Ubisoft is notorious for treating the PC versions of its games as if they aren’t nearly as important as their console counterparts. Or that’s at least how many PC players feel. Well, now the French publisher is attempting to avoid giving its critics further evidence of that by delaying the launch of one of its biggest 2016 releases on Windows.
Watch Dogs 2 will not make it out November 15 on PC. Instead, Ubisoft is pushing the launch to November 29 to give the release more polish and ensure the game runs well on a large matrix of various PC components. The open-world hacking action game is still going to hit PlayStation 4 and Xbox One on November 15. Of course, PC players are likely still going to feel slightly burned that they are once again the audience that has to wait for a major Ubisoft release because the publisher seemingly prioritized the console versions.
Earlier this year, Ubisoft released the open-world hunting-and-gathering game Far Cry: Primal on consoles a few weeks before the PC launch. The game his PS4 and Xbox One February 23 before going live for Windows on March 1. Something similar happened with Assassin’s Creed: Syndicate in 2015. That open-world adventure debuted October 23 for PS4 and Xbox One. It didn’t come to PC until November 19.
Even when Ubisoft does get a game out on PC and console simultaneously, PC players often find evidence that the publisher doesn’t want to do the work to take advantage of the platform. For the original Watch Dogs, modders found a slew of options that made the game look much closer to early demonstrations of the game but that the company edited out of the final product. Ubisoft was also one of the biggest publishers to embrace (and since drop) strict digital-rights management that would require persistent online connections for single-player games.
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All of these factors have created a rift between PC gamers and Ubisoft, and that may continue following the Watch Dogs 2 delay.
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