Uplay launched automatically when you launch your Ubisoft game.
This was the perfect time for Ubisoft to launch a Steam like because a lot of 2012's most anticipated games are coming from Ubisoft including Assassin's Creed III, Far Cry 3, ShootMania and Watch Dogs. uPlay client comes with all the expected social features like chat, friend-list and notifications. The games can be directly bought from the client and installed multiple times. Most of the games support cloud save feature as found in Steam and Origin.
Game downloading on Uplay
One thing I like about Uplay is that it rewards you when you complete a certain achievement in-game. For example completing a certain level on certain difficulty will give you some Uplay units which you can use to redeem a new costume for your character or get a new weapon. Pirated gamers can never get these in-game items.
Uplay rewards screen.
There's also an after game report showing your your actions and reward. It's also possible to earn the units in one game and spend them on rewards for your other games. The only shortcoming with the reward system is that these achievements are never more than 4 or 5 per games where as in Steam the numbers of achievements can go up to even 300.
After game report showing your progress.
Ubisoft isn't selling other publisher's games on it's Uplay client currently so it can't be compared to Steam but overall I find Uplay a lot better than EA's Origin right now. There are a lot of bugs in the client like the uPlay enabled games I bought on Steam aren't showing in my game library on Uplay but this is the first ever version so some bugs are expected.
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