Ubisoft and Xbox let you claim 12 PC copies of games you already own on console

Ubisoft and Microsoft have announced a new partnership that gives Xbox owners free PC access to a selection of Ubisoft titles through Ubisoft Connect. If you own any of the qualifying games digitally on Xbox, they'll appear in your Ubisoft Connect library — no extra purchase required. Previously owned titles have until August 4th to show up; anything you buy going forward should appear immediately.

Twelve games are in the initial lineup: Assassin's Creed Mirage, Assassin's Creed Valhalla, Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora, Far Cry 6, Immortals Fenyx Rising, Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown, Riders Republic, Skull and Bones, The Crew 2, The Crew Motorfest, Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Extraction, and Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Siege. Eurogamer also lists Watch Dogs Legion as part of the deal. Your accounts need to be linked for the transfer to work, and while owned DLC carries over to PC, consumable items and in-game currency may not — check a game's Properties page on Ubisoft Connect to see exactly what transferred. The deal is one-way only: buying on PC does not grant an Xbox copy.

The second part of the announcement is that premium editions of several Ubisoft games — including Assassin's Creed Shadows, Star Wars Outlaws, Skull and Bones, and Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown — are now available to purchase through the Xbox app on PC. This partnership fits into a broader pattern of Xbox pushing harder into PC gaming: last week Microsoft made select original Xbox backward-compatible titles available on PC, and rumors persist about a feature that would let players digitize physical game libraries ahead of the next Xbox hardware generation.

For anyone who played Ubisoft games on Xbox and has since moved to PC, this is a straightforward win — a library of games you already paid for, now playable on a new platform at no cost. Whether this is part of a coordinated long-term strategy or a series of opportunistic moves remains to be seen, but the direction of travel is clear.