Ubisoft is effectively dead
(twitter.com)
Comments (54)
sorted by:
Ubishovel has deserved this for far longer than most people here have been mad at them for. Their idiotic open world design has had a negative effect on games for more than a decade.
Hopefully they just collapse entirely.
I still think that open world is one of the worst fads in gaming over the past 15 years. Once Skyrim blew up, everyone needed to make open world games. For every gem, there are heaps of games that are worse off. I'll take the old hub system with content dense levels in most cases over a world that has some hot spots mixed with vast areas of nothingness that's pretty to look at.
Here's the thing though. Ubisoft was making shit tier open world mechanics well before Skyrim ever came out.
Why the hell you want to return to the days of the play once corridor shooters? 5 hours of gameplay for $70-$100 is insane.
Sure, Ubishit open world games are shit, but that is because it's Ubishit, not because they are open world.
There's middle ground. 100-hour JRPGs that aren't open-world.
Those are the worst. They're exactly like ubislop just differently made. If 10hr tutorials aren't enough to clue you in on this is wish you a very happy time wasted.
Agreed. The best open world games are great, examples are like Just Cause 2, WB open world games (Mad Max, Arkham Series), Saints Row series, Mafia 2, heck I even like Mafia 3 despite the wokeness and I don't understand the complaints about how you progress the world in that game; to me it's satisfying. Almost every open world game I consider one of my favorites, like none are Ubisoft. I think the first Watch Dogs is excellent however, so they sometimes have exceptions. But I could go on with stuff like Fallout 3, Infamous, etc.
These are all amazing open worlds. Why? The open world plays to the gameplay strengths.
Ubisoft is just copy and paste. It feels like filler. When I'm 100% Mad Max, none of the activities feel like filler. It feels like I'm becoming the legend that is Mad Max. With Ubisoft, everything feels like filler. I don't know why it's such the case with them as opposed to others. Other companies also have many collectibles. Other companies also have repeating side activities. But there's something about Ubisoft where it all runs together and you feel like you're in gaming Limbo where other games pull it off somehow.
You only played through the Mass Effect games once? I know I played them multiple times. The Witcher 2 was a game I played through probably 10 times, but only played through TW3 once. I played Dragon Age Origins multiple times... and I'm sure I've played through many other 15+ year old RPGs multiple times.
Even if you want to be more generous and mention more semi/smaller open world games. I've played through the Yakuza games multiple times, which features smaller hub based cities. Kingdom Come Deliverance (1) is an example of a smaller open world that I enjoyed replaying, but that was at about the limit of what I would want to deal with in an open world. IMO, big for the sake of big is just stupid and a waste of time/resources. I'm not against smaller open world games that can keep the world dense and interesting.
For RPGs, if you make the player's choices matter, and have decisions change the world then you can play easily make hub based games replayable. If you must have an open world style game, then making the world smaller and more intimate is a better design choice. Filling open world games with countless travel hours does nothing to improve the experience to me. I'd rather spend hours exploring every inch of a city than going there just to receive some quests, then being forced to go somewhere else, come back, get a new quest, on repeat. For example, Citadel in Mass Effect is probably one of the most memorable RPG locations I can remember. I can also probably play through Flotsam in The Witcher 2 or even Vizima in The Witcher 1 blindfolded (exaggerating obviously). There's nothing like that in these open world games.
I find that most of these larger open world games lack any memorable locations because every new location is just another quest giving hub with little to do because the game requires you to experience the rest of the world that the devs spent countless hours building. It also ruins the focus of the game. I'm not saying some devs don't ever pull it off, but it's rare IMO. Everyone wants to try to do it, but most can't.
You aren't asking for once a generation series like Mass Effect. You are asking for more games like Max Payne (10.6 hours on a blind playthough) Max Payne 2 (7 hours), The entire FEAR series which are all less than 5 hours. Or the Original Ghost Recon series which are also all less than 5 hours.
Also you contradict yourself
The Citiadel is exactly that kind of location.
I'm not asking for 10 hour games. I'd rather 30-40 hour games (like Mass Effect). When I say hub, I mean games where you spend a long period of time in a single area exploring, getting quests, doing quests in the vicinity of that area, etc. before progressing the story to the point where you then move on to a new area. Some games do this with acts that keep in that one place until the act is complete, others allow you to explore a limited amount of locations until you need to move on to new places as the story demands.
Open world, if done correctly, is a blast. Especially if at least 2 of your crew have had a few beers on Friday night.
"Fuck the mission, let's just blow shit up."
Deus Ex IS a corridor shooter. It is just another of those play once and never again games. Sure they take a bit longer, but they have no replay value. The levels don't change so there is nothing new to find. It's the same story every time. Meanwhile games like Kenshi are the peak of gaming.
Unfortunately, companies don't collapse anymore. They just get bought out and the industry subsequently gets more centralized (and worse).
But do consumers have to play along? No. The winning move in a rigged game is not to play. If that means buying 1 or 2 title a year and spending rest of your time at the gym or private servers then so be it.
It doesn't matter if you buy or not.
It always matter on a individual level. You can not be forced to participate at gunpoint.
Some humans are not individuals. Very susceptible to marketing and opinion of their peers. I know several people who do not like racing games at all and yet they all bought the new forza just because of the marketing and one guy's pressure. Even when they coulda bought a cheaper copy on shady sites they bought it on steam for a full price.
And how does that prevent you from choosing to not buy?
Me personally? Doesn't because i don't buy games. But plenty of people would fold, not to mention goyim who have nothing else to do with their lives.
Apologies, hijacking this post for a poignant thought.
Like, 98% of Ubisoft's catalogue are Games As A Service games.
If stop killing games takes years to get traction in the bureaucratic red tape, ubisoft will be able to slip out the door into chapter 11 and shut down all their games.
The exact company that started Stop Killing Games might be able to get out before anything can be done to stop them.
Rest in piss
The government of Canada will stop paying them in 2027, which is why they're so sure they'll last until 2028.
Ubisoft being shit to begin with, the real takeaway I want other companies to notice is that DEI and catering to it will never make money no matter how much triple-A polish or marketing you dump into it. Ubisoft was completely capable of failure on their own terms and had managed to fuck up just fine by themselves with boring projects, but betting the house on woke is what truly put them into the coffin.
Are you retarded? The DEI shit was always about ideological influence and the money lost was an acceptable cost for pushing the propaganda. Plus lots of it was getting offset by the ESG money being dumped into their coffers. The goal was never to make money from paying customers and if you haven't figured that out by now you're either a complete neophyte or an idiot.
They can burn infinite money on this without even blinking.
Ubi didn't receive any comp money or incentives to jump on the DEI wagon. Blackrock doesn't own them as they were controlled by the Guillemot family (before the stock massacre, anyway. Blackrock actually held a sizable short position knowing they were going to fail, which freaked out other investors who also dumped the stock.) The Guillemots decided on the George Floyd direction of the game as they hold double voting privileges on any decisions. It's why they were on the verge of bankruptcy - they honestly believed the companies you referenced were actually making money despite losing money. They weren't in on the joke that everyone else seemed to figure out, and were proof that none of it makes any money without being propped up.
It's almost as if stock control is all made up and never matters if retards just jump ship because someone else suggests it might be sunk [by the very person suggesting it].
Nah, after 12 years I'm done giving the benefit doubt to any of these chuckle fucks. It's all intentional and malicious action rather than companies/people being naive and dumb. Hanlon's Razor was misdirection designed to deflect well earned animosity from bad actors.
Be more precise. Companies that work with Sweet Baby Inc won't make it.
They want to focus on live service games?
I just hope they hand off all the licensing properly when they burn down so we don't have more properties stuck in legal limbo preventing them from getting preserved for future generations like so many have over the years.
Translating from corporate speak, "we don't have the money to do any significant development, but if we don't keep Siege and The Division afloat, we'll have no income at all."
Would bet they leveraged those to Blackrock for loans before Assassins Creed's latest failure.
I don't know about the rest of you eleven, but I think we're just about to clear the first stage.
Keep your eyes on the horizon, keep marching on and don't pay heed to those who would distract you.
The sun is the goal, and to conquer it is our quest :)
Assassin's Creed Shadows made Ubisoft become a shadow.
How about when you make a game about Feudal Japan, the characters are Japanese and not African.
Does anyone here have a twitter account? I'm morbidly curious to see an archive or screenshot of the comments.
Try this
https://xcancel.com/
I don't have Twitter and I never will. But if I ever want to read comments on a post, I just use Nitter.
https://nitter.net/Grummz/status/2057238891388944487
Couldn't happen to a worser company
Fuck Jewbisoft
That's so very very sad.
Funny how the CEO saying people won’t own their games anymore, resulted in people not owning their games anymore. But just not how he had hoped.
All they had to do was improve upon Odyssey and even Valhalla. Instead they made Mirage which was the shittiest game I’ve ever played. And I refused to buy Shadows for $70 with a female and black guy protagonist. Fuck them. It’s not that hard.
Waah my goyslop got worse
Thank you Ubisoft for helping destroy games with their stupid open world design.
I don't have a problem with open world. I have a problem that every game became the same fucking game.
Agreed, open world games are fine but not when every game is open world.
And the exact same "climb the tower, take out the enemy camps, craft all your supplies" style of open world
I think I've managed to dodge this genre pretty much entirely because the basic premise never appealed to me. I'm not sure who the target audience for such an experience is but it's someone other than me.
I like open world too, and I also agree the blatant copying of the Ubisoft style destroyed so many potentially great games.
I love their open world design and I'm not alone. The death of Ubisoft was caused by releasing garbage games like Skull and Bones, Star Wars Outlaws and Assassin's Creed Shadows. 3 expensive games that are full of WOKEness and is broken in multiple ways, that completely destroyed Ubisoft's reputation. EDIT: 3 games, one after another that was shit was too much for them to handle. I know some people will say their previous games were WOKE too which didn't help them but not to the extent seen in AC Shadows. Most gamers didn't mind the WOKEness in AC Valhalla but AC Shadows went too far.
Fair enough, maybe I was the foolish one playing a bunch of open world games back to back.
It's not returning to profitability.
It's just wasting too much cash. Too many employees, too many shit games. "Get ready not to own your games"