The Ubisoft press release that announced this morning's Ghost Recon Future Soldier delay also nonchalantly mentioned that the a Windows version of the game will be arriving "at a later date." Nothing to see here, right? PC ports get delayed past their console counterparts all the time.
That would be perfectly true, if Ubisoft hadn't been incredibly vocal about their decision to skip the PC version of Future Soldier entirely.
Back in November, Ubisoft's Sébastien Arnoult told PC Gamer that Future Soldier wouldn't be heading to the PC over piracy concerns. Instead, the company was planning to release Ghost Recon Online, a free-to-play, multiplayer-only title with
"When we started Ghost Recon Online we were thinking about Ghost Recon: Future Solider; having something ported in the classical way without any deep development, because we know that 95% of our consumers will pirate the game. So we said okay, we have to change our mind."
Arnoult's comments were met with much consternation from the PC gaming community, who resented the (relatively absurd) claim that most of the intended audience would choose to pirate the game instead.
Now, it appears that Ubisoft has quietly reversed this stance and will be bringing Future Soldier to the PC after all.
While I'm thrilled to see that they've changed their mind, it's a bit puzzling that they've buried the announcement like this. The company has had something of an uncomfortable history with the PC community — I Am Alive producer Stanislas Mettra famously chastized PC gamers for "bitching" — and now that they're finally doing something right, they almost seem ashamed to admit it.
