Ubisoft (Mid 2017-present)
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 They're not so soft anymore, they're rough now.
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Ubisoft Entertainment SA (formerly Ubi Soft Entertainment SA) is a French video game publisher headquartered in Montreuil, France. It is known for developing and publishing games for several- video game franchises, including Assassin's Creed, Far Cry, Just Dance, Prince of Persia, Rayman, Tom Clancy's, Brothers in Arms, and Watch Dogs. While they were a great company in the 90s-early 2017, they went downhill since mid 2017.
Why They're Rough Now
Note: Some of the flaws before 2017 will also be noted
- They became the AAA equivalent of mobile game advertisers since 2014 as some of their games like Red Steel (although not by much), Watch Dogs (being the worst offender and the first game to start this awful trend) and Tom Clancy's The Division, for unknown reasons, suffered from noticeable graphical downgrades between announcement and release (it is assumed that this is due to limitations of the console versions of their games, especially during the start of the eighth generation). One example is the trailer for their game The Crew 2, which showed various renditions of famous landmarks in the United States, however, most of these landmarks were either removed or replaced with inaccurate versions at release.
- Additionally, their "gameplay" trailer for Assassin's Creed Valhalla showed absolutely no gameplay whatsoever.
- They recently started only to care and milk Assassin's Creed, Far Cry, Watch Dogs, Just Dance, Rabbids, and Tom Clancy's series since they have more popularity and give them enough money but ignore their other franchises like Rayman, Brothers in Arms (which also got abandoned by Gameloft), Driver, and the sports franchises that they acquired from Microsoft.
- They've been milking the Tom Clancy series a lot lately. More specifically, their focus tends to be on Ghost Recon, Rainbow Six and The Division rather than Splinter Cell, Endwar or H.A.W.X.
- Speaking of Tom Clancy, Ubisoft has been criticized by gamers numerous times for slapping his name onto any shooter game made by them, because almost all of these games have absolutely nothing to do with Clancy's literature. For example, the now-canceled Ghost Recon entry, Frontline, would be a Battle Royale multiplayer game.
- They added a subscription fee in their 2020 remake of Trackmania Nations and the newer version of Rocksmith. In a similar fashion to EA claiming that loot boxes are "surprise mechanics", they claimed that the remake isn't subscription-based, but rather people will have to pay for the game multiple times (which is exactly what a subscription is).
- They've been milking the Tom Clancy series a lot lately. More specifically, their focus tends to be on Ghost Recon, Rainbow Six and The Division rather than Splinter Cell, Endwar or H.A.W.X.
- They're infamous for canceling some games and shutting down some of their subsidiaries. For example, Rayman 4 was canceled and Phoenix Studios (not to be confused with Phoenix Games) was shut down.
- They even canceled Steep for Nintendo Switch in August 2018 out of excitement that they were going to bring new live content and challenges to the other consoles and players instead. They didn't even bother to tell anyone about it and instead told the person who asked them.
- Their new 2017 logo is a huge downgrade from their previous 1994-2003 especially the iconic 2003 logo and to a lesser extent, the 2009 logo
- Ever since 2017, following EA's footsteps, they started only caring about money, season passes, microtransactions, paid DLC, and following the same formulas in their games for the most part. Sometimes they even openly show that they care more about profit than their fandom. Here are some examples of this:
- The company has even gone on record to outright claim that games are a thing of the past and that live services are the future. Yes really.
- They're a bad example of pre-order culture as they tend to release upwards of four (sometimes five or even seven) separate editions of a single game, starting with Assassin's Creed: Odyssey. The main problem with this shady practice is that it is not only confusing for people who want to get the best out of their games but that Gold Edition doesn't provide all the content anymore, despite retaining the same price, so you have to buy an Ultimate Edition. Even worse, the content from the deluxe and ultimate versions is almost unavailable for separate purchases.
- Starting with Ghost Recon Breakpoint, their games went up high in price, increasing the prices of said editions. And they still have the nerve to force microtransactions and lock some features behind the paywall, which is demonstrated with the same Breakpoint.
- They have invested in blockchain and NFTs games, adding them to Ghost Recon Breakpoint.
- As mentioned before, they used to support NFTs (which were known to harm the environment) by adding them to Ghost Recon Breakpoint. Ubisoft Quartz uses the Tezos cryptocurrency, which is more energy-efficient than Ethereum, through Ethereum was also later updated with PoS to be energy-efficient as well since Sep 2022, but this wasn't enough to save it from many other issues such as poor or non-existent security that led to scams, and many other issues (which led to the decline of NFTs and blockchains).
- Even when the announcement trailer was so heavily disliked that they delisted it from YouTube, they still added them in the game anyway.
- They are also trying to convince their employees who are against NFTs by giving them away to silence their voices. However, this resulted in an even more revolt from the employees.
- Some of their games tend to be prone to glitches, such as Assassin's Creed Unity, which had ridiculous multiple bugs and glitches at launch on PC.
- When Assassin's Creed Unity was criticized before release due to running at 30 frames per second, Nicolas Guérin, one of the developers, said in an interview by TechRadar that "60 frames per second don't look real, and 30 frames per second were cinematic." Both gamers and other publishers quickly and mercilessly savaged the remark, and Guérin became a laughing stock amongst the gaming community.
- Their online connectivity is awful. The most infamous case in recent memory is For Honor, which used a Peer-to-Peer connection that caused horrible lag problems and frequent disconnects. Thankfully, it got an update that added dedicated servers in February 2018.
- It was revealed that Ubisoft outright suspends some of the user accounts on their launcher if you are inactive for 30 days, which can cause some users to lose all of the games they own.
- They tend to have poor management when it comes to developing games. Because of this, World in Conflict will never see a sequel, since after Ubisoft acquired Massive Entertainment, they decided it would be better for Massive to focus on shooters (currently focused on The Division series), rather than strategy games.
- Depending on your view, they ruined some of their popular franchises. For example, they turned Assassin's Creed into a typical RPG game starting with Origins, (although it actually worked very well) Odyssey, and Valhalla (they went way too far, but thankfully, they toned it down on Mirage).
- They sometimes tend to lean towards political correctness. For example, they altered some historical aspects in Assassin's Creed Origins' Discovery Tour mode for reasons like "not wanting to support sexism of the past" (specifically, showing a class composed of both boys and girls). However, they admitted that this was historically inaccurate.
- They defended loot boxes in Trials Rising, claiming that "If players simply didn't buy these crates, they would not be added into games".
- When they added the Story Creator Mode in Assassin's Creed Odyssey, they made sure to ban any gamers who make a mission that gives players a faster XP increase (keep in mind that they sell XP boosters in the in-game store).
- The service of their online store is awful. Often, it can fail the purchase and sometimes your money will still be taken despite that. There are also some problems that people are not made aware of, such as the system not being able to process more than 7 items in the cart.
- They added too many unnecessary RPG elements to their recent games, while the original series of these games weren’t even RPG, all that to extend the game's length by forcing you to grind and sometimes sell you the XP boosters mentioned above. Examples include Assassin's Creed (it actually worked very well in Origins though, but went way too far in Odyssey and Valhalla), Far Cry: New Dawn, and Ghost Recon: Breakpoint.
- When it comes to mobile ports/games, they release simplistic freemium games on the stores, infested with microtransactions and pay-to-win mechanics, even if it's a spinoff of a franchise. However, this only happens when their fellow company, Gameloft, who port their base games to mobile, is not involved.
- In fact, they are even greedier out there and refuse to deliver quality mobile games by themselves. This is more evident when in 2020, they sued Apple and Google for allowing Area F2 on their stores, a mobile clone based on their Rainbow Six Siege game, that although copied several features from their game, was praised even by hardcore gamers. The developer has even expressed his ambitions of making the game, which explains why it has no microtransactions or pay-to-win mechanics.
- Eventually, said the game was taken down from both stores, and the servers were shut down.
- Ironically, while they're punishing ambitious mobile devs for replicating their games on mobile, they do not bat an eye to the bad guys who rip off their games just for money.
- In fact, they are even greedier out there and refuse to deliver quality mobile games by themselves. This is more evident when in 2020, they sued Apple and Google for allowing Area F2 on their stores, a mobile clone based on their Rainbow Six Siege game, that although copied several features from their game, was praised even by hardcore gamers. The developer has even expressed his ambitions of making the game, which explains why it has no microtransactions or pay-to-win mechanics.
- They're planning to shut down the online services for some of their older games, and prohibit players from gaining access to DLC in the PC version of said games.
- Thanks to the critical backlash from developers and fans over the greedy practices (especially Ubisoft Quartz and NFTs), as well as being exposed for sexual abuse on female employees due to the lack of leadership, producing indistinguishable creatively bankrupt trendy Multiplayer shooters at a rapid paste, and using a deceased novelist's name on said games for profit, their stock price tanked severely hard, and they're now planning on selling the company to keep it afloat.
- They recently have literally stated on Twitter that "Gamers should be more comfortable with not owning their games" which is just laughable.
- Their new so called "AAAA" game, Skull & Bones is extremely rushed.
- Just like modern Rockstar Games, this era ruined the reputation of a once good company thanks to bad business practices and decisions.
- Despite their unofficial mascot being Rayman, he barely got any new game or remake as of 2024!
- For some unknown reason, most of their recent games: Skull and Bones and Star Wars Outlaws lack swimming options, despite their prior games such as Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag having that option.
- In September 2020 instead of releasing a Rayman game they released a Rabbids game for Rayman's 25th anniversary, which caused a lot of controversy from Rayman fans and Rabbids haters.
Redeeming Qualities
- Despite their reputation nowadays, just like modern Rockstar Games, they are more tolerable compared to other greedy companies.
- They still release some good games here and there.
- Atleast they actually removed the tradition of having cringe-worthy press conference since 2017.
- After the success of Rainbow Six Siege, they're planning not to make any paid DLCs, instead add all in-game items for free and make them unlockable either by playing or via microtransactions.
- To a certain extent, they seem to want to improve their public image - at least in comparison to Electronic Arts.
- They treated Square Enix with respect with their licensing on an event for Final Fantasy XV that was called the Assassin's Festival, which was a free treat for fans of Assassin's Creed. Ubisoft responded by adding free Final Fantasy XV-themed content to Assassin's Creed Origins.
- Despite popular belief, they listen to their communities and work to improve their games. A great example is Rainbow Six Siege, which has improved since its launch and part of that was because they listened to the R6 Community.
- Finally, after so many years. they added Rayman in Mario + Rabbids: Sparks of Hope.
- Since September 13, 2022, Ubisoft later confirmed that they are no longer interested in NFTs and any actions related to NFTs such as supporting them are for research purposes [3].
- Even if Rayman is a dormant franchise, they might be remaking a Rayman game. This hasn't been confirmed yet, although we hope this is confirmed because Ubisoft have forgotten the Rayman franchise exists for so long.
- They used to be a good company in 1986-2016
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