Ubisoft gave a very small update to Assassin's Creed Mirage on Steam and managed to get it bumped up to a Steam Deck Playable rating. The rating and update went live today.
Don't expect much though, they didn't make any specific upgrades to the game. Here's what they announced:
The game will automatically detect your Steam Deck and will run default settings for better performances on this device. We recommend keeping using the proposed presets to smoothly experience Basim's coming of age story on your Steam Deck.
So, this is absolute minimum-level effort stuff. They haven't announced any plans to improve it elsewhere, so that may be the best we get for it.
Why is it rated Playable? First up: Ubisoft Connect (that's required) has issues where you may be forced to use the touch screen and it may have small text. On top of that you will need to manually bring up the keyboard any time it's needed, some in-game text is too small and the game will also not exit clean so you have to force close it when you're done as you get left with a black screen.
Here's a bit of fun behind the scenes info for you: surprisingly, Ubisoft sent a key to our Steam Curator. However, it came with a major problem. I couldn't actually play Assassin's Creed Mirage at all. I'll give you one guess as to why. It was due to Ubisoft Connect — what a surprise! Did you guess correctly? I bet you did.
Even though Ubisoft release their games on Steam now, and will be going back to same-day releases for future titles, they still use their additional launcher. Not just that, it also needs a special activation code (like a CD Key). For Steam purchases this is done in the form of a DLC. For Steam Curator keys, initially this activation code DLC was not actually linked up.
I spoke to Ubisoft Support, who gave me the usual unhelpful runaround of not actually reading what I wrote. Ubisoft Press didn't even reply and Valve support initially gave the usual unhelpful didn't-read-it reply too. 3 days later, the activation code DLC was suddenly in my Steam Library. Steam support then replied again that same day, to note basically "you're wrong, it's there" — well of course because someone did fix it. Who? I'll apparently never know. Update: Ubisoft press did reply, after the article was published, but it's solved now anyway.
Somewhat a unique situation being a Steam Curator, but just another in the list of why these extra launchers can be a nuisance. 3 days of waiting on it…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EYG368ilWoA
Even though Ubisoft release their games on Steam now, and will be going back to same-day releases
And yet they try to undercut it by selling for half the price on their own service. At least it gives Valve lawyers a nice example to argue with in the Epic lawsuit. :-D
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