I used to like Ubisoft. I used to genuinely think they were a cool
company. I didn’t really know anything about them
until I started religiously watching E3 presentations back in the day. Back when E3 was still kicking around, all
the big companies showed up every single time, and for a few days every year I could plunk
myself down on the couch and watch presentations morning noon and night. (Good gravy, I miss those days…) And this was when I “discovered” Ubisoft,
in a sense. I knew about them, mainly from Rayman and
the launch titles they made for the Wii (yes, I was one of those poor folks duped into buying
Red Steel). But I didn’t know much about them as a company,
I wasn’t familiar with all their different series. But after watching one of their E3 presentations,
I thought, “You know what? This Ubisoft ain’t so bad.” I really appreciated how they seemed to be
interested in creating a wide range of experiences. They had their AAA series, which seemed really
impressive (if a little repetitive). Even when I didn’t play the games it was
still fun to watch the reveals and marvel at the graphics and whatnot. I did play Assassin’s Creed Black Flag and
loved the HECK out of it, though we’ll talk about that more in a bit. But then in addition to that Ubisoft had smaller
projects. Platformers like the Rayman games. Indie-sized, artful little games like Child
of Light and Valiant Hearts. And their E3 presentations were cringey, sure,
but ALL E3 presentations were cringey! And at the very least you could say these
ones were colorful and interesting. I knew Ubisoft was a huge gaming corporation,
but it felt at least a little bit like these were some people who liked making games. They worked on so many different projects
that I even got a little excited wondering what they might reveal next. For a few years I genuinely looked forward
to watching their show each E3. And even as recently as the beginning of the
Switch generation, Ubisoft was putting on good shows, releasing some cool games. They did Mario and Rabbids, which was awesome,
and no one else liked Starlink but I will forever stand by that game, I thought it was
neat. I even did sponsorships for those games! Ubisoft let me make some silly skits, we were
all chummy with each other, it was great! What a company… WOW how things change. It is just AMAZING how dramatically things
can change. The older you get, the more you find that
you can never count on something good to be good forever. It’s sad, but it’s true. Many things, no matter how good they are,
have a tendency to just GO BAD. And my opinion of Ubisoft could not POSSIBLY
be lower than it is now. Even if they TRIED to get me to hate them,
they deliberately sabotaged my opinion, the end result would still be what we already
have now. The respect I had for them is 100% gone. The admiration, the faith I had in them as
developers, it’s completely gone. That well has run bone dry. Now, that’s not to say the company is incapable
of making cool games. They just put out a really cool looking Prince
of Persia Metroidvania, of all things, and I hear it’s amazing. Then Mario and Rabbids Sparks of Hope looked
like a really cool sequel. Ubisoft is a huge company, they’ve got plenty
of passionate and talented developers on the payroll, and in the increasingly rare occasions
those devs are allowed to, they’re very much capable of making great stuff. They are not the problem. The problem is the captains runnin’ the
ship. For starters, there’s the whole employee
abuse THING. I won’t go too deep into that, I already
did a whole video about it. But basically, all that time Ubisoft was making
cool games and doing silly dance numbers onstage, they were also cultivating a toxic and abusive
work environment where the top executives were allowed to harass anyone they pleased
with zero repercussions. And even since all that came to light, they’ve
done essentially nothing to fix the problem. So that’s already plenty reason to just
be entirely DONE with Ubisoft as a company. It’s run by very very evil people. And I’m not a big fan of evil people. Just not my thing. But even beyond that, Ubisoft has slowly but
steadily revealed itself to be “just another AAA publisher.” Over the last ten years or so, the industry
has gotten nastier and nastier. More focus-tested, trend-chasing schlock,
more aggressive and psychologically manipulative monetization, more barebones yet fully priced
experiences propped up by paid post-launch content… Not every company has gone down this road. Plenty have decided to hold their ground,
keep doing their own thing, not sink so low. But one company that’s been leading the
charge, flying a green flag with a golden dollar sign on it? Ubisoft. In this increasingly scummy gaming landscape,
they have happily embraced the scumminess. They have slathered themselves in it, made
it their home. When live service games became the big moneymakers,
Ubisoft basically said “all we make now is live service games, everything else is
worthless.” When microtransactions became commonplace,
they were adapted eagerly by Ubisoft. And multiplayer games, that’s one thing. It’s easier to monetize a multiplayer game,
especially if it’s free to play. Ah, but what about SINGLEPLAYER games? Oh, not just singleplayer games, but FULL
PRICE ones?? Assassin’s Creed sold very, very well. When they started releasing them every single
year there started to be a problem and they had to pull in the reigns a bit, but for the
most part it’s an incredibly profitable series. Not profitable enough though, it seems. Ubisoft introduced RPG elements to the series. Not because this was a natural evolution of
the formula, but so they could sell players XP multipliers. I’m not making this up, and frankly I’m
still APALLED that this happened. They introduced XP into their games so that
they could drip feed XP to the player in order to frustrate them into purchasing multipliers. It’s unfathomable. It’s disgusting on such a deep level. It’s an insult to the customer, and--at
the risk of sounding all hoighty toughty--the art of video games. If you’re doing this, you are clearly only
in it for the money, and you clearly care none for your audience. None. Zero. You’re the scammer, they’re the mark,
that’s literally all this is. So yeah, Ubisoft is awful. But you know what, I do have to admire one
of their qualities. It’s their unshakable reserve, their passionate
dedication…to being awful. All that trend-chasing? That pledge to focus almost entirely on live
service games? Yeah, it’s not working out for them. That’s the thing about live service multiplayer
games. If they work, then they make you a lot of
money. But if they don’t, if they just don’t
click with players, then you’ve got yourself an EXTREMELY expensive flop on your hands. These kinds of games take so much money, so
much infrastructure, they’ve got to support millions of players, they’ve got to have
content planned years in advance, they’ve got to run well, they’ve got to be polished,
they’ve got to really stand out from the vast ocean of similar games all vying for
the market’s attention. But there can only be so many popular multiplayer
games at any given time. And Ubisoft just keeps making games that people
don’t care about. Their live service games are failing, or otherwise
just not performing as well as they want. Their multiplayer series that USED to be successful
are morphing to fit the live service model, and people aren’t having it. One would think that someone in charge might
look at all this and realize, hey, this whole live service thing isn’t really working
out. I think this might have been one of those
bandwagon things people are always talking about. A foolish attempt to capitalize on what’s
already successful by chasing trends and creating soulless, focus-tested slop for the masses? Maybe we should take a moment and rethink
things… Yeah, you’d expect that from a reasonable
person. But the dudes in Ubisoft’s captain’s cabin? As recently as LAST YEAR, CEO Yves Guillemot
was like “WE LOVE LIVE SERVICE GAMES. LIVE SERVICE GAMES ARE LIFE.” I mean you just can’t keep this guy down! What a little fighter! Then on the singleplayer front, they essentially
built an empire on making games using the exact same formula again and again and again. Assassin’s Creed and Far Cry? For a while it felt like they were essentially
the same games but with different stories and camera perspectives. The gameplay loops were just so similar. Today they’ve diverged a fair amount, but
Ubisoft has put out SO MANY GAMES from each series. And pumping out games like mad, that used
to work for Ubisoft, so they kept doing it, and particularly in the case of Far Cry, people
are caring less and less. Reception to these games is growing more and
more tepid. So what should Ubisoft do? Change course? Noooo, not on your life. How about we just make sure all these games
ship with MORE MICROTRANSACTIONS? More XP multipliers and premium currencies
and special items you can only get by spending even more than the 60 or now 70 dollars you
already spent on the stinkin thing? It seems like no matter what happens, no matter
how much they fail, they REFUSE to learn. Guillemot himself has even admitted here and
there that yeah, they’re turning out some real stinkers, and they need to do better. He SAYS that. But…he just SAYS it. And that’s it. Nothing changes. They keep makin’ stinkers. Which finally brings us to the analogy this
video was built upon. Ubisoft is a sinking ship. Now, that’s not to say that they’re at
risk of being entirely SUNK any time soon. It’s hard to sink a ship this big. Despite all the failures, they’re still
making some money. Reception to some games may be tepid, but
these AAA games do appeal to wide audiences so sales are sometimes okay. And all the microtransactions, I’m sure
those help. They’re there for a reason, and I have no
doubt that there are plenty of people out there who succumb to the call of those fancy
shiny currencies and items and such. And sometimes Ubisoft will put out a genuine
hit. Assassin’s Creed Valhalla was a big financial
success, the first in the series to hit one billion dollars in revenue (thanks in no small
part, I’m sure, to the ABUNDANCE of DLC and microtransactions sold alongside it). And, of course, big companies always have
tricks up their sleeves. Firing employees and making the remaining
ones work harder, that’s a popular one. Putting MORE microtransactions in their games,
thinking of even more sinister ways to manipulate people into spending more money, that’s
ALWAYS on the docket. They’ve got options, and they’ve got control
of some really big IPs. They’re going to keep making money. But I can’t help but see a trend here. I can’t help but see a trajectory. More and more of their games are failing,
and they’re barely managing to put out just enough successful titles to keep the lights
on. The live service model isn’t working, so
they’re leaning into it even harder. You know what that makes me think of? A crew BAILING WATER. Sure, maybe the ship won’t be completely
submerged any time soon. But the lower decks are flooded, and that
water line is creeping upward, slowly but surely. The crew is working hard to bail out as much
water as they can, and it’s working…but how long will that last? This all happened because the captain sailed
the ship into treacherous waters in search of treasure, but even though it’s becoming
more and more clear that there isn’t any treasure around here, he’s only sailing
deeper in. Ubisoft is getting by, but their success feels
tenuous. It feels unsiustainable. They’re doing the wrong thing and failing
because of it, and only doubling and tripling down. Their games are selling okay, but public opinion
of the company is probably at an all time low. And on top of all that, their horrible management
is catching up with them, and they’re facing all sorts of lawers and regulators. It feels like every week they’re getting
in trouble for something. And even though they’re still making money,
the business is still WORKING, technically, I get the feeling that I’m not the only
person who feels the ship is taking on water. Let’s take a look at their stock prices. When they were at the top of their game, pumping
out titles like mad, milking that Ubisoft formula for an audience that wasn’t QUITE
sick of it yet, their stock price was very high, peaking in 2018. Then they saw a dip, but in 2020, when everyone
was at home playing games and pretty much EVERY game company was doing very well, they
saw another huge increase--helped a bunch by the release of Assassin’s Creed Valhala. But since then? Sinking, sinking, sinking… Their stock value has dropped by a whopping
75%. The company is worth a mere QUARTER of what
is was, and is worth only about as much as it was way back in 2015 when they were just
starting to really get somewhere. These numbers are DISMAL. Here’s the thing about an entertainment
company, though. Its success hinges on it putting out products
that people want to buy. You never know quite what’s going to happen,
or how well any one product will do. This Ubisoft ship? There’s still time for it to correct its
course. We can’t just look at what’s happened
in the past. We’ve got to look to the future! We’ve got to look AHEAD! So what’s on the horizon for the SS Ubisoft? Where is its next port of call? *fog horn noise* Ohhhh I’ve been looking forward to this
for so long. I’ve mentioned it here and there in videos,
but I’ve been dreaming of the day I could really talk about it. And I cannot even believe how perfectly this
plays into the analogy. I mean it CREATED the analogy, Ubisoft is
making my job so easy, they just GAVE this to me, just handed this to me in a neat little
package all tied up in a bow. A Youtuber could not possibly ask for more,
it’s just too perfect. Sorry to rewind again, but remember how I
mentioned Assassin’s Creed 4: Black Flag? Golly, that game is good. I really love ships and the age of sail and
all that, so I got the game looking for a good pirate simulator, expecting to mostly
ignore all the assassin stuff. But it turned out that the assassin stuff
only ENHANCES the pirate stuff, and the whole package isn’t just a terrific pirate simulator--it’s
just a phenomenal game overall. Every kind of piratey activity, you can do. Naval combat with other ships, disabling and
boarding those ships to add them to your fleet, managing that fleet to make money, fishing,
diving for buried loot, attacking strongholds, raiding storehouses, getting in swashbuckling
fights with all kindsa folks. The world is massive and completely seamless,
so you can sail wherever you want and at any time you can just jump off your ship, swim
to an island and explore it for treasure and rare animal pelts and silly Ubisoft collectibles
that are completely pointless but when you’re really invested in a game they’re GREAT. Black Flag is incredible, and I actually put
it on my list of the best games of the DECADE. After I finished it and played it for who
even knows how many hours, I wanted more. Now, it is worth noting that Ubisoft did create
a straightforward followup to Black Flag, Assassin’s Creed: Rogue. But they gave it to a studio who had never
made an Assassin’s Creed game before, threw the game together in well under a SINGLE YEAR,
didn’t market it, and only made it in the first place because they wanted to put Unity
on eighth gen consoles only, so they needed something for people still playing their PS3s
and Xbox 360s. And despite all that, the game still turned
out pretty okay, and while they haven’t revealed solid numbers, we know it still sold
decently based on what they’ve said about it. That was all Ubisoft could muster when it
came to an actual followup. A rushed sequel scraped together purely to
help fill the holiday slot during one transitional year, then quickly forgotten. No, they had their eyes on a greater prize. Because a LOT of people seemed to be really
into this whole pirate thing. Black Flag was so successful that Ubisoft
got it in their heads that they might have something here… Maybe there’s a market for a full-on PIRATE
game, without the Assassin’s Creed stuff, and everyone on planet Earth was like YES,
that is an AMAZING IDEA, PLEASE DO THAT. The funny thing is though, that was SUCH a
good idea on Ubisoft’s part…yet that, right there, that exact point, right at the
very conception of their new pirate IP, was the END of their good ideas. Because what was starting to take off around
that time? The live service model. So instead of doing what literally EVERYONE
wanted, making a game like Black Flag except with its own world and even more pirate stuff,
they decided to make a primarily multiplayer, always online, live service game. Actually, they decided to give the game even
LESS pirate stuff, making the focus almost entirely on naval combat, without any of the
actual hand to hand fighting or island exploration or anything. Just boats shootin’ at each other. And at E3 2017, Ubisoft revealed Skull and
Bones. I was there, on my couch, I remember that
show quite well. That trailer filled me with pure joy. It appeared as though we were getting that
full pirate game after all, and it even had a sea monster in it, suggesting a much more
fantastical, fictional world, which was everything I could have wanted… But then I read about the game after the show. No, this wasn’t what I wanted. And judging by the reaction, it wasn’t what
ANYONE wanted. I couldn’t find a single person who was
happy about this direction the game was taking. This was, quite simply, an objectively bad
idea. I mean, I could see the rationale behind the
decision. Let’s take a game that was good, turn it
multiplayer, and get people hooked on microtransactions and battle passes and all that junk? I mean
the money-making potential was there, I suppose. But…Do you know how many people bought Black
Flag? I looked it up and found articles saying it
sold ELEVEN MILLION units, which was the last concrete number I could find, so I was ready
to go with that. But then while editing this video, Kane found
this tweet. THIRTY FOUR MILLION people have played Black
Flag. The game has been pretty steeply discounted
here and there, I’m sure, and I think Ubisoft has had a few “free play days” for their
Assassin’s Creed titles. But that number is still ABSURD. Even eleven million is absurd, but THIRTY
FOUR? Clearly, when it came to making another, bigger
pirate game, the money was already on the table. They already had the makings of another massive
hit on their hands--of an exciting and very profitable new IP that could support countless
sequels. Clearly there was a market for this big pirate
game. But what do we always say about companies
like this? They don’t want money. They don’t want a LOT of money. They want ALL THE MONEY. They didn’t want another successful game. They wanted a live service PRODUCT that generated
an endless supply of cash from addicted players. That was all they would accept. So they took their big delicious piece of
cake and threw it in the trash, for they would settle for nothing less than the whole darn
cake. So when people complained about how Skull
and Bones looked? What did those lionhearted heroes at Ubisoft
do? Did they listen? Did they realize that something wasn’t right? No, they stayed the course. And what followed was a long, long, drawn
out and even nightmarish development process. An arduous voyage to annoyingly keep the ship
analogy going. E3s came and went, and no new trailers dropped. After a while no one knew where this game
even was. Ubisoft said it was still coming, but something
was not right. Then the reports started coming in. The game had been scrapped and restarted multiple
times. People who playtested it said it wasn’t
any fun. The whole project was turning out to be a
flaming wreck. The game got delayed. Then delayed again. And again. And again. Honestly I don’t know if ANYONE knows exactly
how many times it was delayed, I think you’d need a chronometer and a sextant to figure
that out! Many people wondered why Ubisoft didn’t
just cancel the darn thing, but then it came out that the game was funded by the Syngaporean
government, and Ubisoft was contractually obligated to finish it and produce a new IP
using Syngaporean talent. So no matter how rough those waters were,
no matter how doomed the expedition seemed, they absolutely HAD to keep going. This game has been in development now for
OVER TEN YEARS. Seven years have passed since its reveal. I can’t fathom how much money they must
have spent on it. I mean I truly can’t imagine it. But this is where the story gets REALLY good. When they revealed Skull and Bones, we all
said that the idea of a game like Black Flag except ONLY the naval combat and none of the
other stuff was a flat out stupid idea. And over these seven years, they’ve rebooted
and retooled the game more times than we even know. People have told them their game wasn’t
fun, so they’ve just kept working at it, trying desperately to produce a good finished
product they could actually release. And now, against all odds, the game is finally
out. And what’s it like? What format did they finally end up going
with? Well, it’s like Black Flag…except only
the naval combat…and none of the other stuff. I’ve not played it myself, but I’ve heard
many early reports, and it’s literally exactly what they advertised in 2017. You can walk around in your little town area
to talk to NPCs and stuff, but everything else is done on your ship. It’s nothing more than naval combat. Activities we were once able to do ourselves
are now reduced to mere cutscenes or unenjoyable mini games. As far as piratey stuff goes--no, as far as
actual GAMEPLAY goes--it’s literally just LESS than Black Flag. And from the sound of it, it’s also, wow,
humongous surprise, NOT VERY FUN. Some people are having fun with it, and I’m
not doubting that there’s some good stuff in there. It clearly leans a lot harder into the quests
and the progression and all that, and that’s certainly stuff I would WANT in a game like
this. But when you remove all that other stuff that
made the experience feel like a real pirate simulator, when you strip away a dozen elements
and leave only one or two intact, I fail to see the point. And for every cautiously optimistic take I
read, I read a dozen more from people who played the beta, found it to be a slow, grindy
slog, and uninstalled without looking back. Even if there ends up being an okay game in
there somewhere and some people take a liking to it, it’s so abundantly clear that this
isn’t the game Ubisoft COULD have made. Also, who even knows how aggressively the
game will be monetized. That’s a great big question mark at the
moment, but you know they’re going to want to make back at least a little money on this
thing. And if they end up selling XP multipliers
and time savers and loot and resources for real money, I have to wonder how grindy they
made the base game in order to encourage those purchases. And I also can’t help but mention that it’s
not like other companies aren’t making pirate games. Sea of Thieves is RIGHT THERE. That’s an online pirate game that’s apparently
pretty great and succeeds as a pirate game AND a multiplayer game. Ubisoft knew the bar was high, yet staunchly
refused to aim for it. And again, that dedication is commendable. They could have produced two or three games
in the time it took them to make Skull and Bones. And at any point in the process, during any
of the rumored reboots and retoolings, they could have altered course, they could have
put in the work to give us all the pirate trimmings we wanted. They could have made the game ANYTHING. It could have been the biggest, most incredible
pirate game in history, or at the very least it could have been another Black Flag. What were they even doing during development? What were they even working on? What were they even improving? I don’t know. But you gotta hand it to ‘em, they stayed
that course. No matter what happened, through thick and
thin, even when the wind was against them and they were taking on water, they pressed
on. They would make their mediocre, live service,
Black Flag fascimile or DIE TRYING. And now that they’ve finally done it, the
saddest thing is that they’ve got to release the game with a straight face and act like
nothing is wrong, like this is a game that people have actually been looking forward
to, and not making fun of for the last seven years. Yves Guillemot defended the $70 price recently,
claiming that this was the world’s first AAAA game, which is… It’s so intensely funny and gross and sad
that I can’t even dwell on it here. That statement is just too powerful, I… AAAA game. THIS game. THIS is the one you call AAAA. Okay, gotta move on. For over ten years, Skull and Bones has been
one massive leak in a ship full of holes. The ship is still floating, but only because
the crew is bailing water so hard. And it’s worth noting, Ubisoft is now in
trouble with Syngapore for mistreating the employees working on Skull and Bones. *sigh* I’m no analyst and I don’t know
what Ubisoft’s projections look like, but I don’t think there’s much chance they’ll
turn a profit on this game. And you know what?? This isn’t the only game that’s been languishing
in development hell, hemmoraging money, constantly teasing fans who have already lost interest. Beyond Good and Evil was a very cool singleplayer
game that eventually gained cult classic status. Beyond Good and Evil 2 was announced in 2008,
then we didn’t hear a single thing about it until it was re-revealed, funny enough,
at E3 2017, right along with Skull and Bones! Yeah, that was a really great show! We thought! And ever since then, same story. Long periods of nothing, reports that Ubisoft
doesn’t know what they’re doing. At one point they brought up the game again
with another trailer--a re-re-reveal, as it were--and then POOF! Gone again! The game has officially taken the crown for
“longest development of a AAA game,” beating even Duke Nukem Forever. And the only information we have about the
game? The only thing that Ubisoft has shared about
it? It’s going to be an always-online shared
world with multiplayer. …Ubisoft is a bad company. It is run by people who have no idea what
they’re doing. An evil company that finds success through
abuse and manipulation is already bad enough. But one that does all that evil stuff but
still manages to fail because they’re also just SO incredibly inept? It’s just a whole other level of sad. So that’s all the stuff I wanted to say
about Ubisoft and Skull and Bones. Really, I just want another cool pirate game. Like…man, I just want another Black Flag. I played Rogue. It was pretty good. I think I liked Black Flag more. But I want something really new. I want a cool new singleplayer pirate game. But I mean hey, maybe we’ll get lucky! Even if Skull and Bones ended up…the way
it did, maybe after all that, SOMEONE at Ubisoft will decide to take all the lessons learned
and just make a new Assassin’s Creed with pirate stuff! I’d certainly take that over nothing! Actually, let’s see… What’s the latest Ubisoft news… Ubisoft is reportedly developing a Black Flag
remake--UGH
