Assassin's Creed: Unity's Season Pass Has Been Cancelled

[Steven Bogos]

Assassin's Creed: Unity's Season Pass Has Been Cancelled

Anyone who pre-purchased the Assassin's Creed: Unity season pass will instead get their choice of a free Ubisoft game.

In a surprise development, Ubisoft has announced that the planned Assassin's Creed: Unity season pass has been cancelled, removed from online stores, and that anyone who pre-purchased it will instead have to choose between a variety of Ubisoft titles as compensation. Furthermore, the first (and evidently, only) planned DLC pack for the title, Dead Kings, will be made available as a free download for all owners of the game.

"To show our appreciation for your continued support, we're making the upcoming Assassin's Creed Unity Dead Kings DLC free for everyone. For Season Pass holders, we will also offer the choice of one additional game from a selection of Ubisoft titles for free. More details on the offer for Season Pass holders can be found here: press release [http://assassinscreed.ubi.com/en-GB/community/liveupdates/live_updates_details.aspx?c=tcm:154-186650-16&ct=tcm:148-76770-32].

Pre-purchasers of the Season Pass, as well as anyone who bought the special Gold Edition of the game, will be able to choose between the following games as their compensation:

The Crew
Far Cry 4
Watch Dogs
Assassin's Creed Black Flag
Rayman Legends
Just Dance 2015

While there will be no further DLC for Unity, Season Pass holders will continue to have access to a variety of additional content, including Assassin's Creed Chronicles: China.

"Unfortunately, at launch, the overall quality of the game was diminished by bugs and unexpected technical issues. I want to sincerely apologize on behalf of Ubisoft and the entire Assassin's Creed team. These problems took away from your enjoyment of the game, and kept many of you from experiencing the game at its fullest potential," Ubisoft added in its statement.

Considering all the press [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/138538-Low-Frame-Rates-in-Early-Reports-of-Assassins-Creed-Unity] and generally underwhelming fan reaction Ubisoft is receiving for the game, this looks like a clear case of the developer trying to distance itself from the title as quickly as possible, by dropping all development of future content and instead focusing on whatever Assassin's Creed title is next in the pipeline.

Source: Ubisoft [http://assassinscreed.ubi.com/en-GB/news/news_detail.aspx?c=tcm:154-186654-16&ct=tcm:148-76770-32]

Permalink

 

[ShirowShirow]

This is one of the few cases where I see the "Torch it and run" approach big publishers often take towards stuff like this to be a positive.

Unity will go down in history as garbage. There's not much that can be done about that.

 

[Hero in a half shell]

Wow. That was unexpected. But if the AAA companies that release these half-arsed untested games would just put the effort in to polish them in the first place then they wouldn't need damage control when their customers complain about their broken product.

I have no pity for Ubisoft as a company.

 

[ElMinotoro]

"To show our appreciation for your continued support"

I think the biggest question is whether Ubisoft will be continuing support. Of the game. Because it's pretty broken.

 

[The_Blue_Rider]

Well thats awfully nice of them, I was honestly really surprised to see Far Cry 4 on that considering it only came out like last week. Ubisoft knows they fucked up bad, so hopefully the next AC game will be good. What I wouldnt do for another game that could replicate the feelings that Assassins Creed 2 gave me

 

[ecoho]

you know I still got to call them on the fact they are not just refunding money to people. That should be an option and if I bought this game and a season pass id be pissed, as chances are you own everything they listed as compensation.

 

[Vivi22]

And for the people who already own or don't want any of those games, they get absolutely nothing of value because the refund they're entitled to isn't an option.

 

[ObsidianJones_v1legacy]

This, while positive, is a negative step for Ubisoft in a year of colossal fuck ups.

There's a saying among doctors... never apologize. Never take credit for something wrong. Just fix it, and things will be forgiven.

To take their current 'pride and joy', the thing that they hyped to almost make up for every stupid thing they've done recently and go "Eww, yucky" to it and run away... I have no faith in Ubisoft. What game will this happen to next? will they even devote time to truly fix Unity?

I was semi interested in the Crew, but didn't want to put down money because I've had my fill of Uplay and Ubisoft... Now I just think it's safety for my wallet and my sensibilities to wait for something else.

Captcha: Open Wide.

... Captcha, you are just getting nastier with age...

 

[seditary]

Surely in some regions it'd be the law that they'd have to provide a refund instead of just exchanging it for something else?

 

[Ambient_Malice]

Surely in some regions it'd be the law that they'd have to provide a refund instead of just exchanging it for something else?

I don't see why they'd be obliged to refund since you're still getting the content you paid for. It's just that everyone else now gets it for free, and you get a free game on top of that.

Anyway, I've been playing Unity on PC, and it is not THAT bad. The game has some nasty bugs, but so did AC3 after SIX PATCHES. Ubisoft have just started rolling out a massive bugfix patch, and are promising a performance patch in the future. It's not as if Ubisoft tossed a half-finished game out the door and then abandoned it.

Annual series having nasty issues on launch goes waaaaay back. Why has everyone forgotten the Turok games, pushed out the door like clockwork every year regardless of whether they were finished, and their terrible bugs which were (sometimes) fixed in later catridge revisions?

edit:
I mean, I want a refund for Assassin's Creed IV: We Sold You A Pirate Game Disguised As An AssCreed Title.

And while AC3 is still a bug-ridden mess, I think it's a high point for the series.

 

[seditary]

Surely in some regions it'd be the law that they'd have to provide a refund instead of just exchanging it for something else?

I don't see why they'd be obliged to refund since you're still getting the content you paid for. It's just that everyone else now gets it for free, and you get a free game on top of that.

No they aren't. People bought a season pass, its been cancelled, they don't have an option to get their money back.

 

[Gearhead mk2]

I agree that they should be offering to refund people instead of/as well as give away free stuff, but I appreciate they actually admitted they screwed up relatively quickly instead of dancing around it until the next game looms so they can get some PR. I'd call it an attempt to save face, but at this point I think mentioning faces around Ubisoft is just rubbing salt in the wound.

 

[Ambient_Malice]

Surely in some regions it'd be the law that they'd have to provide a refund instead of just exchanging it for something else?

I don't see why they'd be obliged to refund since you're still getting the content you paid for. It's just that everyone else now gets it for free, and you get a free game on top of that.

No they aren't. People bought a season pass, its been cancelled, they don't have an option to get their money back.

Not precisely. The season pass is no longer being sold. Those who have the season pass are still recieving the DLC they paid for, and on top of this they now get a free game.

 

[seditary]

Surely in some regions it'd be the law that they'd have to provide a refund instead of just exchanging it for something else?

I don't see why they'd be obliged to refund since you're still getting the content you paid for. It's just that everyone else now gets it for free, and you get a free game on top of that.

No they aren't. People bought a season pass, its been cancelled, they don't have an option to get their money back.

Not precisely. The season pass is no longer being sold. Those who have the season pass are still recieving the DLC they paid for, and on top of this they now get a free game.

No they aren't. They're only getting one piece of DLC, which is being given free to every owner of the game, not just people who bought the season pass. Unless you're somehow trying to falsely argue that the season pass was $30 for just the Dead Kings pack.

 

[Gatlank]

This is the future of next gen. Release buggy game to get all the moneyz as fast as they can.
If consumers find out they were ripped off, cancel all future work, make minimum effort to correct major bugs (if got some profit before caught throw a free dlc) and offer a free game as a gesture of good faith.
If sucke...*Cough* Consumers are lucky the available games wont be as buggy.
Rinse and repeat.

 

[esserin]

Hmmm, at least they're sending out the big parts of the season pass.
If they had outright cancelled "dead kings" people would be up in arms. As it is, people can only hope it won't be a badly made product.

Ubi really dropped the ball here. I mean this is the engine for the next generation of assassin's creed games. They really should have made sure to give it the care it needed. This is the engine any future game will be built upon.

They should have reduced the scope of the game and focused they're resources on the engine itself. Once that's out of the way, THEN you build a giant game.

 

[esserin]

Surely in some regions it'd be the law that they'd have to provide a refund instead of just exchanging it for something else?

I don't see why they'd be obliged to refund since you're still getting the content you paid for. It's just that everyone else now gets it for free, and you get a free game on top of that.

No they aren't. People bought a season pass, its been cancelled, they don't have an option to get their money back.

Not precisely. The season pass is no longer being sold. Those who have the season pass are still recieving the DLC they paid for, and on top of this they now get a free game.

No they aren't. They're only getting one piece of DLC, which is being given free to every owner of the game, not just people who bought the season pass. Unless you're somehow trying to falsely argue that the season pass was $30 for just the Dead Kings pack.

I think it depends on whether or not, they ever actually said what all the extra DLC was. If they never specified anything, then they didn't break any laws.

They still lose lots of consumer trust though.

Edit: crap, just realized I've essentially double-posted. Is there any way to remove this post or at least merge it with my previous one? Rather not face the ire of moderators for this.

 

[kajinking]

Ok question: I'm working my way through the Creed series the first was rock solid and so was the second, I've just hit brotherhood and only fallen through the world once.

My question is this: just HOW bad is this gonna get? It sounds like they get worse bug-wise as you progress so I want to get a good idea of just how unstable this series gets.

I was planning on getting Revalations and 3 this steam sale but at this rate I may just bail on this series now.

 

[Gatlank]

I think it depends on whether or not, they ever actually said what all the extra DLC was. If they never specified anything, then they didn't break any laws.

They still lose lots of consumer trust though.

I dont think they care much about consumer trust at this point. I bet the way they see it is that the "hype machine" will fix everything for the next game.