China already owns everything. Ubisoft executives are gross people. Yawn.

I like Ubisoft games both because of and in spite of the well-documented problems many have covered here and elsewhere. (Skull and Bones can fuck off though) I think that I might have the OCD that BoP mentioned... 😁

VaranDragon wrote on Mar 28, 2025, 10:23:
Politics in Ubisoft's games is not the problem. The problem is shitty games. A string of mediocre, unexciting, play-it-safe, rinse-and-repeat ad nauseum games. Year, after year after year.

Yep, exactly. However, I'll die happy if they can at least hang on long enough to release The Division 3. Those are probably my favorite shooter games of all time.

Beamer wrote on Mar 28, 2025, 11:11:
I think FC5 did well, but that game sucked. It's fun to look at my posting history, and how prior to 5 I was saying "I know it's a formula, but I haven't grown tired of it" to 5 making me say "I fucking hate this piece of shit." A lot of design decisions in that game made no sense and streamlined things to the point of having no merit or value (like how there were multiple weapons in each category, and upgrades, and none felt very meaningful. Such a missed opportunity. How do you make guns boring?)

Ubi, in general, is too stuck on franchises that set a template in the 2000s and haven't really done anything innovative since. But is that really just Ubi? What is EA doing? What is Activision doing? These big third party publishers have all kind of just gotten dull. They've all taken the approach Netflix does to movies - something big and shallow that no one will love but a lot of people will kind of enjoy, sort of.

I had the opposite reaction. FC5 brought my interest back to the FC series, at least temporarily. Whacking religious fundamentalist nutjobs? Yes please! It was far from a perfect but I played it as a stealth character (as I would were I actually fighting as an insurgent) and it was fine. Going in guns blazing was rarely the smartest choice one could make.

But I agree that Ubisoft has drained the well dry with the "Ubisoft formula". A bunch of random shit just to pad the game feels like a disrespectful waste of the player's time in my opinion. For those with OCD, I can understand it trips their trigger but it feels like an unnecessary slog to me. Collecting random materials to do upgrades is also a sticking point for me. Am I a farmer or an assassin? Pick a lane!

In a lot of ways, Ubisoft reminds me of Disney. "We found one thing that is successful. Let's keep doing that over and over again and completely forget about trying anything new or different."

MichaelT wrote on Mar 28, 2025, 09:43:
If you look at most articles about Ubi's problems they tend to point to the upper management as the problem. Poor decision making, trend chasing, etc. If the Ubi owners and senior management are still in place then this doesn't actually solve the issue at all. A ship with a bad captain is still a ship with a bad captain whether you sell the ship to another company or change out the entire crew, but leave the captain in charge.

This is just adding some much needed money to Ubi's bank so they can cut more costs (aka jobs) and have some money to throw at AC:S future expansions until they can get something else out. The problem with focusing on a single game is that after it is released and you get the initial set of money from sales, you have nothing to support you until your next game comes along. That appears to be what this is giving them.

Still AC isn't as great a series as it was before, even with Shadows. People got burnt out I think. Far Cry hasn't done well since FC4 and I have no idea about the other game. At this point none of Ubi's top IPs are that great anymore. If Tencent is planning to throw a bunch of games from these IPs onto the market then it'll just go down like Ubi's attempt at putting out an AC game every year. It might work for the first year but people will burn out after that.

This is a life support move to me. Giving Ubi enough time to let the senior execs get their money and then they'll sell and run.

I think FC5 did well, but that game sucked. It's fun to look at my posting history, and how prior to 5 I was saying "I know it's a formula, but I haven't grown tired of it" to 5 making me say "I fucking hate this piece of shit." A lot of design decisions in that game made no sense and streamlined things to the point of having no merit or value (like how there were multiple weapons in each category, and upgrades, and none felt very meaningful. Such a missed opportunity. How do you make guns boring?)

Ubi, in general, is too stuck on franchises that set a template in the 2000s and haven't really done anything innovative since. But is that really just Ubi? What is EA doing? What is Activision doing? These big third party publishers have all kind of just gotten dull. They've all taken the approach Netflix does to movies - something big and shallow that no one will love but a lot of people will kind of enjoy, sort of.

I think the last two titles I truly enjoyed from Ubisoft were AC:BF and FC5.

If the company is going to be broken up, then I hope someone buys the rights to the Silent Hunter series and does something enjoyable with it.

MichaelT wrote on Mar 28, 2025, 09:43:
This is just adding some much needed money to Ubi's bank so they can cut more costs (aka jobs) and have some money to throw at AC:S future expansions until they can get something else out.

Well, hopefully. If you compare Ubi's headcount with other gigs then they are bloated as fuck. They have ~20K employees with a tiny fraction of the revenue of EA or other major publishers. Like, EA = $7.6bn revenue in 2024 with ~13K people. Ubi = ~$2.5bn (€2.3bn) in 2024 with ~20K employees. The inefficiency is un-fucking-real.

They need to fire AT LEAST half of their staff to become competitive. These are the preparations. A "good bank" and a "bad bank" division and then they are going to hit the flush button .

The no. 1 reason why no other publisher has bought up Ubi so far is that they are an unmanageable bloated monster corp. With the split they are taking a first step to turn the company into more manageable parts. They might even let the "bad bank" part go bankrupt because it won't be easy to fire that much staff. Laying off thousands of people is going to be really expensive with all the compensations that need to be paid. Better to just let shit die.

I wish them luck cuz I'm one of those weird fuckers who actually enjoys the occasional Ubi romp.

Politics in Ubisoft's games is not the problem. The problem is shitty games. A string of mediocre, unexciting, play-it-safe, rinse-and-repeat ad nauseum games. Year, after year after year.

If you look at most articles about Ubi's problems they tend to point to the upper management as the problem. Poor decision making, trend chasing, etc. If the Ubi owners and senior management are still in place then this doesn't actually solve the issue at all. A ship with a bad captain is still a ship with a bad captain whether you sell the ship to another company or change out the entire crew, but leave the captain in charge.

This is just adding some much needed money to Ubi's bank so they can cut more costs (aka jobs) and have some money to throw at AC:S future expansions until they can get something else out. The problem with focusing on a single game is that after it is released and you get the initial set of money from sales, you have nothing to support you until your next game comes along. That appears to be what this is giving them.

Still AC isn't as great a series as it was before, even with Shadows. People got burnt out I think. Far Cry hasn't done well since FC4 and I have no idea about the other game. At this point none of Ubi's top IPs are that great anymore. If Tencent is planning to throw a bunch of games from these IPs onto the market then it'll just go down like Ubi's attempt at putting out an AC game every year. It might work for the first year but people will burn out after that.

This is a life support move to me. Giving Ubi enough time to let the senior execs get their money and then they'll sell and run.

AlexSledge wrote on Mar 28, 2025, 07:27:
I’m willing to make the mental leap that if AC:S sold gangbusters the sale wouldn’t have proceeded.

Yeah, but that wouldn't make any sense at all. It isn't how these things work. If it's being announced today, it was in the works for probably a full year. Ubisoft has been having it rough, and a single game wouldn't change this kind of hedge.

People just want to be angry at AssCreed due to politics, but it's the same people demanding we remove politics from gaming.

I’m willing to make the mental leap that if AC:S sold gangbusters the sale wouldn’t have proceeded.

This new subsidiary will focus on building game ecosystems designed to become truly evergreen and multi-platform.

Translation: More micro-transactions?

A deal like this isn't something that is set up in just a week or even a month, negotiations have almost certainly been going on at least since fall 2024. The only influence I could see AC:S having on the negotiations is whether the launch was successful enough to include in the deal or not.

So I guess Shadows isn’t bringing in all that big money they say it is after all, eh?

Resistance is futile. You will be assimilated. Even 30% of Larian belong to Tencent cuz Vincke sold out/cashed in back in 2019. Tencent has already held a sizable share of UbiSoft stocks for a long time (currently just under 10% according to the latest annual report).

Tencent must be pissed with Ubi's performance if you look at the charts. Sounds like they are making up for it now by separating UbiSoft into sort of a good bank (with the cash cow IPs) and a bad bank. Tencent will be holding 25% of the new good bank (the new subsidiary) so they won't have much say.

I'm curious about the timing of the deal. UbiSoft marketing keeps touting AC Shadows as a huge success but Steam player numbers tell a different story and this deal here does, too. Would they have gone ahead with these plans and inked the deal if AC Shadows would have really been a smash hit? Doubtful. They must have known from preorders alone that it would not take off as they hoped it would, thus the new subsidiary was born.

On a whole, as someone who actually doesn't want Ubi to croak but to improve, this doesn't sound too bad. If anyone here is genuinely interested in the details and economics, I would suggest reading the source document directly from UbiSoft that they have published on their investor portal.

Good luck to Ubisoft, hope it doesn't bite it in the ass.

Aaah, the temptation of cheap Chinese loans... It's like taking your first free drug from the dealer. Not much, and for free, it won't hurt, right? It won't instantly turn you into an addict, right?

* REMOVED *

This comment was deleted on Mar 28, 2025, 08:56. Reason: Shitpost