In honor of two different 10-year anniversaries, Ubisoft is giving away two complete games. Assassin’s Creed 4: Black Flag will be available starting Dec. 12 through Dec. 18. World in Conflict is available starting today, until Dec. 11. Both titles are only available on PC to users of Ubisoft’s proprietary Uplay client.
In a post on the official Ubisoft blog, the developer and publisher said that the giveaway was in order to celebrate two related 10-year anniversaries.
“It’s been ten years since the release of critically acclaimed real-time strategy game World in Conflict,” Ubisoft said, “[so] you’ll be able to download World in Conflict and its expansion (Soviet Assault) for free. ... In honor of the tenth anniversary of the first Assassin’s Creed game, you’ll be able to get Assassin’s Creed IV Black Flag for free.”
The post added that players will need to log into Uplay and then download the games during the period of time that they are free. Only then will they be able to keep them in their library.
While Ubisoft will, on occasion, give away some products to users of its Uplay platform, it certainly makes no promises to do so. Two of the three major console manufacturers do, however.
Ubisoft’s announcement comes on the heels of an in-depth analysis conducted by Polygon on the value of the free games provided to subscribers on the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. That analysis also concluded with an opinion piece by our Owen Good in which he remarked that the end of the road, so to speak, is nearer for PlayStation. Since they started giving away games earlier than Xbox, they have chewed through considerably more of their catalog so far than has Microsoft.
“That is now running out,” he said. “Microsoft still has at least two years if it stands pat with its Games With Gold approach, maybe longer given major third-party publishers’ apparent willingness to help it more than Sony.
“Either way, this is a concept that began on the last console generation, and when they finally go, so will it.”