Situations like these show us exactly why nonpublic company run by a sensible person is not only possible but can be good for everyone that matters (none of which are other big companys)
this post was submitted on 26 Nov 2024
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I got the Far Cry joke. I'm a nerd.
But if Ubisoft gets their way, they would not only get to fudge their numbers for shareholders, but also hide when their games completely break on Windows because their kernel level anti-cheat stopped working after a Windows update.
Why do we allow this? Why does this pass for art? Why does it even pass for widgets?
Yeah, just more bullshit from AAA publishers to hide information that their games are mediocre and games to waste their money.
I won't even pirate a Ubisoft game these days. Free is still too expensive for the digital slop they put out.
Agreed, my storage space and time is worth more than their slop
Wtf kinda of investor calls don't have concrete numbers? Nothin makes me more suspicious than when a company tells me things are fine but won't let me see for myself.
You have evidently not had the misfortune of listening to shareholder meetings of anything involving Elon Musk.
Oh sure, there are numbers. They're almost all aspirational, or outright lies/misdirects to focus on some other metric that looks better...
But, somewhat more seriously, it is pretty common in shareholder meetings for many different publicly owned companies to only report non-specifically-legally-required concrete numbers if:
A) The board/CEO thinks they are really good.
B) Someone specifically asks for an exact, precise number, which is not as common as you might expect...
... and even then, the easiest thing to do is just say 'I don't have that in front of me right now, I'll get back to you on that' when its almost always the job of this person to know that number and have it ready for that meeting.
These higher ups are convinced that is just too much detail. Same with conversations on.. ok.. but how.. yeah that's implementation details.. that's for other people to worry about. Line goes up?
The only way I'm buying a Ubisoft game is if Valve hides the developer's name lmao 🤣
Rayman, tho
Ok, look. We all have weaknesses...
Maybe that will be Ubisoft's next demand of Valve. Might just work.
Seems like Valve is still a privatly owned company, poor aaa studios. Let's see how GabeN feels about that.
They might pull their games from steam and try to sell them on UPlay again
I couldn't give a shit either way. Not ever going to buy a Ubisoft game again. I was interested in Star Wars Outlaws until I heard they were involved.
Isn't the reason they gave up on that because they lost all their customers?
I actually sympathize with their desire to resist silly reporting over player counts, because it can snowball and generally it's silly not-news. But you do have to actually sell games at some point.
If they focused more on actually making good games, instead of monetizing the shit out of mid ones, their player count problems would solve themselves.
Oh, I'm not saying that the reporting is why they don't sell games. I just think it's mostly nonsense.
I'm saying that they have a big enough sample to recognize that pulling off of Steam isn't a reasonable path forward, because people aren't willing to deal with their launcher or epic. They know that they can't push Valve around.
Yeah, sorry, I wasn't interpreting it that way, it seems clear that they want to eliminate Steam's reporting just because it makes them look bad, not because the numbers themselves are influencing sales
Modern journalism:
Dragon Age Veilguard: return to form, massive success.
SW Outlaws: Trash only sold 2M, Ubisoft in panic.
Ever since Ubi fended off the hostile takeover, the media has conspicuously focused on portraying Ubi in a far worse position than it is. Maybe it's because they are a prime target for absorption from a certain company that has been gobbling up everything lately. It just so happens to advertise in almost every outlet nowadays. This smells of a Nokia like job.
To be fair, if your first month estimate is 5 mil and you don't even sell 2 mil in 3 months that could easily be a panic. And for comparison, fallen order had sold over 8 mil units in about the same time period.
Ubisoft still hasn't done anything about the plausible sex assaut ring allegations from upper management's preying on admin.
I'm too offended to play the Ubisoft games I own, let alone buy new ones. And they dove into the microtransactions void even after promising not to.
Ubi is already festering with parasites. It just now needs to die off so all the larvae can go off and pupa up before finding other companies to victimize.
I wonder if Activision, Rockstar, etc also offend you. Maybe between the kids soccer practice?
Activision, for its own reasons.
I take from your disdain you don't mind at all the poisoned rats ground into the Ubisoft sausage?
I have better things to worry about than if there's some dude bros working at Ubisoft. Especially after the layoff rounds that hit the industry, where even in its shitty state, Ubisoft was one of the least offenders in relative terms (god bless EU employment laws). I know, I'm boring with my concern for relevant things like unemployment of my peers rather than riding the social media zeitgeist hate fest that usually starts and ends on Twitter with no real repercussions in the real world.
For those of us out of the loop, what company are you talking about?
Microsoft
Things that make companies mad are good things for consumers and that usually turns out to be more information or feedback.
Star Wars Outlaws was a lot of fun. Nothing ground breaking but, it was a decent game.
I'm astonished by the hate UBI is getting for their games. Sure, the company has problems, but there are so many bad actors, if I stop buying games from Microsoft(Bethesda, Blizzard), Tencent(Epic, Riot, Grinding gear games and and and) there literally won't be any AAA games left. Next to the games not being as bad as claimed. Have yet to play outlaws but it looks fun, and I've had quite a good time with ac Mirage. Some annoying bugs but otherwise a well made game with an interesting story. Yet when I post a screenshot of the game on steam, I get asked by ppl who don't even own the game why I'm playing trash like that. Excuse me? Reviews are good, games runs really well with few bugs, why shouldn't I?
There are some surprisingly good indie games out there by companies who are more into making games fun than manipulating their end-users to spend more money.
I'm not saying you are under any moral obligation to change over. (You're not.) Just that there are alternatives, and maybe even spiritual successors without the DRM and without the revenue enhancements, if ever they push you over the brink.