Ubisoft Is A Good Company

[Phoenixmgs_v1legacy]

Assassins Creed isn't a 1 game a year thing, they've put out two last year and now they're doing three. That's a BIT excessive and I merely point that out because frankly everyone points to EA and even Five Nights at Freddy's and says 'they're bad because they milk their game'. And I agree with you, if you don't like it, don't buy it, and that's exactly what I'm doing with Ubisoft. Thing is, I don't care about the series or the rate they put them out, I more worry for the devs who're being pressured to put out AAA games and it's obvious they're beyond their capacity.
The reason they probably don't release those games yearly is simple, they don't have the established fanbase anymore, they're trying to get them back up and the first one with them always takes the longest dev time. We'll see how that goes afterward.

Which was the point to begin with, since Unity was so obviously rushed it came out broken, that's the problem they're trying to kick these games out so numerous and fast their games are broken months later, have horrible DLC schemes and their apology in the form of free DLC was even broken. THAT was the point and not the rate of the games coming out.


"Graphics aren't everything" That's not the point, I cannot stand this incredibly strange minded argument. Yes I buy games for gameplay as well because it's not a movie, it's not a photo- but if someone is showing me what I'm going to buy and when I get it the game is cut down then I'm going to feel lied to- and that is exactly what Ubisoft did. They claimed it's actual gameplay footage then the game comes out and it's different- that is a lie. Yes, we can all now look at what we're ACTUALLY getting after people have bought the game and made these videos. The topic is "Ubisoft is a good company" well I don't think many good people never the less companies lie to their customers, or push their devs beyond their limits, or release broken games that don't get fixed for months and broken DLC, and really sub-par ethics on DLC.

Dunno why graphics came up as the point, my points are Ubisoft is a terrible company, and they are.

Unity actually had over 3 years of development instead of the 1 year cycle most AC games have. No doubt it ended up being rushed at the end for sure, that's so common place that calling Ubisoft bad for doing that is calling practically every publisher a bad company. BF4 was even more broken than Unity I think. Naughty Dog rushed out Uncharted 3, I didn't even buy it until a month later when they fixed the aiming, plus the game wasn't even working on fat PS3s a mere couple weeks before it went gold. I think Unity was the only broken game Ubisoft has released in a long time, that's a much better track record than most publishers.

The Watch Dogs comparison video I posted was 2 months before the game released. People did graphical comparisons off of the Ubisoft footage after the delay vs the 2012 footage. That was all available BEFORE the game's release so the consumer should know exactly what they're buying. Has there even been any Witcher 3 console footage yet? Because I think all the footage is from the PC version, how am I supposed to know what that game will look like on PS4? Most companies only show the best version whereas Ubisoft showed us how the other versions looked. I don't think Ubisoft lied about Watch Dogs either, they were trying to get the lighting, effects, etc. working but they just couldn't as those files were still there on the PC version. Obviously an open world game reveal is going to look better than release as devs always think they can get the game looking better than they actually can during early development. Whereas a linear game is much easier to gauge the final graphics. The Witcher 3 is being accused of having a graphical downgrade as well, I guess we'll see when it releases. I don't care if Witcher 3's graphics got downgraded, I don't know if I'll like the gameplay enough which is my concern. It's not like these graphical downgrades are like the game looks so awesome and then it looks like shit when you play it where it's something completely different; Watch Dogs still looked great on PS4 (it was an open world game with graphics better than PS3's best looking linear games).

For me, it's all about the games. The only EA games I've bought since PS3 released were Mirror's Edge, the Mass Effects, and MOH Warfighter (the MP is actually fantastic) and the only Activision game I've bought since PS3 was COD4. Ubisoft is better to me because I've bought and liked way more games they've made vs EA & Activision combined. To me, Ubisoft just shits on the other big publishers in game quality, which is pretty much all I care about in regards to game publishers/developers.

 

[keniakittykat]

I think a lot of people don't realize that Ubisoft isn't just one company. There's the North American division which focus on their big titles. (Assassin's creed, Far Cry, Splinter cell, etc.) Who love to dick customers out of their money.

And then there's the European division which focus more on smaller, less expensive titles that aren't as time-crunched and/or big-audience oriented. (Rayman, child of light, party games etc.) Which has a better reputation as far as original content is concerned. For example, Rayman legends is 2 years old at this point, and they still have daily challenges and Uplay rewards completely free and zero DLC.

And The only time the different divisions work together is when they're working on something big, or when a lot of work is sent off to the Asian studio for completion.

 

[Snotnarok]

Assassins Creed isn't a 1 game a year thing, they've put out two last year and now they're doing three. That's a BIT excessive and I merely point that out because frankly everyone points to EA and even Five Nights at Freddy's and says 'they're bad because they milk their game'. And I agree with you, if you don't like it, don't buy it, and that's exactly what I'm doing with Ubisoft. Thing is, I don't care about the series or the rate they put them out, I more worry for the devs who're being pressured to put out AAA games and it's obvious they're beyond their capacity.
The reason they probably don't release those games yearly is simple, they don't have the established fanbase anymore, they're trying to get them back up and the first one with them always takes the longest dev time. We'll see how that goes afterward.

Which was the point to begin with, since Unity was so obviously rushed it came out broken, that's the problem they're trying to kick these games out so numerous and fast their games are broken months later, have horrible DLC schemes and their apology in the form of free DLC was even broken. THAT was the point and not the rate of the games coming out.


"Graphics aren't everything" That's not the point, I cannot stand this incredibly strange minded argument. Yes I buy games for gameplay as well because it's not a movie, it's not a photo- but if someone is showing me what I'm going to buy and when I get it the game is cut down then I'm going to feel lied to- and that is exactly what Ubisoft did. They claimed it's actual gameplay footage then the game comes out and it's different- that is a lie. Yes, we can all now look at what we're ACTUALLY getting after people have bought the game and made these videos. The topic is "Ubisoft is a good company" well I don't think many good people never the less companies lie to their customers, or push their devs beyond their limits, or release broken games that don't get fixed for months and broken DLC, and really sub-par ethics on DLC.

Dunno why graphics came up as the point, my points are Ubisoft is a terrible company, and they are.

Unity actually had over 3 years of development instead of the 1 year cycle most AC games have. No doubt it ended up being rushed at the end for sure, that's so common place that calling Ubisoft bad for doing that is calling practically every publisher a bad company. BF4 was even more broken than Unity I think. Naughty Dog rushed out Uncharted 3, I didn't even buy it until a month later when they fixed the aiming, plus the game wasn't even working on fat PS3s a mere couple weeks before it went gold. I think Unity was the only broken game Ubisoft has released in a long time, that's a much better track record than most publishers.

The Watch Dogs comparison video I posted was 2 months before the game released. People did graphical comparisons off of the Ubisoft footage after the delay vs the 2012 footage. That was all available BEFORE the game's release so the consumer should know exactly what they're buying. Has there even been any Witcher 3 console footage yet? Because I think all the footage is from the PC version, how am I supposed to know what that game will look like on PS4? Most companies only show the best version whereas Ubisoft showed us how the other versions looked. I don't think Ubisoft lied about Watch Dogs either, they were trying to get the lighting, effects, etc. working but they just couldn't as those files were still there on the PC version. Obviously an open world game reveal is going to look better than release as devs always think they can get the game looking better than they actually can during early development. Whereas a linear game is much easier to gauge the final graphics. The Witcher 3 is being accused of having a graphical downgrade as well, I guess we'll see when it releases. I don't care if Witcher 3's graphics got downgraded, I don't know if I'll like the gameplay enough which is my concern. It's not like these graphical downgrades are like the game looks so awesome and then it looks like shit when you play it where it's something completely different; Watch Dogs still looked great on PS4 (it was an open world game with graphics better than PS3's best looking linear games).

For me, it's all about the games. The only EA games I've bought since PS3 released were Mirror's Edge, the Mass Effects, and MOH Warfighter (the MP is actually fantastic) and the only Activision game I've bought since PS3 was COD4. Ubisoft is better to me because I've bought and liked way more games they've made vs EA & Activision combined. To me, Ubisoft just shits on the other big publishers in game quality, which is pretty much all I care about in regards to game publishers/developers.

I've enjoyed more EA's games than not recently, Deadspace 1 & 2 are great, loved Mass Effect 1-3, Dragon Age is good (yes I'm aware they're studios under EA) even Battlefield BC2 - 4 was really fun. Though , as you said there were some issues but I was always playing the smaller pop maps so I didn't see it as much I guess. . I wasn't aware of any issues on uncharted 3, when I played it froze on me once but otherwise worked perfectly fine. (I'm sure that it's patched and whatever)

I've not had a lot of favorable time with Ubisoft, I loved their Rayman games as of recently and Farcry 3 was great, Farcry 4 didn't even work for me *came with my video card) so hopefully by now they've fixed it but I'm in no rush to even bother.


I'm not saying Watch Dogs is bad because it was downgraded, I'm just mad they lied, just like other devs with bullshots (see Epic games for their incredible bullshot crap). I get it if it's early in dev and they put something out showing their progress, but it's weird to say "this is gameplay" then the actual game looks very different. It's like fast food burgers in commercials vs bought, the only thing is you say it's fast food what do you expect when you're paying 5-10 bucks vs 60+whatever DLC crap they're trying to harass. I played Watch Dogs and I wasn't wowed but I wasn't as angry as others with gameplay, I'm honestly just not buying Ubisoft games because I don't like their business practices. Their DRM history is enough where I'd avoid. If you enjoy 'em? That's totally fine, I'm not trying to sway minds on games. As I said, love me some Rayman but, bloody annoyed with Uplay and previous drm nonsense.

 

[Valkrex]

Even if I actually bought any of their games these days, I'd still pirate a copy these days just so I don't have to deal with the bullshit

When Ubisoft forces a conflict ridden broken DRM platform into every game they sell all it does is make me want to pirate their game so I don't have to deal with it.

When Ubisoft's aforementioned software can't handle player traffic and won't let a legal purchase be activated, all it does is make me want to pirate the game.

When Ubisoft releases a buggy, unpolished, unfinished, and flat out broken piece of software (AC:Unity) all it does is make me want to pirate their game so I don't have to take the risk.

When Ubisoft gives 12 retailer specific pre-order bonuses all it does is make me want to pirate the game so I can actually experience all of the content.

When Ubisoft downgrades the PC versions graphics of a game for console parity (Watch Dogs) all it does is make me want to pirate their games.

When Ubisofts's downgrades on PC cause the game to run WORSE (Watch Dogs) then it would with all of the original options and features enabled it just makes me want to pirate their games.

(yes, I have proof here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b43ZlqPvBDs&ab_channel=TotalBiscuit,TheCynicalBrit )

When everything Ubisoft does makes me want to pirate their games instead of dealing with their bullshit, then they're a bad company.

I hate piracy. It disgusts me, I think its morally wrong, and I really think that 99% of pirates are nothing better than thieves despite the law saying they are infringing content. BUT, when I see Ubisoft pull the amount of bullshit they have been, I have some sympathy for pirates and find myself contemplating the very act I despise.

Only way to beat piracy is to make people WANT to pay. Make customers feel valued friends instead of thieves, make games that work, make games that are feature complete, make games that don't come with conflict ridden, system crashing, game breaking DRM, make games that don't feel like they've cut half the content out to sell later, actually RESPECT your customers, and maybe I'll start giving their games another chance.

They've lost my trust, they've lost my faith as a customer, and they can go out of business for all I care with their actions the last couple of years. Yes they may still have studios making some decent games, but when the game comes out broken, downgraded, and with ridiculous DRM bolted onto it, I want nothing to do with them.

 

[JayRPG]

Ubisoft used to be good, now I find them just as bad as EA and Activision.

I mean, look at the shit they've given us recently. Unity, the crew, watchdogs.

Not even their 'good' games have been particularly good. The lazy Farcry 4 which tried (and failed) to be exactly like Farcry 3, Rogue was decent but nowhere near as good as some of the previous entries into the franchise.

They just strike me as the ultimate 'quick cash-in' company operating at the moment. Assassin's Creed does not need to be a yearly franchise, and the amount of spin-offs on every platform dating back to the Nokia 3315 that they release every few months is just overboard, why they continue to think having forty thousand different studios (across several different countries) developing one game is a good thing is something that I will never be able to understand, and it strikes me as the company simply being run by 'game development no nothing' bigwigs who's only care is profits.

Ubisoft has almost no PR skills to speak of, they have no sense of time it seems, almost every single game of theirs gets delayed several times, they are serial 'announce 2 years too early' -ers, often their efforts seem outright lazy, they aren't above lying to save face. I think the amount of hate they get is well justified.

 

[J Tyran]

I think Ubisoft have a lot of talented devs working for them, that want to try new things or do things a little differently. They explore the world and history with their games too, they are hamstrung by terrible corporate decisions though. Like splitting a game between a dozen or so developers or cramming in attempts at extra revenue streams and DRM.

 

[RJ 17]

It's ok to be a fanboy of a company, no matter how crap a game company is there will always be loyalists. If you truly like Ubisoft games then good for you, I'm glad they're making games that you enjoy. The trick about being a fanboy, though, is that you have to acknowledge that their shit does stink, just like everyone else's. I mean good lord, you're talking about DRM like it's a good thing simply because they hand out some token trinkets.

What's really funny though is how you cite Jim Sterling as though he would support your belief that Ubisoft's DRM is DRM done right...when in reality Ubisoft is generally his primary target when it comes to anti-DRM conversations.

Oh, and just a friendly tip: when attempting to make an argument such as this one, it's best to steer clear of entirely subjective arguments such as "quality of games." You look at a pile of Ubisoft games and see a pile of games that you thoroughly enjoy. Truly there's nothing wrong with that, everyone has their own tastes. However any number of other people could look at that same pile and say "Those are all games that I literally want to shit on."

 

[jklinders]

Ubi used to be a go to for me on the grounds that were the only ones making some of the kinds of SIM games I like. IL-2 Sturmovich and Silent Hunter. I was enjoying the Assassin's Creed games for a few years as well.

As a PC gamer, U-Play is a game breaker for me. it is literally the only platform for launching a PC game out there that I can think whose primary focus is to punish me for being a PC gamer and that clearly makes me a pirate. I cannot fathom why they sell their games on Steam given that it forces you to use U-Play anyway. That puts it on par with fucking Microsoft games for fucking windows by forcing the use of more than one gaming client.

They have lost the plot on their Ass Creed games to the point where they are clearly milking the franchise, pulling a Call of Duty by recycling the same engine over and over and charging for the next game full price instead of the expansion pack it actually was.

The quality of their Sim type games has fallen into the toilet to the point where I felt betrayed in a couple of the purchases. They need new management and a new focus. Also they need to get rid of their contempt for the PC gamer, or stop attempting to sell to us. We don't care any more.

 

[loa]

So I bought blood dragon on steam recently and it slapped uplay which is the ubisoft proprietary storefront onto my pc without asking, I had to unlock the game with a key there and need to juggle 1 more password to log into there so I can play the darn single player game.
The uplay storefront window also pops up every time I start blood dragon and remains in the background when I play in steam big picture.
If I try to return to the desktop, uplay breaks the big picture controller support so I can't confirm quitting to the desktop without using a mouse.

So that's really annoying and a bump in the road of me using my pc like a console!
That's the extent of bad experience I have with ubisoft.
I don't buy all that many assassin creeds and farcries though and am not really all that interested in online multiplayer so it's kind of limited that way.
I much prefer games that don't bring annoying baggage like uplay to the table though and uplay is inseparably tethered to everything ubisoft so that's definitely a factor when deciding if I should buy a thing that has an ubisoft logo on it!

 

[chikusho]

A company can be really bad, and still make great products.

 

[loa]

Oh by the way after talking about uplay I just went to change my uplay password so it's not the same as steams password and you wouldn't believe how hard doing that is!

It's not even something you can do from within the client they force onto you and on the uplay site you will be greeted with popups that go "pick one of these bullshit avatars now! There is no cancel button and you are blocked from doing anything else on this site until you picked one!".

Also if I make uplay start in offline mode, it'll always ask for a password (and thanks to that specific popup, blood dragon will always start windowed. Neato) until you enable pass remembering (it doesn't ask if it is allowed to go online for whatever reason) and it will use the old password if you change your pass on the site until you go online again.

So thats neat I guess.
That's something fun to shove down every customers throat.

 

[Dalisclock]

I always used to think the reason no one ever gave Ubisoft shit was because unlike EA, they manged to put up some pretty good games, great games even. As far as I know, widespread disdain for Ubisoft only really happened after Watch_Dogs.

Well, a lot of people didn't like ACIII either, and I'm pretty sure nobody who isn't a Ubisoft suit likes Uplay. If Ubisoft decided Uplay was going away tomorrow, my respect for them as a company would increase. Not a whole lot, mind you, because they kept it place for a decade despite the fact everyone hates it, and also because I'd have to be sure they weren't going to replace it with something worse.

 

[SecondPrize]

Seemed that for a while they couldn't open their mouths about PC gaming without lying like a dog on a rug. Either way, uplay is a deal breaker for me. I love company of heroes, which I bought after uplay was removed from it. I think it's been three times now I've backed off from buying a game in a sale because I saw it required Uplay on its info page.

 

[Flutterguy]

Their big steady releases suck.

The smaller releases like Child of Light, From Dust and... well I avoid buying them cause uPlay really is a pain in the ass, not even a big problem, just an unnecessary one that actually prevents games from working unless put in online mode.

Farcry is fun though. Easy drunk mayhem kind of fun.

 

[Phoenixmgs_v1legacy]

I'm not saying Watch Dogs is bad because it was downgraded, I'm just mad they lied, just like other devs with bullshots (see Epic games for their incredible bullshot crap). I get it if it's early in dev and they put something out showing their progress, but it's weird to say "this is gameplay" then the actual game looks very different. It's like fast food burgers in commercials vs bought, the only thing is you say it's fast food what do you expect when you're paying 5-10 bucks vs 60+whatever DLC crap they're trying to harass. I played Watch Dogs and I wasn't wowed but I wasn't as angry as others with gameplay, I'm honestly just not buying Ubisoft games because I don't like their business practices. Their DRM history is enough where I'd avoid. If you enjoy 'em? That's totally fine, I'm not trying to sway minds on games. As I said, love me some Rayman but, bloody annoyed with Uplay and previous drm nonsense.

I don't feel Ubisoft lied about the Watch Dogs graphics; of course, the PR isn't going to literally say the graphics got downgraded. The proof was in the videos Ubisoft released after the delay and before the game's release, you can see for yourself what the game looked like. Plus, those files are there in the PC version to make the game look much closer to the 2012 footage so you can tell they had the game running at those graphics but couldn't iron out everything. It's not like they released pre-rendered videos and said that's how the game looked. An open world game graphically is going to change over the course of development because the game will be able to look better when the whole city isn't finished and not all the game systems are in place yet either. It's like scenes from movie trailers that don't make it into the movie. When any piece of art is previewed, it's not done yet. I found Watch Dogs to be a pretty good game; mix and matching between the stealth, hacking, and shooting on the fly made for some great moments. The shooting was the best 3rd-person shooting I've ever experienced in an sandbox/open world game. I knew going in that the characters and story were going to be bland as fuck just be the previews, I bought Watch Dogs for the gameplay, which was exactly what I expected (3rd-person FarCry in a city with hacking). The missions were much more open ended than say GTA, which is the whole point of a sandbox game IMO.

I think people need to cut Ubisoft (and others) some slack for the DRM stuff. The whole digital marketplace is rather new to everyone, even Steam sucked early on and still has its lumps. It seems like people are just now starting to warm to EA's Origin. I think Ubisoft is just trying to get their own marketplace going and there's going to be bumps. I'm not saying to just give them a pass but give them a bit of slack and see how Uplay evolves and changes before calling them a bad company. It is part of the reason I barely PC game because I don't want to have to deal with stuff not working (whether it's on my end or their end), I just put in the disc and the game works every time. I'm a PC tech and I can figure out all the issues but it's just not worth the time for the most part the better graphics (resolution and framerate) don't really improve the gameplay experience much.