It was 2016 when Ubisoft held what I consider a legendary E3 conference. On their thirtieth birthday, they clearly and loudly told Vivendi – you will not take us over. We will resist. And they did. Ten years later, E3 is dead, Vivendi no longer has the desire to forcibly take over Ubisoft, and Ubisoft is indeed questioning whether they will celebrate their fortieth birthday properly. Or will they face the worst possible fate. The end of existence.
While I think that scenario is not realistic, the problems are enormous. After rejecting Vivendi, they entered a golden age for the company, Tencent invested in them, and the peak of that period was 2018. They released Far Cry 5 and The Crew 2, and in July, the stock reached a record 103 euros, partly due to investments and partly because Assassin’s Creed Odyssey was set to release later that year. That period of success did not last long.
A few days ago, they announced that they are shutting down projects and studios, and this Friday, two days ago, they started the trading day with a stock value of 4 euros. No, I didn't make a typo. Four euros for something that was worth over 100 seven and a half years ago – 25 times less. You don't need to be a great economic expert to state that the situation is not good. And all of this was caused by Ubisoft's own poor decisions and seemingly questionable creative leadership. The Guillemot family has managed the company well for years, but with the arrival of sons and daughters into the family business, that is slowly changing.
Over the years, Ubisoft has done everything and anything. Whatever new gimmick the industry had, they tried to be a part of it. Whether it was being ready to make a game for the failed Kinect project, investing in yet another failed NFT project, or jumping on every new buzzword like Metaverse, even though no one in the world is really sure what it actually is. When we add that all their open-world games have become conceptually very similar to each other, player criticism was there.
Climbing a tower, a spire, or some high point on the map to unlock a view of everything around became a standard in almost every one of their games. And somehow Ubisoft became associated with mediocre products, which certainly did not help their status. Here I think fans were way too harsh. It is true that Ubisoft has not impressed in recent years, but a good portion of the games they released were fun and of quality. They recognized the qualities that For Honor and Rainbow Six Siege had and gave them a chance to thrive. In which they succeeded.
Let's not kid ourselves, Ubisoft is not a saint. No company is, nor is it your friend. They have had their share of sexual harassment scandals within the company that the management did not address properly but swept under the rug. Until the court penalized them. But when we look at the issue of games alone – Ubisoft receives far more criticism than it deserves. Let's go back to 2018 and Far Cry 5. Every American media outlet wrote about how that game did not portray rural America in the way they wanted, in a completely anti-Trump manner, during the first term of that mentioned lunatic. Ubisoft gave a ridiculous response saying that their games are not political, instead of saying that the game is what it is.
And everyone wrote about it. It was analyzed as if the apocalypse was imminent. Yet when the beloved Nintendo starts raising prices (something for which Ubisoft was criticized with the AAAA term), when physical copies are actually semi-digital, when they start locking soundtracks behind Amiibo figurines, something that I consider to be much bigger crimes, it barely gets mentioned as a footnote. Similarly, if it's a crime to make similar games, the entire industry is guilty. Because everyone does it. Did they shut down the servers for The Crew? Yes, but others have too, as well as removed games from digital platforms so they are no longer available for purchase. But no one has ever received as much criticism as Ubisoft. Which, in my opinion, is anything but fair.
Ubisoft certainly has its share of guilt in all of this. They knew and heard all of it and did not really react. The only reaction they had was the redefinition of the Assassin’s Creed series and how its gameplay works. But even there, they retained many conceptual ideas that define every Ubisoft open world game. They have brought themselves to the point where their games look similar and people do not see creative diversity. The setting was more like a skin for the same base mechanics.
Can they get away with it? They can. And they should. The last thing we need in this industry is fewer publishers; we do not want to move towards a monopoly. We also want big publishers in Europe, as surely part of the problem arose because they are not as ruthless as the completely capitalist approaches that the American market and their way of doing business offer. I cannot say this with certainty, as I do not have insight into the numbers, but they would probably be in a much better situation if they had laid off a bunch of people over the years. Now they need a better vision in leadership, a clearer idea of what they want to achieve. And they need the community's support again. And that is the hardest part, as much as I think they are over-criticized, part of that is deserved and it is very hard to regain a reputation once you lose it.
