Jose92
[Membe
Inside Ubisoft's unprecedented "exodus" of developers
The great resignation has hit the Assassin's Creed publisher hard.
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SJRB
Gold Member
Good. Fuck Ubisoft.
Once my alltime favourite developer and publisher, now a disgusting, shameless, money-hungry turd with zero integrity or respect to its employees and [sometimes decade long] fans.
Companies like Ubi, EA and Activision clearly do not give a shit about you as an employee, so if anyone is able to get a better job someplace else then please go and don't submit yourself to a toxic workplace. Life is too short to get shit on by an employer.
Once my alltime favourite developer and publisher, now a disgusting, shameless, money-hungry turd with zero integrity or respect to its employees and [sometimes decade long] fans.
Companies like Ubi, EA and Activision clearly do not give a shit about you as an employee, so if anyone is able to get a better job someplace else then please go and don't submit yourself to a toxic workplace. Life is too short to get shit on by an employer.
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CitizenZ
Banned
Signs of the exits are abundant.
- Top-name talent is leaving, with people from least five of the top 25-creditm the company's biggest 2021 game, Far Cry 6, already gone. Twelve of the top 50 from last year's biggest Ubisoft release, Assassin's Creed Valhalla, have left too. (A 13th recently returned.)
SlimeGooGoo
Banned
.
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Punished Miku
Gaslighter Pro: 16.7 Fireflops
True, but for some reason I still respect Stephen Tostito. I think he tries to get it right on the facts.
Pejo
Member
So does that mean that these "vets" from Ubi are going to other game studios? Are all of the studios with exodus problems l just hot swapping their employees with each other? Or is there some mega-progressive ultra-dev that is gobbling them all up? I didn't imagine there were that many options for game devs in today's market.
mckmas8808
Mckmaster uses MasterCard to buy Slave drives
But they are usually closer to the truth than your average article on video games as most of them as some form of marketing. At least there's real journalism here.
STARSBarry
Gold Member
But who will make my full priced open world multi season passed with lootboxes and a day 1 premium shop game for the 20th time in the last 2 years based on an iconic franchise that was none of those things last time?
Dream-Knife
Banned
I think that was more due to it being "AMD sponsored". Same with Halo...
KingGhidorah
Banned
Western gaming studios situation is a hot stinky mess, woke mob snowflakes, overworked employees, sexual harassment shit, pedo executives
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mckmas8808
Mckmaster uses MasterCard to buy Slave drives
Man that's EYE OPENING! Point 4 is something that us gamers have noticed for years too. Just looking Assassins Creed and Far Cry as good examples.
"Today's market" in games (and tech in general) is kind of like today's market in real-estate - at least for 2021.
I'm not saying this should happen, but this happens at every software development company.
Us devs hate to document shit, and when we do, we don't update the documentation... So it becomes useless over time.
After that the newer devs can only rely on the people who worked on the project.
Shits_McGiggles
Member
I constantly wonder how long companies can get away with hemorrhaging experienced employees, but it seems like people will buy anything even if it is an unplayable mess. I heard a term that I think adequately captures the modern economy- technocrapitalism. Company executives outsource everything to countries like India because they treat every job (except their own) as unskilled labor (while simultaneously expecting domestic workers to be the most experienced personnel on the planet so that they can justify outsourcing everything). The result is technology that functions because of legacy code of the 80s/90s before everything was outsourced, but increasingly likely to fail spectacularly as companies build or replace that legacy code using cheap, exploitable visa workers who are inadequately skilled.
People working at Ubisoft are like people working in British Tobacco. They can be nice individuals and very good at what they do, it is still very hard to feel empathetic for people that have contribute to such bad products for so much time.
Good if they are finally leaving I guess, whatever.
Good if they are finally leaving I guess, whatever.
Called it, Ubisoft is going to become the worst/most hated video game company of coming years.
There are reasons, that are the same found everywhere (untalented imposter relying on micro-management to make-up for their lack of vision), and then there's the fact that it's a french company, and as a french person I can tell you it's way worse here: consanguinous, often racist and cynical hiring, inintelligent pretentious cynicism in the strategy, complete lack of culture, subtlety and vision in their executive production etc...and it all trickles down to every level and through the resulting game.
I don't want to single out Ubisoft as if it was the only corporation (in any domain) where it was happening, but they take the cake for having grown massive while being governed by very vulgar abusive people which ended with all their talents leaving or being wrongfully terminated (they defended the worst culpable ones because they were white, and wrongfully fired the talented non-white one like Ashraf Ismail, an asian creative and a few other ones), only to be replace by untalented cynical racist leaders who don't know shit about how to conceive and craft a good video game.
All under the leadership of boards that forces self-destructive decisions and roadmaps on the company.
There are reasons, that are the same found everywhere (untalented imposter relying on micro-management to make-up for their lack of vision), and then there's the fact that it's a french company, and as a french person I can tell you it's way worse here: consanguinous, often racist and cynical hiring, inintelligent pretentious cynicism in the strategy, complete lack of culture, subtlety and vision in their executive production etc...and it all trickles down to every level and through the resulting game.
I don't want to single out Ubisoft as if it was the only corporation (in any domain) where it was happening, but they take the cake for having grown massive while being governed by very vulgar abusive people which ended with all their talents leaving or being wrongfully terminated (they defended the worst culpable ones because they were white, and wrongfully fired the talented non-white one like Ashraf Ismail, an asian creative and a few other ones), only to be replace by untalented cynical racist leaders who don't know shit about how to conceive and craft a good video game.
All under the leadership of boards that forces self-destructive decisions and roadmaps on the company.
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Hawking Radiation
Wants to watch an Event Horizon porno
Point number 1
Number FUCKING ONE !!
Piece of shit companies don't want to enable work from home policies despite the ability to do so for years. I have friends who want to find other jobs who offer these working conditions. We're no longer in the fucking stone age. Let people work from home and enjoy more time with their families. The work will get fucking done. Employees will be happier not having to sit in traffic every single day to and from work. Companies save money on electricity and other bills with less people in the office space.
FFS why is this still an issue?
username12
Member
I used to commute 2 hours a day. I didn't like it. So I moved closer to work. I didn't blame my employer.
VN1X
Banned
That's great but not everyone's in a position to do that.
EDMIX
Writes a lot, says very little
Agreed. The publisher simply hires too many people to really be out here pretending the sky is falling cause someone didn't want to commute lol
This is a nothing story looking for clicks.
IntentionalPun
Ask me about my wife's perfect butthole
You would be incredibly wrong.. the software development industry in general is by and large a workers market.. gaming had a huge surge.. so did the rest of the world of programming and software design/creation.
Honestly not sure why you'd "imagine" that.
Companies are desperate for people.
StreetsofBeige
Member
Me too. It was 3 hours a day for me during bad rain or winter during one of my old jobs. Good old Hwy 401 before lane expansion.
I moved to be walking distance to the office.
Even before covid, a lot of office workers have a WFH entitlement attitude. It is not the same as being at the office. It's a lot more productive at the office. If you can be productive at home, you can be productive at the office, and being at the office has it's perks with in-person meetings, people doing whiteboard stuff in front of people, and even for sanity sake (seeing and working with people and going out to lunch). A lot office workers have a lone wolfer loner mentality.
Also, being hooked up at home is slower as VPNing from home with shitty home internet is way worse than more stable office connections and super fast networking uploading files. It's a slog at uploading and saving big files from home to the company's servers. And you dont get junk like "Sorry guys, gimme a bit.... my MS Teams isnt working right"... "OK, can you see my screen?"..... "No we cant".... "Hmmm... anyone know how to show my desktop?" A total waste of time. WFH has been like this forever. Here's some more beauties I've heard when it was strictly conference calling in (no video). Nitwits not on mute and you can tell they are watching TV or vacuuming or outside on their patio playing with their kids and dog.
In other words, log into to the call so they know you are there..... "Hey Brad, are you there?"..... "Yup, I'm here" But when they goof off when it starts.
There's a lot of wasted time fuckery with WFH people.
Another perk about in-person office work. People do their work during the same time so you can get hold of each other easier and emails flow at similar times. WFH has people winging off emails after dinner because they want to work 11-7. And when people have odd schedules, you cant get hold of them half the time until they're back at their seat or feel like answering you as you check their status symbol and it's either offline or a yellow dot "Away for 4 hours" despite it being 2 pm in the afternoon. If this was 100% office, they'd be in their seat. If I need an answer, I can walk to their desk. Cant hide or be napping after lunch.
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Fbh
Member
This sounds like:
-Game journalist: so why did you leave?
-game dev: Well the commute was really long and tiring and I'd like to work on something where I can have a bigger creative input which I won't be getting in these formulaic AAA open world games where corporate is constantly interfering.
-Game journalist: B...but the abuse allegations we reported about were also a factor..r...right?
-Game dev: yeah, sure, that sucked too.
-Game journalist: AHA! You heard it here first folks, our valiant tweets are bringing down Ubisoft!
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BouncyFrag
Member
BbMajor7th
Member
Hardly a shock, but this is the reality: games of this size are so highly tuned for market returns and so heavily outsourced in production that the creatives employed to work on them are no more stimulated than they would be working a production line.
The industry has blown up fast and the pressure on these products for return is too high to allow creative risks. It's why everything has gotten so bland. Everything is data driven: built around the principle of iteration over innovation. New ideas are seemingly only developed by smaller devs, who upon striking success are either wholesale ripped off by bigger players, or else bought out by them.
The industry has blown up fast and the pressure on these products for return is too high to allow creative risks. It's why everything has gotten so bland. Everything is data driven: built around the principle of iteration over innovation. New ideas are seemingly only developed by smaller devs, who upon striking success are either wholesale ripped off by bigger players, or else bought out by them.
RoyalLaFlame
Banned
Not everyone is in the position to do so. Software development is one of those jobs that is easily done remotely, like, there's not even a question about it. But these companies want you there, to constantly micromanage everything you do and to justify the big salaries they pay to Managers. If there's anything a developer doesn't really need, is micromanaging.
Remote work should always be an option.
StreetsofBeige
Member
With the way DLC, mtx (and now UBI NFTs) come in, anyone know how and when all these things come about in the process? I have a hard time thinking the initial steps have a bunch of people sitting at a table already talking weapon skins and shit. But maybe I'm wrong and the game industry does talk about that stuff early on.
1. Core people have a great idea on a napkin
2. They do some storyboard mockups and initial artwork
.
.
.
.
.
.
10. Game launches with mtx add-ons.
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jakinov
Member
Lol a bunch of you guys just see negative thread title/headline for Ubisoft and are just here to shit on them but ignore that this is just the Ubisoft perspective of an industry-wide problem.
The whole sexual harassment thing has been a thing for over 20 years in all industries. For game development the west is probably the least overworked and probably the highest paid. Japan for example, one of the bigges non-western countries making a lot the games we play have stories of people sleeping in their office and are reprotedly paid as much as janitors. China and up and coming country for gaming, hasn't had a lot of news speciaifically about gaming but developers in general have a work culture called "996" which is a culture promoting the idea that people should work from 9-9 (12 hours) 6 days a week. Haven't heard anything specifically bad about Korea, but considering they are known for treating other works like shit it wouldn't be surprising they treat game devs like shit too. And in regards to "pedo execs", I'm assuming you are refering to the 15 year old baiting that happend with Sony and Nvidia. I'm not defending or making a case for it but using it to try to disparage western companies is absurd, that shit's legal in most of the non-west. The age of consent is lower in most non-west countries. Japan litterally openly makes indecent games featuring characters younger than that. You don't hear about that stuff there because it's legal and people there don't really care.
EDMIX
Writes a lot, says very little
Agreed 1000%. They not trying to hear these facts.
In order for me to see a real story here, I need more data to even tell me some abnormal thing is even going on here vs the usual rage Youtube, neckbeard journo hot take. I think many just love jumping on the bandwagon of "omg UBISOFT" and or "OMG Da WEST" or "CALIFORNA" and just repeating a bunch of the same shit for clicks lol Japan out here has fucking underwear for sale in vending machines, children depicted sexually in cartoons as some normal thing, folks literally working themselves TO DEATH aka Karoshi.
They are not trying to hear these facts sir, they want hot takes, zomg tik tok sensationalism and exaggerated headlines ignoring all facts and context.
I need to know what that number or % normally is across the industry in the west before giving a shit about this nonstory. The man wanted an easier commute and folks decided to run with this idea that he MUST have agreed with them not liking AC Odyssey and datz da REAL REASONZ doe lol
I really wonder how many programmers in these big companies have more than 5 years of experience. Not in gaming, I mean coding in general. Because my opinion is game developing is so shitty most of the skilled people constantly leaving for burnout and there always are shortage of skilled people. That's why games take years to make and when they are released they still are a shitty mess.
Panajev2001a
GAF's Pleasant Genius
BbMajor7th
Member
For games of this size it will be parallel pipelines, with separate teams working at once on different projects. I would imagine developers like Ubi have dedicated teams working on recurrent spend modelling, online engagement, content engagement, etc. briefing requests to designers and developers.
Developers will be in a position of attempting to do the best job they can while addressing the needs of many competing stakeholders. At a certain level, you're not doing your best work anymore, you're just doing what you have to stay sane.
This is why you see a lot of developers looking for smaller scale projects, where they won't have to sit through audience segmentation seminars or put their designs through a ballbreaking approval chain of stakeholders that know and care very little about design, or have every little idea trampled under a stampede of budgets, resources and deadlines.