November 16, 2020 Ubisoft has clarified that Assassin’s Creed Valhalla will have traditional achievements on PC.
If you’ve been exploring ninth century England in Assassin’s Creed Valhalla on PC, you may have noticed something missing. No, it’s not the horns on the Vikings’ helmets (an historical anachronism, as it turns out) – it’s achievements. There is no achievements tab for Valhalla on Ubisoft Connect, and it turns out that there won’t be for future Ubisoft games on PC – or so it seemed this weekend, thanks to a mishap on the Ubisoft user forums.
Redditors and Ubisoft forums users have taken note of the absence of achievements for Valhalla on Ubisoft Connect, and Ubisoft’s support staff has explained that achievements are being replaced by an expanded set of challenges, which have long sat alongside the traditional achievements list in the now-defunct Uplay launcher. These challenges have typically been split into two groups: there’s usually a set of time-limited challenges that are refreshed periodically, and a set of ‘core’ challenges that are essentially a parallel set of achievements to the list created for Xbox achievements and PlayStation trophies.
“Achievements are not available for this title on PC, and this is an intended change,” Ubisoft support staff wrote in a thread on the official forums. “Instead of Achievements for new games on Ubisoft Connect, instead we have expanded the Challenges, which provide XP and other rewards on Ubisoft Connect.”
It makes some amount of sense for Ubisoft to consolidate some of these achievement trackers. Going forward, it seems likely that the traditional console-style achievements will simply be included in the core challenge list, with the time-limited challenges separated out as they are now in a separate tab under the game’s Ubisoft Connect library page.
However, it’s not clear as yet that’s what’s happening: the Ubisoft Connect list for Valhalla includes 31 core challenges, while True Achievements lists 50 achievements to unlock for the Xbox versions of the open-world game. There are, clearly, significant discrepancies between the two sets at the moment.
We reached out to Ubisoft for comment on this story, and since it was first published the company has clarified that this all seems to be a misunderstanding between the development teams and the community support team – in short, Assassin’s Creed Valhalla will have achievements on PC.
“We are aware that achievements are not available yet for Assassin’s Creed Valhalla players on PC – this was unintended”, Ubisoft told us. “We are actively working to enable achievements and will keep you updated when more information is available.”