Vidjama Gmaes Work

Frustration from moment #1.

I booted up Assassin’s Creed Shadows for the first time last night and truly nothing completes the Ubisoft experience quite like an obnoxious technical issue that probably won’t get fixed for another two years. And as the icing on top, it has a convoluted workaround that the community had to come up with.

Assassin’s Creed Shadows marked the launch of the Animus, Ubisoft’s hub for the new Assassin’s Creed games from Origins onward. This is where the battle pass and cosmetic shop are also now housed, and I had to see what an AC battle pass looked like. Only for it to completely fail to load. Just a blank screen.

And the shop itself immediately failed to connect, throwing an error code and not letting me in. That’s why Ubisoft is unique. Normally companies will make sure at least their cash shop works, Ubisoft breaks tradition by not letting people who want to give them money do so.

Well it turns out this is a moderately widespread issue for Shadows players, and presumably those using the Animus with Odyssey and Origins. The workaround? Disconnect your Stadia account from your Ubisoft account. And possibly Amazon. And maybe Steam, Xbox, PlayStation, and everything else. Really it’s a crapshoot on which account will trigger the store to work again, or if you disconnect everything and it’s still broken.

Luckily all I had to do was disconnect my Stadia and Amazon accounts and the Animus worked again. Others? Not so lucky.