Those who've been itching to play Ubisoft's Assassin's Creed: Odyssey can now get it for free, courtesy of Google's new, experimental Project Stream.
Powered by Google's cloud computing division, Project Stream is a new video game streaming platform that allows players to stream games over the cloud. To promote the service, Google is giving anyone who plays just one hour of Assassin's Creed: Odyssey a free copy of the game for PC or Mac through Ubisoft's Uplay platform.
Assassin's Creed: Odyssey
The game retails for $20 right now on Uplay, and it costs $35 for the console versions. Unfortunately, the promotion is only open to U.S. users, as Eurogamer reports. However, that's entirely Google's fault, not Ubisoft, as the company is only making its Project Stream experiment available in the United States for now.
Gamers have until Jan. 15, 2019 to clock their total Assassin's Creed: Odyssey play time. Again, playing only an hour of the game nets gamers a free copy of the game. Project Stream is live now.
International users who visit the site are going to get a sign that says, "Sorry, this project is currently open in the U.S. only." Perhaps some crafty user would eventually find a way to get around the restriction.
Saves and in-game items will be available to transfer once the player receives their free copy of Assassin's Creed: Odyssey. It means they can continue their progress from Project Stream to their PC or Mac seamlessly.
Project Stream
Google first announced Project Stream this past October, one of its first efforts to experiment with video game streaming. Assassin's Creed: Odyssey is the only title available to play right now, and Google has yet to make clear whether it's going to add more games moving forward.
It's still early to be thinking of expanding the library, though. In fact, making Assassin's Creed: Odyssey available might just be Google's way of testing if Project Stream is viable for big launch titles. After all, the game requires modest specs on PC and only works on Microsoft and Sony's latest consoles. Successfully streaming it over the cloud would be a quite a big feat.
Apart from Google, there are a number of other companies working on video game streaming platforms. Sony's PlayStation Now service already offers a somewhat robust library of streamable games, while Microsoft just unveiled the xCloud platform, which is expected to a pair of next-generation Xbox hardware due out in 2020.
