Ubisoft Announce New Rewards Program

In what can be seen as another bid to draw players towards their unpopular distribution and reward service, Ubisoft announced a new rewards program to be released later this year, the Ubisoft Club. With it now available to join, I took a look to give my initial thoughts.

From my first looks at the Ubisoft Club, the service appears to incorporate a number of features into one social platform. From your Club profile, you can do simple things, such as decorate it with Ubisoft themed avatars and backgrounds and show off badges earned through playing Ubisoft games (all of which so far appear to be straight imports from Uplay Win). Another feature carried over from the Uplay Win service are the system of Uplay Units, gained by clearing certain “Actions” in Ubisoft games and spent on rewards relating to those games, from skins and wallpapers to gameplay advantages. In addition to these standing Uplay features, games bought through the Uplay store also earn you Units and the virtual currency can be exchanged for 20% off vouchers, with other rewards such as beta accesses and more hinted to be available in future.

Another new feature is your level, determined through time played on Uplay games as well as Actions and challenges completed. It is unclear at this point if your level has any effect or just serves to let you compare with your friends. Your Ubisoft Club profile also allows your friends to see your recently played games, Actions, challenges and rewards unlocked. Additionally included on your profile main pages is a news feed of you and your friends’ recent activities on Uplay and oddly, a Ubisoft Twitter feed. In all, the profile seems a little busy, with little customization beyond Ubisoft themes available.

Overall, for all Uplay is slated by the PC gaming community, at least Ubisoft seem to be making continual efforts to improve the service for their customers. And while the new Club features bring the service more into line with the social tools available on other platforms such as Steam, it doesn’t bring anything to the table that can’t be gotten elsewhere currently. And with many already having their gaming social circles on these platforms, I see low adoption as an issue for a service already possessing a negative stigma. Could this breathe life into Ubisoft’s ailing platform, or be too-little-too-late of an effort to reconcile their audience with their digital distribution platform? Or do you think this is even a step in the wrong direction, with many wishing Uplay to be more inconspicuous?

Check out the Ubisoft Club here and let us know in the comments what you think.