Ubisoft has started getting rid of its launcher in the place where it annoyed people most, on Steam. The company is testing Ubisoft Connect Services, a tool that keeps the publisher's in-game features while no longer requiring Ubisoft Connect to be installed or running. The first test subject is Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown.
What Ubisoft actually said
The post went up on the game's Steam page and the wording is fairly careful. Starting with The Lost Crown the company is testing a new Ubisoft Connect Services Steam tool that keeps Ubisoft game features such as cross-progression, cross-play, player safety, challenges and rewards, among others, without requiring the Ubisoft Connect PC launcher to be installed or launched.
Ubisoft then calls this an initial step toward a smoother and more streamlined launch experience on Steam, and promises to keep iterating, rolling the tool out to more of its games over time.
Note what is not in the post. Ubisoft Connect itself is not going away; this is only about not having to launch it to play something bought on Steam. No dates and no list of the next games are given.
Why this matters more than it looks
An extra launcher on top of Steam is not just an extra window. The people it hurt most are the ones not playing on ordinary Windows.
- Steam Deck and Linux. Games there run through the Proton compatibility layer, and every third party launcher is one more place for things to break.
- Valve's newer platforms. Arm and Android compatibility is built on the same kind of layers, and the fewer other people's programs in the chain, the better the odds that a game simply starts.
- Time to launch. You wait for the launcher, it updates, sometimes it wants you to sign in again. For half an hour in the evening that is noticeable.
Let me say it plainly: this is a case of a publisher doing the right thing for the right reason. Not out of love for players, but because gaming hardware has moved somewhere an extra launcher costs more than it earns.
What it means in practice
For now exactly one thing: if you own Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown on Steam, start it and see whether anything asks for the launcher. This is the first version of the tool and Ubisoft honestly calls it a test.
Every other Ubisoft game on Steam still behaves as before. When the list grows, the company says it will tell everyone separately.
For us this is also an indirect signal about the Steam Deck and the Steam Machine: publishers have started adjusting to them rather than the other way round. What actually runs on devices like those we collected in a separate roundup.
Sources
Ubisoft's wording, the list of features and the status of the test: the Ubisoft Connect Services post on the Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown Steam page, checked on 11 September 2026.
Game screenshots: the same Steam page.
