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

Palabragrís said:
"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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I love this.

Some "folks" didn't want to admit even Concord was killed by woke, when by all acounts the game was perfectly fine from a technical standard: no bugs, good performance, high resolution, all that. The people simply didn't ingest that slop.
 
Topher said:
This goes to show you that corporations are happy to be embrace all the woke ideologies as long as the money keeps coming in. The cash flow dries up and these spineless executives will drop the pandering, DEI, the pronouns, all of it, if it stopped the bleeding. Honestly, the whole damn industry could use a good crash right about now to get their heads out of their asses.
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Everyone's for woke agenda until the audience gets mad and stops showing up and your company stock craters. Capitalism is some tough bitch huh. See Disney for more information
 
Holammer said:
Some of you might not have heard about Disney's recent big success with Inside Out 2, there are reports of the development being heavily scrutinized by Disney according to a former Pixar employee, making sure it was less gay with no overt framing or colours that would suggest or inspire gay shipping/chemistry. That's how I would have handled production myself after Lightyear's failure.

I expect to see similar moves towards the centre in the video game industry too. If you have progressive themes [and I think you should have because it lends itself to interesting subtext], how about not making a big deal out of it, do it with less virtue signaling. Like we had in media before 2015. The moment you put the issue on a pedestal and it becomes polarizing and you lose a good chunk of your audience.
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That's the crazy fucking thing about all of this. It's not like progressive ideas weren't in movies or entertainment more generally 10+ years ago, but they weren't the overriding focus. And when they made things that way, you could agree or disagree with the ideas without the experience itself being tanked. You still had to make a quality product.

But then they said NO! That's not good enough anymore. If gay people can get married in real life, then I'm sure as shit going to make you play as an ugly woman who don't need no man to mask my daddy issues.

Which doesn't even make sense.
 
makaveli60 said:
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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That Concord developer said we would run out of games to play, now they/them are running out of jobs.
 
Took a peep over at the asylum and I saw someone commented that it was us "Gamergaters" that caused the poor sales of Outlaws

lT2Y6py.jpeg
 
laynelane said:
That right there shows why gaming media has lost so much respect from gamers. Stock price falling, board launching an investigation, controversy surrounding their most recent release and upcoming game, etc. - but why would they address this?
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Fuck, you'd think a stock dropping 85% in 3 years would be a wake up call. Lol. Guess not.

Only a few more dollars away from -90%. And now they react. A little late guys. Lol
 
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StreetsofBeige said:
Fuck, you'd think a stock dropping 85% in 3 years would be a wake up call. Lol. Guess not.

Only a few more dollars away from -90%. And now they react. A little late guys. Lol
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I suspect the investigation by the Board is going to give us a lot of juicy details about exactly how this situation got so bad. There's the obvious lofty promises/lies - stuff like Outlaws will turn everything around and then it didn't - but there has to be more too.
 
laynelane said:
I suspect the investigation by the Board is going to give us a lot of juicy details about exactly how this situation got so bad. There's the obvious lofty promises/lies - stuff like Outlaws will turn everything around and then it didn't - but there has to be more too.
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And has been pointed out, the massive drop in stock price started around the time that Ubisoft got all touchy feely and hired a bunch of DEI types to rework the organization, so.... yes - that'll be some scintillating reading coming up.
 
Finally realizing your customers aren't involved in "bad faith discourse" or "hateful bigots" for calling out shitty points of your products, Yves? It's just a PR speak memo but bringing it up is quite a huge deal and it's good they're starting an internal investigation than simply cutting off partnerships with consultancy agencies. Well, we've yet to see if this actually heads in the right direction.
 
StreetsofBeige said:
Fuck, you'd think a stock dropping 85% in 3 years would be a wake up call. Lol. Guess not.

Only a few more dollars away from -90%. And now they react. A little late guys. Lol
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I just checked the stock history, because I didn't think their decline could be that steep.

Fucking hell!

It's true. How could they be this stupid?!?
 
Ogbert said:
I just checked the stock history, because I didn't think their decline could be that steep.

Fucking hell!

It's true. How could they be this stupid?!?
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They were counting on the strength of Star Wars, Avatar and Assassin's Creed to reverse the trend. It's easy to assume people would buy that stuff on principle.

Unfortunately for them, Avatar is a lame IP which lead to indifference for the game. Star Wars as a brand is severely damaged and the game was meh. Once the internet started poo pooing Shadows they were like awww shit.
 
Might honestly be time for Yves Guillemot to admit he can't run this business anymore. This is the second or third time in the last 2 generations they're reevaluating the same thing.

Kacho said:
Unfortunately for them, Avatar is a lame IP which lead to indifference for the game. Star Wars as a brand is severely damaged and the game was meh. Once the internet started poo pooing Shadows they were like awww shit.
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Yeah.

Avatar is only useful/lucrative in the hands of James Cameron
Star Wars, for better or worse, is damaged like you said.
 
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Chuck Berry said:
How long ago was this?
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Looks like 4 years ago. There's definitely a correlation here. If you're going to fire actual talent over this stuff, you better put qualified people in their place or your products suffer. Alas, here we are...



He now joins a growing list of men who have been fired, forced to resign, or otherwise separate from Ubisoft following allegations of misconduct, which includes some of the most senior creative talent in the company. While some of those departures, like that of former chief creative officer Serge Hascoët, have been announced publicly, others have only been communicated internally, and in some instances, according to three sources Kotaku spoke with, only to the direct team members associated with those individuals.
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Kacho said:
He now joins a growing list of men who have been fired, forced to resign, or otherwise separate from Ubisoft following allegations of misconduct, which includes some of the most senior creative talent in the company. While some of those departures, like that of former chief creative officer Serge Hascoët, have been announced publicly, others have only been communicated internally, and in some instances, according to three sources Kotaku spoke with, only to the direct team members associated with those individuals.
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Well There It Is Jurassic Park GIF
 
Wow.

I figured that the delay of AC: Shadows was for the regular fare of issues (polish, etc) but now I wonder how much they're going to change about the core experience.

My prediction: they're going to alter the narrative of the game to focus much more on the Japanese character, to the point where she's essentially the main character.

-----

Regarding the talk of Ubisoft of the past from my perspective: I have always first and foremost been a fan of their Assassin's Creed franchise. I loved how they made those games with authentic-feeling settings, and protagonists that were likeable and felt appropriate to the setting. Ezio, Connor, Kenway - all great and interesting (with Ezio and Kenway being absolutely fantastic). The games were of reasonable size and length. They were a joy to play through, being a completionist felt optional, and there were tons of memorable moments for the characters. They also focused the gameplay on stealth and murdering people.

After that I felt the franchise began to fall off. The main characters started feeling generic. The settings began to feel less authentic - even when they added an actual virtual encyclopedia to a game to give kids history lessons. They made one feel obligated to do every last side quest, hunt down every trinket, etc. Too heavy an emphasis was placed on fighting three or four enemies at once rather than the stealthy action of the past.

And this feeling about the design of their games spread to most of their other projects. Every Ubisoft game I played onward seemed to be cast from the same mold. I still enjoyed some, like the recent Star Wars game, but that Ubisoft stamp was ever present, no matter how enjoyable the game was. And I feel that is what hurt them the most. Customers began seeing their upcoming games being advertised and figured that the experience would be almost exactly like the last three or four UBI games they played so they just tuned out.

So in closing, I think the things they need to do to right their ship are:

1. Get back to making shorter, tighter experiences with their open world games while placing an emphasis on making truly interesting main characters. One single main character too - no more forcing the player to choose between two characters

2. Give each game unique designs. Stop making every game have that "UBI feel". Every game should feel unique and not like it's built from a template

Thank you for reading my long-ass diary entry.
 
Kacho said:
They were counting on the strength of Star Wars, Avatar and Assassin's Creed to reverse the trend. It's easy to assume people would buy that stuff on principle.

Unfortunately for them, Avatar is a lame IP which lead to indifference for the game. Star Wars as a brand is severely damaged and the game was meh. Once the internet started poo pooing Shadows they were like awww shit.
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I agree.

Star Wars was already tainted due to Disney's BS. I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of the design decisions were strongly influenced/mandated by Disney.

I would've thought that Avatar had a good setup for a game if done right, but it lacks an iconic figure that you would want to play as. At least for me, I never thought I'd want to play as the protaganist of the OG movie. I haven't seen the 2nd one and probably won't anytime soon.

And AC as a property has just been overly saturated judging by how many games are out there to include mobile. It really could do with a little bit of a hiatus to build up demand for it.

In the meantime, Ubi should focus on their other IPs. Many have pointed out that Splinter Cell really could do well with a sequel or hell even a remaster although I dislike them for the most part due to them not done in the spirit of the original.

They have a real opportunity for them to turn this around, but they really take a good hard objective view of themselves. Cut the fat that contribute nothing to what makes a good game and invest in what does.
Time for them to put their blinders/ear plugs to the "offended vocal crowd" and get back to good ole game making again.
 
Many many many many people on here are fast to defend Ubisoft. Don't think its just a Re poison.

Ubisoft have been complete shite for at least the last 10 years.

These recent event's have solidified that position and i can only hope Ubisoft comes out slimed down and more focused.

Ubisoft are spread way to thin, quantity over quality for the last 10 years, Assassins Creed from Unity onwards has been complete crap and YES that includes Origin and Odyssey.

Don't even talk to me about Far Car & the less said about WatchDogs the better.....
 
I dig this move and self-reflect on what is wrong and how to move forward.
Im all for them bouncing back.

I dont hate or avoid their products like many do. If im interested- im interested regardless of opinions. That being said- its just plain obvious they have things going on that need fixing. Atleast at surface level today, this appears about as genuine as you will see from a company such as this.
 
Unknown Soldier said:
Everyone's for woke agenda until the audience gets mad and stops showing up and your company stock craters. Capitalism is some tough bitch huh. See Disney for more information
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Sony and MS must learn from the industry trend. Mark my words, these companies pushing trans ideology will crash and burn if they continue to cater to the wrong market segment. Nintendo it seems to be one of the few that know what majority gamers want - unadulterated fun games free from woke ideologies.
 
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I find it interesting as when a corporate missive like this is passed down, all is NOT fine. To me this is an admission by the people that matter that maybe their creative choices are not working and need to be reassessed. This will usually result in changes in key positions.

I'm sure "efficiency consultants" will trim quite a bit of fat. Curious to see if anything in AC Shadows changes moving forward. Pretty obvious that the culture issues are now recognized as affecting their bottom line.

I don't think Ubisoft can't afford soft sales for Shadows and they are going to take a hard look.
 
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Bond007 said:
I dig this move and self-reflect on what is wrong and how to move forward.
Im all for them bouncing back.

I dont hate or avoid their products like many do. If im interested- im interested regardless of opinions. That being said- its just plain obvious they have things going on that need fixing. Atleast at surface level today, this appears about as genuine as you will see from a company such as this.
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Sweet, summer child.

This is about money. And Shareholders are fucking pissed. That's what's happening.
 
Raven117 said:
Sweet, summer child.

This is about money. And Shareholders are fucking pissed. That's what's happening.
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You are absolutely right. But im not naive enough to not realize its all money- obviously.
But sometimes you gotta look in the mirror and understand why that money is no longer flowing in.
 
Bond007 said:
You are absolutely right. But im not naive enough to not realize its all money- obviously.
But sometimes you gotta look in the mirror and understand why that money is no longer flowing in.
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Self reflection seems to happen the most when your job is on the line.
 
Bond007 said:
You are absolutely right. But im not naive enough to not realize its all money- obviously.
But sometimes you gotta look in the mirror and understand why that money is no longer flowing in.
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They know good damn well why it isn't. They have been on the the decline for years as their games became more and more formulaic and predictable. They made some bets on GaaS that didn't pan out. In a last ditch effort, they tried to "appeal to a broader audience" which further alienated their core base...and here we are. They are going to spend millions of dollars on vetting this out and twisting it in a way where it was "reading the market incorrectly" and yada yada.
 
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SyedDanishAnwar said:
Ubisoft with their woke DEI infested crap were clearly pushing a politcal ideology. I am glad the global gaming community fought back with their wallets.

Woke is destroying the entertainment industry including gaming. The movie industry is already infested beyond redemption. But I still see hope for this sector.
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Time will fix this. This companies, don't mater how big they are, can't lose money forever. If they do, they will go broke and others will replace them.
Money will always talk louder. As long as most people don't support this agendas, those companies will fail sooner or later.
And as we can see, most people don't support this.
 
Ogbert said:
I just checked the stock history, because I didn't think their decline could be that steep.

Fucking hell!

It's true. How could they be this stupid?!?
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The stock was actually 108 Euros in 2018. So right now at 11.42 euros, that's an even bigger decline than whomever started it off basing it on 2021 at 85. lol
 
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