Nope can unsee that now, I imagine you all as your Uplay avatars.
Uplay is a service (if you can call it that) with an identity crisis.
I've sadly been there from the beginning with AC2 on 360 and then a month later on PC for the same game. AC2 just acted like a silly gated DLC scheme on consoles for playing the game with all preorder and bonus DLC also unlocking through it and not the draconian DRM on PC that severely affected those without stable internet connections. The same with SC Conviction except on PC you used that system for multiplayer as well. Co-op wasn't a problem if you had found another poor soul who signed up for a Uplay account and added them to your list but the other game modes seemed massively unpopulated even at around launch.
A trend then continues with each games integration of Uplay doing something different. AC: Brotherhood added guides that were rubbish, AC: Revelations had a community feed that told you what your Uplay chums had done in game, PoP Forgotten Sands went back to barebones but had tie in videos with the film and behind the scenes, AC III was basic awards and multi but added purchasable DLC right from the client, Far Cry 3 had a news ticker on the main menu with updates of what your Uplay friends list was doing but never really seamed to work, Driver SF I can't remember much but I think it's pretty basic, Rayman Legends deals with leaderboards maybe online coop ( don't know only played it local) as well as the usual guff and AC IV adds community challenges and shareable events that were a bit messed up for a very long time. Now this isn't necessarily an addition on top of each other, some of these features only appear in each respective game. This isn't even touching on the separate friends list dilemma (good and bad in it's own right).
The avatars thing Is really baffling as you next to never see them in a game. I don't think I even had one until I had to go to their site last year after they got hacked, forcing me not only to change my password but thrusting a gaudy avatar on me as well. The first few implementations on consoles haven't been patched and still shows me with one avatar whilst the later has a playdough representation of me and the AC IV companion app another completely different avatar all together. The amount of times they have been careless with user credentials I'm quite glad my username and email address on Uplay is completely unique to anything of substance to my other online accounts.
What's more even, games you redeem and download for Uplay have different ways of installing and patching. I'm not going to go in about Blacklist too much as I'm still having nightmares but the mere fact that a content delivery system in this day and age uses package files to install that carry no method to verify when it is missing packages (and it will be unless you have a perfect connection) is baffling. Couple that with a broken patching system that downloads the most recent patch which can't be installed due to needing the previous versions. You end up having to manually patch the game to have any chance of it running. Then a game that was released a month later, AC IV, uses a system more akin to Steam's. It does away with Blacklists late 90's era system and creates a file system structure and downloads self extracted packages with no fuss at all. Why was that so hard for a game the month before to use? Patching is still a little off as it only checks on start up of the client and was about 2 weeks behind Steam's patches. Child of Light had been absolutely fine so far (touch wood) and checks for updates before you launch the game not just at the clients start.
All in all I have no idea why the service still exists on Steam. Maybe it's too much hassle to rip it out for UbiSoft and far too entrenched into the MP and DLC systems for each game to be anything but a pain for their engineers to rework Steamworks into (pass the pain to us eh folks?) but it's just another layer getting in the way. The offline mode implemented at around Revelations time has had nary an official mention (go to the cog on the client and select it there) and after activation Uplay is pretty much made pointless. Watch_Dogs is meant to doing something different and I believe them in the many guises I've experienced over the years but let's hope it's for the best and stays well out if the way on Steam.
I guess someone at UbiSoft is a massive control freak. Sorry for the monumental rant.
game, let alone coming soon
