Asmongold TV - The complete and utter collapse of Ubisoft | Asmongold Reacts | Asmongold

Episode Date: June 21, 2025

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This has been a massive video. We're going to watch it. Today we talk about the fall of Ubisoft. I don't like to hold my tongue. I like to speak my mind. And from my perspective, when I see a company that has failed to deliver quality to their customers, that have completely ignored any criticism, whether that's from the industry itself, from critics or their fans, they get what they deserve.

And in the case of Ubisoft, this is a victory for consumers. This is exactly what we want to see. Because if you're not working for us, you're working against us. And that's what they've been doing for years. So when you're a company that's as Ubisoft, one of the most recognizable names in all of gaming, they're a cornerstone of AAA, you're going to have some ups and downs,

but over the last few years, they've had a lot of downs. They've been digging a grave that I don't think that they can escape. I don't know if they can either, honestly. Because the problem is that the company's reputation is damaged. And if you compare this to, let's say, like, Blizzard, like Blizzard's reputation is damaged, and that is like,

it's so harmful. I don't think people respect and put enough value on the importance of reputation. Because if you don't have that reputation and it ends up like, you know, getting away from you and you lose the narrative, you are in a very, very bad situation. At least four years to recover the reputation. No, I think it's 10 years. I think you need to have like at least five and usually 10 years to rebuild your reputation. I think about companies that have done it. it takes years and years and years

quality repetitive games lack in player interest controversy now their own investors are calling for their leadership to be ousted and for the company to be sold how do you get yourself to that point that's what I want to answer today there's a lot of other companies that are traveling this road to ruin

and I want this to be a lesson to all I think this is I think he's also right that a lot of companies are trying to do what Ubisoft does because they just want to make more and more products to make more and more money. That's the reason. It's that simple. And you're seeing a lot of Western companies do this primarily. So let's talk about the rise and fall of Ubisoft. As of recording this video, Ubisoft's stock just hit a low that they haven't seen in over a decade. Their stock prices. The funny thing is now. It's even lower. Like, let me see if I can, can I find it? No, no, it's not on here

anymore. Yeah, it's like this was from like a week ago or a few days ago. So like now it's even worse than it was in this video. Almost 84% over the past few years and with recent releases like Scull and Bowels. So low. Assasance Creed Mirage. X Defiant, Prince of Persia of the Lost Crown, Star Wars, Outlaws and the upcoming Assassin's Creed Black Shadows, nothing seems to be able to pull them out of this death spiral no matter how many games they release in quick succession. Well, think about how many games he just listed off. Like that was like seven. games or something like that. Of course they're like I mean it's just your spread

so thin. What do you expect? When a company releases six games over the course of a couple years that's usually the sign of success but in the case of Ubisoft each release seems to be taking them one step closer towards the brink of collapse. I don't think that's an example of success at all. The only games

that bring out six games in a year, the only companies that bring out six games in a year are mobile games slot companies. Nobody's bringing out six games in a year. Who the fuck does that? Yeah, there's no way. So how did this happen? Why did this happen?

How does a cornerstone of the AAA industry all this car from race? And if they do, it's a remaster. We need to go back and look to where Ubisoft came from, where it peaked, and where it fell. Ubisoft, like many developers, cut their team from PC games in the late 80s. A game company initially started by the five Gilamont brothers

who still own and operate the company today, initially focused on games distribution as they slowly moved into games development. titles like zombie, Prince of Persia, and a few others helped them to gain a foothold, but it wasn't until 1995 that the company would make a name for itself. Rayman exploded onto the scene,

a game using interactive and creative puzzle and platforming mechanics if we hadn't even seen before that sold over 400,000 units by the end of the year, becoming the most popular game in Europe and cementing itself in gaming history. Following their success came rapid expansion. By the year 2000, Ubisoft saw exponential growth, on their publishing side with major victories on the Dreamcast,

with titles like, Bronia 2, my favorite JRP of all time, Tokyo. I feel like the Dreamcast was like fucking like, who the fuck? Did any of you guys have a Dreamcast? Because like, am I the only one that like my mom wouldn't buy me one because of how expensive it was?

Dreamcast was like crazy overpriced. No Extreme Racer, F1 Racing Championship, and Taxi 2. However, it was on the PlayStation 2 that Ubisoft would find its identity. While they were still publishing great games like from some, Armored Core 2 and Eternal Ring and Snowblind Studios champions of Dorath. It was during this time that Ubisoft acquired the license to use

Tom Clancy's stories and name in a series of games with Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon and later Splinter Cell taking the stage. After this, Ubisoft went on a blitz with original titles, quickly rolling out sequel after sequel. Splinter Cell kicked it off in 2003 with

Pandora Tomorrow in 2004, Chaos Theory in 2005, double agent in 2006. Yeah, like, I remember these games, you guys, like, these games were like as big as cod. Like, Splinter Cell was massive. I never, what's weird is, like, I never even really liked Splinter Cell that much because it was a stealth game. I like, you know, shooting games like Halo and stuff like that. But yeah, they were massive.

Recon launched in 2002. It had a sequel in 2004, a next version of it with Advanced Warfighter in 2006, Advanced Warfighter 2 in 2007. Prince of Persia, the Sands of Time, came out in 2000. And, yep, just like the others, it saw rapid follow-ups with Warrior Within in 2004 and Two Thrones in 2005. It was crazy to see like some of those old games that have better gameplay than what we have now. It's actually nuts. I don't know how that happens. On the mid-2000s, Uvysoft must have realized that this rapid pace was not sustainable.

And it started to affect the quality of their games. Later releases took longer. The next Prince of Persia game didn't appear until 2008. And it took four years to develop the next five. bar cry game from the original that came out in 2004. Despite this intense schedule, Ubisoft was holding its own against rivals in Activision with its military shooters and competing against Konami's Metal Gear Solid through Splinter Cell. Why did they stop making military games?

Do they still make military games? I feel like they don't as much, right? Because of Cod? Do they make Cod? I don't think that Ubisoft makes Call of Duty. Activision makes Call of Duty. It's too controversial. They make, oh, yeah, I guess they make Rainbow Six.

Yeah, okay, all right, they still have that. Isn't that the game that they're adding in a person in a wheelchair? They're adding in a person in a wheelchair or Rainbow Six? I'll be right back. There ain't the military anymore? Yeah, because it's like, you know, if you go in the military, like, it's just, like, it's just, it's so stupid. Like, how do you even do that?

I'll grab that. Regardless of their success in publishing, developing licensed IPs and military shooters, it was the release of Assassin's Creed in 2007 that set Uvysoft into orbit. Yeah, this game, like, this game was the fucking, like, I remember I never played the original one, but I would see it all the time. Like, if you go to a GameStop or something like that back in the day, it was everywhere. Fun, I can play myself as Rainbow Six. What?

Yeah, exactly. But, like, yeah, I mean, I feel like Assassin's Creed is probably the one that Ubisoft has known the most for right now, I would say. With a title that appealed to audiences worldwide. There was nothing like it in the market at the time. This game was an enigma. It was far and away the best-looking game on consoles. It's fluid movement, parkour, and combat felt alien.

Its setting of reliving our ancestors' memories while we chase a relic to try to stop the shadow government Templars was fresh and original. Assassin's Creed defined modern gaming at the time, and it made Ubisoft a household name. Ubisoft was everywhere at this time. You'd be hard pressed not to turn on your console or turn on your PC and see that logo pop up. And it wasn't just the games that they were making. It was the games that they were publishing.

They had such a good eye for talent, such a good eye for great games. And as a result, they made a ton of money. I mean, they published Marowind. I didn't even know that. I was going through some of the history of all the different games that they had published over the years. Yeah, I didn't know that either.

I'm like, man, these guys are raking. in cash at the time. But it wasn't just those games as well. It was also the successes that they were seeing with the games that they were making. They had such a fresh... How do you do that? Like, that's crazy for me to think of

because, like, they published Devil May Cry 3, 2? What the fuck happened? That's crazy. Like, how? I don't even understand. Like, that's unbelievable. High quality outlook

on all the games that they were creating. They were really leaning into present. more than anything else. They wanted to make sure that their games just look the best hands down, bar none, no competition.

They pulled it off. Advanced Warfighter 1 and 2 are some of my favorite shooters of all time, even kind of more than some of the Call of Duty games at the time. They're likely the games

that ended up inspiring Call of Duty Modern Warfare 1 and 2. You look at Splinter Cell and Metal Gear Solid, they leaned really hard into the stealth aspects, the spy aspects of those kind of games. And as a result,

they found their own following and gave a, really unique experience that you weren't getting from the Metal Gear Solid games. Right. While the narrative wasn't nearly as strong, it was still pretty good, but the gameplay was completely different. Then you bring out Assassin's Creed, and that just took their quality to a completely different level.

At this point, with Ubisoft, if you're buying one of their games nine times out of 10, you were going to have your socks knocked off. There were incredible experiences. And Ubisoft knew that. They capitalized on it, and they profited. Following the release of Assassin's Creed, It's crazy to see how popular they used to be.

Like, I feel like I really kind of downplayed how big Ubisoft was. I didn't understand how many other games they also published. That's incredible. Like, yeah, old games were good, yeah. In 2007, Ubisoft entered into a golden era that solidified their place as one of the leaders in the AAA industry. The success of Assassin's Creed was not just a one-off hit. It became a flagship franchise that grew in scope and ambition with each and installment. Assassin's Creed 2 in 2009 expanded upon the original's foundations with deeper gameplay

mechanics. It's also like in 2009. Okay, this isn't a very good image. But like if you look at the gameplay here, 2009, that's really good graphics. Now I think this is another component that people might forget is that like I know that like for Black Flag and a few other games that Ubisoft did, like their graphics for the time were like next level. They were really good. Deeper gameplay mechanics and more engaging narrative and a charismatic protagonist in Ezzio Auditori, still the best protagonist in all of Assassin's Creed. The game was a commercial and critical success, selling over 9 million copies and becoming one of the most celebrated entries in the entire series. The success continued with Assassin's Creed Brotherhood in 2010 and Assassin's Creed Revelations in 2011. In combination

with this, Ubisoft was experiencing major successes with their Far Cry series. Far Cry 3 in 2012 was a groundbreaking title that redefined open world gaming. It introduced vast, explorable islands filled with diverse environments and a gripping story and one of the most memorable protagonists in all of gaming history. And I think that character shows just how far Ubisoft today is fallen from where they came from. No shot Ubisoft ever makes a villain like this again. I'm sorry, what did you say? What did you say?

Did you want me to slice you open like I did your first? friend. Shut the fuck up. Okay? I'm the one with a fucking dick. Look at me. Look me in your fucking eye. Hey!

You fuck! Look me in the eye. You're my bitch. I rule this fucking kingdom. Markry 3 sold over. Man. So they actually just pusified their games.

That's what I think it is. They pusified the games. That's what it was. Yeah, because like, I watch this, yeah. That's it. How's it? How's it? Yeah. Goat villain of all time.

Because I compare this dialogue to the dialogue in Star Wars Outlaw. You know? For 10 million copies and was one of the best games of the generation. Setting a new benchmark for open world shooters. The series continued to thrive with Far Cry 4 in 2014 and Far Cry 5 in 2018, each expanding on the franchise's formula with new mechanics and narratives. By 2018, Far Cry 5, became the fastest selling title in Ubisoft's history, moving over 5 million copies within

the first week solidifying the franchise's place in history. In parallel with the success that they had going on with the Far Cry series, Tom Clancy's Rainbow Sick. I feel like what really is poison for a lot of games is that when the game has like limits that it won't go to. And I think that's what happens with a lot of companies is that like they, there's like an edge that the company has or the games have, that then they kind of get afraid of.

They're like, now we're afraid of this edge. And I feel like it was so crazy for me to play cyberpunk 2077 and then to have right before that played Starfield. Like, it was like, it was like two completely different experiences, right? And I feel like that's what's happened with a lot of these game companies, is that I don't even really know why, but so many of their games are just flaccid.

They're just flat. They're just like there's no, like, I don't know. Like, I'm trying to think even like what the word, they're soft. Yeah. Like they're soft. Like everything is, um, saying, yeah, it's just, I, I'm just trying to think like the best way I said,

character soul. Yeah, it's just weak. Like, yeah, the characters don't have any edge. They don't have any grit to them. they're not interesting I don't know they're one dimensional yeah they're politically correct for sure

I think that's a huge problem yeah like I feel like you know what a good example of this is like what game like really was a great example is the like Baldersgate 3 with like the bear sex scene and then also the coffin of Andy and Lely

and I think that the reason why those games like got so much attention is because like completely different levels by the way obviously but like the reason why they got a lot of attention is that if it's a game where you can kill and eat your parents you can like you know that you are experiencing something that's not being artificially handicapped in terms of its narrative direction because the person that's writing it is afraid of offending the wrong person on Twitter and I think that that's really where the weakness comes in that's where the problem is it's that people are self-censoring narratives and making them less complex and less interesting

because that complexity and that interest makes certain people on the internet that are really outspoken, like really upset and uncomfortable. Games have weak characters, mostly just agenda vehicles. Well, I feel like the problem is that whenever, and this is kind of like the issue,

is that whenever you see, like you perceive, I think this is also very important, whenever you perceive a agenda or like a certain reason that's political or social of why something is the way it is in a game, I think that the amount of escapism that you can have in that game goes down massively. Because now you are no longer playing a fantasy world. You are doing something that is in the context of like a real life.

There's no agenda? Yeah. Yeah, it's immersion breaking. It's very immersion breaking. Siege. Initially launched to a modest reception, but through consistent updates and community engagement, it is now grown into one of the most popular and enduring multiplayer shooters, even still today. By 2018, Rainbow Six Each had amassed over 30 million players.

Thank you, Jinks. Tom Clancy's The Division in 2016 was another major hit, offering a compelling blend of third-person shooting and RPG mechanics set in a post-apocalyptic New York. It was Ubisoft's fastest selling new IP at launch, earning $300 and $3 million in sales within the first week. Jesus. It showcased Ubisoft's ability to successfully launch a new IP

while still being able to maintain their existing franchises. If we take a snapshot of the successes from 2000 to 2018, we see a... I had no idea they had this crazy of a run. Really? Like, I actually had no idea about this. This is nuts.

Microsoft that was consistently delivering on high quality experiences while innovating within existing franchises, creating new franchises, doing all kinds of things. But at the exact same kind of, time we also see a foreboding trend. The minute

that they see a game becomes successful they hammer that nail again and again and again. Sometimes within such quick succession that we're seeing sequels with games within year to year to year back to year back to back and then they stop. And that's going to take a toll. Not only on the developers but also on the

audiences. Well and it's also like another component of this is that as video games have become more expensive and people have become more conscious of the money they're spending, I think that you see a lot less people that are willing to spend a lot of money on games. Because like, again, whenever you were playing games and you were getting maybe like, you know, you get a new game for $50 and it's like every once in a while you buy one of those, it's okay. But now I feel like people are much more money conscious because

of how many different things are asking for your money. So it's obvious they were grown. Yeah, exactly. You yourself got to a point where they had nothing to say. Well, I feel like the problem really is that I think their biggest weakness, I'm going to be totally honest, is the fact that they're making so many products. I think that the issue is that they're spread too thin and they're focused on too many different things at the same time. But that's the biggest issue. By 2018, Ubisoft is worth $24 a share.

It's the highest price. It's still the highest price that they've ever been worth. And keep in mind that the $24 a share is contextual around the company being only one-fifth in the American. in stock exchange. The other four-fifths are in the European stock exchange. So the actual value of that stock over there was probably closer to $100. That's the perfect reflection, whether you care about share prices or not. It's the perfect reflection of what the company was worth at the time. Ten times the value that they were before they released Assassin's Creed. They were swimming in cash. They were so successful. They were massive. But when you reach those peaks, there tends to be a trend

that follows. They've been following that trend straight into the ground. As Ubisoft entered into 2018, the cracks in its previously successful formula began to show. While the company had relied on its major franchises to drive growth and maintain

its position within the industry, the strategy began to falter. The initial decline of this period can largely be attributed to Ubisoft's over-reliance on its established franchise is a pattern that we've seen with many major publishers. This is what happened with Blizzard.

Like they've, and like they had a number of games. They haven't released an original franchise since Overwatch, I'm pretty sure, right? Like there isn't anything else that they've done. Like it's just been Diablo 4 and World of Warcraft. Yeah, and also the phone game. Well, that's just that that's not new. That's Warcraft Rumble. Like, yeah, it's just a phone game, really.

And, yeah, I think it's a huge issue. brown breaking mechanics and narratives that defined Ubisoft's titles were beginning to feel repetitive, leading to players feeling bored and fatigued with Ubisoft's design. I'll be honest, by the third Assassin's Creed, I had already tapped out because I felt like I saw the writing on the wall. Every time I watched any of their reveals or trailers, I say, this is the way I feel about wow. Like what he's explaining right now is exactly the way I feel about wow. is that like because I've already played it so much, I know what the new one is going to be like

and I'm like, oh, I've already been there, I've already done that. And yeah, I've done all this before. This over-reliance on existing franchises resulted in a slew of releases that while still commercially viable lacked the innovative spark that wants to find the company. Assassin's Creed Odyssey in 2018 was a prime example of this issue. Despite it being a commercial success

and receiving positive reviews, it didn't quite reach the heights of previous entries in the series. While it expanded upon RPG elements that were introduced in Assassin's Creed origins, players and critics alike felt that the formula was becoming stale, with the vast majority of the open world and numerous side activities, feeling more like a checklist rather than an engaging experience. I think this is what's happened with a lot of live service,

not not live service, open world games, is that somebody said that the comparison, like the difference being an open world game, game and a non-open world game and it had like a guy and like a monster and a treasure chest and the open world game were just like it was farther apart it's like okay things just take longer to do okay um wow amazing right uh i quit open world games and i think also like a big problem is that once you use this formula so many times like i kind of i'm i'm kind of this way with gotcha games now where like i played star rail i had a lot of fun playing star rail but like

the fact that I can figure out everything that's happening in a gotcha game when the whole thing is in Chinese. Like how the fuck? I'm not, I can't read Chinese. How do I know this? Because every single one of them plays the exact same way. And I think that's a huge problem. It's like you have this established formula and how many times are people going to want this formula? And I'm going to tell you a more contemporary example. Look at their response to anotria. And anotria in a lot of ways is a good game, right? And like, despite the type of game it is, there have been a lot of people who have expressed a degree of fatigue with Soulslike games. They feel like we've had too many of these and they're looking for something new. And I think that's always what happens. And like for me, I love Soulslike games. I get it. But I can totally understand.

I can see where they're coming from. It's very mid-Souls-like, worse than Words of the Fallen. My point is that people see a Souls-like and they're like, oh, okay, it's another one of these. And I think the same thing happened with Ubisoft. Propagated a shared perception between players and critics of more of the same. Ubisoft games were becoming predictable, drawn out, and boring. Far Cry New Dawn in 2019 suffered from the exact same issues. As a rec sequel to Far Cry 5, it attempted to build on the narrative and setting,

but was seen as more of an expansion than a full-fledged new installment. The game was a commercial success to a degree, but it didn't match the sales or the impact of Farquire. cry three or far cry four this is something like this is kind of an abstract comparison but i can see this happening with certain streamers where like streamers will do certain things to like maintain a certain amount of viewer count and i think that it's an instance where doing the safe option guarantees failure where like for example some streamers don't want to only play like they only want to play like one type of game and eventually that's going to stop working and people will get tired of watching to playing that game.

Like, there's a lot of loud players that are like that. And I think it's a huge issue because if you're not evolving, then you're falling behind. And I think that's true with anything. Like in any sort of a market, if you're not evolving your product and evolving what you're offering to consumers, other people will, and then consumers will move on. Narrative was considered weaker. The post-apocalyptic setting, while a new direction for the series didn't really resonate strongly with the player base, this

underwhelming reception was indicative of a larger issue, the lack of fresh ideas and a growing formulaic approach to game design. Another notable release during this period was it was about this time that I started hearing a lot of bad things about them too. Two in 2019. Now this game was

like the memes. It had refined mechanics over the first game. The end game content was really engaging and it was twice the size. It's not larger than the first game. However, despite its reception, it didn't meet Ubisoft's. High sales expectations. The live service model that they had injected into the game arbitrarily, while successful

in Rainbow Six Seed, did not effectively translate into the Division 2. This is partly due to market saturation as other players are more invested in other live service games, but from my perspective, as a fan from Division 2, the life service model just didn't work here. It felt generic. In a game where you're finding loot, and that's the gameplay loop, the last thing that you want to do is buy things to wear. You want to stand out for your achievements in the game.

Not how much you spent on loot boxes. Well, that, I mean, like, fuck, man. Like, you could say that with every game. And the thing is, I can. I think that a lot of people are kind of fatigued from, like, every video game being full of cosmetics and shit like this. And I get how, like, games have to make money and everything, right? I understand.

But at the same time, it's like, there's a certain degree of fatigue where, like, you just have all these cosmetics and all this bullshit in games. Like, everything is made into being a live server. this game. Does it really need to be like that? I think that the best example of this is the suicide squad game. That's probably the biggest example of a fuck-up. But I think Division 2 might be a good example. I just don't know enough about it. This pattern of diminishing returns, poorly implemented monetization and loss of connection with the players is a common issue for companies that heavily rely on their existing franchises. While sequels and spinoffs can

capitalize on established fan bases, they also run the risk of alienation. players by offering experiences that feel all too familiar or injecting things into those experiences that make them, well, just something players don't want to engage with whatsoever. Ubisoft's reliance on its core franchises like Assassin's Creed, Far Cry, and the Tom Clancy games led to a perception that the company was simply reusing the same templates with minor tweaks and adding monetization. Yeah, this is when the memes of like the Ubisoft, like if Ubisoft made Dark Souls and it's got like a million menu. items and there's like all these pop-ups and it's like check the store and everything and then the

elden ring one as well yeah that's it lack of innovation and growing similarities between their titles resulted in players being less excited about their new games and they began to see ubisoft games is formulaic in design and you see like what i'm talking about about how people that are like streamers it's the same thing is that like if you just keep doing the exact same thing over and over, you might think that you're being safe, but all you're doing is like safely failing slowly. And I think that's what happens with a lot of people. Like I tell myself, or I've told other people this too, it's like, if I'm not looking back at my content from three years ago and thinking it's bad, then I'm not winning, right? I'm not getting better. Yeah, there's no,

they're postponing death. Yeah, exactly. sprawling open worlds filled with repetitive tasks rather than unique and engaging experiences. And I think that's the most troubling thing when it comes to Ubisoft. It's their aversion to criticism. Get that away from me. And they're not alone in that, okay?

There's plenty of other studios and journalists that are out there that feel the same way. Don't listen to the gamers, those angry gamers. They don't know anything. Look, it's actually crazy to me that like any group of like developers have like, they've gaslighted themselves into thinking that games journalists speak for gamers. Like there's it, I think this is like a huge problem that like publishers and developers are

listening to these journalists and these people that are writers. You're listening to them over your actual audience. You're listening to them. You know who you need to be listening to? The YouTube channel comments. You need to be listening to the reviews from users that are highly upvoted about the game that you released. Those are the people that actually matter.

Some person that works at a company and the company has an important name, this is one person's opinion. They don't represent anybody other than themselves. And I think that what happens a lot is that these companies have like a very distorted view of what players want because they're getting that perspective from people that are not accurately representing the players. And I can offer you guys a very easy example. do you feel like your needs and your desires as a player are accurately reflected by the way that different games companies cover games? Do you think that they're accurately reflected, right? Exactly, no. And so guess what the problem is when you make decisions based off of that, everything goes to shit.

Get it. Well, nine times out of ten, players don't know how to voice their criticisms effectively. oftentimes they're just being mean when they say things. They're still telling you that something's wrong with your games and you need to fix it. But year after year, Ubisoft has completely failed to listen to any criticism, whether that's coming from professional critics or the players. People have been saying for years how formulaic their design is, how scary predictable their games are.

I know that if I can find it. Oh, man. If Ubisoft made Eldon Ring. Man, I can't wait, huh? Huh? Real exciting. You know, my man? Yeah, a timeless masterpiece. Yeah, there you go.

I log into an open world Ubisoft game. It's just going to be a checklist simulator. Everybody still remembers when their developers took to Twitter to criticize Eldon Ring of all games for its open world design, its quest design, and its UI. I forgot. How the fuck do you do that? That's the... I just, yeah, the UI of Eldon Ring. Oh, my God.

And the thing is that there actually were criticisms with the UI. Like, for example, like, keybinding things with, like, your pouch is kind of annoying to do on keyboard. But, like, none of the people that play the games that are these developers, like, played the game enough to know that. Best game that we've had, one of the best games that we've had in the last decade. Why would you look at a game like that? Look at the success that it sees and say, we need to internalize some of the things that this game. did well why players liked it and then reflect that in our games going forward. That's actually a really good point is that Star Wars Outlaws came out after Eldon Ring.

So this is like an open world game. And like you could have looked at Eldon Ring and taken examples and things that Eldon Ring did or for example like Tears of the Kingdom or Breath of the Wild did. And you decided to take none of those examples. That's how you make better products. You learn from your competition. learn from the games that do well instead of looking at it

wanting to criticize it and trying to make excuses while you think that your games are better don't play Assassin's Creed instead fuck that look Ubisoft had a bit of a resurgence in 2018 to 2019 and it looked like

they were getting back on the horse it looked like they were listening to player feedback they were implementing in their games it was making better games as a result they were making a lot of money but that only lasted for so long of course after a period of declining

interest and fatigue, Ubisoft managed to stage a bit of a resurgence in 2019 and 2020 by... Oh, big surprise. Wow. In December of 2020, Ubisoft was worth a lot of money. Oh, wow. That's crazy. I wonder why. What could possibly be the reason that the video game company during the pandemic that caused everybody to be inside their house was making a lot of money. What a coincidence. Revisiting some of their core franchises with a renewed focus. It must have been the flu. I guess so. Now, who thought something like that could actually have a positive impact on your sales? One of the most significant releases during this time was Assassin's Creed Valhalla in 2020.

This game was a commercial hit, selling more copies during its launch week than any other previous Assassin's Creed title. It received praise for its engaging narrative, improved combat mechanics, and rich historical setting. Valhalla revitalized interest in the series. It showed that Ubisoft could make changes. However, that isn't to say that players can. complaints didn't remain the same. Many reviewers and players lamented over the length of the game and while Valhalla

introduced some innovative elements, territory arcs as well as the narrative just dragged on for far too long. The game's average completion time was over 60 hours and 100% completion was nearing over 200 hours. No matter what you do, elements that were praised at the beginning of the game are going to start

to feel repetitive and it's just... Is that a problem? Because I play a lot of games. I think it depends. I don't really like that, like, I really, really hate the idea that time spent playing the game should be a metric for success. I actually think that that is such a massively toxic, like, a metric for deciding whether a game is good or not. It's so fucking toxic. Like, there are so many games that I've played for 80 hours and I think are trash and other games that I played for eight hours that I think are amazing. And like there's games like, for example, Blackmouth Wukong was a pretty long game.

Eldon Ring was a pretty long game. Wise of P was a pretty long game. Those were great games. And then there's also short games that are bad too. It's so weird that like, I just, I don't think that that's the way that you should judge a game. Dollar per hour. But like, that's not really like, that's not really true though, right? Because like you're paying different amounts of money for different things.

You're paying a dollar an hour for a video game, but how much do you pay for a hooker? Well, if a video game feels like a hooker, then shouldn't you pay more for that time? I feel like that'd be pretty fair. So it's not about really the dollar per hour thing. It's like the metric is very, I think like you can use this. What? Well, I'm just being honest, right? I'm just being honest, that's all.

And so I don't think that you should look at the time that you have to spend playing a game as being good or bad. because I can guarantee you if the game felt fresh the same way that Eldon Ring did, a lot of people's play-throughs of Eldon Ring were probably longer than Assassin's Creed foul howl I would assume and guess what I bet people weren't complaining

the gameplay wasn't good enough for 60 hours, that's why, that's the issue it's the gameplay again going to feel like a checklist of tasks in the same year they released Watchdog Legions which attempted to innovate with its play is anyone mechanic

allowing the player to recruit and control virtually any character in the entire game world. Well, the game received mixed reception due to some technical issues in a less than compelling story than we've seen from its predecessors. This is, again, that's the problem is like once a company gets really big, because you have to keep in mind, I don't know if he's going to bring this up. But like after a company goes through like one of these like weird sexual harassment things, you see them like really playing it super safe with like a lot of themes in their stories. And I think this happened with Ubisoft and it also happened with Blizzard. So you have companies like Blizzard that like, you know, for example, like, so they have this massive sexual harassment lawsuit, right? And then after that, they're going to release Dragon Flight where the main character is a girl in a chain mail bikini with like Alex Straza. No, of course not.

So they redesigned her. So the problem is that now, again, the game is being limited and it's being changed and it's being artificially handicapped for real world reasons. And I think that Ubisoft had the same type of issue happen at their offices. And because of that, now you're getting a watered down, neutered version of the games. Because the company doesn't want to take risks like that, because it could look bad for them, like, socially. And again, nobody cares about that. That's what's so crazy. And actually, that's not true.

You know who cares about it? Journalists care about it. Do players care? No. Like if you're ever listening to anybody other than actual players You're a fucking idiot Like I'm sorry you were a fucking moron Only listen to what players tell you

It sold relatively well And it showed that the company was willing to take some risks And explore some new concepts with existing franchises Immortals Phoenix Rising in 2020 Was another one of those key releases That showed Ubisoft had a willingness to experiment And even come out with some new IPs The game offered a vibrant and humorous take on Greek mythology combined with open world exploration and puzzle solving and action combat.

There were a lot of folks that liked this game and in some cases people liked it even more than Breath of the Wild at the time. Though it didn't reach the commercial heights of Assassin's Creed or Far Cry, it showed that Ubisoft could still deliver a fresh and enjoyable experience outside of their established franchises. Am I crazy to think that that game play that I just saw looked very painful? Like I don't know why It's like it's so astonishing for me to see people look at games like that And see it and not think that it's immediately garbage Like I have a very high I guess maybe I have a very high standard for this

But like the quality of game like the minute to minute Like the way that games like react co-love the game Yeah I just I can't like games that play badly I just can't do it However I think the most important thing to keep in mind during this period of time and this surge of growth at Ubisoft and the biggest boon to Ubisoft at the time, as well as many other developers as well,

is that there was a pandemic and lockdown that was driving an increase in game sales artificial engagement. With people spending more time at home than man for games surged. Ubisoft benefited from this greatly as their established franchises and live service games offered an extensive amount of content for players to explore.

Rainbow Six Siege saw massive growth during this period. The player base growing to over 70 million players, at the end of 2021. Well, it's also, I'm pretty sure, Rainbow Six Siege, there's not a lot of other games like Rainbow Six Siege. So, like, they're competing in a market

without really a lot of other, like, competitors, right? I mean, like, you could say, like, abstractly, like, Overwatch is like that, but not really in terms of, like, having different heroes and stuff and, like, different types of characters. But, like, no, it's not, like, Rainbow Six at all. So, yeah, I think that's also another reason. It's, like, they've got this market pretty much

lockdown. Continued support through regular updates, new operators and seasonal events helped keep that community engaged and invested even today. Any game studio that had a game that came out or was ready to release right around the time of lockdowns saw massive growth and massive profits. Go figure. But as we've learned, that growth is inorganic and unsustainable and none of them had been able to maintain it.

So with that said, yeah, of course, Ubisoft is going to see a little bit of growth there. I think there is also, like, you have to keep in mind that, like, in the late 2010s, like, 2017, 18 and 19, there is, like, an artificial, like, expectation that tech companies would just keep growing unsustainably. Because this was back still whenever social media was growing 20% every single year. But what I think happened with COVID is that COVID kind of accelerated that growth. Like, it's, I don't even think that COVID necessarily. artificially like change the growth, but they just made it happen faster. So like, for example, something that probably should have happened over 10 years because of COVID happened in two years, which is the amount of people that were like on the internet,

on social media, et cetera. Because I feel like during COVID, how many of you guys knew somebody or know somebody who wasn't really connected online and like spending a lot of time online? And then COVID changed that. It was a catalyst, right? COVID basically, it was like a speed run of the next 10. 10 years. But like now that those 10 years have occurred, like video games have kind of reached to a certain degree a saturation point. Social media has reached to a certain degree a saturation point

where everybody that's going to have Facebook has Facebook and everybody who doesn't have Facebook chooses not to have Facebook. And I think that's the big issue too. It definitely evolved a little bit past some of their game design issues. You're just growing unsustainable. Those same criticisms were still. there regardless of the years that had gone by. And one of the other problems that Ubisoft has is the minute that they see something work, they will hammer it until the wheels

fall off. They will exhaust you as fast as they possibly can because they just want to try to make as much money as fast as they possibly can, rather than paying attention to what the longevity of that game would look like, how much more money you could make if the game lived longer. But they just love killing games. When you have an entire industry that is criticizing

your games, where in a lot of cases you can take some of these reviews for some of their games, layer them on top of each other, and it looks like they're reviewing the exact same game. When you have your players that are complaining about your monetizing... I get to say that that's probably an issue also with the game journalism. I think it's a bit of a self-report that a lot of the games journalists talk about how AI can't make anything new. All it can do is repost existing things, but they're simultaneously afraid of AI taking their job. Well, what does that say about your articles? It's just me. A.

You don't then go and just make all those things worse. You just keep doing the exact same thing. You don't inject. You don't inject. How do you put XP boost in a single player game? What are you doing? Why? What is this?

What was the game that did that? Um, I forgot which game that was. Was it Volhala? Shadows of War. I don't remember. Assassin's Creed honesty. Yeah. There is no value that having a

store adds to a player in a single player game or really almost in any game. But here's the problem that a lot of people don't understand is that when you have systems like that in games, now the game is designed around making you want to buy an experience boost, which is a huge fucking problem. Completely defeats the purpose of playing games like this in the first place. We know that all you're doing is just expanding the content as far as you possibly can to make it unrealistic for casual players to play without spending money. It's transparent.

That's the worst part about them. They are transparent greed manifest. You can see everything they do and they think that they're being sneaky about it. What are you talking about? Get comfortable with not buying your games. I know what you mean by that. I know the implications of what you're talking about. Because that means you're going to try to make it where we can't buy games.

Well, it's that they want to control the ownership. of it and they want to have another metric of control. That's the reason why make us a little bit more comfortable with it in the future, right? Yeah. Don't worry about it. We're all pretty comfortable with not buying your games. Which brings us to the rapid decline of Ubisoft

over the past few years with release after release failing to deliver out expectations while doing nothing to compete with recent shifts in the market. To me, Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon breakpoint in 2019 encapsulates everything that's wrong with modern Ubisoft. It was buggy, the writing was

awful it was repetitive and generic over bloated and overmonetized they monetized XP games they put vehicles and skins that had no business being in the game into the game and destroyed any sense of immersion in a largely single-player experience like every other open-world game from Ubisoft even still today they haphazardly put in RPG mechanics like varied loot skill trees and more mechanics that are only there to extend the players time in the game putting these elements I can not agree with this more. I think that so many games overcomplicate the experience in a way that

doesn't add anything to the player's experience of the game. They're not, you're not making the game any better. You're not improving the product. You're just adding in more hoops for the player to jump through in the hopes that it will keep playing, keep them playing the game longer. Like, I don't know about you guys, but anytime that I'm playing a new one of these games and I loot something and it says one of 250, I'm like, like, it's just, are you fucking kidding me? And there is a means to gatekeep players from progressing to story or taking on certain enemies.

I think Skillup said it best when he was reviewing breakpoints saying, why the fuck is this in the game? Why is it so poorly implemented? And why is it in, well, they're doing it. The problem is that, like, this is a rhetorical question. Everybody knows why this is in the game. earn 50% more experience with this boost valid forever on all your save games this sucks because i guarantee you that probably the experience acquisition method or the way that you gain advantages through experience

is counterbalanced to make this more appealing and that's the issue just cheat what the fuck yeah and why is it in every game in their portfolio this sort of design philosophy has proliferated through just about every single game that they make. And what makes matters worse for Ubisoft, and I think this is the one thing that the vast majority of people are overlooking here. It's what's killing their sales. It's the increase in competition from other publishers with new successful IPs. It's also a big reason is to that you have indie development studios that are able to make games

that are of a higher scope and a higher quality now. So whereas before they only had like maybe a half a dozen. dozen studios or a dozen studios to compete against. Now they have way more studios to compete against. So you have other games that they're being compared against and it's like, okay, well, you made this game. Well, why is it that, you know, like I don't just play this smaller game. It's cheaper. It's like, I think a good example is like the Prince of Persia game. So Prince of Persia, I think it was like, I don't remember what it was. It was a recent like side score Prince of Persia game? Why would somebody spend $50 or $40 on a Prince of Persia side-scroller game when Blasphemous

2 and 1 are way less money and they're basically the same experience? So that's another example of like an indie game that's coming out that's just edging them out of the market or hollow night or something like that. And whereas before in the 2000s and like the early 2010s, they had this basically de facto monopoly because it was harder to go to market with a game as an indie developer. But now you have so many different types of tools for guerrilla marketing and different ways that companies can get their game out there. Like, for example, Corekeeper, look at that game. That game did really well.

It came out of nowhere. We're not really out of nowhere, but it was made by an indie studio. And like another crab's treasure is another good example of that. So POE versus YAL before. Yeah, exactly, right? And a lot of these games that are made by these smaller studios end up being better. experiences. And that's the reason.

And so now they have to compete with more people, and so the products have to be even better. And they're just not, they're not meeting the mark. Golden Ring and Genshin Impact have captured player interest. Eldon Ring's open world design and exploration set a new benchmark for the genre. While Genshin Impact offers a free-to-play model in an open-world game with high production values and it's shaking up players' expectations. Games like these force players to compare

similarities and when you contrast Ubisoft. Here's one big factor. Eldon Ring and Genshen impact play well. I cannot emphasize this enough. Star Wars Outlaws does not

play well. It doesn't work well. It doesn't like the way the characters move. You don't fully feel like you're in control of the character. It's not very good. That matters more than basically. fucking anything.

So yeah, that's another big reason. Games with the experiences that players have had access to over the past few years, it's no wonder why people aren't playing their games. And this goes back to what we were discussing previously. Ubisoft's core issue is their inability to change and recognize

trends. Their loss and quality and generic monetization. Look at their first AAA, sorry, quadruple A game ever made skull and bones. This was crazy. I still can't believe they made this. Really, like this is, it's insane.

$1,000 live service title, in development for 11 years, costing over 200 million. In development for 11 years? Oh my God. How? That's, that's insane. That should be illegal.

$1,000, only to release a more boring version of Assassin's Creed black flag with less than 700 concurrent players on Steam. Well, I think that actually the game is more popular now on Steam. Let me see if I can compare it. That was for something else. Skull and Bones.

I think the game is doing better now. Oh. Anyway. How to make a more consumable version of Assassin's Creed with Mirage, charging $50 for a less than 15-hour game that did nothing to evolve the franchise. They finally returned to Prince of,

of Persia with the Lost Crown, they made an awesome game. It was really innovative. I actually enjoyed it, but they charged $40 for a Metroidvania game in a market where those games cost a fourth of the price. This guy watches my screen. That's exactly what

I fucking said. That's exactly it. The Lost Crown is great. It was. And they did have a, like, they made one innovation that I can think of, which is being able to screenshot things in the different world. so you can remember them for later.

I don't know about another Metroidvania game that had that before the lost crown. So yeah, I mean, it's a good point. It is. It absolutely is. Like, that's why I made it. But like, anyway, like he's right, though, is that, yeah, you're competing in a market with other games. And also Prince of Persia, you had like a three-day, like, early access thing.

And this is like a problem with like perception, is that when you're going to see a lot of streamers and people talking about the game, it's going to be on the early access day. So the early access for the game was like $50 or $60. It was insane. Who the fuck is going to spend that much money on a Metroidvania game? And I have no problem with it. I don't care. But the audience perception is that Metroidvania games are of a lower quality.

That's just the way that people see things. Star Wars Outlaws, a game for all intents and purposes should have been an easy home run, but ultimately showcases how dire the situation is at you. Ubisoft. Not only... This game gave me an existential crisis. Like, I was so upset at the end of this game. I was shook, bro.

Like, I remember at the end of this, I just went out into my backyard and I sat on the porch for like 30 minutes. Just doing nothing. You beat the game? No, the game beat me. Does the game suffer from quality issues unattractive character designs, bugs, repetitiveness, and inconsistencies, but in an attempt

to remove some of their open world bloat, you come to realize just how those elements, once they're removed, the game is really just held together by duct tape. Eurogamer in their review said something really interesting, saying that the problem with Star Wars Outlaws, however, isn't that it adheres too closely to the development approach akin to hoarding, but that it does the opposite, stripping away years of accumulated video game clutter. Admirably, Outlaws does this quite aggressively, Kessel Sabak aside. But in doing so, it reveals an integral issue. Ubisoft Open World games are not only fun because of their formula, they are their formula. To strip away isn't to peel off some old wallpaper to reveal the original

brickwork, it's lifting up the carpet to find a whacking great hole in the ground. I cannot disagree more. Every single thing about that, game was bad. The graphics were bad. The combat was bad. The story was bad. The itemization was bad. The upgrades you can get were bad. Every single thing about it was bad. It is crazy like the open world formula is why it would have been good. There's no way. The enemy AI, it wasn't bad. The enemy AI, the enemy AI was retarded. It was insane. They can be looking at you.

Seems clear over here. All right. Resuming Newming NPC movement. Oops, oops, I've been assassinated. The game looks AI. It's just terrible. It was so IGN 7 out of 10. As I said, guys, because of those reviews,

that's what's actually gotten me to, like, play a lot of new games. is because I will see reviews for games that I think are complete garbage. And I'm like, I, somebody has to, somebody has to do it. They, somebody has to actually play through this game and actually give it a real score. Higher review than Space Marine 2, by the way. It's crazy. It's funny because Mirage has decent outlaws couldn't replicate it. That's how you do it.

It's just embarrassing. On the ground. Meaning that their games are hollow. and I think that that's a fitting description. From my perspective as a player, Ubisoft has become synonymous with generic games that are overpriced, overmonetized, and overly repetitive.

I'm going to be, I'm going to say again, I disagree. I wish that it was generic. I wish so much that it was generic. If you had just done a generic game, it would have at least been like a six or a seven, you know, like how do you do that? I wish we had a generic.

rank. TGS, a Tokyo game show. It's in like a, it's actually a little bit about two hours or so. It's actually pretty soon. Side of the division one and two, I've had no interest whatsoever in playing any of their games because I've already played them years ago. And playing the next game isn't going to be any different.

That is why I'm not playing well. That right there. That's the reason. Like that, that's, I don't know, Danny, you guys feel the same way. Like, that's how I feel at least, right? Is it not be playing Division III? Yeah. That's where I'm at.

Same games pushed out the door for profit that lack any creativity or originality. Now we look at their next release. Assassin's Creed Shadows. A game criticized well before its release because, other than legacy media, everyone else can see the elephant in the room. An Assassin's Creed game finally set in Japan, a setting that is so great for a game with this kind of theme, only to include a tokenized representation of a character with vague,

at best historical relevance backed by a hip-hop soundtrack in combat. Why is it that representation to these people means hip-hop soundtracks or a character wearing Jordans whose power is that they run fast? Because there are a bunch of liberal white women that don't know any black people. And so they think that they're like some like different like type of animal or something. It's like, well, this is their culture. They don't know any black people. Like you look at the development studios for these games,

it's full of a bunch of white people. That's the reason why. It's because they don't know any, they don't know any black people. They don't know how to interact with them. Sheltered white dudes. Yeah, so look, they're racist. Exactly.

It's crazy how it happens. They lock their cars when a black person gets closer than 50 feet. Yeah, they go down the bad part of town. They're like, they're locking their doors. Oh, shit. Oh. what's this here? It's the blind side effect.

Yeah, it's just, it's crazy. It's so, so, so weird, bro. Like, ultimate racist, aristocratic racists? No, they're not aristocratic, okay? They're just performative. It's crazy how whenever you actually take a step back and you look at it, it's like, it's so, it's such an obvious caricature, but these people don't realize it.

I'll be honest, I think that a lot of the dialogue surrounding Assassin's Creed shadows are issues that players would largely ignore if they knew that Assassin's Creed that this game was going to be incredible. I've said this before. Yeah, I hope he says it. Yusuke will not even be in the top 10 problems of this game when it comes out. Please realize that when this game releases, it's not even going to be in the top 10. Over the years, players have come to expect less and less from Ubisoft games. Why are investors so concerned? Why are they jumping shit before one of the largest releases of Ubisoft in recent memory? Well, why don't you tell me why anyone would want to play Assassin's Creed Shadows

when they have far better Eastern themed YouTube content? I'm going to play it, very simple, actually. I'm going to play it so I can make a video about it. And then I'm going to have people watch the video. that's the plan. Yeah. Alternatives that without a doubt have better combat, better environments, higher quality, and better storytelling.

Without the need to be able to make a statement or press their morals against an audience. I think that's a really big component that a lot of people, I feel like the way that companies like put morals and put like their social agenda into games actually plays a much bigger role in how people respond to those games. and I think the reason why is that it takes a player's immersion out of the game. So when you see something like this and you hear it, like, oh, yeah, this character has like pronouns and it's like, oh, well, we're going to add in, you know, like we're going to make a game from like back and like, you know, like 300 years ago and there's going to be like openly gay characters. It's like that's not real. That's not the way it is.

And like, whenever you see that, you know that you're playing it and you're looking at it in this perspective because this is the way that developer wants you to see the world. Co-opting established IP? Yeah, exactly. It's a red flag. I stopped caring about the game.

I do too. When I see people that use a game as a platform for their agenda, and I think also, like, it's very obvious when it happens. Maybe I'm crazy, but I can immediately see that. There's a game set in 13. century Mongolia with 16 pronouns. I wonder what Gingas Khan would think of that. Yeah, I wonder what he think about that.

Hmm. I'm sure he'd be very upset. What would I play Assassin's Creed Shadows when I could play Blackmuth, Wukong, Ghost of Sashima, or Rise of Ronan? Why would I play something that I have already played when I could play something entirely fresh? Yeah.

Ubisoft's issues are the same issues that plague the vast majority of the... I think also like it just looks so bad that the day after they announced the new game, the new ghost game, that Ubisoft delays Assassin's Creed Shadows. Even though the decision to delay Assassin's Creed Shadows was probably decided probably weeks ago, publicly, it looks really, really bad. The largest publishers and developers in the industry.

I was so good? Over the years, while they've continued to grow and chase profits, they've lost a unified vision of what they're, game should represent. In the pursuit for profits and expanding their market share and maximizing revenue through aggressive monetization strategies, they've strayed from the creative foundations that once made them an industry leader. This fragmented approach has led to a loss of identity, resulting in games that feel more like products that are churned out to meet quarterly targets rather than passionate, well-crafted experiences. I think this is happening to a lot of game

companies. I think it's happening to Activision. I think it's happening to EA. It's happening to lizard. It's happening to Ubisoft. And I think there's probably a couple others that I haven't thought of. It's happening to, I hear Bungy, but I'm not entirely sure. This is a huge issue. And I think the problem is because gaming is becoming, gaming is an art that is also highly monetizable. And I think that you're seeing the same thing happen with gaming that we see with a lot of movies, where a lot of movies are just, like let's remake Indiana Jones. Let's do another Spider-Man. Let's do another movie that's in the same universe as an existing movie.

And so what happens is that politics, yeah. I mean, and there's also exploitation and, you know, all that, yeah, for sure. But I think it's that these companies become so big and they have so many shareholders or, you know, there's like so much money relying on these things that they can't afford to make mistakes. And I think that what these companies are. do is that instead of trying to take a risk and make a lot of money, they don't take a risk and they guarantee that they'll only lose a little bit of money. And I think that's what's happened a lot, the safe approach. Yeah, they're taking this very safe approach. And I think

that that safe approach has caused a lot of people to lose interest. And also, I think that games, so there's a number of games that I think prove this. A great game will be accessible to everybody regardless. Let's take some examples. Fortnite. Insanely fucking high skill cap. Crazy fucking high skill cap for Fortnite. But kids love Fortnite. Everybody loves Fortnite.

And even though it's a very different styled game, right? Path of Exile. Massively super, hyper complex game. But it's hitting new heights about every five or six seasons that they bring out or leagues that they bring out. Here's an even better example. The best example, Balders Gate 3. A video game from 1998 was released in 2022, 2002, I forgot which one. And it was the biggest game of the year. Why is it? It's because the game is good. Everybody that said that, oh, yeah, so 23, yeah, I remember. Ellering was 22,

Balders Gate was 23. Everybody thought this game was great. Everybody played this game, even people that weren't from that genre. And I think a truly great game will cause people to play it, even though they're not native players from that genre. Same as PubG and Fortnite, World of Warcraft. Like all of these games that are like massive generational success games, transcend genre boundaries. Look at the speed of Ubisoft's game releases.

They struck the iron while the iron was hot. Another good example is Genshin and Perman. A lot of people didn't play gotcha games, but Genshin Impact was such a good game that they played it. Barely spacing any of their game releases, rarely making new IPs or changing their perspective on how to deliver existing franchises. This lack of cohesive vision and the inability to change has not only diluted the quality and the uniqueness of their franchises, but also eroded the trust and enthusiasm of the player bases. They're exhausted. Without a clear sense of purpose and a commitment to innovation and quality, Ubisoft, like many others in the industry,

has found itself trapped in a cycle of diminishing returns and waning relevance. And I'll be honest, it's not going to stop. From my perspective, this is likely the end of Ubisoft. The ship is too big to be able to turn on a dime and the... I don't think it's the end of Ubisoft. I think that they're going to do a restructuring of the company. They're probably going to change ownership, maybe. and you'll see better Ubisoft games in like five years.

I think that's what's going to happen if I had to guess. Because it's very clear that there are people that are working at Ubisoft that are talented and do know what they're doing. So how do you make a game? There are certain things in the game that are good. So it's like how do you fix the problem? I think it's a leadership problem. They're too big to sink, fire the activists. and I think also they're probably going to go back to making less games,

which is, I think, a point that this video didn't really touch on a lot, but I feel like is huge. They're making and trying to put out too many games at the same time. They're trying to be like an entire industry almost, and it's too much. Less is more, exactly. Kind of overhaul that they need is likely a decade away. We can't save Ubisoft, and honestly, we don't want to. Let this be a stark warning to the first.

rest of the industry, a cautionary tale. When you churn out games that nobody wants to buy, when you nickel and dime your players at every turn, when you strip your games of their soul, you don't just lose a sale. You lose your place in the industry. This is a huge component that I think a lot of people, like I showed this graph before, is that the negative effects of a bad product are not immediately observable, but it's like a ripple effect that happens like two years, three years down the road. and you don't immediately lose the trust with people generally.

It's something that, like, kind of builds up. It's like, I don't know, it's like poison damage in Eldon Ring, right? Where it's like you have the bar, and once the bar gets full, now you're poisoned. And unless you have a special item or something, you have to sit there and take the damage until it expires. Or scar or rot? Yeah, that's what it is. Square Enix is learning that right now. Square Enix is the king of,

being inconsistent. They have some insanely good games and they have some insanely bad games. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes, and Ubisoft has played them all. I tried to do my best to be able to showcase the highs and lows of the company

and all the games that they made, but I found the more that I researched, the more that I wrote, I just kept talking about the same games over and over again for damn near 20 years. Assassin's Creed, Rainbow 6, Far Cry

Assassin's Creed Rainbow 6 Far Cry Assassin's Creed Rainbow 6 Far Cry Well you want to make sure that you're doing what you can To support the titles The players love the most The reason why they know your name

Yeah I just like I hear that I think of Blizzard right World of Warcraft Diablo 4 Diablo and And Overwatch Right Like that's all the

And I guess Harstown Right That's really bad Starcraft What's Starcraft Is that a mobile game? It will be to begin with

at the same time when you're absurdly aggressive like Ubisoft where you just keep pumping out the same titles over and over again and at the exact same time you just continue to crank up the monetization and the pricing and how many things

are locked behind different versions of your game for $100, $130? Good Lord, what do you expect? What do you think is going to happen? When you keep making the same thing over and over again regardless of how many times people criticize your design and you just keep increasing the prices and there's better and more interesting and more unique

the way that they price things is so absolutely insulting to a customer that you would have to be a dick eater to buy it like the fact that they're giving three day early access for a single player game and you have to pay $30 for it I'm sorry but you're a dick eater if you do that this is a single player game what the fuck like streamers well streamers do it for a job right that's like saying a what do you call it like a game reviewer is like that no i mean that that's a different dynamic but like if you're just

an average person and you're buying it what the fuck are you doing it's unbelievable streamers do it to make their money yeah streamers make their money back you don't that's the big difference where m or 40k did that too i don't know if they did it or not. But like a lot of games are doing it. But it's not just that, right? It's like all of the extra bonuses. It's the season pass. It's the subscription service that you're clearly trying to get funneled into. And it's just, I think it's exhausting for a customer to just constantly be like assaulted by that all the time. I think what some of it's habit out of people, but obviously their sales was significantly declined. Yeah. And it's like, and that's the thing,

right? But like Ubisoft's sales significantly declining now is a result of actions that they've taken years in the past. Experiences that are out there that we've been seeing over the last few years, so many of these independent, double A, single A and indie studios just popping off selling more copies of games than you do now. You don't see a problem with that? You know, I was sitting back and I was watching people play Star Wars outlaws. And I sat there thinking to myself, this is literally just Star Wars Assassin's Creed, minus a few mechanics.

Do not insult Assassin's Creed. That game, I just... I really... I feel like, is this what it's like to be triggered? Because, like, every time I hear the name of that fucking game, it makes me upset. I'm actually getting upset, just hearing it. Like, I...

I'm actually getting triggered. It just, it looks so boring. Some of the aspects... for cool. I think part of the narrative was somewhat interesting. I like a few of the environments, but outside of that, the actual mechanical gameplay just looks so boring.

God, it looks so bad. It just goes to just how creatively robbed the studios are. The only thing that I ask for is that if this company goes down, please somebody make sure they take care of Massive. I like Massive. I like the division. They've done a really good job.

Please make a Division 3 or something else. You can't use that title because I want to see more of those games in the future. I hate that we're in this weird place in time right now where genuine criticism voiced well or not doesn't really matter is just pushed to the side because both legacy media and publishers and developers just don't want to hear.

Don't listen to the angry gamers. If you don't want to listen to the angry gamers, then you're not going to have the angry gamers by your game. And I think that there is a massive amount of people that are these angry gamer stereotypes and they are the ones that are playing and buying games all the time. Like, who the fuck do you think is playing these video games?

Like, who's playing Star Wars, right? I mean, like, what the fuck do you expect? That brings us back to toxic positivity? Well, it's more or less like that, like, so this is the issue is that games journalists create expectations for video games. that do not reflect what players want to see. So what ends up happening is that video games are developed and designed

in a way that pleases journalists but alienates players. And you see this. And the problem is that this is something that's immediate, like, no, I guess I don't have it up anymore, but it's immediately observable by just simply looking at the way that the CEO speaks about their games. He says, these games aren't doing what. Well, look, but all the critics told us they're doing well. What is this?

How do you listen to the critics? But as a dev, how do you differentiate between massive decent feedback versus a loud minority, which can happen? Well, here's the way that you do it. You look at the people that are your fans. You see the way that actual fans respond to it. And then you make a decision based off of that. you don't go and also there's very rarely

where like a loud minority of people on the internet for like Assassin's Creed Shadows almost everybody was negative about this game it's not like it was a kind of mixed back pretty much everybody was negative about it so if you have everybody being negative about something then maybe you made a fucking mistake yeah I think that there's like always this idea

of a loud minority but the loud minority I actually think is the majority in a lot of cases and I think the problem is that there is another loud minority and these are the Twitter activists and the people like this who actually are a minority that would never play this game all the way through

and then they're the ones that are trying to push games to be in a certain direction or to be made with a certain design principle and they don't even play the games in the first place yeah yeah like the Concord point players, right? Exactly. That's the issue is that developers and publishers need to stop trying to to listen to legacy media. And don't even listen to YouTubers either. Listen to what people say about your game and listen to how many people are saying it. And if you have everybody saying something, then they're going to be right whether you like it or not. And this is a big issue that a lot of

companies have. And this is a big issue that people have that are artists. That like sometimes you have art that you make and a lot of people don't like it. Well, that's fine. But you can't expect to make something for yourself and then everybody else think that it's great. You can like, it's basically choose one. Make art for yourself. Or like, you know, I'm an artist for the sake of like being able to express myself or I'm an artist because I want to make something to sell well. You, you, one of the, one of these. One of the clearly like invalidates the other. These games are far from art.

Yeah. That's subjectivity. It is. But whenever the subjective opinion is held by 95% of the people, then you have a problem. These games aren't made for you. Yeah. Who are they made for? Exactly.

I'm sure Ubisoft's investors would like to know. Yeah, they would. I don't necessarily like to see companies fail. I do. Ubisoft has made a lot of games that I love seeing companies fail because that means that the free market is working in the right way. When you see a company fail and you see things fall apart, that means that the free market has decided that we deserve better than what we're getting.

Loved over the years, but at the exact same time, this is, from my perspective, a victory for consumers. Because this shows the rest of the industry. If you do what Ubisoft is done, you will fail. There's a couple of companies that are out there that have been trying to follow that same line. And while it's continued to work for now, It won't. Well, it won't.

As you can see, it doesn't work forever. No. Anyway, I hope you guys enjoyed the video. If you guys did enjoy the video, make sure you like and subscribe, share the video with your friends. Follow me on Twitch if you guys would like to see me talk about gaming news and play video games live. Outside of that, I'm going to go and play some video games.

What am I playing today? Deadlock, baby. I don't know. Something. Stay cool, stay righteous, stay safe, my friends. And I'll see you next time. Man. Family, family, family.

I could not agree more with a lot of the points in this video. I really do agree with pretty much all of this. I'll link you guys the video right there. Good video? Yeah, I think so too. IPs are almost immune from failure. IPs are immune from failure until they fail. I don't think that's the case.

That, yeah, give it a like. This one is, I've been feeling like this is going to happen for a while. And I think this is one thing that, like, things just kind of get worse and worse over time. And what ends up finally happening with a company like this is that even when a company brings out a good game, like the Lost Crown, for example, with Prince of Persia, is that people are just so negative about the game that it doesn't matter anymore. Because, like, the negative sentiment with the game overrides everything else. The pendulum is slowly swinging back. well and then this is also another issue is that a lot of games have some form of like performative inclusion and i think that a lot of gamers don't like that and the big issue is that there are so many of those

people online and those people online here's the issue right is that a lot of people online might not make a decision based off of like uh you know what like a reddit comment says but like they'll see a YouTube video and if the YouTube video has like a bunch of comments saying the game looks bad, they're going to think that the game is bad. And I think that's what happens with a lot of people is that they see a game like Assassin's Creed and they're like, wow, nobody likes this game. It's looking awful. I'm a game sentiment specialist. Can we talk? I mean, so am I, right? I think that everybody is. It's been bad for years. I think so too. Making into account called performative inclusion. Yeah, that's basically what it is. And like,

a lot of games do it. And when I see performative inclusion in a game, like, especially whenever it's in a fantasy world, like any time that I see a fantasy world that, like, for example, like the top scars from Dragon Age Vailgard, I see something like this. It's like, okay, so you have shape shifting, but you can't change your gender without having the same scars that are like just the same as the real life scars that people have. It's ridiculous. It's off-putting. Yeah, it's so off-putting and ridiculous. And I think that what happens is that these companies are, they listen to these people that think that, oh, well, this is the thing that the game needs. And what happens, I'm going to be honest, is that they end up destroying their game.

They totally destroy their game. And that's it.