When it rains it pours

It is a weird expression. You see I grew up in the Netherlands, there we have over 50 words for rain, there are all kinds of rain, so when it rains it doesn’t always pour. But I understand the expression and that is the stage that Ubisoft is in at this point. The amount of negative video’s on YouTube is staggering. I watched one but ignored the rest. The one I watched had a few good points. Nothing I hadn’t mentioned before, yet the larger stage is not merely the mediocre games and the below mediocre approach to fixing stuff. It is the cold hard fact that the last two good games (for me) were AC Origins and Watchdogs Legion. I am not a Rainbow six fan, I (for the most) am not into multiplayer games and there are a few more that do not tickle me, so these games have never been part of any assessment. Yet the bugs in Far Cry 6, Breakpoint, Valhalla and the Division are just too pathetic for words. And that is not the end of it, several sources report on the great exodus. People leaving Ubisoft in droves. A few sources tell us that 5 out of the top 25 from the Far Cry franchise have left, 12 out of the top 50 from the AC Valhalla franchise are gone. In the Ubisoft Toronto and Montreal offices (according to LinkedIn) are now 60 people lighter. So it is not merely the setting at Ubisoft, it is also the larger stage of creativity has left. And recruiters are plucking Ubisoft as an easy target. This is what I call the final nails in a coffin that was once a software great. And I created the concept of new versions of some of the games in a day, and the current franchises are bleeding them dry. Yet I warned of this danger 3 years ago. A year before Valhalla launched, I saw this coming a mile away. OK, the large exodus was a little unseen, but the recruiters picking them clean fits the process, the gaming industry are all vying for a slice of the $200,000,000,000 revenue pile and the best programmers will empower software houses to get a larger share. And all the game makers are greedy, in this Ubisoft fumbled the ball thrice over. With mediocre games, with a toxic work environment and the lack of support and overworking staff. There is no doubt that the end of Ubisoft is coming and when it does Google (relying solely on Ubisoft titles) will be in the wrong place, so There is a larger stage where Amazon will take the race to the checkered flag. 

And all this is before someone realises that I still have a setting where Amazon could sell 50,000,000 Luna’s. Ubisoft was not needed to get that done, so the pile of revenue might actually increase a little more than I expected, but it is speculative, so let’s not blow my own trumpet. This is about Ubisoft. And when you search “Ubisoft + bugs” you get a list that goes on and on, when you filter to only in the last month we still end up with a list that is way to large, especially for a game that has been out for well over a year, those are the nails that seal the coffin of Ubisoft. A stage that was once grande, millions went nuts over AC2 and devoted following was created, but the bugs from AC3 onwards took a little away with every game and a lot with AC Unity. They regained a little trust with AC Origins but wasted that away with AC Odyssey. So even as we now see stories about the next AC not being out until 2023, we need to consider that it is already too late for that. You see people will look at the financials, the stock but that is only the smallest part of the story. The value of Ubisoft is creativity and a boatload of that walked out. Some even mentioned the low pay, so when was that ever a good idea? In one quote we see the mention that Ubisoft has hired 2600 employees since April. That sounds nice in theory, but you need unity (like the title they bungled), that means that each franchise needs its supportive and inspiring heads and 17 out of the 75 top of two franchise walked out, there is every chance that they will also entice the quality programers to follow them, at which point they have two close to empty franchises. So how will they fix that? They can’t, they will be in denial, they will oppose any negativity but this cannot get the marketing spin and in a stage with that much people walking out the slices that would have sealed their share of $200,000,000,000 this year alone will fall away for too large an amount, that implies that Ubisoft stock will take massive hits this year. And when that happens the larger stage becomes a small platform and Ubisoft will need to secure what it can, but in a firm with 18045 employees (2020) will take a few hard hits and with the cream of the crop leaving the larger stage of people, or good people vanishing will go faster and faster. As such Ubisoft has massive problems. Unrelated we see covid, something no one could see coming and even as some thrived under these conditions, it seems that Ubisoft is not doing that well. If it did the exodus would not be there. 

And as I see it Ubisoft does not get to blame covid for these hardships. There was a larger failing visible from AC3 onwards and Far Cry had a few issues from version 4 onwards, with too many in the latest version. Too many issues in only two of the franchises and too little was done. In all this Ubisoft kept on buying software houses and people and left that structure like an empty egg shell and now the softest taps is collapsing that once great software house. And all that is before you add to the hardship with Breakpoint released in July 2019 and still getting massive updates to deal with bugs were announced less than 3 months ago and there are still issues. A repetitive cycle in a stage of games that no one is willing to pay to play. And when the hilarious bugs are seen in AC Valhalla, we see a larger stage of failure. So how will Ubisoft deal with it? Most no longer care and neither do I, Ubisoft was great once, but the errors, the bad judgement and the failures makes me happy that there are good software houses that deliver real treasures. Sony being one, then there is Insomniac Games, we have Guerrilla games and a few more. So why mention these three? These three wanted to be as good as Ubisoft, now or better stated from 2019 onwards these three all surpassed Ubisoft in quality gaming and quality games. The stage at Ubisoft is that bad at present. 

It merely makes me think of that old movie (1969) ‘They shoot horses don’t they?’, I wonder why? (LOL)