30

Today I bought an Uno card game from Steam since it was on sale and I thought it would be fun to try it out. However, clicking on the game icon took me to a Uplay web site instead of launching the title. I went through all the hoops to get myself a Uplay account. However, what really killed it for me was the quality of the Steam integration. Uplay seems to provide a duplicate of every Steam feature. Now I'm left wondering if there is a way to filter out all Uplay games from Steam to avoid such games in the future.

Improve this question

2 Answers 2

Reset to default
28

Uplay is a digital distribution service, like Steam. Many games offer additional meta-features - experience, achievements, trading cards, badges, &c. - for both services. Steam does not take into account whether or not Uplay (a rivalling platform, after all) offers similar meta-features for specific games.
If it does, it's probably through a user-created tag, that won't be available for all Uplay-compatible games - if it got popular enough to become a standard tag for a certain game in the first place.

What you can do is exactly that: create custom tags for all Uplay-enhanced games, and exclude this tag in your preferences (see here for instructions).

If you're talking about Ubisoft games, however (i.e. the company behind Uplay), it's somewhat easier, but less stringent: you can ignore their content by going to their publisher page on Steam, clicking the options wheel icon to the right, and selecting 'Ignore this creator' (a popup notification will mention "If you ignore a creator, then Steam will stop recommending any games that they publish or develop to you"):

Ubisoft page on Steam, highlighting the Settings menu

In case you don't buy games that often but do want to keep informed about releases, I suggest conditioning yourself to look at the publisher and developer of games (both are mentioned on the game's page in Steam) and avoid buying anything that mentions 'Ubisoft', 'Ubisoft Entertainment', 'Ubisoft Montreal / Quebec/ Kiev/ Bucharest/ Montpellier/ Shanghai/ Singapore', etc., as they are logically more liable to offer more extensive Uplay-enhanced features (although the more popular releases usually don't, anyway):

UNO's Steam page

Note also that Uplay certainly hasn't got all features Steam has: it has no Trading cards or platform, it has no tagging system, no advanced software exploration methods or Labs, no platform-based experience, no Workshop or other community-driven elements, very little out-of-game user interaction, and more.

Improve this answer
8
  • 2
    UPlay also misses the feature to play Windows games on Linux
    – Ferrybig
    Commented Mar 23, 2020 at 16:32
  • @Ferrybig AFAIK, only SteamOS games can be played on Linux; but SteamOS games additionally work on Windows. Am I missing something awesome that would allow me to play (say) Fallout on Linux?
    – jpaugh
    Commented Mar 24, 2020 at 19:11
  • @Joachim it's worth pointing out that the Steam company is aware of Ubusoft's competing service, and therefore tracks their use of the Steam game directory. If at all possible, they also track 3rd party developers which advertise UPlay games on Steam. They have therefore made an internal decision not to block or filter these games. If I'm wrong, then it implies either apathy or incompetence from the Steam team; neither of those seem likely.
    – jpaugh
    Commented Mar 24, 2020 at 19:20
  • Block or filter them how? The 'ignore this creator' function has its functionality limited to search and discovery queue results.
    – Joachim
    Commented Mar 24, 2020 at 19:22
  • 2
    @jpaugh Steam has a feature called Steam Play which allows users to run Windows games on Linux/SteamOS. They use a forked version of wine, dxvk and esync (called proton) and a bunch of libs they developed for that purpose. Runs pretty smooth, even in VR. Also technically SteamOS games can't be played on Windows. It's just that SteamOS games usually have a Windows version.
    – Scindix
    Commented Mar 24, 2020 at 22:05
49

A different approach from the other answer: if you get the augmented Steam addon, then any time you visit a Steam game page in your browser (but not within Steam), it will tell you if it requires any other launcher.

Example

[Edit] As mentioned in the comments, you can also see this in Steam (with no addons) at the bottom of the info sidebar on the game's store page

Example 2

Improve this answer
3
  • 12
    For the record, you can see this information without enhanced Steam by scrolling down and checking the right side of the page on the store. It will show in orange/yellow any 3rd party DRM used by the game.
    – Logarr
    Commented Mar 23, 2020 at 14:14
  • 1
    Yes, both on the website and in the Steam client.
    – Joachim
    Commented Mar 23, 2020 at 17:35
  • 3
    The orange/yellow boxes only talk about license and account. It is quite common for games to require accounts to play online. The requirement to manually install and maintain extra background services is far more cumbersome.
    – cyberixae
    Commented Mar 24, 2020 at 22:13

Your Answer

By clicking “Post Your Answer”, you agree to our terms of service and acknowledge you have read our privacy policy.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged or ask your own question.