Ubisoft say nah, no Steam Achievements for Assassin’s Creed Valhalla

Assassin’s Creed Valhalla snuck onto Steam last week, but Ubisoft say they won’t be adding Steam Achievements. You can still unlock 70 of the things via Ubisoft Connect, which launches automatically when you boot the game up on Steam anyway – so the only functional difference is that your achievements won’t all be in the same place. People don’t love that, which is fair, but let’s keep our heads now.

The news comes from Ubisoft’s response to someone politely asking if Steam Achievements could be added, in a forum post that’s now flooded with 261 pages of bitter histrionics. There are many people who claim they’ll now be demanding a refund.

I do get the appeal. There’s satisfaction to be had in ticking off the many, many check boxes in Assassin’s Creed games, and I can see why you’d want that recorded in the same place as all your other games. I’m not a developer and I’m aware that adding even very simple features can take more time and effort than you’d imagine, but it’s not hard to see adding Steam Achievements as being worthwhile. Previous Creeds on Steam have had ’em, after all.

For me the value of achievements mostly lies in seeing that little box pop up and going “hah, neat, there’s an achievement for that”. Valhalla mostly sticks to the kind that just tick off story progression or completing side activities, though there’s one for petting all the cats in Evreux and another for being flung really far when one of the big guards whacks you.

Valhalla’s Steam review rating is now “Mixed”so the main thing I’d take from all this is a reminder that those ratings can be distorted by people caring about things that you might not.