A few weeks ago we got some solid indications that international mega-publisher Ubisoft would be slinking back to Steam, the de facto default for PC game stores. Lo and behold, le fils prodigue revient: as of yesterday, Ubisoft has posted Assassin's Creed Valhalla to Valve's ubiquitous storefront with a December 6th release date. It will follow with Anno 1800 and Roller Champions at some point. Ubisoft is the latest huge publisher to venture out on its own with its a PC-based game launcher, then return to Steam's profitable fold. Ubisoft's brand of bloatware was called Uplay, which became the exclusive home of the publisher's major franchises in 2019, and was rechristened Ubisoft Connect in 2020.

Ubisoft will start bringing its games to Steam again, nearly four years after it turned its attention to the Epic Games Store and its own Connect launcher. First up is one of the publisher's biggest games of the last few years, Assassin's Creed Valhalla, which will be available on Steam on December 6th. City builder Anno 1800 and the free-to-play Roller Champions will hit Steam at a later date. "We're constantly evaluating how to bring our games to different audiences wherever they are, while providing a consistent player ecosystem through Ubisoft Connect," a Ubisoft spokesperson told Eurogamer. "Assassin's Creed Valhalla, Anno 1800 and Roller Champions are among the Ubisoft titles that will be releasing on Steam." Assassin's Creed Valhalla will land on Steam just as Ubisoft releases the game's last content update.

In recent years, Reinforcement Learning (RL) has seen increasing popularity in research and popular culture. However, skepticism still surrounds the practicality of RL in modern video game development. In this paper, we demonstrate by example that RL can be a great tool for Artificial Intelligence (AI) design in modern, non-trivial video games. We present our RL system for Ubisoft's Roller Champions, a 3v3 Competitive Multiplayer Sports Game played on an oval-shaped skating arena. Our system is designed to keep up with agile, fast-paced development, taking 1--4 days to train a new model following gameplay changes. The AIs are adapted for various game modes, including a 2v2 mode, a Training with Bots mode, in addition to the Classic game mode where they replace players who have disconnected. We observe that the AIs develop sophisticated co-ordinated strategies, and can aid in balancing the game as an added bonus. Please see the accompanying video at https://vimeo.com/466780171 (password: rollerRWRL2020) for examples.