What The HELL IS Happening With Ubisoft?

Ubisoft has recently been in the headlines for financial issues and more delayed games. What's going on? Let's talk.

[dittoford]

The problem with big AAA companies are that they’ve grown “too big”.
They have to profit a considerably huge margin every game to satisfy the execs and investors and that lead to predatory-trend chasing-cash grab of games decisions we see today

[SuperAerie]

I have so conflicting thoughts on ubisofts. I really like a lot of their games and they do support them for a long time after launch but their management keeps doing really weird & terrible decisions all the time.

[Sadoos]

It's no secret Ubi became another EA a long time ago. As a person with passion for good video games I always wonder how do such companies still manage to exist.

[tHeWasTeDYouTh]

I worked for Ubisoft from 2015-2019 straight out of SGD. I am surprised they have not announced massive layoffs after so many cancelled games. During my time with them, there would me a lot of layoffs after a game shipped, literally all the contractors would be fired and also at least half of the QC employees no matter if the game made a lot of money. The crazy thing is that in a few months when a new game would start development some of the laid off people would be rehired. Volt also would take some of their money so basically it was a dead end job for them and there was no way to better themselves. Ubisoft would take advantage of all of the new devs that just finished school because the studio I worked for had a ton of 4 years universities and community colleges around. Ubisoft would hire people and keep maybe 1/3 and fire the rest right before 3 years so they would not get bonuses or more pay. It was pretty disgusting. For anyone that wants to make games and really wants job security your number 1 bet is to be a competent programmer. Do not under any circumstance do QC because that is bottom of the barrel and they are always exploited and the first ones to be fired. Artist are almost always contracted from China/SK so if you are an artist in America or Europe you are also in trouble because the competition always works for no money.

[damienlee]

Saddest part is you could make a video like this on just about every AAA publisher out there right now.

[angrymikko]

Sad to hear Sparks of Hope isn’t selling. Many Ubisoft IPs started out as tightly designed single player experiences and have since been bloated into games as service formats. Over time many of the games have become far removed from what players actually like and it’s been so long that players are voting with their wallets.

[jimjones]

They're finally hitting the ramifications of their paint by number game design. The fact is most of their games feel the samw: big open world with tons of markers to do the thing at.

The ones that aren't like Siege and For Honor have their own issues that ubisoft hasn't addressed and seem content with keeping their head in the sand.

[point]

Im calling it, it is the era for indie games.

Triple A companies are getting too greedy just trying to grab money and releasing broken crappy games.

With the amazing tools now available to everyone through things like Unreal Engine, very soon we will see great games from actual players who want to play great games.

[Lameawsome]

The biggest problem with any company is that if the company is doing shit it’s usually due to a lack of right direction and leadership from the person running the company

[Dcook]

Ubisoft made some of my most favorite games back in the early 00's. I hope they turn around but they also are completely responsible for the situation they're in.

[meeqsb]

Its really not too surprising to see the publishers with 1 huge franchise propping them up and a complete unwillingness to try new things rather than just put out a bunch of the same thing over and over run into issues. This has kinda been a long time coming.

[Flitalidapouet]

1 YEAR LATER .... 613 people playing Skull and Bones in real time. Cost 200 millions + 20 to 40 millions in publicity. Dev 10 years, Ubisoft Studio's involved = 6

[MellowWater]

I think they had no option but to delay skull and bones after the push back they got after the gameplay reveal. I don't think the reason is "polish and balance" but more on the line of reworking the systems in there entirety because nobody wants to be gathering resources with their ships canons and have cutscenes on land rather than explore on foot.

[saalok]

With the CEO's comments, it is no surprise things are a mess. Sucks for the workers there, but it is not really a surprise after the bloated games, NFT decisions and general dumb actions

[alexspata]

Thanks for the insight, but I think there's more to the story that we don't know.

I feel like there's a bigger thing happening that gonna affect the future of the entire Ubisoft - creative people or important employees that move to other companies.

I hope it's not true, but I'm guessing they lack these key people at the moment.

I believe that behind the scenes, huge studios like Microsoft tend to "buy" (steal) everyone, or at least these key people from other studios, or something like that.

What is happening now in France, huge protests (for changing the retirement age from 62 to 64 and high cost of living) also adds a lot of tension through employees, and it does add a level of uncertainty to the whole industry.

[Michael.Custance]

When a game company has significant delays (Like Skull & Bones) if gives players like me pause. Although I am absolutely excited to see something come of this game, at this point I am VERY skeptical about buying it on release. Most likely I will wait 5 or 6 months to buy it so I can see how it's received and how it performs. In fact, at this point I never actually buy ANY game on release - nor do I per-purchase them... I wait 30days minimum post-release to see how the company handles all the inevitable bugs & crashes that come with a new release.

[blackfyre]

About time we acknowledged the fact that the developers of many of the industry's leading franchises who used to be really special have been taking Ls for years now

[KristianKumpula]

11:08 For me it's also about not being scummy and rooting out the abusers in the company. The main reason why I haven't been interested in buying Ubisoft products lately is because of the mobile game-like monetisation schemes and the lacklustre reaction to abuse allegations.

[InfiniteDeWitt]

Sparks of Hope didn’t sell as well because people saw how cheap the original went on sale for after barely a year and decided it was worth it to wait for a steep discount

[ImmortalSangre]

Dude... you are just now informing me of Mario and Rabbit game. I didn't even know it existed. Lol