Transcription
I actually think that it's over for Ubisoft. Silence your critics. I do. I think it might actually be over. Everybody said I was crazy when I said it was going to happen on Twitter; they said I was delusional. Hi to your fans, double down on poor decisions, ignore feedback. What's that? Oh, this is a big bag of feedback? We don't need that. This is not chipot virtue signaling from your C-suite office; that is the Ubisoft plan for success. That's to get them right back on track. I am floored. I can't believe it. You know, everything that they've done, every action they've taken, everything that they have said has only dug their grave even deeper. At this point, they're just diving in, and honestly, I can't even really believe the company is being run so badly that it makes me believe that there was some sort of conspiracy—that the family that owns a lot of the shares of the company is intentionally tanking it so they can buy back more of the shares at a lower price. It's so bad that it does make me believe maybe that's what's happening. How do you make this many mistakes in a row?
You know, I had hope that after all of the bad press surrounding Ubisoft with the failed launch of Star Wars Outlaws and them pushing back Assassin's Creed Shadows, according to the press, Star Wars Outlaws was amazing, that they would try to figure out ways to be able to trend in the right direction. And then I thought to myself, why would they do that? I mean, come on now. We have industry analysts that are predicting that Ubisoft is going to go private and then sell off their biggest IPs. To be honest with you, they're probably not very far off. A lot has happened with Ubisoft since we last talked about them, and at this point, their graceless downfall has turned into nothing but pure cinema.
The reason why a lot of people are happy to see Ubisoft failing is because Ubisoft represents the rot that's been in gaming for years, and seeing them take an L means that gamers get a W because they have infested single-player games. If you have a single-player game and it has microtransactions in it, you're like, "F*** you." It shouldn't be there. There's no reason. Absolutely not. We can talk about blue-haired SJWs and woke stuff all you want, but at the end of the day, the real things that are f***ing annoying and actually offensive aren't the fact that they have they/them in the game; it's the fact that they have skins and power bonuses in a single f***ing player game. That's a thousand times worse.
Ubisoft, once a titan of the gaming industry, is now a cautionary tale of what happens when a company loses touch with its audience, its vision, and becomes so top-heavy that their only recourse is to squeeze their customers for all their worth. This is a story that we have chronicled before: a company plagued by scandals, internal dysfunction, and creative stagnation. In my video, "The Complete and Utter Collapse of Ubisoft," we retraced all of their obsessions with their annualized franchises like Assassin's Creed, Rainbow 6, and Far Cry. Once their crown jewels, now they're Achilles' heel. By recycling mechanics, churning out uninspired titles, becoming increasingly more predatory with their monetization, and refusing to innovate, Ubisoft alienated their once-loyal player base that could no longer stomach mediocrity.
But their problems weren't just creative; they were systemic. As I pointed out in Ubisoft, I think it's creatively too. I mean, like these studios—this is what happened with Blizzard. There are some studios that it almost feels like you have a corpse, and it gets reanimated, and it can only, like, maybe bring you your shoes or something like that. Other than that, it's effectively dysfunctional. That's what's kind of happened. More than their worth, the company has been hemorrhaging money, losing key developers, and chasing trends instead of setting them. They gambled on live service games and large projects that nobody asked for, sinking resources into games like the long-delayed Skull and Bones, a game that has now become an industry punchline. They lost it all on Star Wars Outlaws.
I don't understand how you could think Skull and Bones was good. I was going to play the game; they were going to sponsor me to play Skull and Bones, and then I made like two videos that got a lot of views that said that the game was bad. I assumed that the developer was like, "Okay, well, we don't want to pay you anymore," but they still were going to pay me money. They didn't even care. Only selling a million copies and then further embarrassing themselves with a release on Steam. They've closed the studio behind Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown, arguably the best game that they've had in recent times. It was the most well-received game. A lot of people didn't like the way the character looked because they thought that it didn't look like a Persian; it looked like maybe an African guy instead. That's up for debate. I didn't really care a whole lot about that, but other people did. The game actually was a good game, though they overcharged for it.
Add to that workplace scandals and allegations of toxic leadership, and it's no surprise that Ubisoft has seen waves of departures and plummeting investor confidence. Despite the warning signs of their games failing to reach audiences, Ubisoft seemed unwilling or unable to change. They clung to outdated design philosophies and tone-deaf marketing strategies, prioritizing shareholder appeasement over player satisfaction while accomplishing literally nothing. And while other companies in the industry have found ways to pivot or regain their footing, Ubisoft has dug their heels in, spiraling further into irrelevance.
Fast forward to today, and the cracks in the foundation have split wide open. The struggles that we've talked about are no longer cracks in their armor; they are gaping wounds. Just recently, Ubisoft announced the closure of two studios, another devastating blow to their workforce and morale. And then there's that means he's still getting his bonus. Ex-Defiant, a game that was supposed to show that Ubisoft could still compete in the realm of military shooters, instead becomes yet another entry in their growing list of failures. See, they would have succeeded if they added Nicki Minaj and Kevin Durant as characters in Ex-Defiant that you could play, but unfortunately, Ubisoft didn't want to get with the times.
Juice Van Duran, business professor and former CEO and co-founder of Data Research, a games marketing research company, is predicting that Ubisoft is headed for privatization and dismantling in 2025. Anybody who thought this wasn't going to happen when you see the stock going like this is totally f***ing delusional. The share price is plummeting from $289 to $12.30 year-over-year. The company has become an attractive takeover target; its valuable assets, particularly Rainbow Six Siege and the Assassin's Creed franchise, could be worth more separately than together.
Now, something I want to be crystal clear on is that Ubisoft is essentially powerless. In the videos that I had made previously, I was just basically stating that the Titanic had hit the iceberg; they were already taking on water. The ship was sinking. Their only options right now are to save their valuables and try to salvage what's left. The only reason why their stock started going back up is that there were rumors that Tencent was going to buy them. Like the dream that just maybe, maybe Tencent is going to show up to those lazy French f***s and be like, "Listen, guys, you don't want to work; you want to be lazy? Alright, you got to start making good games again." No, that's what people thought. I guarantee you that's what they thought.
Please know, what do you mean? Please no. Tencent owns Grinding Gear Games. Tencent owns Riot. Tencent is the—under their rule, they've made a lot of good f***ing games. We going to do is China bad, China bad, China bad? Get the f*** out of here. That's the position that they're in right now. You know, in a lot of cases, we talk about how difficult it is for some of these really top-heavy companies to be able to turn things around because it takes a while for them to do so. But we don't ever get to study a company that can't turn around, and that's the position that Ubisoft is in. Honestly, that's what makes this so fascinating.
You know, when I made the video talking about how Ubisoft had lost more than their worth, I meant it truly. I meant it. They have had too many games that they've released that came out to subpar reception. It's also a big issue that a lot of people really downplay. Brand value doesn't matter until it means everything, and I think that you've seen that happen with Ubisoft or Blizzard. Look at that. For example, there were people that got—this is going to be kind of a bit of a different thing; it's kind of emotional, so just try to think about this abstractly. You know, people that got accused of doing some kind of creepy weird f*** with girls, and people didn't believe it because everybody knew this guy was a stand-up guy. They're like, "I'm not going to immediately believe this because I've watched this guy for a long time. I don't think that he would do that." And like, that's really the difference, right?
So, like, do you think Ubisoft's IPs are too damaged? No, absolutely not. I think that if we heard that Ubisoft sold Assassin's Creed to Capcom, that would be a good day. That would definitely be a good day. I would be happy about that day. That'd be good. They failed completely, and they spent way too much money on it. On top of that, the company has too many employees to support. Do people even understand that this company has over 20,000 employees working for them? They are—f***ing—it's only 19,000 now. No, it's 18,000. Probably by the time that this video gets uploaded, it'll be 17,000. Oh God, Jesus. 20,000 employees for what? Massive. When you're making as much money as they are right now, that is not enough to support that many people.
I mean, even if Assassin's Creed Shadows found success—let's say five million copies—that's a conventional success in gaming. That's not too bad; that would cover their development costs and marketing costs, and then outside of that, not really a whole lot else. Yeah, they would need a Baldur's Gate 3 or Elden Ring level of success. We're talking 10-plus million copies sold for them to make a profit on this game. And then even still, it's not going to cover up any of the mistakes that they've made with their other games. No, it's not. I mean, look at CD Projekt Red. Like, Cyberpunk—they had one L with Cyberpunk. Like, Witcher 3 was really, really well received; the DLC is considered some of the best DLC ever made. And then Cyberpunk comes out; it's really bad, but it improves, and people still are skeptical about CD Projekt Red, even though I bet Cyberpunk at its worst will still be better than Assassin's Creed: Shadows or Star Wars: Outlaws at its best.
Think about how good Cyberpunk is now, or at least like whenever I played it. Think about how insanely f***ing good that game is, and even that people still are skeptical. Think about how long it took No Man's Sky to dig themselves out of that hole. The money that they've invested into Skull and Bones or Star Wars: Outlaws or anything else for that matter, and then keep in mind that their next games to release after this are much, much further down the road. We're talking years that they're going to have to survive on that money. Assassin's Creed: Shadows is not going to sell that much.
No, for Ubisoft to be able to patch the hole and get—I think they could probably sell five million copies of Assassin's Creed: Shadows. I do. I think there's a high probability of that. But the thing is, like, I don't even know if that would make the money back. If that would make the money back, too, at best. Not like Assassin's Creed is such a big IP, and there's going to be so much talk about the game. And also, it's set in feudal Japan, which is something that fans of Assassin's Creed have wanted for a really long time. I could still see it clearing five million copies. Like, I don't think it's going to go 10, right? Like, probably not going to go 10 million copies. No way. But I could see five, sure. Yeah, I could see it happening.
Or it's an impossible task to do it, but if they did, it would be one of gaming's biggest turnarounds. But to do that, it would require strong leadership. But in this case, the captain is just heading for the next iceberg. Well, it's like there's no quality control. Like, they had the one—like, what was it called? That thing that was a relic of like the World War II nuclear bomb? It was like the one gate something. It was like a—Tory gate? Yes, yes, the single Tory gate. If you put that out there, like, that's something that unironically—that's the kind of stuff that you hire a company like Sweet Baby to make sure that you don't do. And I'm being completely serious. If you're looking for cultural sensitivity readers, that is why they're there. They are there to make sure that you don't make mistakes like that.
And people do that. It's a different word. Yeah, exactly right. It's a respect thing. It's a company, not Sweet Baby. Yeah, but I'm just saying, like, as a consultancy that does sensitivity reading for stuff like that, that is an actual example of it, right? And so it's funny that, like, you know, that doesn't happen. So what happens is, like, it indicates a lack of quality control all the way down the line. You know, they have no quality control with the narrative; they have no quality control with the research; they have no quality control with the gameplay; they have no quality control with, like, the way that the game is presented. Like, everything about it is bad.
So you can't, like—for example, with Cyberpunk, Cyberpunk was an amazing game that was held back by bugs. So easy to fix that. But you can't polish a turd; that's the problem. And you've seen games try to do that. They try to, you know, "Oh, well, we're going to fix this stuff." No, you don't understand; the game at a fundamental level is bad. The bad press surrounding Ubisoft, the delay of Assassin's Shadows, and the failed launch of Star Wars: Outlaws—you would think that the company would try to remain low profile, not make any waves, and not do anything to rock the boat any further.
Disregarding all sense of caution, common sense, and reality, for that matter, Ubisoft launched Champions Tactics: Goria Chronicles. I got to say, too, like, if I look at this gameplay, I know it's a totally different game, but like, who the f*** watches this and says, "Yeah, I'd rather play this than Stalker 2"? I don't. Common sense and reality, for that matter, Ubisoft launched Champions Tactics: Goria Chronicles, a tactical turn-based player versus player RPG. The gameplay markets as tactical play-to-win. This NFT game would see you buy and sell character pieces, earning cryptocurrency in the game that you could then—oh, okay, I get it. So it's a crypto game. Yeah, I remember Ubisoft announced this, but they never said anything about it because they were afraid.
Into Heroes, and then you could sell that for real money. The common line of garbage that we normally get with these kinds of games, or at least what they try to sell to their coked-out audiences. But Ubisoft was selling characters for upwards of $63,000. What? And to the dismay of many playing the game, in true Ubisoft fashion, it was broken at launch with claims of cheaters and exploiters. You're telling me they couldn't even get a fake amiibo game to work? How? You—that's embarrassing, Ubisoft. Get the f*** in line with the transaction.
Yeah, so my understanding is one of the reasons why companies want to add in their own currency like that is so they can profit. Like, the reason why Binance and, like, you know, FTX and all of them made a lot of money and make a lot of money—Coinbase, cash app to an extent—the reason why they get that? How do they make that money? Transaction fees. F***ing transaction fees, man. Like, back in the day, whenever I learned—'cause I had a friend of mine, and he went to jail for fraud. But before he went to jail for fraud, he was explaining some of this stuff to me. It's like 10 years ago; it was like 2012. I—it was Cataclysm, right? And so he was making like over a million dollars a month, and I was like, "This is really—I should start doing this." And so then I started wanting to make my own crypto website in 2012 because I could see how much these transaction fees were—millions, billions of f***ing dollars.
That's why if you look at my actual Asmongold Twitch channel, it says youtube.com/virtual exchange because that's what I was going to call it. And so, yeah, if I had done that, I mean, I'd probably be in jail. No, like, I 100% was going to scam people. But yeah, while Ubisoft tiptoed around their NFT game, Ubisoft's head of Assassin's Shadows said nothing when it came back to tackling ongoing discussions about forced representation and the influence of diversity, equity, and inclusion in video games. This has been a major point of contention for players and fans of Assassin's Creed.
And keep in mind also that the character Yuk—the main way that they informed themselves about the character was, well, they brought in a cultural expert who previously had written or been involved with books that had to do with relationships with underage people. And then also, I don't know what the details are, so I'm going to spare you with them. You know, you're welcome, by the way. And also another person who was completely discredited in pretty much every single way by not only, you know, putting up false information but pretending to be another person on Wikipedia, sourcing himself, and then using himself to become the, uh, what do you call it? To become like the, you know, like the main source for information about this character.
The first game to be set in Japan—a fitting setting for the franchise. The game's main protagonist is a Japanese Assassin. Ubisoft boss Marc Alexis Côté responded to player pushback, saying, "Assassin's Creed has always been about exploring the full spectrum of human history, and by its very nature, that history is diverse." See, all of this stuff—like, this is always so stupid. This is so f***ing stupid to say something like this because you're not going to convince people that they're wrong about the way that they feel about media. Like, you can't tell them, "Oh, well, you're wrong for not liking this; you have to like it."
True to history means embracing the richness of the perspective without compromises. For example, in Assassin's Creed: Shadows, we highlight figures both fictional, like Nawe, a Japanese woman warrior, and historical, like Yasuke, the African-born samurai. And it is extremely questionable as to whether he was a samurai or not. Ubisoft actually had to put out a post that was meant for the Japanese community to explicitly state that they were not completely sure about the circumstances in his life. The fact is that, I mean, they didn't have—did they have iPhones in 1580? When did that come out? No, no, they didn't. So they didn't have iPhones; people didn't take a lot of photos and videos back then, right? So, like, we don't really know what happened.
The inclusion of a black samurai in feudal Japan has sparked questions and even controversy. Nawe, a fictional character, has also faced scrutiny for her gender. But just as Yuk's presence in Japanese history—of course, who the f*** do you think's playing Assassin's Creed? It's a bunch of guys. They want to play as a—like, why do you think Ezio was so popular? He's a cool-looking, suave guy. Yeah, guys give a f*** about that. They do; they care, like, for f*** sure. What do we like? It's so sad that people have to rediscover fire every single time one of these things happens. People have to rediscover that, you know, like, these things do matter. They do matter, absolutely.
They might not matter to everybody, but for the people that they don't matter to, why alienate the people for whom it does matter? And that's exactly what happens. It's a fact. So too are the stories of women who define societal expectations and took up arms in times of conflict. Holy gaslight, Batman! I don't think I've seen anybody—it's like, I wonder what the percentage of women fighting at that time period was. I've seen—I would assume it's probably pretty low. And so I understand the drama, though.
Assassin's Creed has always been very loosely based on historical type of games; they never followed history 100%. The problem, I think, is that—so this is the difference. I think that you're right, and I think that's a good way to approach it. Like, it's not based off of history; it's inspired by history. But I think the issue with this is that they used the authentic nature of the history of this person as an argument for why the inclusion of it is okay. So I think people felt like they were being gaslit, and that's why there was such a negative reception for it. It's a rewriting of history.
Yeah, exactly. Draw, man, this hard. I don't think I've seen any backlash regarding Nawe, a Japanese female ninja. It's pretty fitting for a setting like this. And I'll be honest with you: if she was the main and only protagonist, I don't think people would be complaining nearly as much. I think they probably still would be, but probably not as much. You're right about that. Personally, I do not understand the inconsistency of the messaging here. First, you want to say it's rooted in history; then you want to say it's fiction; then you want to say you want to make a fictional character historic.
I think every normal person can see how there's clearly a lot of double speak going on here. Everybody can see this. What are we talking about? Yeah, it's mental gymnastics. Yeah, and like this is the problem is that I think the reason why so many people push back on stuff like this is because it's the intellectual dishonesty and the implied insult to the intelligence of the user that it's even being considered as a reality. I think that's what really makes people annoyed.
How come it's never a Brazilian person getting represented? I mean, I don't know. To be honest, I mean, I don't want to self-promote or anything like that, but you know, we're publishing a game that's about the Canudos Massacre. It's coming out, I think, this year or next year. So, yeah, I mean, I—yeah, that's just me. Yeah, hell, clock. I just don't understand why you keep trying to justify it. Why don't you just say, "We made Yasuke because we thought it would be entertaining, and it's what we wanted to make," rather than making it sound like it's some type of noble cause or like the appeal to authority claim?
The game is rooted in history, get pivoted to emphasizing fictional elements while defending their creative choices. Then they blur the lines even further by trying to represent a fictional character, Nawe, as a part of some broader historical narrative. It's as if they're trying to have it both ways, asserting historical authenticity when it suits them while falling back on fiction when it doesn't. Exactly. That's actually, you know, the way he said that is actually so perfect. Absolutely. Yep, there you go.
To include Yasuke was genuinely creative or thematic, then why not just own it? Say, "We wanted Yasuke because we thought it added something unique to the story." That would make it feel far more honest than trying to dress it up as some noble endeavor to try to highlight diversity. The over-justification doesn't reinforce the decision; it just makes it feel disingenuous. I think that's another problem that people have is they think that it's disingenuous.
Like, the issue I—and this is something I actually do believe—I actually don't think that gamers have a problem with any sort of multicultural stuff at all. I think there's always going to be, you know, a subset of angry people that are mad about everything or something, right? Like, you know, somebody's going to be mad about everything. But ultimately, I think if there was a game that came out that was like really, really good—like, let's say, I don't know, of like Hannibal, right, from back in the day, or like Shaka Zulu, or somebody like anybody from like maybe Africa or like South America—anything like that would go so f***ing hard. People would love it.
Yeah, Mansa Musa. Yeah, exactly. Like, people would love this f***. It's just like, yeah, exactly right. Yeah, just make the character good. Yeah, and make it authentic. They're anticipating the backlash rather than simply standing for their creative vision. Right? Côté would go on to further justify their actions, saying, "This echoes the selfless bravery of our Assassin's Creed protagonists. They fought for freedom, knowledge, and the right to chart their own paths, just as we do as creators fight to tell stories that matter in a world that grows increasingly divided."
As the authors of how democracies die so powerfully stated, "Democracies crumble when good people decide to stay silent." The same is true, I think, of our creative freedom. When these f***s think they're George Washington—do you think you're George Washington? Make it a shut the f*** up. Stop it. What is going—what is this? They're on the right side of history? What is it? Pretend this is so obnoxious. We allow fear to stifle our voices when we self-censor in the face of threats, when we hand over our power piece by piece until freedom and creativity—this Martin Luther King, Gandhi-like—what is going on with this? This is a revolution?
I—this is unbelievable, guys. Both wither away. We cannot let that happen. It's time for us creators to stand firm in our commitment to our values by telling stories that inspire, that challenge, and help people to connect. Our silence cannot become complicit. Like, what are you doing? Are you listening to, like, the Lord of the Rings soundtrack while you're typing this out on your MacBook at Starbucks? How the f*** do you do this and not realize how ridiculous you sound? Like, this is amazing. This man deserves an Emmy. I am dying here. Please help.
Côté is suggesting that criticism or backlash is akin to self-censorship, implying that questioning their creative choices is the same as threatening their freedom to create. But no, no, it is—they have every right to create what they want, and I don't think that they should censor themselves. If this is something that they choose to create, that's totally fine. I respect that. But you also have to respect that other people aren't interested in it, and they don't really find the same—it doesn't resonate with them the same way.
Like, yeah, they are—that's true. Criticism is not censorship. Players are pointing out inconsistencies, questioning decisions, and expressing dissatisfaction for a product that they're expected to pay for, and that's not an existential threat to your creative freedom. It's feedback. Treating critique as a form of oppression is not only disingenuous. "People don't like my video game! Help! Guys, I'm being oppressed! Oh my God, wait a minute! People are disagreeing! I'm being oppressed again! Oh my God, please make it stop!"
But it's actively dismissing the audience's role in this process. The invocation of how democracies die is especially egregious. It trivializes real-world political and social crises with the act of creating a new version of Assassin's Creed products. It's appealing to authority, using the weight of academic work to justify your inclusion of specific characters or narratives in a damn video game. Outrageous! Yes, the game is not democracy theater, kids need to be stopped. Pretentious theater kids that nobody likes need to stop these people.
Nor is it a battleground for your lofty ideals. It is a product designed for entertainment and for sale, and that's where the root of player concerns are right now. This is a product designed to be purchased for entertainment, and this is what you want to use it for? And then when we find out that this game is reportedly being worked on by a staff comprised of people who nearly half of them have never even made a game before? You don't have to tell me that; I already knew it. I watched the trailer of the gameplay where, like, he shot a bullet at somebody, and then after the bullet hit the guy, the guy moved away from it, and the bullet's still there. And then, like, the door is like right here, and then like the step is up here, so you have to like step up to here in order to get into the door.
Yeah, I immediately believe they never made a game before. Some of them, I feel like they maybe even never saw a computer before. Some of them believing that it is the worst game ever, and your only response to players' concerns is your nobility and the belief that you're some freedom fighter? It only helps to prove that this game, regardless of its delay, will have Yasuke being the least of players' concerns. That's exactly what I said. I think when this game comes out, Yasuke is not even going to be in the top 10 problems this game has.
It's probably going to have Denuvo; it's probably going to have launch issues; it's probably going to crash on PC; it's probably going to have like a bad progression system. There might be some sort of like pay-to-advance inside of the store. There's going to be glitches; there's going to be cinematics that probably aren't working properly. There's going to be other issues with the story that are totally f***ing stupid that we can't even predict. Do you really think that the studio that used the one gate Tory gate thing as a marketing tool for feudal Japan, do you really think that they give a f***? I mean, because they've already written the story; they've done the voice lines; they've acted all of this stuff out; they've already done this.
So, do you think they're going to go back and—think about how many other f***ups the game probably has in it? They're burying the lead. When I see a developer that is this wrapped up in their own social politics, I see it as a mining canary that they are ignoring what they need to be paying attention to, which is making sure that they're making a game that players are actually going to enjoy. They're not paying attention to gameplay; they think they're writing a stage play. And I think that's what has a lot of players genuinely upset and sick of a lot of these studios and many of their executives.
This kind of speech that Côté is using only serves to alienate the players even more, mining Albatross further because he's taking the conversation to a moral high ground that is so high the elevation is likely to make you sick. Players are not rejecting creativity, diversity, or meaningful storytelling; they are pushing back against well pretension. Yeah, and their critiques of people don't want to be talked down to. They don't want to be talked down to; they don't want to be patronized. Like, you just treat people like adults, and you don't try to f*** them around; they're going to act like it. That's it.
They think they're the new Hollywood revolutionaries. Yeah, product being compared to assaults on fundamental freedoms. I think that's the most frustrating part about all of this is that it's so easy to see that community concerns, player concerns, customer concerns are being purposefully ignored. This is patented intellectual dishonesty, and because of that, the players and the customers feel disrespected. This is just a piece of advice that I'm going to give, but when players feel that way, they're not going to buy your games.
I don't think that I've ever seen a company so thoroughly and completely gaslight themselves as much. This is the reason why I think the companies that have this type of ideology—this is why I think they're never going to be able to get away from it. It's because they're so wrapped up in the moral goodness of what they're doing, they can't see reality at all, and they're so radicalized that they can't accurately process what's happening. Yeah, they can't escape it. Exactly. It's like think about how much people couldn't get away—like people even after, after, um, what do you call it? Like, so if you're American, like you probably know a little bit more about this, but like the recent election that we had, people just could not comprehend that certain groups did not vote based off of identity politics expectations.
They could not comprehend the idea that Latino populations in America didn't vote for what would be best for other people that might share the same heritage as them. That's it. They could not even believe this was happening. Pragmatism before idealism. Yeah, exactly. Or that women could be against abortion. Yeah, by the way, there's a lot of women that are against abortion—like a huge amount. America is so weird. Well, what I'm saying is that we've exported our weirdness to the world because these people are here in France and are just as f***ed as we are.
So what's happened is that this ideology has infected the entire studio. Like, you're not going to be able to get rid of this. Soft has—and they're good at it. And that's just the state of the company today. Now, following the abysmal launch of Star Wars: Outlaws, the game reportedly only captured 1 million copies sold in an act of self-inflicted financial devastation. The company has chosen to stay true to its plans to continue to support the game with more updates. They're going to have to kick us out the door. Well, I guess that's what they're going to have to do.
In changes, in an interview with GamesRadar, Julian Gity, the creative director, said, "I'm a little disappointed with the Metacritic recognition from the critics. It's very important to us." But why? You're stupid if you think recognition from critics matters. You don't even understand what you're doing. Your goal is to sell a product to an audience; it's not to sell it to critics. So what are you thinking? I do think that players are really connecting with what we did. We had a very—why are players rating it lower than critics? How can anybody think like this? How is this possible?
Just target—we literally reached for the stars, and I think that we were successful from so many different angles. There's a magical, unique experience within Outlaws. Whether it's Star Wars or not, there was a unique experience with eating dog s*** or getting kicked in the balls, but that doesn't mean that you want to have it. Also, I think that Star Wars: Outlaws was probably worse because it was Star Wars. I think that if they had built the world up from the ground up and they had—because I bet Star Wars and Disney, they exercised a lot of creative censorship over what Ubisoft was going to do, and it ended up probably making the game worse.
It's Disney! It's Disney! Like, are we really going to think this didn't happen? Of course it happened. Pause there for a moment before I continue because worrying about the critics is exactly what got Ubisoft into the position it's in today. Exactly. As I go throughout this interview, they mostly end up talking about how they're still working hard on the game, story expansions, as well as—this is why, like—and this is what's funny is that you have game—you have companies like Hoovers, and you have companies—and this is even true with content creators too. Like, a lot of people that are really popular, there's a lot of people also that don't like them.
Never take the opinions of people that have decided that they should be professional opinion havers. Don't take that seriously. And this includes me. I say something, okay, f*** it, ignore me. But see what people do. See what people do. See the averages do because you're not selling to like the five people that have an opinion on YouTube; you're selling to millions of people, to an audience. Proving the base game, however, I can't help but feel as though this is just an exercise in futility more than anything else, and they would be better off refunding players who bought the season pass content and just cutting ties with the game.
I wish that companies would stop being so ambitious about the future of their game and focus on the present. What is the point of committing yourselves to future plans if you have no idea whether or not players are going to even play your game in the first place? When Elden Ring was announced, I don't think that there was any mention of additional content that would come in the future. While there were, I think a lot of times developers know that their games will be successful before they come out. I think that a lot of people know.
Yeah, like, there's no science to this. They made a Star Wars game with no lightsabers. They are stupid. Yeah, pretty much. Yeah, and assumptions. We never got confirmation until after the game had released and garnered success. There's—within that, I mean, Ubisoft announced back in September that Massive, the studio behind Star Wars: Outlaws, would be moving over to start work on Division 3, the series that that studio is loved for, which has already gone into pre-production.
From my perspective, given the sales of Star Wars: Outlaws and its tepid reception—ooh, that's bad. That's real bad. When it released on Steam, wouldn't it be a better idea to go all hands on deck with an IP that you know players want and you know that studio has the most experience with? It just doesn't make any sense, not from a customer perspective or from a business perspective. However, lately, Ubisoft isn't known for having the brightest ideas.
I mean, there's also a big issue with any sort of cultural or social stuff that's being put into a game. The problem is that you have a culture of toxic positivity that shuts down any honest conversation about whether it's going to improve the game or make players like the game or not. Because, like, if somebody thinks that it's a good idea to add in, let's say, you know, a character that is like, you know, has like a non-normative sexual identity, right? Like, you know, transsexual or anything like that.
Think about, like, if you're working at a company that has a lot of people that want to do that. Do you want to say that, "Oh, I don't think this is going to be good for the game, and it's going to alienate people, and it's going to make gamers get mad"? Do you want to be the person who's transphobic? Do you want to be the person that gets sent to HR and maybe gets fired for, you know, like daring to question this? Absolutely not. So these people aren't going to speak out against this that work at the company because they're afraid of getting in trouble.
So you have a situation where it creates a chilling effect at the company, and everybody can push it, but nobody can stop it. It's the same as pronouns or anything else. What do you think happens at a place like Obsidian when somebody says, "I don't think we should add pronouns to the game"? They get totally painted as a bad person, and they get misrepresented and demonized. Fired, right? Or fired. So that's also another big issue.
They convince themselves that Skull and Bones is a worthwhile investment, and they are telling players in the media that they will turn it around in the next season, which now that I think about it, that sounds oddly familiar. Ubisoft coming out to reassure players—and every live service game that fails says that—contrary to popular belief, one of their is actually healthy and has a bright future. Oh wait, that's right, Ex-Defiant. Just a few months ago, Marc Rubin, the head of Ex-Defiant, wrote a blog post in a summary of their year one roadmap for the game, and in it, he took the time to take on Insider Gaming's claims that the game was living on borrowed time.
Rubin had said, "I just want to quickly address the status of the game, i.e., is the game dying? No, the game is absolutely not dying. We know that there are things we need to improve." Like, why is it like that they don't have any PR? Because, like, if you were—like, if I was an executive working at Ubisoft, I would say, "Hey guys, we don't want to comment on the nature of the status of the game, whether it's dying or not, because we don't want to draw attention to it, and it's just going to be bad for the brand."
And this is what I was saying before about it being a systemic problem because, like, as an executive, like, there's a good chance—here's the thing, there's a good chance Marc Rubin didn't even know that it was going to be shut down. He might have found out that it was going to be shut down maybe a week before it was shut down. There's a good chance that he was telling the truth to the best that he understood it. But when you do an interview with somebody like this and you work at a big company, you go through media training.
And so if you have media training for people to ask you about this game that has a very rocky start and there's like a rocky kind of reception of the game, they should have told him not to even comment on this. You see kind of what I'm saying, right? Like, it makes them look very bad, and they could have easily explained it. The executives could have easily explained it as like, "Yeah, just don't talk about this issue."
It's just to attract potential new players. Yeah, but like, I bet they probably should have. I don't think so, man. He addressed it with no prompt. Exactly. Yeah, like they should have given him—and this is my point with the company is that when a company has problems like this, it does not just permeate the narrative team of a game; it permeates the—like, it's even in HR; it's in the PR training. They can't even figure that out.
Code and hit registration and adding more content to progression, but the game is doing well. We just want it to do better, and we do that by addressing the concerns of the community, which has always been the plan. Ubisoft is very much behind us and has allocated more resources to the team in order for us to do that. Only for two months later for Marc Rubin to go on Twitter and announce that Ex-Defiant will shut down and services will end on June 3rd, 2025.
And also, by the way, I think it is so f***ing sh***y of Ubisoft to make him do this. So f***ing sh***y for them to make him go out and announce this when they let him go out and say that the game wasn't dying. That sucks because he probably has no hand in whether the game gets continued or not. He knew—how do we know that? I think it's very likely that he didn't know. Ubisoft is such a massive company; the decision could have been made at that time, but he wouldn't have known about it.
Rubin goes on to talk about how the game was a passion project, how difficult it is to get a live—also, like, here's another reason why he might not have known is that a lot of companies—I'm sorry to pause, but this is like just a side point, and it's a meta-level point—is that the reason why a lot of big company changes are not announced ahead of time is because of how fast information travels now and the concerns of insider trading. So that's why big layoff rotations and like big layoff waves are not made public at all to anybody in the company until the day that they happen. It's to prevent insider trading.
So Ubisoft is a publicly traded company; you could logically think that this has happened, right? So, yeah, Nancy Pelosi disagrees. No, she doesn't; she has a special exception, which is very convenient for her. And so, yes, and that's the reason why it's because it's—off this game off the ground and more. What I find really interesting is this section where Marc says, "If there's something I hope we can take away from this experience, it's the importance of open, honest communication between developers and players. The player-first mentality, along with respectful, non-toxic conversations between developers and players, has been one of the standout differences that made Ex-Defiant so special."
From my first post about Ex-Defiant, this was the vision I wanted to champion. I hope it leaves a positive mark on how the games industry treats its players and communities. Yet none of that ever actually happened. There was no honest communication or a player-first mentality when it came to Ex-Defiant or any other Ubisoft game for that matter. While the game had issues—serious core issues with net code and hit registration—two things that are quite literally the backbone of a first-person shooter experience, that didn't stop Ubisoft from adding more microtransactions or season passes.
See, this is another issue. Like, if the game—this is the point, right? Like, it doesn't even work. Even they acknowledge that the net code and hit registration is bad; they're saying it's bad. Think about how bad it actually is. Instead, the money printer kept printing while the issues kept pushing players out of the game. While Ubisoft plans to refund the players that had purchased the ultimate edition of the game and auto-refund microtransactions that were purchased within the last month, there are still plenty of players that are left hung out to dry.
I think that this is the crux of the whole issue with Ubisoft and many other companies. They're so caught up in their own personal identity politics, personal politics, actual politics, social politics, and all the different ways that they can make money off of games that they've lost sight of the fact that they are providing a service and a product to customers. Technical and quality issues, or even just the vision of a well-made game—a game that players will actually enjoy—is eclipsed by how they can commoditize, monetize, and use their games as a soapbox.
Well, I definitely think that there's a problem. I do think that too many of these developers want to use their video games as a way to push their social message. And I think also that's not really a problem, but the issue is that their social message is not—people don't want to hear it. They don't want to hear about how hard it is to be, you know, some kind of a person in a first-world country. The social messages that people want to hear about are extremely general and broad. It's like about overcoming adversity; it's about, you know, becoming a better person, living past mistakes.
These aren't like real, like abstract social concepts and like, you know, messaging concepts. These are like very specific things that only people that are privileged in first-world countries care about. And I think that's the reason why the stories fall so flat is because it's like, again, it's like, you know, a really good example of this is I had to read a book in high school. It was called The Catcher in the Rye. It was the most pathetic, embarrassing piece of s*** that I've ever read in my entire life. And the reason why I hated it is because the person—I think his name is like Holden Caulfield or something—he was the kind of person who had no problems in his real life and he invented problems because he was bored.
And I thought it was pathetic and annoying to have to read about some loser who was privileged and who had everything going for him in life and who managed to like get emotional about birds. What a pathetic f***ing loser. Well, like, what a little f***. And these people that are writing these stories are the ones that read The Catcher in the Rye and they said, "He's just like me." How f***ing pretentious! How obnoxious and annoying!
Within the industry, I think that this mentality with a lot of these companies is born from the fact that they're publicly traded. They have fiduciary responsibilities; they need to make money for their investors. But I also think that it's a sign of a much larger issue—too much investment and too much inorganic growth. Many of the biggest publishers and studios in the industry are now incentivized, imagine teaching students about Holden Caulfield and s***, The Catcher in the Rye, and not Animal Farm. I cannot think of a single universe where Animal Farm would not be more relevant than that piece of s***.
By the sheer size of their organization and the number of their employees, to make their games more expensive, to fill them with microtransactions, and to create things of lower quality, they need to make as much money as they possibly can for a minimum viable product just to be able to keep their heads above water. They can't take creative risks; they can't create niche experiences; they can't—
Isn't that great how nowadays with game releases we don't have a discussion about when the game is finished? We have a discussion about when the game is at the minimum viable product. That's really—it's such a cynical term to use. What's the absolute least that we can do and get away with it? Make games that have their own identity because they need everybody to be interested in that game. They can't remove or limit monetization because, well, they need as much money as possible. So they bloat their single-player games with useless content to urge casual players to buy solutions in the form of microtransactions for problems that they created.
Ubisoft as a company is a case study for this industry and where it is headed. They aren't alone in this issue; they're not alone in this race. And while games media and CEOs will happily blame toxic gamers for the issues of these companies or say that the reason why games are failing is because of steep competition, they deny reality. It is steep competition; other people are trying, and you're not. You suck, and you lose. That's what happens; that's natural selection, and you got selected. Work harder; do better.
It's the same with YouTube or Twitch. There are people that complain. They're like, "Oh, well, you know, my stream isn't doing well; my videos aren't doing well." Work harder; work harder; try harder. Are you doing that, or are you just sitting around thinking about how bad it is for you? Winners win, and losers lose. You're right; there it is. The same as Ubisoft. Your games are boring; they're buggy, repetitive, and too expensive. We don't need you, but you need us, and that becomes more apparent by the day as we see more games fail and more studios close.
Remember who you're working for, or you might not be working much longer. You know, something that I've noticed, and I'm sure a few of you guys have seen this as well, is that art styles, themes, colors, characters, stories, even music at times have started to kind of blend together with some of these games. However, the most popular games—the games that have gotten some of the best sales and some of the best player feedback and retention and all that good stuff, player appreciation, customer appreciation—are games that are incredibly distinct.
If I look at like Elden Ring or Baldur's Gate or Path of Exile 2 or any of these games, they end up standing out because they just don't look like or play like or sound like anything else that's out there. I think he's so right. Like, playing Cyberpunk was a transcendent experience. The vocabulary is unique; the gameplay is good; the graphics are amazing. Like, absolutely. You didn't finish it? Yeah, I know that. Thank you. Thank you. I forgot about that for five minutes.
And like Elden Ring is the same thing. With a lot of these really good games, everything about them is insanely good. But if I take a game just as an example, like Dragon Age, and I rip off the EA and the BioWare logo, and then you tell me who made that game? Epic? Activision? I don't know. Well, if you can't tell what's happening during combat, Blizzard probably made it. Like, they all start to look the same after a while. If the game has a lot of loading screens, Bethesda made it.
Um, let's see, what are some other ones? Oh, if it's single-player and there are microtransactions, it's either a gacha game or Ubisoft made it. I think it's because they're all just chasing each other's tails. That's really all it ends up being. They look to see what the other big company is doing, and they say, "Oh, we're going to do that too," and that's their big great idea that they, you know, bring forth to their boards.
In the pursuit of growing, they lost their identity. And if you die after killing a boss, you know Grinding Gear Games made it. It made them unable to stand out in front of other studios and other games. They needed to make more money, but they needed to hire people. And as their companies grew larger and they had more money, well, then they needed to monetize their games and price their games higher. So what are you left with? You're left with overpriced, over-monetized, and boring games that fail to stand out amongst the rest of the competition out in the market right now.
That's why games are failing; that's why you're not making any money; that's why the games that you're putting out aren't finding an audience because there are other games that stand out better, are much more original, and value our time and money. And the narratives for the games are bad too. Like, I mean, I think Dragon Age could have been better if they spent more time on the narrative. But like, if you look at the narrative difference between Metaphor and Dragon Age or Cyberpunk and Dragon Age, it's just a night-and-day difference.
Like, if you look at, for example, the narrative difference between, like, I bet probably the most recent Ubisoft slop shooter game, and you compare that to like Stalker 2, it's not even—it’s not even the same thing. Don't anymore. And it's also because you can't—because it really does come down to just how big these companies are. Yeah, they don't have time to think about what the customer needs; they can only think about what they need right now.
And the fact of the matter is you just don't have what it takes to be able to compete in a creative industry anymore because this cold corporate approach just doesn't work here. Simple as that. You're selling products based on people's wants, not their needs. You can't just do anything you want to what you're selling to us. That's just not how this works.
Yeah, sorry. This is another big problem is that people believe that the moral superiority of their worldview causes them to override market concerns and market preferences. It doesn't matter how right you think you are; that's still not going to make somebody buy your game. You're not going to, like, guilt or emotionally blackmail somebody into spending $70 on slop. Ubisoft has taken too many Ls; they've had too many games that have failed, and they don't have enough games to give a positive outlook, not only for their investors but just in general for keeping the company afloat, keeping your employees paid.
Because if we actually sit back and look at every single game that they've failed on and how much those games cost them, well, that's all going on in the background against any of the games that actually have succeeded, which is basically none for quite a while now, outside of Valhalla, and that was back in—was it like 2018, 2020, or 2019? Something right around there. It's been a few years since then, and it's not enough money to float all of the poor decisions that they've made.
Nor is, um, what is it called? Rainbow Six? Rainbow Six isn't making enough money to be able to keep the entire company afloat. I brought it up earlier in the video; they have over 20,000 employees; they have offices all around the world. And even though people in games—20,000 employees to make a video? Like, 20,000 people? You know what I bet probably is going on? I bet their project management, leadership, and executive teams are spread way too thin because they probably over-hired a lot of people that actually make the game, and then the top leadership is probably—that's probably what's really spread thin.
Yeah, 1,700 marketing. Yeah, exactly right. And I think fire them all. Well, it's basically like I could easily see they probably don't have enough people to like really focus on one thing specifically. Media—like, they laid off 300 employees, and it's just like they have 20,000? Like, how are you paying for that? No wonder your investors are leaving. They're like, "There's just no way that this company's going to be able to backpedal out of this." Their only choice—literally their only choice—is to go private and then sell their IPs.
That's what I'm saying; their only choice. I'm saying the owners—that's the only thing the owners can do to be able to make money for themselves because honestly, that's likely the road that they're going to end up wanting to take. I would imagine that Tencent is probably on the opposite side of that, where they don't want the company to shut down; they want to keep it up; they want to keep the employees there because Tencent will sort them out so fast. They're just going to go in there, and they're going to solve the problem.
Like, they're going to be the guy—you know, it's like he's talking about like democracy, about like, you know, speaking out and silence is being complicit. They send him to a re-education camp—problem solved. Then they bring somebody else in whose idea is to, "We're going to make an Assassin's Creed game; it's going to be a new game; it's going to be set in, you know, wherever the f***, and it's just going to be good." And that's it—problem solved. Yep, we're not going to like Tencent's solution, though. I like their solution with PoE2; I like their solutions with Riot; I like their solution with Larian, with From Software. I think they know what the f*** they're doing.
I think they're a massive, like, top 10, almost in the world, billion-dollar company. These people aren't stupid. Like, they don't care. Like, they—yeah, their game—they own games. Science that made Black Myth: Wukong? Le is cooked right now. Ah, maybe, right? I played Valorant; I thought Valorant was really good. Billionaires scare me. Okay, well, I mean, I've got bad news for you about the owners of Ubisoft. They want to make the games; they probably think that they could do a better job at getting the company to produce at the level it should be producing at.
Yeah, I mean, take that however you want. I know people have a lot of thoughts on Tencent; I get it. You know, I'm not really a huge fan of corporate takeovers, but to be honest with you, a lot of the companies that Tencent has—I'm not about corporate takeovers or not; I'm about change. I think that at a certain point, if people are celebrating and your stock goes up because a massive Chinese company that has a totally different value structure and is going to totally buy you out in a western market, I think that if you've gotten to the point to where that increases your stock value, you should ask yourself why.
The main reason Tencent is good is because the CCP is anti-woke. The main reason why Tencent is good is because they know how—like, a lot of the best—like, 'cause I've had to deal with investors and stuff like this before. One thing that I've noticed with all the smartest ones is that they know what they don't know. They're not going to try and sit there and make creative decisions for you; they're not going to try to go and tell you and micromanage every single little thing that you add into the game. They look at the big picture; they say, "This seems to be a problem," and they fix it, and then they get the f*** out of your way because think about it from their perspective.
Do they want to have to micromanage you and tell you what to do and be on calls with you all the time and like, "Oh, well, you need to do this"? Do they want to be—no, they don't want to do that. They want to f***ing just do whatever the hell they want to. I don't know, like, play video games themselves. Yeah, they want you to make money. Exactly. Yeah, they want to f*** off and play golf. Exactly. They don't want—
I think, yeah, why would they want to micromanage? I don't know. This is just ridiculous. I can only predict that there will be more videos at one point in time. I'm not sitting here trying to, like, farm these guys every single day. I don't really want to do that. I just wait until there's enough to talk about. This is more than I thought I was going to end up having to talk about. They—man, pure cinema. This is too good. Good eating, my friends. It is good.
Anyway, I hope you guys enjoyed the video. If you guys did enjoy the video, like the video, subscribe to the channel. You guys can follow me on Twitch if you want to see me rant about video games or die in Exile 2. Outside of that, stay cool, stay safe. I'll catch you guys in the next one.
Yeah, there it is, family. Family. No, I think everything he said was right, and I feel like also Tencent—like, my opinion is that they've—like, every time that I think a big company, like, especially, I think there's a degree of, you know, like, kind of like—I don't know what to say. I don't think it's really racism. You know, I don't know what you call it—like an ethnic anxiety, maybe? Whenever people think that, like, there's a bunch of Eastern influences taking over video games. But like, I really don't think that's the case because, like, as far as I know, Nintendo—oo, I don't think they're in America, and I think that we all grew up on Nintendo.
Xenophobia? Well, I—I just—I don't like having the phobia word. I think that usually whenever I hear the phobia word, it's being—okay, right? This is some kind of f***ing person trying to stand on a soapbox. I think that there are people that have a reasonable concern about other countries like China because of the way that their culture is, right? And the way that their government is. Absolutely, sure. But at the same time, these people are not evil. In a lot of cases, they're not trying to, like, do something bad; they're trying to make money. That's it.
So anyway, Nintendo has an American company—Nintendo of America. Yeah, sure, but like my point is that it's a Japanese product. It comes from Japan; it's influenced by Japanese culture, etc. Right? And so that's it. And American capitalism. Yeah, they don't like that; they're communists. Sure, I think that Ubisoft will probably have to either sell off some of its IPs or have to go private or have to sell off a lot of their stuff.