Ubisoft’s New Steam Tool Ditches the Launcher, Starting With Lost Crown

There was no press release for this one or an announcement on any of Ubisoft’s official channels. Just a small patch notes entry buried on Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown’s Steam page, titled “Introducing Ubisoft Connect Services.”

“This first version is an initial step toward a smoother and more streamlined launch experience on Steam. We will continue to iterate and improve Ubisoft Connect Services over time.”

That’s a meaningful shift for a publisher that’s spent over a decade requiring its own client to run alongside Steam, even for games bought directly through Valve’s store.

The new system keeps cross-progression, cross-play, player safety tools, challenges, and rewards intact, according to the patch notes, but drops the requirement to have the Ubisoft Connect PC launcher installed or running in the background.

The Launch Parameters Behind the Switch

vgtimes dug into The Lost Crown’s SteamDB update history and found two new launch parameters tucked in there, -upc_ucs_mode and -uplay_steam_mode,confirming this as part of a broader switch. None of this kills the Ubisoft account requirement outright. You’ll still need to link one for crossplay, achievements, and cloud saves. The part that goes away is the middleman: no separate client to download, install, and leave running in the background just so a game you already own will launch.

Ubisoft has been slowly warming up to Steam for years, walking back earlier exclusivity plays and adding achievement support across its back catalog. The next logical step is likely the removal of the third-party Ubisoft launcher and letting the players play Ubisoft games directly on Steam.

For now, this is a single game, single test. Whether it holds up against Ubisoft’s history of janky server dependencies is the actual question worth watching.