped, Valve's handheld gaming PC is a perfect match for large, sprawling RPGs that Ubisoft develops and publishes on the regular.
Assassin's Creed Valhalla is available now for PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.
Source: ResetEra