Jimquisition: Ubisoft - A Sad History of PC Failures

[Kerethos]

I'll just leave this here.

http://whatifgaming.com/the-division-developer-insider-we-already-downgraded-a-few-things

Well, that was an interesting read. I wonder if there is actually some way to try this practice as false marketing, and put an end to it?

Edit: Too bad we'll probably have to wait until next year to see if the claim is correct.

Edit 2: I own a bunch of Ubisoft games on console and they've all worked well and I've had no issues with Uplay. And I own one Ubisoft title on the PC. That's more than enough, because Uplay on PC is just in the way.

 

[ThreeName]

Ubisoft made it perfectly clear that they don't want my money years back. Haven't bought one of their products since, and never bloody will.

Same here. If Ubi don't give a shit about me, then I don't give a shit about them either.

I concur. I was about to pick up Far Cry 1 the other day on sale, but then I remembered the publisher, and bought Shadow Warrior instead.

I'm not giving them a bloody cent.

 

[TheNewGuy]

Yeah... it is rather annoying when a publisher blatantly treats PC gamers like second class citizens.

Really? I find it rather annoying when PC gamers treat anyone who isn't a PC gamer as a second class citizen.

 

[Valagetti]

I really hope we don't forget these fuck-ups and apathy of publishers. Only the core crowd seems to remember.
Thank God, for Jim Sterling!

 

[maximara]

Ubisoft made it perfectly clear that they don't want my money years back. Haven't bought one of their products since, and never bloody will.

They should rename themselves to OopsieSoft.

But after reading some of Penny Arcade's Tales from the Trenches and even with taking the stories with a grain of salt I am convinced that the computer gaming industry as a whole wouldn't know a good idea if it walked up to them and shook their hand. Basic Common Sense seems to have left the room and wandered into Raccoon City and the public just keeps taking it like its got a strong case of masochism or something.

 

[maximara]

Its sad, really. Ubisoft won't stop though, because the gaming community on the whole refuses to deprive themselves of the latest games to send the message that we won't put up with it. And lack of sales is really the only message they'll listen to, even if they'll lie about what it really means.

quoted for truth, i'm still waiting for people to vote with their wallet, i can believe the masses want this treatment

"No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people." - paraphrase of H. L. Mencken.

To which the addendum of 'especially when it comes to buying electronic games' can be added.

 

[Saltyk]

"We won't make it if we can't milk it to death!" (make a franchise out of it).
Is anyone honestly still expecting anything good from Ubisoft?

Yeah, that was one thing that has bugged me about Ubisoft. They only want to make games that they can make franchises out of. I loved Assassin's Creed, but after hearing them claim that they only want to make franchises, I haven't picked up any of the games past the second (which I didn't even finish).

Hell, I have next to no interest in Watch Dogs. The entire reason is that I knew from Day One that it was gonna force some sort of cliff hanger ending so that it could be milked into a franchise.

Not every game needs to be a franchise! Sometimes, a good game can be made simply by making it a good stand alone game. And sometimes you can make a franchise that doesn't require a guide to the whole thing, like with Mario or Final Fantasy. You can pick up any game in the series (I'm not counting the direct FF spin offs) and be fine.

Honestly, that whole attitude makes me wary of Ubisoft franchises. Never mind the DRM and other such nonsense. EA is kinda worse on that front since even consoles need to connect to EA servers to play DLC, not that I'm defending Ubisoft.

 

[mechalynx]

Funny how the topic came up just as I was proclaiming I was done with Ubi. I actualy feel ashamed and slightly dirty for having forked over money to them in the past few months.

With EA and Ubi off the list, I'm down to 2K, Deep Silver and Sqeenix for 3rd party publishers I feel comfortable with paying.

 

[red255]

Yeah, Um UPlay made me not play thru games I typically play thru multiple times, multiple times. Like Heroes of MIght and magic 6 if I wanted to start clean, I'd have to buy a totally new game. I might be wrong there.

But I played thru once, and sorta wanted to start fresh, but couldn't. Because dunno.

But I didn't have a problem with Far Cry 3. What I'm getting at, is while they are bad, calling them EA, or Activision is like comparing Obama to Hitler.

Sure Obama and Hitler are bother charismatic leaders of men. but the comparison is dumb and you should be ashamed for making it.

Ubisoft is a competant game company that makes games many people like, for the consoles. sure it makes inept and ham fisted PC games, but its not like activision or EA.

Activision decided to release Starcraft 2 in 3 games that were basically done in the first game and the other two are just maps or something and the Diablo 3 was all Ebay with them getting that 20% of their cash sales or whatever. Things that are annoying and made to make them more money.

Ubisoft just puts things in there to be annoying, do they make lots of money from UPlay?

EA, I want to say I've never purchased a game from EA i haven't been disappointed with, but thats not true. you got your Mass effect and Dragon Age, Portal was good apparently.

But they Frequently make games that LOOK good that are just disappointing and you get the feeling that their few actual good games are like the machines near the doors of the casino that actually pay out to get people to come inside and lose money on the games that are not good and whose trailers were a lie.

Dragon age 1 was good so that dragon age 2 could get away with being utter s***, and Dragon age 3 can just be better than 2 and make money. sort of thing.

 

[nevarran]

I concur. I was about to pick up Far Cry 1 the other day on sale, but then I remembered the publisher, and bought Shadow Warrior instead.

I'm not giving them a bloody cent.

Uh, I forgot Far Cry, I bought FC3. It appears I'm not completely innocent here, I feel ashamed
That was a good PC port, btw, I didn't have any issues with it. It looked great, it was well optimized and surprisingly bug-free. Weird, huh?...

 

[JET1971]

Ubisoft made it perfectly clear that they don't want my money years back. Haven't bought one of their products since, and never bloody will.

Same here. If Ubi don't give a shit about me, then I don't give a shit about them either.

I concur. I was about to pick up Far Cry 1 the other day on sale, but then I remembered the publisher, and bought Shadow Warrior instead.

I'm not giving them a bloody cent.

Ubi didn't make FC1, It was Crytek that made it and Ubi just published. It was after FC1 that Ubi took over the development of the series leading to Crytek telling them to shove it where the sun doesn't shine and making Crysis with EA as a publisher. Yeah Ubi was so bad a developer told them to go fuck themselves.

OT:
Jim, FC2 had limited installs back in 2008. A total of 5 installs with a revoke tool that didn't always work. Within 2 months of having the game and playing with friends online in multiplayer I had to download a pirate copy to play the game that I purchased because of the DRM making it unplayable. 1 install lost because I did a hardware upgrade and I didn't know it would count that as a new install, 1 lost because of a hardware failure, the rest were lost because the revoke tool did not revoke even if it said it was successful so 1 install on a different PC while visiting family and 2 more upgrades. Then they supposedly removed the limited install because it wasn't working and yet I have to still use pirated copy because the digital download from Ubisoft still had the limited install DRM the last time I installed.

So to bring back limited installs in 2011 when it was a complete failure that they had to remove in 2008 tells me that Ubisoft is willing to screw paying customers over by implementing DRM they know just screws paying customers over without doing a thing to pirates. They knew it wouldn't work because it failed the first time they tried it. That makes the second attempt by far worse than you made it out to be in the video.

 

[CBanana]

Explain CD Projekt Red and Gog.com then.

With Saints Row 2, CD Projekt did the absolute worst PC port I've ever seen. That was the only time I had to use a mod, an ini file and timing a part of the game with a stopwatch to get a game to be playable. It still wasn't the most stable game. Also, for some reason gameplay was capped at 30 fps while cinematics were at 60 fps which is utterly bizarre.

 

[Metalrocks]

It's times like this that I'm ashamed I own as many Ubisoft games as I do.

dont worry. you are not alone.

i have many games. especially the AC series. even though i never really had any issues with any of these titles or that uplay caused me any huge problems that i could not play the games i have on it, but i sure do admit that its a problematic DRM with its downloads and even purchasing a title is not easy.

the way i see it, EA seems to have a better reputation now than ubisoft. at least origin is working fine and easy to buy from and doesnt stop you from playing your games. so if i have to choose now between one of them, i go for EA.

 

[BeerTent]

But if people stop buying PC Ubisoft games, then I can't keep laughing at the same people who get excited about a ubi game, preorder it, get disappointed, FORGET ALL OF THIS, and do it again.

I'm highly tempted to make an animated GIF about getting the popcorn ready. But that means I'd need to make popcorn. Also, my most recent attempt at making an animated gif was 38MB large.

I'm not very good at this.

Point being, I agree with you on this. I don't understand it either. Sometimes it's hilarious, but sometimes, I'm actually really disappointed by it.

 

[RealRT]

Only reported instances of good PC ports:
-Assassin's Creed Director's Cut: none of that horse-ing about, and fast-travel. Yes x10.
-Beyond Good And Evil was alright.
-Prince of Persia: Sands of Time still runs on modern OS, considering that neither Warrior Within nor The Two Thrones do, it's pretty impressive.

That is all. I agree with 100% of what you said Jim. Uplay is f***ing horrendous.

AssCreed 1 had horrible optimization, Beyond Good and Evil was locked in letterbox widescreen which was shitty back then and is even shittier now because it's still letterboxed so you get BOTH black pillars AND everything is stretched up the arse
I don't know about Two Thrones, but Warrior Within very much does run on Win7.

 

[Vault101]

With Saints Row 2, CD Projekt did the absolute worst PC port I've ever seen. That was the only time I had to use a mod, an ini file and timing a part of the game with a stopwatch to get a game to be playable. It still wasn't the most stable game. Also, for some reason gameplay was capped at 30 fps while cinematics were at 60 fps which is utterly bizarre.

Saits row 2 was THQ wasn't it?

 

[Jennacide]

As I'm hoping people have already pointed out, the Watch_Dogs PC mods make the game run infinitely better. To the point of being criminal. I have a top of the line PC that beats every single one of Ubisoft's 'recommended' requirements for Watch_Dogs, and after dealing with 3 install attempts due to bugs with uPlay, once I got the game going it would frequently bounce between 30fps and 5fps on HIGH settings.

Now that the mod is out, it sets you to Ultra, which my PC is supposed to be able to run, and I think all of 3 times it's dropped below 60fps, each time in a very specific set of conditions. In the fastest car, while it was raining, in the most building dense part of the city. If I don't use that car it literally never happens.

Meanwhile Ubisoft has tried to claim it will break the game, which makes no sense because all the mod does is use the existing patch system to turn on a different set of shaders, DOF filter, and disable the idiotic level of pagefile cache checking the game does. That can't effect gameplay. Again Ubisoft shows absolute disdain and arrogance at the PC user like we're some sort of mindless chaff that takes what they say at face value. Except, you know, the modder made a point to clearly denote what he did, how it worked, and didn't infringe on uPlay's EULA either by using the existing patch file system.

It reminds me of Dark Souls in the opposite fashion. From Software basically said "Hey guys we really dont have the talent or resources to make a PC version, but you asked for it so me made it. Sorry for the bugs" and they did a muuuuch better job on part 2, but the difference is they were honest and humble about it. I really don't get why Ubisoft has to be such dicks about everything. Why not simply be nice and garner fan support?

It was also basically the first functional PC game From ever made. And when modders found a way to fix some of the bugs with framerate, in particular Blighttown, From recognized his work and assured that nobody could be banned for using it. And when DS2 got a similar fix (though not as needed) and VAC started redflagging people, From went through and helped undo the bans, making sure only cheaters and dll injectors got bans.

 

[Magmarock]

I agree, and I'm not sure what else there is to say. I would like to mention that that Ubisoft's latest update for Watch dogs apparently breaks it's compatibility with the what I will call the ?E3 Mod?

Ubisoft is making a whole bunch of reasons for this but I do have a theory of my own. This is pure speculation on my part but do hear me out and let me know what you think.


Also there's no way of saying this without sounding like an elitist so you have been warned.

We already know that companies like Ubisoft don't like PC gaming, but the question is why.

I think the main reason why companies don't like the PC market isn't so much to do with piracy but more to do with control and freedom.

PC gamers have more control and freedom with the PC were as with a console the companies have more control; at least they think they so.

They don't seem to take into account just how easy it is to mod a console or even what a modded console can even do. But even so, the PC still offers more freedom to the consumer. I think this is why companies prefer you to game on a console.

However, Over the past decade PC's have gotten better while consoles have gotten worse. I don't even think this is an opinion I think it's a provable fact in all honesty.

This, I think is the reason Ubisoft dumb downed the graphics. I don't think Sony paid them to do it, I just think they did because they didn't want to show how much better a PC was then a new current gen console.

That's my two cents.

 

[CBanana]

Saits row 2 was THQ wasn't it?

THQ was the publisher. CD Projekt were responsible for handling the port to PC. You can see CD Projekt in the credits for the PC version of Saints Row 2:
http://www.gamefaqs.com/pc/946770-saints-row-2/credit

 

[gridsleep]

This rag wouldn't be the same without Jim Sterling. Long may he reign.