Ubisoft's online tactical shooter, , has recently seen a surge in players, reaching an all-time peak of over 201,000 concurrent players on Steam as it enters its ninth year. With this recent surge in popularity, what makes the title worth revisiting in 2024?
had a rocky launch, and was known as a buggy mess in its early years, but still amassed an audience due to its environmental destruction and fun gameplay. Since then, Ubisoft has put in work to add quality-of-life features that have made the game more balanced, completely changing entire systems at times if they don't seem to make sense anymore, and has added new content to each year, even when future entries in the series, such as — which saw the series' tactical shooter gameplay used to take on an alien threat — was not as popular with players.
The recent surge in popularity, which saw the game reach an all-time peak of 201,933 concurrent players on March 17 (via SteamDb) may have been bolstered by Ubisoft making completely free for a week between March 14 and March 21, along with a heavy discount that dropped the game to just $4 until March 20 for those who wished to keep it. This is far from the first time has been heavily discounted, however, and Ubisoft has held many free access events for the game over the years.
These free-access events are often timed to coincide with the release of a new season's content. This allows players to occasionally dip in and out of the game to see what new operators, weapons, and missions the title has in store, or invite their friends to assist them when loading up the game's new operations for the first time.
Each year, Ubisoft has added four new seasons with new free content including maps, features, or game modes as well as new unlockable content such as operators, weapons, or character skins. These operators can sometimes include guest appearances from Ubisoft's other titles, such as 's Sam Fisher, who was introduced in 2020's Year 5 Season 3 expansion under the codename
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