Ubisoft's Board is Launching an Investigation Into The Company Struggles
Ubisoft's Board is Launching an Investigation Into The Company Struggles
This is going to be one of those "Ubisoft investigates Ubisoft and found that Ubisoft did nothing wrong at Ubisoft"-situations, isn't it?
Clearly what they need is more management layers and SCRUM masters to streamline the game creation process.
and a dozen more external contractors will def make their games better
Don't forget AGILE. That should solve all of their problems, right?
They're going lean so they're firing half their workforce so the rest can produce more work. Don't worry though middle management is safe
Finally, let me address some of the polarized comments around Ubisoft lately. I want to reaffirm that we are an entertainment-first company, creating games for the broadest possible audience, and our goal is not to push any specific agenda. We remain committed to creating games for fans and players that everyone can enjoy.”
Creating games for the broadest possible audience is what has made Ubisoft games so lackluster in recent years, and I think players are tired of games not targeting a specific niche. It feels these games are full time jobs in themselves with how much needs to be done to complete/100% it, and I think that formula is now stale.
I'll be interested to see what results of this investigation. Hopefully better art, but I am cynical
. . . our goal is not to push any specific agenda
This is the part they're actually getting at. Not that the fundamental game design is for everyone (which, yes, is what they try and fail at), but rather they're responding to people who think they're failing because they put a woman as the protagonist in some game or another.
100% is itself a bit of a misleading target.
I think I remember Just Cause 2 had it so the top achievement in the game was only for 70% completion because they knew they had such a ridiculously huge map.
Breath of the Wild aims the same way - they like having you come across a bunch of Korok seeds while traveling, but not scouring the land with a magnifying glass looking for them.
Just Cause 2 was insanely huge.
I can’t name you a single Ubisoft game that i’ve had any interest in buying, in the last decade
I missed when they' weren't so focused on development and more publishing focused. They published some bangers in the late 90s/early 2000s. Grandia comes to mind and a ton of Dreamcast games.
All of the big publishers from 20 years ago doubled down on a couple of key franchises that make the most money and appeal to the widest demographic, rather than the old strategy of having a diverse portfolio across most genres.
The last Ubisoft game I bought was Far Cry 3 in 2012. None of their games since then have even remotely interested me.
Also unpopular opinion incoming; Far Cry 1 was the best Far Cry game in the series and it was made by Crytek, the makers of Crysis.
That's not an unpopular opinion, that's just a well known fact.
Far Cry 3 loses all its steam the moment Vaas is out of the picture.
Which shows exactly why it was good: Michael Mando.
I don't recall the name but there was a farcry game on original Xbox that came with a map maker for couch PvP. It literally let you shape the topography and place any asset in the game, easily the best map maker I ever used.
Prince of Persia came out this year and I would say that it’s one of the best metroidvania games ever made
tbh I bought far cry 4, but because it was at a heavy discount and Ij ended up paying less than (the USD equivalent of) 4 dollars
FC New Dawn was actually really good
Here's one. Your main series assassin's Creed still has the same glitches and bugs it did 15 years ago. The last one was so much more of the same that it's the first Ac game I put down and gave up on after an hour cause it felt like I had played it already. How bout building a new game from scratch instead of repeatedly dipping into the same garbage pile and charging premium for it, while your other titles are overflowing with micro transactions and bullshit
Prince of Persia 😴
That new one is a solid metroidvania. It would have been better if they shrunk the map a bit or introduced meaningful upgrades more frequently, but it was still very good.
I bet they will find embezzlement, possibly funnelled through consultancies.
"Ubisoft investigates Ubisoft and found that Ubisoft did nothing wrong at Ubisoft"-situations, isn't it?
"The consumers are wrong, it's those damn Millenials again"
Followed by continuing to change nothing and fading into obscurity like Atari or Commodore. (hopefully)
It needs to happen to all the big developers.
I bet at first it seems like multiple consultancies, but the more they investigate, the more they realize it's just minor variations on one consultancy copy-pasted around the map, and at a certain point, investigating each one just feels same-y and boring.
What it really comes down to is that this type of “safe” game design where you rehash the same game over and over again for 20 years thing used to make a shitload of money, that’s why they all do it, and now it doesn’t. Or at least, they’re discovering that there’s a mathematical maximum amount of times you can rehash something without innovating. And not doing that is too huge a pivot for a huge lumbering company like Ubsioft to make on a reasonable timescale.
This is what’s supposed to happen though. When not enough people buy games to make them profitable, the games have to change, or Ubisoft goes under. Either is fine.
And I feel like half of that 20 years was based on FOMO. "I better get the next Assassin's Creed or I'll miss out", and then it's all the same crap but they still sold a million of them. People do eventually wise up to FOMO.
Miss out on what? Unity was a buggy mess on launch, skip, the British one was a snorefest. By the time of the reboots, Ghost of Tsushima, Elden Ring and BotW already came out
Nah, this is about money. They'll definitely find a group of underpaid employees to fire.
They'll fire the developers that implemented the unpopular features (that they didn't want to build in the first place but were forced upon them from executives, who, by the way, are due for their end of year bonuses!!)
Management has decided that the real issue is the lack of employee involvement. Mandatory beatings will commence.
after careful consideration of the management decisions that brought us here, we concluded that 1600 layoffs of low level employees is the solution. those who stay will crunch harder for the same pay to make up for any lost labor so we can keep churning out slop that definitely has nothing to do with our crisis.
Always suprised when I remember that WatchDogs 2 is from Ubisoft. Such a well made game, i played the crap out of it twice
Edit: awe man Steep was super fun too
I wanted to like Steep but the Controller experience, even on the Steam deck is so horrible I didn't last a full hour
I know there are some changes you can do in settings. I mostly did snowboarding and since I snowboard irl I found the controls were close to how you'd control your feet on an actual board. So that probably helped ^ ^
But rider's republic mixed it all up so I get what you mean
I want to reaffirm that we are an entertainment-first company, creating games for the broadest possible audience, and our goal is not to push any specific agenda.
Press X to doubt
What agenda is that referencing? I'm out of the loop.
it’s always really annoying when there’s the assumption that the existing team is not aware of and trying to fix problems. I hate when I have a problem and I’m taking steps to fix it and then somebody else steps in to say “let’s figure out how to fix your problem”.
Maybe they should try not making crap games. All that money and they can't get decent voice actors or writers.
Ubisoft isn't making money. That's something wrong as far as the board is concerned.
Absolutely not. When the board is looking into it, it's because they are not returning shareholder value and they are pissed about it. This will likely end with the C-suite being butchered.
Ah yes, I hate being butchered that way, too. It sucks hard to be paid to leave before you get paid extra to start your next job elsewhere.
And don't get me wrong, if the C-suites actually ever had to take actual responsibility for their fuck-ups, I'd be all for those board investigations. But they don't. They get paid enough to not care about interims between jobs - just look at the CEO who said people can just spend a year on the beach or so if they've been laid off - plus they get paid extra both on the leaving and on the re-hiring.
If they had to pay all non-salary money back on fucking up, even retroactively, no matter how many Porsches they'd have to liquidate to get the money from X years of fucking up the company back, sure. Do it. But that's just sadly not the case. For a C-suite, this just means changing what name is written under your name, and moving on to the next place you can grift.
they can start by just making games as gamers want it,not inserting lame ass political agendas in their games or hire politically correct nutjobs to determine how games should be inclusive.
What you mean is making games how you want them to be, not the overwhelming majority of gamers. Stop thinking everything is an agenda designed to limit your freedom.
literally all they need to do. If you make games that people actually want to play, then people will buy them. And if you want to have lgbtq characters, then do it like borderlands 2, that game got it right in 2012.
Every day I grow more and more tired of you braindead idiots.
funny, given that most gamers seem to agree with me, according to sales numbers. Noone wants this shit in games. Perhaps we're not the problem.
Why would firing DEI consultants improve the work?
And if you want to have lgbtq characters, then do it like borderlands 2, that game got it right in 2012.
In what particular way do they differ?
Because things like black protagonists with hip-hop music in the background make no sense in a feudal japanese setting and people are sick of games being abused as vehicles for morality preaching.
An example from borderlanfs two could be Sir Hammerlock, who was introduced as a normal (for borderlands) character early on and later in a side quest was revealed to be gay in passing. That's the kind of 'representation' you want for lgbtq to be "normalized". In modern games, his story would be one of struggle against straight white oppressors at the end of which there would be a five minute long cutscene in which everybody turns to the camera and informs the player that being gay is normal and that prejudice is bad and that straight white people are inherently evil. I'm overexagerating (spelling?) of course, but you get the point.
last time i wrote something similar to yours,the left wing nutjobs came rushing in,guns blazing.
god damn wokies.
Yup.
How about just the completely entitled attitude of the execs that think they can tell us how to enjoy something. Only to then whine that nobody wants to buy their 70 euro no better than mid game
They do damn near 10/10 work when they give a fuck, Thats probably the worst part.
Siege was damn near perfect as a tactical competitive shooter for the first few years. The Division was great, Just Cause was enormous fun and so on.
The problem is they hit a winner, and then milk it and milk it and milk it until we hate it or them.
I'm old enough to remember when Siege was a Rainbow Six game.
My god Siege was good for the first few years. Intoxicatingly good multiplayer. Too bad they fucked it up trying to make it more CoD like. For example, I used to play with a completely hidden hud because it was so immersive and fun. Now it's like rainbow six and Roblox had a baby and the weird game popped out. I can't even hide my hud or crosshair any longer
I love the division 1 and 2 but the first game had some MAJOR bullet soak issues for the first half-year of the game's lifetime.
Massive always does good work despite Ubisoft, in my opinion.
Ah yes the "sears" method of going out of business.