Ubisoft Unraveled: The Fall and Rise of a Gaming Giant

n this episode of Gamer Chronicles, we dive deep into one of the most iconic gaming companies in the industry—Ubisoft. From their humble beginnings in the ’80s to becoming the creators of legendary franchises like Assassin’s Creed, Far Cry, and Rainbow Six, Ubisoft has been a pioneer in game design and storytelling. But not everything has been smooth sailing. We explore the company’s meteoric rise, their golden era, and the challenges they’ve faced, including repetitive design, controversial delays, underwhelming releases, and internal company issues. Join us as we unravel Ubisoft’s journey through highs, lows, and their ongoing efforts to reclaim their status as industry leaders.

Key Takeaways:

•Ubisoft’s groundbreaking history in shaping the gaming world.

•The rise of franchises like Assassin’s Creed and Far Cry, and how they defined the company’s legacy.

•Challenges Ubisoft faced, from over-reliance on formulas to underwhelming game releases.

•Internal issues and how they impacted the company’s culture and creative output.

•Ubisoft’s efforts to bounce back with live-service games, mobile ventures, and upcoming AAA titles.

•Speculation on Ubisoft’s future in the competitive gaming landscape.

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Transcript

Welcome to Game of Chronicles, the podcast where pixels tell stories and gamers become legends. I'm your host Aiden, and I'll be guiding you through the immersive worlds of RPGs. So on this episode I talk about the downfall Ubisoft. 

All right, let's look at some new stories first from this week. So Paradox Interactive, they're the Pratts who keep releasing unfinished games like City Skylines and the ones who have delayed prison architect two, three times. Apparently they hate this reputation being releasing unfinished games and they pledged to stop. The CEO said that some of the studio's recent mistakes were due to overconfidence and they confirmed the Prison Architect Two and Vampire the Masquerade, bloodlines two are still in development despite following numerous delays. So let's see if that's going to happen because I don't know what Paradox has done. But yeah, they've been absolutely abysmal the last few years in Call of Duty News, black Ops six is giving players a good reason to play the campaign because they can use free rewards in multiplayer and zombies. 

 So yeah, if you just play Call of Duty for the multiplayer, that now means that you should try the campaign. Hopefully it is a good campaign because I do like the Black Ops campaigns and I've always in the modern warfare ones as well. They're great as they're offering free awards. It must be good. They must have put some effort into it. So we'll see. The classic God of War games could be making a comeback. This is just a rumour that they may be remastered on the PlayStation five in 2025.For us PC fans, we are screwed. We don't get to enjoy it and Xbox fans as well. But yeah, that would be something incredible because I do remember playing all of the old God of war games. They were great, but the new ones are amazing as well. Company called Tequila Works has been hit with layoffs. They are based in Madrid, Spain, and they are known for games like Dead Light, the Sexy, brutal and Rhyme. So the studio is not closing, it's just laying off some people, which is very unfortunate and tech. And eight is being review bombed again because of overplayed DLC and the new Makki Temple stage. So the an eight in January of this year was at a ratio of 5,000 to 500. So 5,000 positive reviews to 500. 

 It has now hit a so from probably an overwhelming positive. It's now mostly negative. So something's happened there and I'm guessing. So again, Marjorie Temple also has mostly negative is four pounds for one arena. So yeah, there you go. They tried to fuck us, so we fucked them with review bombing them, which is good. They deserve it because they're greedy. Bastards release a good game and then shit on your audience. This is what happens. Big one here, red Dead Redemption is finally coming to PC with the Undead nightmare expansion. It releases on October the 29th, and we'll deliver 4K resolution ultra wide monitors to support HDR 10 and a lot more for PC players. There you go. If you're a huge Red Dead fan like I am, it has finally come to the pc. It's only 14 years late despite it being released on the PlayStation three, Xbox 360, the Switch, believe it or not, and the PlayStation four better late than never, I guess 14 years. So that's it for the news. So now let's talk about Ubisoft and how they're screwed. 

 I thought it would be a good time to talk about the what's happening to Ubisoft, Ubisoft, however you pronounce it. What's going on with a company that's had some of the best franchises out there that we've all loved and enjoyed over the years, and how did we get to this point? How did we get to a point where a company can fuck up so bad that they blame gamers for everything that's happened? So yeah, I plan on just telling you about a bit about Ubisoft, what's happened, what they were known for, because I played a lot of games of theirs over the years and love most of them. It was founded in 1986 by the Gilmore Family in France. It was known for some great franchises. I remember playing Splinter Cell Chaos Theory. That was one of the best ones. They had a lot of Rainbow Six titles as well before Rainbow Six Siege came out, which was amazing as well. 

 Then they had the Far Cry series, which up until four was pretty good and had some great criminal bosses in it, some of the most memorable ones. And of course, Assassin's Creed and Watchdogs. You can say that all of these franchises have had great games in them. In fact, watchdogs while the first one. Nah, it was actually quite a good try at something new. And the second one, it wasn't bad, it wasn't the best IP ever, but it was their Assassin's Creed that took over from the Prince of Persia franchise, which was brilliant for a few years before that side to decline. And then Assassin's Creed took over. And again, that just went uphill from there. And it was amazing. Rainbow Six has always had its key games. Spin to Cell was a great franchise in it, the normal, the Ghost Recon games. And then of course Rainbow Six Siege. 

 We won't talk about the new Rainbow sixes because they kind of just screwed the pooch and ruined the franchise. Unless you've been living under a rock, you know that Ubisoft has completely gone off the rails, as in their stocks have plummeted. And by plummeted, I mean they're the only AAA gaming company where the stocks have fallen so sharply. Most of the other ones have picked up and are doing quite well where they blame gamers for everything. They can't really say it's the gamers because where you look at everyone else's stock, EA games, Activision Blizzard, cd, project Red, Microsoft, Sony, all of their shares have gone up. But Ubisoft have pretty much crashed and burned to, they haven't been this low since the early two thousands. So the Golden era for Ubisoft, they had some amazing games in the beginning. They had Assassin's Creed was such a huge success. 

 The Assassins Creed franchise, it set a standard for historical open world games because while there was a lot of bullshit in that game with all the animus stuff and the weird magic things that were happening from the universe and everything else, the historical placement, the accuracy, the people in it made the game really, really good. And the original Assassin's Creed came out in 2007 and it was a huge hit. But then they started to, Assassin's Creed two came out in 2009, brotherhood 2010, revelations 2011 and 3 20 12. And it did really well because Black Flag then came out in 2013 and it is by far one of the best Assassin's Creed games to today. 

 Before I talk about Black Flag, let's just cover the other ones where they really screwed up. So they had Rogue in 2014 and Unity in 2014 and Syndicate in 2015. And that's where they really screwed up with the Assassin's Creed series because then they had to take a step back for two years, realise what they did to it, and then they released Origins, Odyssey and Valhalla, which in fact could have been their own IP because especially Valhalla and Odyssey, which had absolutely almost nothing to do with assassins, they just happened to play off the brand Assassin's Creed, but it was such a small part of the game. They could have been their own IP and Valhalla could have just been a great Viking game. Odyssey could have just been a great Roman Empire game. 

 And then of course there was Mirage, which is their latest Assassin's Creed game, which they kind of brought it back to kind of the old ones. So if you like the old ones, Mirage was pretty good as well. And again, they took a few years to release it so that game wasn't released until 2023. So there were a lot of gaps between these games. Anyway, back onto Black Flag and why I want to focus on Black Flag is where Ubisoft began to really lose the plot was where gamers were asking for a black flag remake. Gamers were telling Ubisoft what to do. We were literally saying to them, we want Assassin's Creed for Black Flag. We don't care if you remake it. We'll take a remaster of it. So when Skull and Bones was announced, everyone was expecting a black flag remake. Now on its own Skull and Bones is not the worst game ever made, but then they described it as a quadruple a game, and maybe it's because of how much money they spent on it, but that game, when you say AAA game, what you're expecting is something incredibly amazing. 

 When you go and make up your own bullshit and say, I have a quadruple a game right here. It's what the gamers want. And then it turns out to be shit, this is where things are going to start to go bad. It doesn't help with the continuous delays of the games like Skull and Bones and Beyond Good and Evil too. Will we ever see it? I don't know. All I remember is the Talking Monkey and Talking Pig and the trailer was great and I was looking forward to it. Where is it? Every time they bring one of these trailers out, players start to get excited, but because they're so untrustworthy, these games just haven't seen the light of day. Skull and Bones was delayed numerous times and at the end of it didn't actually turn out to be the game everyone wanted. Some people love it, don't get me wrong, but it's not what everyone wanted, which was a remake of Black Flag. 

 This is what the gamers wanted. And when Ubisoft says Gamers demand too much, we don't demand a lot. We just ask that you actually listen to the gamers. This of course affects players trust and anticipation and they'll move on to a different company. Companies like EA Games and Activision, they can release the same crap every year, but people know what they're getting. FC 24, FC 25, not much difference between them, but people want it. It's a big brand. Madden big brand, all of them. EAs got it down. They're making money and despite even people complaining of how crap those games are, people still buy them. Call of Duty over the years has basically turned into the same game. But that doesn't matter because what you know is you are going to get that game every year no matter what. The player base knows that it doesn't matter if the game is shit or good, it will arrive at that time. Every year FC from EA games will arrive, I think it's September every year, no matter what card will release every year in October, you can expect that it's coming and those will never be delayed. So there is always that trust despite them being greedy corporate entities, it's weird to say, but you can trust them to release the game at that time. It might be full of bugs, it might be atrocious, but it doesn't matter. They will release that game and that is part of what you need for your player base to trust you. 

 But obviously it's not just that. That can cause all of this. Also having a toxic workplace culture and a lot of misconduct causes internal rifts within the company. Back in 2020, there were reports of sexual harassment, abuse and management from high ups in Ubisoft, which then led to the resignations and sacking of key executives. While they investigated internally, everyone I'm sure knew it was going on, but because people actually stepped forward here, it tarnished the company's image led to public outrage at the time. You don't do these kind of things. You can have a great running company, treat your workforce right, and they'll be there for you until the end of the day. You can treat 'em like crap and they'll leave. It didn't help that the CEO EO at the time, he handled the situation poorly because as the CEO of a company, when your company is being named and shamed like this, especially since the CEO is part of the family who started the company, and of course because of this led to the loss of key developers and great talent due to all these internal issues, whoever was left, it seems that the creative team basically all left the day after all this because let's face it, games like the division, the poor sales of Star Wars Outlaws has not helped the situation for them. 

 And because of that, they decided to delay the new Assassins Creed shadows. And it's not a bad thing when a company delays the game because they want to polish it, but Ubisoft delays and fails to meet the expectations that they've set in place. And the problem with this delay especially is if you remember Ghost of Sushima that came out on PlayStation five, it's now on pc amazing game, great Samurai game, probably one of the best Samurai games I've ever played. And then you have Assassins Creed Shadows, which was supposed to drop end of this year, and you're like, great, I'll play Ghost to Sushima . I'll play Assassin's Creed shadows. I'm sure it'll be good. I'm sure it'll be a good game. But the problem is now that they've delayed it, they now have to compete with the next ghost of Sushima , or as it's known as the Ghost of Yote, which is coming out next year. 

Ghost of Yote is going to be a great game. It's going to be polished, it's going to come out and it's going to be good. And that's what you expect from a game like that. That might be a bit of another worry for UBF next year because they delayed this game. It's quite disheartening when they do this because Assassin's Creed, origins Odyssey and Valhalla reinvigorated, the franchise made. It wasn't an Assassin's Creed game, but they made good games. I know they're going to try and do live service, but live service is a big mistake. I think recently they're getting, someone's trying to see if they can be bought out. So essentially it could either work for them or they could just be dissolved into the ether of companies, who knows? 

It is sad to see a company that had great games like this, so it's not like a EA buys the studio, destroys it, and then shuts it down. This is a huge AAA developer kind of imploding in on itself and not addressing everything that's to it and not listening to the gamers and then blaming the gamers for all their problems. Because if you look at the gaming industry as a whole in 2023, made over $200 billion, and by 2026, it's expected to be at about $300 billion. Mobile gaming is big, we all know that. But console and PC gaming still thrives because of games like Call of Duty, Fortnite. I know a lot of us probably don't like that, but the thing is, is that they make good money and it's good for the industry and League of Legends. There's some great life to service games. 

Ubisoft could probably never get on that bandwagon, as we've already found out from Suicide Squad Kills the Justice League. That was an atrocious game. Can't believe I spent money on that. And they tried to make that a live service and that didn't go very well, did it. Another thing is that not putting your game out on all the platforms where Ubisoft has finally seemed to learn their lesson, they've started putting games on Steam again, steam is the big one. Nothing will beat Steam. Epic has tried for many years and they even gave developers more money, and yet people still go back to Steam. If your game's not on Steam, it's not going to do as well as it should. So that was another mistake they made. But who knows? You never know. They could make a comeback. I doubt it because it seems that they've really screwed up with everything they've done recently. 

But if the investment is right, then they could make it back of the good IP’s they have. But otherwise, this could be the end Ubisoft for all we know. But I hope not because if they can fix themselves and bring out some great games again, that would be amazing. I do hope you enjoyed this week's show about the downfall of Ubisoft. If you did, please do leave some feedback. Please also subscribe to the podcast. That would be a real help. So yeah, thank you for listening, and I will be back here next week with another episode. So until then, have a great week everybody.