Asmongold TV - Ubisoft is planning to split up after AC Shadows | Asmongold TV

Episode Date: October 8, 2025

Ubisoft is planning to split up after AC Shadows Asmongold show for all of his stream highlights, competitions, reactions & more. --------------- ----------- Keywords: twitch clips, gaming commentary, video game analysis, streaming moments, mmo gaming Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I also think that there's a lot of copium with this game. I do not think that its success is good enough to justify the theoretical amount of money that was spent on it and the other projects that this was meant to make up for. A lot is going down right now for Ubisoft. I'll start with the obvious thing that you know that Assassin's Creed Shadows has just had its review embargo left. But that's not really the main story here. And by the end of this video, we'll even be discussing the very real chance of Ubisoft quite literally splitting. That might sound crazy to you

I think that they're going to have to do it I think they're going to have to split the company or do something crazy Too many else It's actually a well-substantiated thing that we're able to talk about Your D&D analogy is perfect Yeah

According to this shareholder letter Assassin's Creed Shadow should save the company financially But here's the thing See this is what I was saying It was like what I said I'll repeat it I apologize because like the third day I've used this analogy

So if you've heard it before I'm sorry You ever play Dungeons and Junkers? dragons and you need to roll a 19 or a 20 in order to just hit a monster. I think that that's what Ubisoft did with Assassin's Creed Shadows. They needed to roll a 19 or a 20 and they rolled an 11 or a 12. Rolling in 11 or 12 is better than average and, you know, technically you did get lucky, but it wasn't enough. That is not some boastful letter sent to the shareholders from Ubisoft. Oh no, it is an eviscerating letter sent from shareholders to Ubisoft. And are not happy. It's alleging secret talks. It announces a protest. It threatens.

Yeah, AJ investors are prepared to sue the company for misleading investors. Holy shit. Jesus. Lawsuits. That's bad. And it all cuts through to a very personal angle. The CEO and founder, Eve Gilmo, has been found. There's the guy. For a lot of his recent career. And it's happening to him again because now he has got shareholders trying to take him out. And that gives anyone who could have. help him out of his current situation quite a lot of leverage. I got to tell you, if you're the CEO and the graph looks like it does, I think you got to go.

I do. Like, I mean, I feel like there has to be accountability for that, right? I mean, you can't lose 80% value of the company and then it's like, oh, well, this is normal. Huge story to cover today, and the little fun part of it is one of the things that they're trying to weaponize isn't... And also another issue is that the products simply were not selling well. It's not a matter of like the stock being overvalued or some sort of market manipulation. The fact is that a lot of their recent games haven't been high quality games. I think that's really important to keep in mind.

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You get 60% off an annual plan. So give my link a click today. To kick us off, here's the letter. It's from AJ Investments who bought a minority share in Ubisoft last year. If you know what a activist investor is, well, they're basically one of those. They jump into a company. They try to do some form of skullduggery to yank up the share price, and then they yate themselves away with a lovely payday. Now, when their letter says that Shadows can save the company financially, it's not wrong. The finances of Ubisoft do need saving, as do the Gilmos, whose position this letter,

very much seeks to undermine. So let me lay out the stakes for you so you understand the gravity of today's story. Ubisoft's post-pandemic release schedule just, well, fell off a cliff, right? Every game they've released basically in the last five years has been dog shit. Minus, like maybe two. That's really bad. That's really bad. And then when they did ship games quite often, they missed on quality and they undersold.

leakers actually report half a dozen canceled projects and of course please the market Ubisoft launched into all of the fun trends the NFTs the AI all of that yes you've got us off recently actually made a new NFT game harassment and abuse if you can believe that purge of senior leadership and then the year 2024 happened 2024 was as we all know pretty much a shit show for the company the thing that should have really brought in the sales assassin's creed shadows was obviously delayed they knew that shadows needed to be a better quality seemed that Avatar Frontiers of Pandora didn't really do that well. And Wild Prince of Persia lost...

Because it's fucking stupid. It's a stupid fucking game. Why you even think it'd make an avatar game? Like, who the fuck thought this was a good idea? Who wanted to play this? Nobody wanted this fucking bullshit. Like, what's this fairy-ass shit? What the fuck you doing with this fairy-ass bullshit? What, why? Who asked? Who wanted this? Nobody wanted this. What are you thinking?

What are you thinking? Why are you thinking? A really good video game. It was just a two nation. It basically did not move to needle. While all this is going on, we've got the investors rebelling demanding the removal of the founding Gilmo family. But of course, unfortunately for those investors,

the Gilmose had spent the last decade making their position, their control over the company, almost unimpeachable for a deal with 10 cent. And so, Shadows was delayed. And now we're at the time where it is about to come out. And now it basically means... And I think this game got delayed like two or three times, too. It wasn't even just once.

Shadows flops, it's proof that Ubisoft does need to be gutted. And that leadership, say, the Gilmose really aren't. the problem, at least to the investors. If the game succeeds, in a way it'll almost be proof that management should have just made a lot of decisions a lot sooner and basically for AJ investments with their letter, no matter what happens with shadows, they'll get to basically say, yeah, we told you so. Now don't be confused here. Okay, this is not a good graph. It's not. This is a bad graph. This is a very, very, very bad graph. Just because you release one game that does well, as I said, you needed to roll a 19, you rolled an 11. Great. Amazing. Awesome. But it doesn't matter

because it doesn't counterbalance everything else that was bad. By the tip? Yeah, I guess so. They are parroting very obvious criticisms of Ubisoft, many of which I'd say we could probably agree with. Sure. But as an example, they're also pissed off over the delay to shadows. I think we all know that that delay was a good thing. And as you'll soon find out in this video, they're trying to rile everybody up to generate headlines to put more pressure on the Gilmose, which will, of course, make their position far stronger. Professional complainers. They're trying to do the whole rebelling thing. Absolutely. We'll get into that.

But for now, let's examine the spiciest claims of this. letter. Ubisoft have been secretly meeting Microsoft, Electronic Arts, Tencent, and more. That is the claim that is made by the shareholder letter, and it's far from the only bit of pressure that AJ investments are seeking to mount up here. They actually plan a protest. So they're playing Assassin's Creed IRL with the company? They plan a lawsuit against Ubisoft's management as well.

That's a lot. They say have wrongfully withheld information and hurt shareholders. Now, sparking this was the Assassin's Creed Shadow like dual delay and then the financial forecast changes that were caused by that. As a vice to say, yeah, revenue projections went down. Massively. But then it gets a bit juicy because they say that this depressed stock price would allow the big players to buy up Ubisoft on the cheap.

Now, of course, if those were big players who were... That's true. But like, that's what happens whenever the game does badly. I mean, I think that's normal. They were doing research. Yeah, that's totally normal. ...leading with Ubisoft management, that would be great. it would be fulfilling management's personal goals

at the expense of the portfolios of smaller shareholders. Yeah, sure. Perhaps shareholders, like AJ investments. It's quite spicy. And per the letter, Ubisoft often hid things from their investments. Why do you're happy about this? I think the people are happy about this is because they view Ubisoft as a representative

of everything that's wrong with video games nowadays. Slop, open world, checklist design, daily quests in a single player game, pay to win in a single player game and it's also like you have to like deluxe editions that are over $100 like Ubisoft is definitely like if you can think of the Exodia right of bad video game companies you have the head sexual harassment allegations the arm the right arm

you have micro transactions the left arm you have woke video game design the left leg you have oh geez let's see open world time wasting mechanisms and the right way you've got fucking micro transactions I can think of five other ones too but you know a million NFTs shitty combat shops yes by our powers combined Captain Planet exactly yes

so why people don't like this game I think it makes a lot of sense yeah why they don't like the company makes a lot of sense and it's also yeah you have your own shitty launcher so people will celebrate the failures of some that represents what they think is bad. That's it. That's the main reason why they're happy. Is it something that they don't like taking an L? That's understandable.

Allegedly Ubisoft hit a deal with savvy games. Savvy games, if you're not aware, are Saudi Arabia's state-funded gaming company. They make a lot of investments. Here's what I think. I think that they're going to these investors because they're fucking desperate. I think they know they're cooked. And so, yes, you're going to Saudi Arabia, you're going to China, 10 cent, because you need somebody to bail you out because you know that you're fucked. That's the real reason.

So apparently there's a deal with them to make DLC for Assassin's Creed Mirage, but I think a lot more relevant to today, quote, discussions between Microsoft, electronic arts and others that are interested in acquiring IPs for Moobisoft. And if true, that is a perfect wedge issue for AJ Invest. Yeah. And they note this letter says that they will hold a protest in Paris this May and that if things don't improve, they'll actually sue. Wow. And look, when you examine all of this, it's hard to not see a lot of it as just the final nail in the coffin of Ruby Soft. They've had nothing but bad news. You know, even their own shareholders are turning against them.

But it's not all of their shareholders. It's a group of them, a group that is led by AJ Investments. And it's not hard to see. Just because you have some investment. activist group complaining, that doesn't really fucking matter. What really matters is the quality of the games and how many people are buying them. That's the bottom line. That's the lifeblood of your business.

And if that's not happening, you're fucked. That's it. That is the beginning and the end of this conversation. Hey, Saudi Arabia, want to cash us out after almost going bankrupt for being woke? Yeah, that's basically what they're saying. And you know what? If I was Saudi Arabia, I would say, yes, please, let us cash you out. We'll make the new Assassin's Creed. We can set it in, you know, like Middle Ages and like, you know, medieval ages like Arabia. And the game is going to have a, you know, dark, edgy male protagonist and it's going to sell 10 million fucking copies.

Prince of Persia, yeah. Yeah, wow, where was that? Is that? Ah, geez, I forgot. Yeah, so you just go right back to what? you were doing and you do it again. What AJ and that's the first game. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah, so of course they're going to be down for that. You're describing the first game?

I know that. That's my whole point. Do it again. People buy Call of Duty every year, they'd buy this too. ...are actually doing here. And that's really because they've played their cards, like openly, for everyone to see. It's bloody obvious.

And, well, they're not the sort of... that we should trust, even if sometimes they'll say words that we agree with. Let me explain why. Reading AJ's letter, the one thing that will strike you is that it's dramatic, right? Ubisoft are keeping secrets. Shareholders are going to protest. Lawsuits are coming. That is all a mode of spicy stuff.

And it is spicy. It's kind of fun to talk about. But here's the thing with that. We've been watching this story since it began, and it began last year. Yeah. What this letter is, because if you only see a little fragment here or there, you won't have a real full picture of the story. What this is is just another play in a war game that's been going on for a while.

The first letter actually came last year from AJ Investments. I watched this whenever. I remember covering this when it happened. And this open letter blamed Ubisoft management for everything wrong with the company. And in fairness, a hell of a lot of blame does rest with them. But why was this new open letter released to IGN first? That's no slight, of course, to IGN's news department. They're all they're doing is they're trying to position themselves in a way that will pressure the company publicly in order to change what they're doing and change their leadership so they can probably get more stock and control of the company.

That's the reason why. It's obvious. Now, sometimes you can be doing that for a good reason, but that's exactly what's being done. But the whole letter, I mean, it's a shareholder matter. It's corporate talk. Why are you giving that to the world's most read gaming site for gamers instead of, say, the trade press? They want me to react to it. That's the reason why. They just want the, yeah, they want to Aspen Go React video, obviously. I mean, if the intent is to actually get shareholders and investors to protest with them, that does seem kind of counterintuitive. You would not go to IGN if that was your goal.

What you would go to IGN for is to get public eyeballs on the situation. Yep. Of course that's what they're doing. It makes sense. Who generally are pretty, you know, frustrated with Ubisoft. But not really people who are. will be thinking about who AJ investments are. Of course.

Oh, look at that. Even the shareholders are turning against them. Damn, those shareholders are our bros. Oh, no. Like, look, the headlines, I mean, we just got to laugh at Ubisoft. It gets the headlines trending. Here's the thing. Investment firms generally don't care, you know,

too much about the detail of why gamers are mad. They just want to harness you and further their own game. And their game is... I think that's fine, by the way. I don't need you to keep. care about my feelings, just make a good game, and that's it. We don't need to be best friends. We don't need to be in a relationship. We just need to, yeah, all I want is for them to make the game good. That's it. Just make good games. Use them and you, yeah, we use them and they use us.

And this is a perfectly great relationship. Let's not rock the boat. That's right. That's right. To put more and more pressure on Ubisoft. So if news sparks because of their open letter sent to IGN, which it absolutely has, then that does further their pressure in Ubisoft to capitulate. That's right. They don't actually need to do a protest or a lawsuit to accomplish that. Yeah. Just need to harness public relations against Ubisoft.

That's right. Now, what about the meat of their letter, right, that Ubisoft are meeting other companies? That's a lot. Secret and spooky stuff. Well, it is newsworthy, right? Yeah. Okay. talking to these companies like EA, that is newsworthy. But it's also exactly what Ubisoft

promised they would do, which was to, again, quote, Ubisoft's own words. That's what they should be doing, obviously, right? Various transformation, strategic and capitalistic options. And to kind of cut through business speak, that basically just means layoffs, closures, and possible sale options. And so far, we've seen layoffs. I think they might have to sell off some of their IPs or split the company or do something really big. Because I, because I don't. just can't see how like how you can have such a big company lose 80% of your value and then release kind of a mid game or like slightly above mid game and then suddenly now everybody's supposed to be okay with it. I just don't see that happen man. Yeah, I still don't. They have 13,000 employees.

Well, the problem, and I think this is also another big issue that Ubisoft has had is that they've tried to release too many games. It's like, stop doing that. You're making too many games. You can't release a new AAA game every single year and maintain a high level of quality. Says you?

Yes, exactly, says me. Yes, there's too many mid-games. It is better to focus entirely on making one really, really good game than make a bunch of different games, diminish the brand value and then hope that one of them pops off through some sort of like viral, you know, internet marketing campaign. It's just not what's going to happen. Yeah, it's like you can't just, well, if we sell one game and we get $10, we can sell five games and we get $50. And we sell 10 games and we get $100. Oh my God, it's make 20 games. We'll make $200. You can't do that. Like you're going to hit market saturation at a certain point. And I think that they have. And it's also. the amount of bandwidth that the leadership has. Because fundamentally,

leadership is still, is now being spread across so many different things. You can't do that. Like, it's not how things work. They're set up to fail. They're set up to fail. They're looking into possible sale options is, well, not really surprising

because they literally said they would do that. And when you actually read Ubisoft's statement, they say that when there is a transaction, the market will be told. And you may then think, why would you be secret about that? Why would you not announce talks? Well, if talks fail or a deal falls through, that can really hurt you as a company.

Just ask the Embracer Group. Yeah, they don't want to talk about this before it's settled, because if they do, then you're going to have a lot of market speculation one way or another, and it could make the company look bad if it doesn't happen, or it could make the company look bad if it does happen. So they want to save that until it's actually a defined entity. I think that makes perfect sense. Well, that went for them.

So given the risk, why would investors want Ubisoft to talk? Specifically, these investors, AJ Investments, that's pretty obvious. Rumors of a deal will shoot the price up. This quite literally happened. For short-term investors, that is the business model, and you don't even need to take it from me. We can just read AJ's own website. Quote, AJ investments take advantage of events and take such steps that will help correct and optimize the running of companies.

Basically, they capitalize on a problem. They force any solution that raises a short-term stock price and then they profit. They don't so much care about the long term when they say, save the company. As an example, they only started their position in Ubisoft a few weeks before they published their first open letter. Prior to that, they're actually long-term shareholders of Activision Blizzard. It does seem like it's very obvious, advantageous. Like, I mean, they're not necessarily good actors, but at the same time, you can agree with people that are bad actors, but you can still acknowledge, yeah, they are bad actors too. Which obviously worked out fairly well for them in the end.

But in this case, right, their letter, their pressure did kind of work. Ubisoft's studio closures on layoffs in the last few months happened at least in part because of that pressure. And now the stock price is somewhat rising up again. But not just because of this lesson. In fact, it's because Ubisoft might actually be close to a deal. What if I told you we might actually have Ubisoft 2? I'm not shitting you. I think that it's going to happen.

I do. Yeah, I think it's going to happen. Just too many L's. The best thing that Ubisoft could do is take half of the company. Okay, let me think about how this would work. So what are the big Ubisoft IPs? Give you like the top three biggest Ubisoft? a soft eyepiece. Okay, Assassin's Creed, okay. Sell Assassin's Creed to either Saudi Arabia

or to China. Sell Prince of Persia to Saudi Arabia. Sell Far Cry to probably also China. Sell splinter cell to, I don't know, probably also China. Rainbow Six siege. Sell that to China. Okay, a lot of these would go to China. Persia's not in Arabia. I know, but it's the same type of vibe, right? Like, I mean, I think, I'm not saying it's the exact same thing. My point is that I think they could make a really good fucking version of it to be good. That's it.

A new company created by Ubisoft that will include, quote, some of Ubisoft's IP, like Assassin's Crete. That is apparently something that could actually exist. Yeah. That is looking for minority investors. That's what they need to do. This is according to Bloomberg's reporting. What it would essentially be. is a lifeboat to save the company and maybe save management as well.

Now, apparently, offers are being made to Tencent as well as various investment funds, and preliminary bidding is actually being sought this very month. Now, obviously, right, this is all stuff that's not settled yet. Maybe I should bid for the company. But it does, in fact, align with Bloomberg's previous reporting. Bloomberg, back in January, claimed the Tencent and Ubisoft were in talks to establish, quote, a new venture where the Gilmos would be backed by Tencent. Of course, the Gilmose are already backed by Tencent.

A whole bunch of the Gilmose control over Ubisoft is actually via a company that's called, like, I think it's Gilmo Brothers Limited or whatever, where basically the Gilmo Brothers Company is like a joint venture or whatever with Tencent. It's crazy how many roach things that people do in like business in order to like obfuscate who owns what. Like and it becomes immediately evident that the reason why this is, is because the people that are inventing these roach solutions are the ones that are paying the government to add in little holes so the roaches can go in and out of the halls. That's it. I hate that. Yes. So it's a complete, it's a roach economy. Zero accountability? I don't know about zero accountability, but it's just harder to see what is what. So suffice to say, the boys at 10 cents have got a decent leverage. I mean, if you want me to be totally honest, I do not want to deal in video game development.

I don't. I don't want to manage video games at all. I would manage, like, I'm not passionate about making video games. I am passionate about maybe media, but not making, I just, I just not something like, it's weird, right? Because I play video games. I've always played video games my whole life. I'm one of those weird people, maybe, that I never thought, oh, I'm going to grow up, I'm going to make video games.

I always wanted to grow up and just collect money from the government and play video games. Mission accomplished, by the way. But other than that, yeah, that was it. That's not weird. Yeah, it's insanely difficult to make video games. Yeah, but it's insane and difficult to do a lot of things when kids still want to do that. Yeah, that was it. The Gilmos, I think it's fair to say.

Anyway, what's maybe more curious here is that Bloomberg are reporting that Ubisoft may, and this is a quote, seek evaluation for the yet to be formed IP unit that is higher than the size of the main companies. Man. So let that sink in. A unit of Ubisoft being worth more than Ubisoft. How can that make sense? Well, honestly, it's actually extremely simple. Efficiency. If you take one unit of Ubisoft and take it away. That's true. I mean, apparently they have 13,000 employees. And this goes back to what I was saying earlier. It's like if you have a game and the credits for this game are two hours long

dare I say it you might have a little bit too many people working on the game maybe it's just a little bit too much you know it's a little bit bloated yeah just a oh like wow like and keep in mind the Concord credits

were like an hour or an hour and a half and everybody was joking about that about how bad it was Ubisoft said hole up, I can do that better. And they did. Could Ubisoft and you sort of see how many? Lots of bits of Ubisoft are actually of a negative value. Yeah.

Of course it actually makes a lot of sense that this sniped away thing, this, you know, scalped away thing will actually. This looks like, this is like the Chinese or like the third world version of Valorant that like you buy guns with real money that do more damage. like and it's only on mobile and it's called like firefight warriors really

like this this looks awful actually have a higher valuation right for bullet yeah is the dobi soft shooter shooters yeah developer head count but actually an intellectual property

a bit of a smaller more focused company than what cares about a few IPs is like going to be seen as a better investment and honestly I think it's pretty obvious why when you take a look at the games industry so yeah if this is to happen and there is... Yeah, the IPs have a lot of intrinsic value,

but the company structure clearly does not. Like I've said this before, that, like, my dream is that Nintendo will have from software and make a legend of Zelda game. Like, I'm not, like, tears of the kingdom, breath of a while, that's like, oh, this is nice, I guess. But I want Twilight Princess. I want Ocreen at Time.

I want Majora's mask. I want Link to the Past. I want that plus Elven Ring. That's what I want. OBP? Yeah. And so the IP has a lot of value. Have you played them? No, I haven't.

I'm talking about the style. You know, good reporting from Bloomberg that it is something that's being investigated. How would it happen? Well, broadly, there's two ways that could go down. Number one, the new company would just hold the IP with really no developers. So it would control the IP for minimal cost. Yeah. It would then license that IP back to the original Ubisoft entity,

would then be doing the development. The new IP holding entity would have lower fixed costs, less risk, and its investors would have more control, which gives them a real good incentive to buy in. It's basically saying, hey, do you want a slice of Assassin's Creed and the crew and, you know, all these big good things and not any of that other junk. That could be pretty good for it. It's actually crazy that they're doing this, that they're basically saying, like, we give up on making the games.

We're just going to own the IPs and register and run the IPs instead. like this is basically admitting defeat for them there is of course another way you just do a split in terms of development and intellectual property you could perhaps imagine

one side taking the smaller yet beloved properties like Raymond, Trachmanian, Ano somebody says the problem is when the layoffs hit they're laying off seniors and good people when Ubisoft layoffs happen to people who ruined Assassin's Creed

will stay at the company you bring up a really great point and I think what you're saying is true and that's why I always say like if you really want to see change happen, look at C-suite accountability. If you do that, things change instantaneously.

We should not fire any people ever. I don't think that's what he's saying. I just think that he's saying that it's disappointing that in a case where the reality is in a lot of these companies, like, yeah, you're going to have bad people all the way down for sure. But like really the heads that, should roll are the decision makers. That's why they get paid a bunch of money.

They get paid like millions of dollars in stock options because of that accountability. That's it. That's it. That's it. Like Rayman, Trachmanian, Anno, and maybe the other side taking the big AAA's, your rainbows, Assassin's Creed, the crew, all that stuff.

I don't want to make it like political, right? But it's like you saw this with Joe Biden. It's like how many border crossings were last year versus this year in February, it was one. It was like 35,000. It changed to one. At the end of the day, leadership does matter. And having leadership that puts a priority on certain things,

that will change the direction of the company. It absolutely will. And I think that leadership bears the most responsibility and also the fault. That's it. It's all the difference. Yes. All the difference. It was like 70K plus?

Yeah. Imagine being that. one guy, unstoppable, he got away. In theory, both sides of the business could here be more efficient and be more focused. Now, there is a problem that efficiency is a fine idea on paper, and the other side of this is, yes, there are all of these rational arguments, but you could perhaps also say this would work per the goals of the Gilmo family, who would be using something like this to basically retain control of Ubisoft and solve their current predicament. Well, yeah, of course. I mean, you're licensing out the IP, you fire like 90% of the employees, and all you're doing is

running a skeleton operation where you're just basically selling the thing that you already had to people to do it better than you can. I mean, I feel like if I were them, that's a huge W for me. Yeah, that's a massive fucking W. Of course, the problem there, the thing with efficiency is that it's fine on paper, not necessarily reality. Here's the rub for today. Assassin's Creed saving the company he does not mean better games for you. Okay? How many games does Ubisoft make that are more efficient for investors on release than just putting your money on the stock market, right?

Like in the S&P 500. Well, the answer basically is most of Ubisoft games aren't really worth it. Well, Ubisoft games are really good if you want to take $100 and turn it into $20. If you have $100 and you want to turn that into $10, maybe $20, Ubersoft is a really good place for you to start. But, you know, for people that want to make money, probably not. So just throwing your money in the stock market. Does it cost $80?

Yeah, that's the reason. He's worth it. Bralha is worth it. Some of their other sort of live servicey sleeper hits are probably worth it as well. But just about everything else, those are risks. They're taking up resources. Well, it's also like these other games like Brawlah and these are very small games. Like, it's nice to have a good game that has a small audience that's well designed and people enjoy it.

But the problem is that that isn't necessarily going to justify 13,000 employees. The fact is that if you have a company of over 10,000 people and you make video games, you need to be making the Lord of the Rings of video games. That's it. And if you're not, you're done. guaranteed profitable games. Wizard used to do it. It's efficient for Ubisoft to produce.

Prince of Persia, the lost crown, right? Under pure market theory, that game was a bad investment. It was a waste of time. None of this is about the quality of the games that are being made. AJ investments may say... Well, it's about... The thing is that I agree half with what Belior is saying and not with the other half,

is that the quality of the game, I think also has to deal with the delivery method of the game. Like, for example, taking the character and then giving him that like, you know, super generic killmonger haircut and then making the narrative of the story that's just like kind of paneling and it's not actually animations and also selling it at such a high price in a Metroidvania genre where the average price is $20. You win into a market.

You didn't advertise the game very well. You're selling it way above market cost and you're making it in a way that's not really resonating with the audience. you're you're fucking up like that's really just it's a marketing department L right

whoever decided the production and distribution for this game should be fucking fired because they totally messed it up the game was fine

but if you design it this way and you make a game this way you need to have and you need to fit inside of the market expectations and that's not what they did

fucking up on like multiple points exactly and so you see a lot of games like I think Assassin's Creed Shadows is kind of the same thing is that if they had never used this like argument to authority of like Yusuke, he's real, he's a real samurai, racist.

Like if they never used that type of messaging, I'm not saying they said that directly, but they clearly implied it and they clearly went in that direction. If they had never done that, they would have never had this problem. It would have never happened. And so the problem is that at the very highest level, decisions are being made that are stupid. stupid decisions are being made and because of that the games suffer that's what it comes down to that's what really matters and like if i look at like assassins creed for example the combat is very one-dimensional it's it's bad but like everything in the game generally works it looks good etc right what that tells me is that the people that are working on the game at a baseline

those people know what they're doing and they're good at their job to an extent, right? At least to enough extent because they're following directions. But the people that are deciding the big picture ideas for the game, they're the ones that are totally wrong.

They're the ones that are making bad decisions constantly. And that's the big problem. I wouldn't even call it bad. It's just mid? Yeah, the combat, I would say for an action combat game, I think it's below mid. but I mean that's my opinion

the combat department needs to be changed yeah but like what I'm saying is that like I think that the a lot of Ubisoft's and I'll give you the best example and the best frame of reference for this then I want to continue the video it's almost over

is that the guy the CEO of the company was like confused the reason why his video games aren't selling very well but they review so well well why are these games reviewing so well, but they're not selling well. Well, it's because they're not reviewing well.

You're listening to a handful of retards that are, you know, journalists about these video games and not your actual customers. I think that just by itself is the biggest self-report you can possibly have. How do you self-report that hard? That you're focusing off of that. They want that. They may say that and try to harness your anger to put on more pressure. But at the of the day, we know that they were pissed about the delays to Assassin's Creed Shadows. And whether you want that game to succeed or not, game companies delaying their game

so that they can have more polished releases is almost universally a good thing for the customer. It is. So if Ubisoft are forced to sell off half their intellectual property to the highest bidder, throwing pink slips at thousands of developers and doing all of these short-term things and the, you know, pursuing getting that stock price up ASAP,

but not necessarily at long-term value, long-term quality. Will that be good for the games? I would not necessarily think so, especially since this is the type of the investor who is anti-delay, even though the likes of Star Wars outlaws clearly tell us those delays are off.

I'm going to be honest. It can't get worse. Fuck it. Send it to China. Maybe they can do something right with it. They didn't fuck up Wukong. Seems like they aren't fucking up a number of other games. Like, I mean, you might as well.

It can get worse? Not really, though, right? To need it. And so regardless of how well Assassin's Creed Shadow sells, expect them to do more things, to drum up more headlines to try and get a bit more leverage, a bit more control, and turn that pressure into something that they can profit off.

Meanwhile, though, on the Gilmo front, well, they might be trying to restructure Ubisoft, doing something with Tencent and potential other suitors to get around this problem. Will that be good for the actual games? I don't necessarily think so. I think that anything that involves a leadership change will be a net positive. If you want to use another D&D analogy, I think that their leadership is a five.

By the way, this is not a six-sided dice. It's a 20-sided dice, D&D dice. Do you re-roll a five? Yeah, you do. You re-roll a five. I think that, yeah, they should re-roll it. So, at least it basically. means who knows of Assassin's Creed Shadows is going to be some amazing bangor or terrible

fair or whatever it is. At least what I can say with a good degree of surety is that does make for a pretty damn good episode of corporate drama. We could at least enjoy that. Okay, I'll see you when there's a new update to this story. I think this is so funny. Once we know how the game launch is actually shaken out. Till then, though, do you want more drama? Corporate drama? Well, I'll link it to you guys. This is a good. video from Belior. I pretty much agree with everything that he said, except for like maybe a couple of things. I think that Ubisoft, here's what's really fucked up. The gameplay in a lot of these Ubisoft games, aside from like the stealth gameplay, like the Prince of Persia combat on a fundamental

level, like the lost crown, and the Assassin's Creed combat feels relatively good. Like, it's not bad combat. But the big problem is that the leadership and the way that the games are delivered and the way they're marketed and like big picture design decisions are bad. And when you think about that, I'm looking at it from the perspective of like, if I'm just a grunt and like my job is to just program things to look good and to feel good to play, I'm doing my job. And I think it sucks that if they do this restructuring, that all of those people that do good work, all of those people are going to probably be left go, let go.

or at least the majority of them. Yeah, it sucks. Combats way too rigid. I mean, I think it's okay, right? It's not amazing, but like, it's okay. Yeah, once you get a guy, you realize how bad the, once you get, oh, if I play, as soon as I play Ghost of Tashima. Yeah, I mean, maybe you're right. I mean, that's the thing.

There's a very good chance that if I play the game and, like, I see these other games are like way fucking better, then, you know, sure, that maybe could happen. but I do think that in a general sense the big problem of what happened is that I think a lot of Western game studios have totally lost their focus and they don't understand at all about like what what should or shouldn't happen in the game anymore

and what should or shouldn't be in the game anymore at all and I think that's really the big weakness that a lot of these development studios have is that they don't have a focus in a way that is meaningful and that matters. Western games are just DEI instead of a good game. Yeah, I unironically, like, and I know this might get me in trouble, but I unironically think that the over-fixation on DEI representation,

and I think hiring based off of that too, because like here's the way I see it. Like, I view diversity as something that usually naturally occurs whenever you engage in an international market. like, you know, or a widespread market. Like, if you have a company that lives that's only in Japan, you're going to have only really Japanese people that are going to play that game, right? Or work at that company.

But if you're talking about like an international thing, and think about it with streaming, right? For example, like, if you pull up, like, let me go back, I'll pull up a Twitch tracker. So let's just look at, we'll look at channels here. So, Kai, all of these people, me, Koso, Kedrel, like Loud Caringa, Jenzi, Hassan, like this, I think he's this Japanese guy. If you look at all these people, there is a tremendous amount of diversity here.

It is completely multicultural. It is multiracial. It is all guys. But other than that, it's all different people, right? And that's the thing. And so my point is, no women? Well, yeah, because it's a male-dominated platform. Like that's really the reason why.

And so if you look at this, like there's tons of different people, tons of different races of people. So I look at diversity as something that if you provide an even playing field, diversity will happen naturally. But when you're hiring based off of diversity and you're hiring based off of diversity-based goals, what's going to end up happening is you're going to end up hiring people that are not the best fit. Because that's the reason that's like if if this was happening naturally and you were

hiring people that were the best fit, you wouldn't need these goals in the first place in order to keep things on these rails. So the only reason why you have these goals is so you can artificially add these people into the ecosystem, while at the same time not taking a person that you would have naturally taken that would have been maybe a better fit for the company, maybe a better employee or something like that. And so merit needs to be the only focus that you have. And I think that when you have a merit based, and this is the point that I was making, is when you have a merit-based system like Twitch, nobody gets a career given to them on Twitch.

People decide, like, there are people that get hosted every single day and they don't get any viewers, et cetera. You have a massively diverse group of people whenever you open things up to anybody can do this. And if you look at, for example, like the guys that work at X, like at Twitter, you're going to see the exact same thing. It's subjective? No, it's not. I think the truth is that it's the same with the Olympics.

Like you see people all over around in the world that are successful in the Olympics. Like I am not a diversity disliker. I am a forced diversity disliker because I think that it's counterproductive. I think diversity happens naturally. Like if you just look at, and again, you just look at like pictures of me and like videos of me whenever I was in high school or like, you know, I have a few from middle school, right? Like our college, you'll see that like I have tons of friends that are of all different nationalities, all different races, religions, everything, right? Because it's just normal.

Like growing up online, that was the default. That was what was normal. And like having a racially homogenous group is what wasn't. And so easy public school, exactly. What happens if it's just an oral black woman, though, then it's called randomly DEI for no reason? Well, that's stupid. So what? Like, I mean, do I have to play defense for somebody who I don't even agree with. I don't think that's true. I think that's dumb. So yeah, it's like, yes, obviously, and just real quick, I do agree with you that the amount of calls for everything is DEI nowadays, it is exhausting. I think that you're right. But the truth is that that is a very, very small group of annoying people. And the fact is also, like I'll say this as well, a lot of the

guys that are doing that are joking around. They are. They're joking around. Like most of the people in my chat are like, oh yeah, you know, it's like, okay, it's a bi-person DEI or a girl, it's DEI. It's a joke. Now, I'm not saying that it's a great joke or it's, you know, this is the pinnacle of comedy or anything, but they're not doing it in a serious manner. At least a lot of them are. Now, some of them definitely are, though. That being said, the point that I was trying to get at here is that I think that when you have Western games studios, and this is especially true with American game studios, because European game studios somehow are less affected by this rot. You have American game studios, particularly American game studios,

that have a hyper fixation around creating video games that act as a metaphor or a reinforcement mechanism of their worldview. This is a very reductive way to make a video game. And it's also something that a lot of people don't agree with. And the problem isn't even that they're doing it. The problem is that they're doing it and nobody agrees with what they're doing. The fact is that a lot of these ideologies are not very popular. They're not. They're not that great. And it's not that popular to hear about like, you know, the non-binary thing with, what was it, Dragon Age of the Veilgard. That is simply not a well-understood thing that average people can relate to. And that's the point. that I think a lot of people don't understand.