Why doesn't Ubisoft get the level of hate that EA does?

[Goro]

EA is run like a bank, they market the hell out of themselves as great people while mercilessly screwing everyone they can in the relentless pursuit of cash.
Ubi comes across more like a gaming company that wants to be a serious business. What was that line from 'The social network'? You're not an asshole, so why are you trying so hard to be one?

 

[V da Mighty Taco]

I also don't get why Valve remains free from hatred. They do the exact same things as EA.

Sorry, but this just is blatantly untrue. EA's most notorious attribute is easily their tendency to buy out promising studios, run them into the ground, then proceed to shut them down within a span of only a few years; followed by sitting on their franchise(s) for a decade or more only to revive it / them in the worst way possible (Sim City and Dungeon Keeper Mobile, anyone?). Until Valve has the staggering metaphorical graveyard that EA has, they will never even come close to being despised as much as Electronic Arts.

 

[NuclearKangaroo]

ubisoft is nowhere near as awful as EA

they have atleast a little bit of respect for their franchises, ass creed might be anualized but you see they put some effort to spice things up, when they decide to revive old franchises, such as might and magic and rayman, they dont bastardize em to get some easy cash or "appeal to a broader audience" like EA did with syndicate and dungeon keeper

hell i even consider uPlay less malicious than origin, you know atleast it has SOME interesting features, such as that mii rip off thing and free DLC if you complete achivements, plus i can fucking use it, unlike origin, but at the moment is too inferior compared to steam

 

[NuclearKangaroo]

I also don't get why Valve remains free from hatred. They do the exact same things as EA.

thats a good one son, not only valve has far better morals than "EAt crap customers!" but they are one of the few devs out there that genuinely seems to care for its fans and clients, at least to some degree

 

[NuclearKangaroo]

one thing im going to add tough, atleast up until recently ubisoft seems convinced their franchises could sell so much more if it wasnt for piracy/used games, and has tried to combat those with anti-customer meansures, such as AC2 being always online for a while and those damn online passes, they should really accept the fact certain games will only sell X amount and as long as you make a sizeable profit out of that, its ok

blaming others for your shortcommings is very unhealthy

 

[Cerebrawl]

its the same reason people shit on origin but fawn all over steam, one has a legion of fanboys that ignore its issues while making shitty half 3 jokes, the other is the band wagon that every one is supposed to hate for no reason

I think it's because steam both has lots of great value sales, and has been leading the way in a push to make games more affordable, lots of other sites have taken up the sale call, and I think we owe a lot of that to valve and steam.

Another aspect is that steam is actually convenient and streamlined, it appeals to laziness, so many people overlook the flaws.

Steam actually has VERY few issues.
It constantly improves, and addresses issues as they appear.
There are a few issues Steam does consistently have, but they're clearly a matter of being complicated and not having obvious solutions. Valve doesn't have all the answers, so it takes them some time to figure out how to address certain things.
You can read their Steam update notes and watch the industry news and see that they're clearly coming up with and testing different solutions...even if they don't always work.
*shrug*

Don't get me wrong, I'm actually quite happy with steam, most of the time. I love the sales, I love the convenience.

But flaws:
No selling/trading used games, or even activated but unplayed.
1 refund in a lifetime for any reason, after that you're screwed unless there's a complete recall(a la WarZ).
You have to be online to go offline, and while it lets you stay that way until you exit steam... I've had situations on vacation where I've had to reboot my laptop and suddenly been unable to play my games.
There's also often 3rd party DRM on top of steam being DRM.
There's poor(no) quality control, lots of shit is getting sold, often on false premises.
Tons of shit being sold at full price despite being in alpha/beta or even pre-alpha states. Remember when game testing was free? Yeah me too. Oh and some aren't even labeled early access. You know why Fray(recently relevant on these forums) had 27% metacritic rating? They sold it as a complete game when it was an alpha.
Developers are allowed to censor criticism of their game on the steam forums as much as they want.
And finally a personal bugbear: the search function is pretty crap, which is a real problem when there's that many games in their library.

I don't run into much of the shit personally because I do my research before I buy anything(and I still haven't used my 1 possible refund, in 11 years), but it's still valid points.

 

[Greg White]

Ubisoft went 7 years without releasing a single game I would play if it were free. Whatever anticonsumer stuff they did in between has no effect on me.

EA in the meantime bought up Bioware, who I love.

EA, however, is ruining BioWare. The Dragon Age 2 thing, that was EA trying to make money off of DA:O. EA is a serial developer killer.

Don't forget a developer corrupter as well.Bioware for example used to enjoy talking to their fans and made quality games, however since they were taken under EA's wing many Bioware employees are condescending,passive agressive and are unwilling to even speak on their own forums.

In their defense, have you seen some of what goes on in their forums?

Saying anything one way or another to some of the people on there would start a flame war and the level of obsession some of these people show is pretty scary.

 

[DoPo]

No selling/trading used games, or even activated but unplayed.

It's not a flaw. It's a feature request. It would be a flaw if it was intended to be there but it isn't.

You have to be online to go offline, and while it lets you stay that way until you exit steam... I've had situations on vacation where I've had to reboot my laptop and suddenly been unable to play my games.

This has been resolved a couple of years ago. It is no longer an issue.

There's also often 3rd party DRM on top of steam being DRM.

Not Steam's fault. Are other game stores to blame that disks have DRM?

Tons of shit being sold at full price despite being in alpha/beta or even pre-alpha states.

Prices are not dictated by Valve - publishers set their prices.

Remember when game testing was free? Yeah me too. Oh and some aren't even labeled early access. You know why Fray(recently relevant on these forums) had 27% metacritic rating? They sold it as a complete game when it was an alpha.

Frey had its servers taken down. Apparently for being shit or something. And that happened over a year ago - the game itself has been on Steam longer than that (even twice, apparently). Are any newer pre-release games not marketed as such? As far as I am aware all Early Access games are categorised as Early Access.

And finally a personal bugbear: the search function is pretty crap, which is a real problem when there's that many games in their library.

What do you mean? Any time I've used it it returns me what I ask for. True, it might use a bit more advanced search terms but as it stands it operates to a satisfactory level - enter a name, it returns you a name. If you want more, it's not a flaw, it's a feature request again.

I don't run into much of the shit personally because I do my research before I buy anything(and I still haven't used my 1 possible refund, in 11 years), but it's still valid points.[/quote]

 

[Eclectic Dreck]

It's fairly arbitrary, honestly. Ubisoft is just as hostile if not more hostile to PC users, they are just as prone to selling you useless garbage after games come out, they are just as likely to grind franchises into dust and just as unwilling to take interesting risks with their properties. The one and only catch I'd think is that none of their franchises have generated the same amount of love as EA properties have over the years and thus when those franchise inevitably slide into ruin, people are less emotionally invested. Thus why (for example) there wasn't much of an outcry regarding the absolutely silly Assassin's Creed 3.

The secret then is to make games that are good but safe enough that you do not foment frothing fanboyism. Then when you ruin things, people just shrug and move on.

 

[NuclearKangaroo]

Don't get me wrong, I'm actually quite happy with steam, most of the time. I love the sales, I love the convenience.

But flaws:
No selling/trading used games, or even activated but unplayed.
1 refund in a lifetime for any reason, after that you're screwed unless there's a complete recall(a la WarZ).
You have to be online to go offline, and while it lets you stay that way until you exit steam... I've had situations on vacation where I've had to reboot my laptop and suddenly been unable to play my games.
There's also often 3rd party DRM on top of steam being DRM.
There's poor(no) quality control, lots of shit is getting sold, often on false premises.
Tons of shit being sold at full price despite being in alpha/beta or even pre-alpha states. Remember when game testing was free? Yeah me too. Oh and some aren't even labeled early access. You know why Fray(recently relevant on these forums) had 27% metacritic rating? They sold it as a complete game when it was an alpha.
Developers are allowed to censor criticism of their game on the steam forums as much as they want.
And finally a personal bugbear: the search function is pretty crap, which is a real problem when there's that many games in their library.

I don't run into much of the shit personally because I do my research before I buy anything(and I still haven't used my 1 possible refund, in 11 years), but it's still valid points.

this was a bug that was fixed ages ago, you can now go offline at any time, i think the only requirement is having steam installed and have been logged on atleast once in a particular PC in the past, then you can play offline any time you want


i dont get the hate early access seems to get sometimes, you can always NOT buy an incomplete game, but as DAYZ, Starbound and Rust have proven, theres a market for these things, there people who want to contribute to a game's development or play early

you and i dont fall within that group but i dont think thats a reason to diss the system, theres some good to be had from it, for both the devs and the customers, is not an inherently bad system designed from the ground up to exploit customers

 

[Cerebrawl]

No selling/trading used games, or even activated but unplayed.

It's not a flaw. It's a feature request. It would be a flaw if it was intended to be there but it isn't.

You're not seriously going with the old "it's not a flaw it's a feature" unironically are you? Also this one is on shaky legal grounds here in the EU by which I mean it's against EU law.

You have to be online to go offline, and while it lets you stay that way until you exit steam... I've had situations on vacation where I've had to reboot my laptop and suddenly been unable to play my games.

This has been resolved a couple of years ago. It is no longer an issue.

Strange that I had this on my last vacation. April 2013. Or maybe you're not being entirely truthful.

Tons of shit being sold at full price despite being in alpha/beta or even pre-alpha states.

Prices are not dictated by Valve - publishers set their prices.

Let me rephrase: Valve is letting them put unfinished games up on their storefront with absolutely zero quality control.

Remember when game testing was free? Yeah me too. Oh and some aren't even labeled early access. You know why Fray(recently relevant on these forums) had 27% metacritic rating? They sold it as a complete game when it was an alpha.

Frey had its servers taken down. Apparently for being shit or something. And that happened over a year ago - the game itself has been on Steam longer than that (even twice, apparently). Are any newer pre-release games not marketed as such? As far as I am aware all Early Access games are categorised as Early Access.

Fray was released as a finished product when it was in alpha. This was before there was such a thing as an early access program on steam. I know because it was a game I was interested in and almost bought. But it's not always that they use the early access system, I think Jim had one on his channel recently that had beta in the title and wasn't early access. Some early access games won't be finished either, there was(is) a pretty interesting but buggy roguelike that's in there that the developers have basically cut and run with, no more updates. I forget what it's called.

And finally a personal bugbear: the search function is pretty crap, which is a real problem when there's that many games in their library.

What do you mean? Any time I've used it it returns me what I ask for. True, it might use a bit more advanced search terms but as it stands it operates to a satisfactory level - enter a name, it returns you a name. If you want more, it's not a flaw, it's a feature request again.

Yeah I want to be able to do more advanced searching, again, this is a personal bugbear. For starters I'd like to be able to exclude DLC, because page upon page of DLC from certain games is a hassle to wade through.

 

[Cerebrawl]

this was a bug that was fixed ages ago, you can now go offline at any time, i think the only requirement is having steam installed and have been logged on atleast once in a particular PC in the past, then you can play offline any time you want

I actually ran into this on my last vacation, april 2013. As long as I didn't reboot my computer after the most recent login to steam it lets me go offline mode(I can put the laptop in hibernate and start it up again too, no problem), but if I reboot, then steam specifically tells me that it no longer has my login information and won't let me in, even in offline mode.

 

[hermes]

To tell you the truth, its because no one cares about Ubisoft. Outside of Assassins Creed and the odd game here and there, they really don't have enough properties that people care about.

They have done some bad things over the years: Online DRM for single player games, poor consumer's opinion (the whole "PC gamers are pirates by default"), milking franchises to death (Assassins Creed), single player content sold as DLC (again, Assassins Creed), having to register to their own service to access content (UPlay), etc. Most of them were done before even EA tried it, but people seems to forget them more often because they simply don't care about it.

For example, if you thought ME3 ending was terrible, you should have seen AC3 ending. From a gameplay perspective, it was broken; from a storyline perspective, it was preachy, pretentious, came out of nowhere, contradicted the rest of the story and made no sense... but since, apparently, no one cares about the franchise story, no one gave them flack for it.

 

[NuclearKangaroo]

this was a bug that was fixed ages ago, you can now go offline at any time, i think the only requirement is having steam installed and have been logged on atleast once in a particular PC in the past, then you can play offline any time you want

I actually ran into this on my last vacation, april 2013. As long as I didn't reboot my computer after the most recent login to steam it lets me go offline mode(I can put the laptop in hibernate and start it up again too, no problem), but if I reboot, then steam specifically tells me that it no longer has my login information and won't let me in, even in offline mode.

well thats weird because i have loged in from my brothers laptop countless times without any internet connection, from college and during a blackout, so yeah, 0 internet access


try loging in without a connection right now

 

[DoPo]

No selling/trading used games, or even activated but unplayed.

It's not a flaw. It's a feature request. It would be a flaw if it was intended to be there but it isn't.

You're not seriously going with the old "it's not a flaw it's a feature" unironically are you? Also this one is on shaky legal grounds here in the EU by which I mean it's against EU law.

Apparently not according to Germany [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/132104-Valve-Triumphs-Over-German-Consumer-Group]. And no I am not saying "it's not a flaw it's a feature" I am instead saying it's a feature request which is distinct thing from a feature.

As an aside, I would also like to tell you from first hand experience that "not a bug but a feature" is often times a very legitimate response to user submitted bugs. I would not wish it upon you to experience these first hand as they are quite frustrating.

You have to be online to go offline, and while it lets you stay that way until you exit steam... I've had situations on vacation where I've had to reboot my laptop and suddenly been unable to play my games.

This has been resolved a couple of years ago. It is no longer an issue.

Strange that I had this on my last vacation. April 2013. Or maybe you're not being entirely truthful.

I would suggest trying again and reporting back what the results are.

this was a bug that was fixed ages ago, you can now go offline at any time, i think the only requirement is having steam installed and have been logged on atleast once in a particular PC in the past, then you can play offline any time you want

I actually ran into this on my last vacation, april 2013. As long as I didn't reboot my computer after the most recent login to steam it lets me go offline mode(I can put the laptop in hibernate and start it up again too, no problem), but if I reboot, then steam specifically tells me that it no longer has my login information and won't let me in, even in offline mode.

If I recall correctly, at the time the saved credentials were valid over a power cycle as opposed to not working at all. That or maybe you had to close down Steam before power cycling and you could use them after the next boot, however that may have been something later on. At this time and over the past half a year, at the very least (it's actually more but I cannot confirm how much is the guaranteed time I've seen it), booting Steam if you have no Internet connection would start it in Offline mode.

Tons of shit being sold at full price despite being in alpha/beta or even pre-alpha states.

Prices are not dictated by Valve - publishers set their prices.

Let me rephrase: Valve is letting them put unfinished games up on their storefront with absolutely zero quality control.

Yet Valve are doing something about it. They are going to ditch Greenlight [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/131366-Gabe-Newell-Our-Goal-Is-To-Make-Greenlight-Go-Away] which has been source of many problems, and they have also added community reviews and tags on the game page. While that is not the same as checking everything themselves, these are steps towards informing the users of what they are looking at.

Remember when game testing was free? Yeah me too. Oh and some aren't even labeled early access. You know why Fray(recently relevant on these forums) had 27% metacritic rating? They sold it as a complete game when it was an alpha.

Frey had its servers taken down. Apparently for being shit or something. And that happened over a year ago - the game itself has been on Steam longer than that (even twice, apparently). Are any newer pre-release games not marketed as such? As far as I am aware all Early Access games are categorised as Early Access.

Fray was released as a finished product when it was in alpha. This was before there was such a thing as an early access program on steam. I know because it was a game I was interested in and almost bought. But it's not always that they use the early access system, I think Jim had one on his channel recently that had beta in the title and wasn't early access. Some early access games won't be finished either, there was(is) a pretty interesting but buggy roguelike that's in there that the developers have basically cut and run with, no more updates. I forget what it's called.[/quote]

You should note I pointed out how long this happened and asked you to provide more recent examples.

And finally a personal bugbear: the search function is pretty crap, which is a real problem when there's that many games in their library.

What do you mean? Any time I've used it it returns me what I ask for. True, it might use a bit more advanced search terms but as it stands it operates to a satisfactory level - enter a name, it returns you a name. If you want more, it's not a flaw, it's a feature request again.

Yeah I want to be able to do more advanced searching, again, this is a personal bugbear. For starters I'd like to be able to exclude DLC, because page upon page of DLC from certain games is a hassle to wade through.

1. Then, as I said, it's a feature request, not a flaw with the system in that case.
2. In fact it's not even that, as you are literally complaining about a feature that has existed for quite a while. You can select "Games" rather than "All items" in the dropdown like so [http://store.steampowered.com/search/?sort_by=Price&sort_order=ASC&category1=998&price=0%2C2].

And there you go - "not a bug, it's a feature". Thank you for providing an example that those exist and are used unironically.

 

[JediMB]

Ubisoft are terrible. No denying that.

The only Ubisoft-published game I've purchased in ages is South Park, though. And that's just because it was made by Obsidian. Besides that one exception, I'm on an Ubisoft boycott.