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Tom Henderson - Ubisoft's Board is Launching an Investigation Into The Company

mansoor1980

Member
i still remember my first ubisoft game.............

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Danny Dudekisser

I paid good money for this Dynex!
Consumers only buy open world games and known IP in large numbers for the last decade. That's the truth.

Sure, but they could stay within those confines and still deliver games that attempt something creative without increasing their risk profile too much. Or scale back the map size of any given Ubisoft shlock by half and you'll end up with a tighter, more focused game AND save enough to fund a couple of more "passion" project type things aimed at testing the waters with difference audience types. Not too dissimilar from how Nintendo, for example, has their tentpole franchises but still gives us the occasional offshoot like the Link's Awakening remake or whatever the fuck the new one with Zelda is called.
 
Wow, can't believe this was actually addressed. Will be interesting to see what they'll actually do, but I'm glad it wasn't just hand waved off as bad faith discourse :messenger_tears_of_joy:

What they'll do : nothing

Unfortunately, the political correctness, "all religions, all sexes and all beliefs" banners aren't going anywhere since A) it's part of their pseudo-progressive DNA and B) every company has succumbed to that.

It's a problem that can't be solved brother, the ONLY thing that will change (maybe) is not to release games in a Beta state and actually put some thought behind them/iron most of the kinks/bugs before actually releasing them.

This company is fucked either way, the self-inflicted Cancer has been eating at the flesh for way too long now - something which the sales for the last couple of games also reflect.
 
Feels like not that long ago Ubi was pretty good. Rayman Origins + Legends. Ass Creed 2 trilogy. Mario Xcom. Even Ass Creed Odyssey was very good IMO.

I'll always respect the fact that they actually released a game like Valiant hearts - what a beautiful, beautiful game...
 

Da1337Vinci

Member
So... what happened?
Ubisoft were always the fast food games maker of the world to me. Something to play when I am hearing a podcast.

They try many thing to further their games sales and appeal.

They try to broaden the appeal of AC by making it into an RPG same as Far cry. This worked somewhat.

But the manpower needed for these game is steadily increasing so they can't do the small IPs anymore.

They tried using popular IPs as driver to further their sales but looking at the reception of Avatar and Star wars this seems to be working barely to their favour.

Lastly their brand perception especially to hard core gamers aka us is terrible.

Edit: Of course not to forget like all publishers fail live services but I don't condemn them for that. Nowadays publishers just need a steady cashflow somehow.
 
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StereoVsn

Member
It’s going to be interesting to see what happens in the next few games.

I don’t see Outlaws sales recovering and Ubi will need to heavily discount ($30 BF?) and AC Shadows is too far into development to make any changes.

I suspect it will underperform as well, but still will sell decently since it’s Open World AC in Japan.

What’s really going to be fascinating to watch if they learn from their mistakes during next batch of releases. My gut feeling says NO, but going to be popcorn time either way.

kB5QtBK.gif
 

Ogbert

Member
I'll always respect the fact that they actually released a game like Valiant hearts - what a beautiful, beautiful game...
UBI are absolutely saveable.

They release some template, fetch quest nonsense, but they also gave us Rayman, Phoenix Rises, Mario Rabbids, Prince of Persia remake, even stuff like Battle for Atlus or whatever the starfox game was called.

There is a core of individuals there that love games and they have beautiful art direction. They’ve just been infected by the no-talent Commie fatsos that fuck up everything they touch, as they’re ugly boring cunts.
 
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Timberwolf25

Gold Member
I expect Ubi is working some serious deals with MS and Sony right now to put some games on their sub services to recoup some cash.
At least they got to step 1 to recognizing that agenda driven shit is not the way to go even if they did so by denying they are doing it :)
 

Kerotan

Member
RIP their share price. They'll be completely under value Vs their potential and would be a good time to acquire them.
 

pudel

Member
- stop hiring and consulting weird people who wants to burn down your industry
- fck off with yr launcher (at least on Steam)
- stop cutting yr games in slices and make your customers pay extra for day1 content
- offer "reasonable" prices for your games
- Steam day1 (gog would be awesome as well...maybe a year after release or so)

Thanks. :messenger_peace:
 
We will also use the extra time to complement the experience with a few high-impact secondary quests that will bring even more memorable...

um, 'that will bring even more memorable' what, exactly? hell, never mind games - ubi can't even complete sentences now. or is this just a french thing?...
 
"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.”

This is fascinating. If the CEO of Ubisoft *himself* had to address the comments surrounding their games and their perceived agenda, it means their DEI push has effectively harmed their sales numbers (and this also makes all the Resetera reazoning about an all-mighty bug forcing them to delay the game even more hilarious).
 
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Da1337Vinci

Member
RIP their share price. They'll be completely under value Vs their potential and would be a good time to acquire them.
With the amount of workforce they have. I don't see it. You would need to cut a huge amount.

I would wait till bankruptcy to get the IPs.
 
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The whole entertainment industry needs to wake the fuck up. The shitty woke games we have coming out now are something that began development many years ago, and they are just now facing the consequences. Stop hiring activists or to meet quotas. Hire the best writers and software developers, get rid of the fucking dead weight, and get back to focusing on your core customers and making great games.
 

Ogbert

Member
Take Star Wars Outlaws.

All they needed to do was make The Division in space. You are part of a group of smugglers that get stranded on a planet and then work together (multiplayer dungeons) to escape. Planet hopping, gun grinding, pvp, raids.

They’d have made fucking billions.

Instead, they released a shitty girlboss stealth game.
 

Punished Miku

Human Rights Subscription Service
It’s going to be interesting to see what happens in the next few games.

I don’t see Outlaws sales recovering and Ubi will need to heavily discount ($30 BF?) and AC Shadows is too far into development to make any changes.

I suspect it will underperform as well, but still will sell decently since it’s Open World AC in Japan.

What’s really going to be fascinating to watch if they learn from their mistakes during next batch of releases. My gut feeling says NO, but going to be popcorn time either way.

kB5QtBK.gif
The sad truth is they will bounce back and make something great, and then no one will buy it. Like Prince of Persia this year.
 

Go_Ly_Dow

Member
Hope to see there stock price fall a good 20-30% tomorrow on the back of these announcements. Then I'll throw in £5k for a trade and sell once up 10-20%.
 

Cyberpunkd

Gold Member
UBI are absolutely saveable.

They release some template, fetch quest nonsense, but they also gave us Rayman, Phoenix Rises, Mario Rabbids, Prince of Persia remake, even stuff like Battle for Atlus or whatever the starfox game was killed.

There is a core of individuals there that love games and they have beautiful art direction. They’ve just been infected by the no-talent Commie fatsos that fuck up everything they touch, as they’re ugly boring cunts.
This.

Their low budget games are incredible, it’s just their major IPs that suffer from brain rot.
 

Kerotan

Member
With the amount of workforce they have. I don't see it. You would need to cut a huge amount.

I would wait till bankruptcy to get the IPs.
They'll downsize long before bankruptcy becomes a thing and smaller ubi games can work. Valhalla could have been a third of the size and still worked.
 
LMFAO yea you think it's about time Ubisoft? You used to make incredible games like Splinter Cell and Far Cry 2 but now you make fucking pirate games that have no sword fighting, gunplay or ship boarding, which is an absolute disgrace when you could have just copy and pasted a pirate game you already made!
 

Shin-Ra

Junior Member
FWIW, my first Ubisoft game since Rayman Legends was the BG&E Remaster which is good apart from the invasive Ubisoft Connect popups (sometimes made the main menu intro transition stutter) and… crashes, now patched apparently.

But a remaster shouldn’t have even those little issues.
 
Hopefully they can get things figured out as losing them in the space is only reductive.

It's too bad about Star Wars and Avatar, I was hoping the licensed efforts would do better for them. At least then, maybe you get Far Cry, AC, and whatever license they are working, now they might slowly drift to an FC/AC factory.

Every developer really needs to prepare for a launch date and then add six months for additional polish, maybe then we would get back to game releases that worked well enough on launch day.
 
Lotta folks still pointing to woke stuff as the problem is amusing to me. I stopped being impressed with Ubi's output well before anyone got triggered by woke stuff. For me, it was just bloat. Like, they were spending so much money to pack games with so much boring samey content in order to create the illusion of having a more comprehensive experience. In the end, it was just padding the length. Seriously, I stopped playing Valhalla about mid-way. It just felt like work to play it. Like a job to check off items from a list. I haven't seen anything to make me think this has ceased to be the case, so I've just kind of lost interest in their games.

Anyway, I doubt this investigation will do much. It won't be aimed at giving us gamers the games we want. It'll be aimed at giving the investors the money they want. I'd put betting money that they just want better monetization, not better games.
 
This is huge.

“As such, our objective is not to endorse any specific agenda”

So it’s clear that these corpos started acknowledging that we had enough of this woke propaganda bullshit. And how many even on this forum said that bitching on the internet about this will not change anything. You think so still, after these shitty projects failing one after another?
 
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Raven117

Member
This is actually pretty serious. A special committee created by a board of a publicly traded company is no joking matter.

There is going to come a day when the shareholders will sue the ever living fuck out of a company for introducing DEI to products and it tanks sales by a derivative action (Not saying this is what happened here (ie DEI), but it was enough to at least get a mention in the memo). This is actually one step closer.
 
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The sad truth is they will bounce back and make something great, and then no one will buy it. Like Prince of Persia this year.


But this is a niche title. Ubisoft has to step up in their main franchises which stagnated for too long.

In the end, correcting course and all that is good, but the actual measures have to be taken at the production level and bring back the talent they lost.
 
"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.”

This is fascinating. If the CEO of Ubisoft *himself* had to address the comments surrounding their games and their perceived agenda, it means their DEI push has effectively harmed their sales numbers (and this also makes all the Resetera reazoning about an all-mighty bug forcing them to delay the game even more hilarious).
yep. slowly coming to understand that this nonsensical quest to be open to the 'broadest possible audience' has, in actuality, always been about specifically catering to a much narrower one...
 

Shin-Ra

Junior Member
The sad truth is they will bounce back and make something great, and then no one will buy it. Like Prince of Persia this year.
Apparently PoP had the same art director as Rayman Origins/Legends but I wouldn’t have known it from the bland mediocrity frequently on display in The Lost Crown demo and videos. Too much time in tedious combat instead of pure platforming challenges which do at least make a brief appearance in the demo.
 
I enjoyed AC up to Unity, then they tried to go too large with the worlds with Origins onwards and I fell off it. I mostly loved Far Cry 5 but then New Dawn was a trashfire with the mtx/GaaS bullshit which continued into FC6, which was also far too big like AC: Origins onwards.

Also changed the combat for the worse with Origins onwards imo*, then tried to make it some hybrid of the old and new from Odyssey onwards that was just as rote as the old combat but now it looked like shit blending wise cause they didn't want to pay for as much motion capture and also tried to make it less rigid... but somehow it ended up just as rigid AND looked worse.

*I understand the combat from 1 to Unity was boring for some since it was a lite version of arkham combat and far too easy, but at least it didn't look like shit, they could've expanded it. I wish they'd just copied more things from Arkham combat to add difficulty and variety, that combat system isn't perfect and it gets old too once you've seen all the animations 100x but you had a lot more options than Unity.
I fell off with Valhalla. AC was about assassinating people. I don't just want to be a normal Viking and the combat in their games sucks for any sort of game like that.
 
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