The Division 2 Skipping Steam, Available Only on Ubisoft and Epic Stores; System Requirements Outed With Radeon VII

[Raevenlord]

The Epic Games Store with its aggressive developer earnings program is drilling away at Steam's already-installed hegemony as the PC gaming platform of choice. A mere 12% royalty for the storefront means much more money goes back to the developers, and the more copies are sold of a given game, the bigger the profit will become. This is why some games have already even left Steam's shores to find a home on the Epic Games Store, and now, a AAA title in The Division 2 will be skipping Steam entirely. With launches on Ubisoft's own store and an 88% cut on the Epic store, Ubisoft will be looking to maximize their profits.

That part of the story is done; Ubisoft has also outed the system requirements for the PC version of The Division 2, which, for a minimum of 30 FPS at 1080p, will require either an AMD FX-6350 or Intel Core I5-2500K CPU, 8 GB of RAM, and 2 GB of video RAM on an AMD Radeon R9 270 or Nvidia GeForce GTX 670.

For High settings and 1440p resolution at 60 FPS, the recommended specs take quite a bump: an AMD Ryzen 7 1700/Intel Core I7-6700K CPU paired with 16 GB of RAM and 8GB of video memory on an AMD RX Vega 56 or Nvidia GeForce GTX 1070. If you're rocking a 144 Hz screen with that particular resolution, you'll likely need NVIDIA's top of the line RTX 2080 Ti or the upcoming AMD Radeon VII - we'll make sure to try and see whether that is true or not come the games' release.

For 4K resolution and 60 FPS gameplay, you'll need the best hardware money can buy, naturally: CPUs see a bump to an AMD Ryzen 7 2700X or Intel Core I9-7900X paired with 16 GB of system RAM and a whopping 11 GB of VRAM, paired with the processing chops of either an AMD Radeon VII or Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080 TI. I'd say that there's a story here in the making: does Ubisoft know something we don't with these GPU recommendations for 4K gaming? Can Radeon VII really offer a comparable gameplay experience to NVIDIA's RTX 2080 Ti at that resolution, or is the required VRAM memory the only metric that means the Radeon VII is the only actual AMD graphics card that even qualifies for this resolution?

View at TechPowerUp Main Site

 

[sam_86314]

Well, I was already actively avoiding Ubisoft games because of the sheer amount of DRM they have on top of Steam, and now they made it easier for me to avoid them.

 

[FreedomEclipse]

But didnt Epic stores have some GDPR issues???

 

[HD64G]

If that means anything about how this game engine likes AMD GPUs, it is logical to suppose that Radeon 7 will battle closely with 2080Ti for framerate~min FPS, which in a shooting game means more than the average FPS.

https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/radeon-rx-vega-56,5202-12.html

 

[oxidized]

Nice, less bloatware to look at on steam.

 

[Deleted member 158293]

For 4K resolution and 60 FPS gameplay, you'll need the best hardware money can buy, naturally: CPUs see a bump to an AMD Ryzen 7 2700X or Intel Core I9-7900X paired with 16 GB of system RAM and a whopping 11 GB of VRAM, paired with the processing chops of either an AMD Radeon VII or Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080 TI. I'd say that there's a story here in the making: does Ubisoft know something we don't with these GPU recommendations for 4K gaming? Can Radeon VII really offer a comparable gameplay experience to NVIDIA's RTX 2080 Ti at that resolution, or is the required VRAM memory the only metric that means the Radeon VII is the only actual AMD graphics card that even qualifies for this resolution?

Dr. Lisa Su did "shush" the Ubisoft developer (forget his name) on-stage about something... will be interesting to see...

 

[neko77025]

Pass anyway

 

[delshay]

I don't think we have seen the very best out of Vega 7. It has massive memory bandwidth & the driver can only get better.

 

[Easo]

Monopoly is bad, but having launcher count increase is not exactly great.

 

[Manu_PT]

Monopoly is bad, but having launcher count increase is not exactly great.

This! I have installed on my machine:

- Steam (70% of my games)
- battle net (Black Ops 4, Overwatch)
- Epic Launcher (Unreal)
- Ubisoft Launcher (AC)
- Windows Store (Forza)
- Bethesta Launcher (Quake, Wolfenstein)
- Origin (Battlefield franchise, FIFA)

I mean... this is going way too far. I don´t think this is attractive for potential new PC gamers. But hey, PC gaming companies are firing bullets at their own business lately (GPU prices, RAM, launchers, etc), so idk.

 

[Xuper]

They mentioned AMD Developers and more stuff like AMD Freesync , Asynchronous compute , Multithreading , Eyefinity displays

 

[ShurikN]

Totally irrelevant on which platform it will (and will not) be since you still need Uplay installed to play it. Might as well bypass everything and buy directly on Uplay.

 

[silentbogo]

I still have some sour taste in my mouth after the first Division beta. Made me not just not want to buy the game, but swear to never touch any upcoming title in this series or of this kind.
Ran around to do some quests, got bored too fast. Went to the dark zone to shoot and loot, ended up listening to 3 turkish kids yelling at each other non-stop (I don't think at the time there was a mute function). Deleted the game even before the test period expired.
They can barely keep steady 4000 players on Steam, imagine how empty it's gonna be if Div2 rolls out on Epic and Uplay... Epic is too fresh to attract people, and Uplay has been always a "last resort" option, if you can't get it anywhere else.

 

[cdawall]

CPUs see a bump to an AMD Ryzen 7 2700X or Intel Core I9-7900X

That's a brave comparison. Wonder how much that one cost amd.

 

[moproblems99]

That's a brave comparison. Wonder how much that one cost amd.

My best guesses are tree fiddy or Schififty five dollars.

 

[TheinsanegamerN]

This is entirely to avoid answering criticism. Epic doesnt allow of user reviews to prevent "review bombing" AKA people negatively rating broken and horrible games, and uplay is unmitigated DRM garbage.

 

[Totally]

That's a brave comparison. Wonder how much that one cost amd.

Sneaky but not brave by any measure. Meaningless bit there, reviews show titles are still gpu limited @4k, they might as well and looks like they did threw ham at a wall of processor names.

 

[toyo]

Did they just slapped a 10/20 CPU as requirement for 4K? My oh my. I would have understood it if they said something like "this is for 240fps at 1080p for our new esports title", but for 4K? Even the Titan RTX would be bottlenecking hard at that resolution, probably even at low settings.

 

[rtwjunkie]

Well, I was already actively avoiding Ubisoft games because of the sheer amount of DRM they have on top of Steam, and now they made it easier for me to avoid them.

Actually they reduced a DRM layer (by not having Steam as the final one).

Additionally, without tunneling from Steam to Uplay, Uplay and it’s games work pretty damned well.

 

[Basard]

Damn beards are infecting our games too! lol...

 

[lexluthermiester]

Well, I was already actively avoiding Ubisoft games because of the sheer amount of DRM they have on top of Steam, and now they made it easier for me to avoid them.

Couldn't agree more with this. I'm a GOG fan and barely touch Steam. I actively avoid DRM. So this doesn't really affect people like me.

Damn beards are infecting our games too! lol...

Jealous?

 

[TheOne]

I already have Uplay so even if they stop using Steam I would just buy a game direct from them, but The Walking Dead, that hurt, it really makes me wish that I had pre-ordered.

 

[sam_86314]

Couldn't agree more with this. I'm a GOG fan and barely touch Steam. I actively avoid DRM. So this doesn't really affect people like me.

Yeah, I really wish more games would come to GOG. The only launchers I actively use are Steam and GOG. I'm planning to switch to GOG as much as I can, but it's an expensive switch even with sales.

 

[FYFI13]

No problem, skipping that one!

Edit: If they wanna sell their games on their own website - i don't mind. Just give me the key that i can use on Steam and get rid of your CPU-hungry DRM. And your broken "launcher".

 

[INSTG8R]

Buys his Ubi games on Uplay it’s gonna use it anyway. Non issue.