Russia won’t be removed from Ubisoft’s Winter Olympics game; Far Cry 5 delayed

Ubisoft has said it won’t be pulling Russia from its Winter Olympics expansion for Steep, despite the country’s ban from the South Korean 2018 Winter Olympics.

The International Olympic Committee this week blocked Russia’s participation in the event after it was found guilty of employing a state-backed systematic doping program. However, the door was left open for Russian athletes who could prove they were clean to compete as neutrals, without uniform and without the backing of the anthem.

Ubisoft recently released its Road to the Olympics expansion for sports title Steep, featuring Russia as one of the competitor countries. However, a spokesperson for the company told Kotaku that “there are no existing plans to patch Russia out” of the game.

The publisher has also confirmed delays for two if its titles.

Far Cry 5 has been pushed back by one month to March 27th, while The Crew 2 will now land in the first half of Ubisoft’s 2018/2019 fiscal year and not in March next year as was planned. Another as-of-yet announced game has been pushed back by as much as a year, too.

“This decision is in line with our strategic vision of developing even more engaging and higher quality experiences for gamers,” Worldwide Studios executive director Christine Burgess-Quémard said.

“Taking more time with Assassin’s Creed Origins enabled our talented development team to fully express their creative vision. As expected, this had a very positive impact on the game’s quality and largely participated to its commercial success. Taking a similar approach, we have decided to invest additional development time in three upcoming games.”