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

[WindKnight]

Because Ubisoft may do something to frustrate you, but EA look at that frustration and goes 'hey, another way to earn money, lets do that!'

EA hasn't pioneered anti-consumer profiteering, but whenever they see someone else do something that earns them money (possibly at the cost of consumer satisfaction), they jump on it wholeheartedly and make it their own.

Free to play make money via micro-transactions? stick them in full price games so the consumer pays twice!

Free to play games generally gives the users a few hours of play a day before setting a timer that can be circumvented by real money? Make basic actions take several hours to complete unless the user pays real money!

Added to that, EA has a lot if big name licenses and franchises under their belt their actively squandering because they don't have to wit to do anything with them. (I'm hoping this time respawn get to make the games they want too, and EA doesn't try and trap them into titanfall sequels like Activision did with call of duty)

 

[Kevlar Eater]

Because when I start a game on my computer, I expect it to work. I know that any Ubisoft game I launch is 100% likely to work without problems (then again, the games I've got are recent, and it took two free games to get me to install uPlay).

EA games, on the other hand, make me skeptical each time I launch them, making me wonder if this will be the day that [insert EA game] craps out and I can't freaking play. Example: Mass Effect 3. First, the unstable server. Then, I buy Citadel and my online pass (thankfully a defunct EA feature) got revoked. As of three weeks to this day, I bought Omega and for some strange reason, From Ashes becomes unauthorised. The only solution that thankfully saved me both time and bandwidth: play offline. I seriously have to do that in order to ever again play ME3 because the DLC's don't work together online for some illogical reason.

By Lyssa's lying heart, I've had a much easier time getting Skyrim mods to play nice with each other, and if I screw up on that, I know it's my fault and fixing the problem is relatively simple. Can't say the same for unmodded EA games.

 

[ViridianV6]

EA's mess ups get more public coverage as they occur on a more regular basis and that their mess ups affect a larger group of people due to the nature of them. Ubi's mess ups tend to affect less people and the games they produce tend to be consistently above average for the industry.

Also Ubi has the balls to use their amassed capital to make something like Far Cry 3 Blood Dragon, a game that can sell on its own merits and without any name recognition (despite having "Far Cry" in the title). This is in stark contrast to EA who try to bleed dry all their current intellectual properties (kudos to them for Mirror's Edge though).

Not a fan of many of the games that these firms with the exceptions of FC3, FC3: BD, and Mirror's edge.

And Assassin's Creed can go sod a dog.

 

[Canadamus Prime]

As I recall Ubisoft was the primary hate figure a few years back, but EA has since taken that position and justifiably so. Personally I hate all major AAA publishers, just EA more than most.

 

[EvilMaggot]

Because Ubisoft has done good the last year - year and a half. They have begun to put out quality games (Black Flag, Splinter Cell: Black List) and thier Uplay service is better than origin because you can what would have been DLC from EA, you can get that grough Uplay for just playing the game and have enough uplay points to get the small dlc's in other games

And the quality titles to come from Ubisoft is too damn high! so Ubisoft is aright in my book again unlike EA.. but thats a whole other discussion

 

[Zipa]

Ubi still get plenty of flack for the stupid shit they do. Like the whole all PC gamers are pirates thing, that didn't end so well for them.

 

[Stu35]

EA does a lot of stupid things, and they get a lot of justifiable hate (ME3, anyone?) but Ubisoft pulls that crap with EVERY GAME THEY RELEASE and no one really says anything about it.

Stick of Truth is an UBISOFT published game, and aside from some censorship issues, they don't seem to have fucked that.

That said, I'm pretty sure UBISOFT did get it's share of the venom from the gaming community in recent years. Stick of Truth aside, I've no really bought any UBISOFT games for quite some time - not out of any righteous anger at the company, simply because they've not published anything I want to play.

I think the last thing I got before Stick of Truth was Far Cry 3, and before that I'm not sure... Brothers in Arms possibly?

 

[Ratty]

EA buys companies then slowly drains their series of all flavor and originality through corporate design-by-committee[footnote]Just like EA does with their original series.[/footnote]. They also usually fire everyone who was in those studios either before or after officially closing them down the second they're no longer insanely profitable, or when EA management lays an egg and needs someone else to take the fall. Westwood, Pandemic, Bioware, the list goes on.

EA also hoardes lots of licensed IPs but refuses to do anything interesting with them, see: Turning Harry Potter into a 3rd person shooter or the same NFL game they've been remaking every year since they got the exclusive license a decade ago. While Ubisoft and EA continue to have a lot of anti-consumer practices, EA has usually been more bald-faced about it, I think all of these things combine to explain why EA gets more hate generally.

 

[Rob Robson]

Don't know what you're talking about, my top 3 most evil companies in games goes like this:

1. Ubisoft
2. Sony Online Entertainment
3. EA Games

Ubisoft are anti-consumer in every single thing that they do. That is why I haven't bought anything with the Ubisoft logo on it for around 10 years.

Did you know they took down the multiplayer servers for Heroes of Might and Magic V less than a year after its launch?

These people are cockroaches.

 

[Angelous Wang]

Ubisoft is Developer first and Publisher second therefore they tend to fuck up their own games only and do not really interfere too much with 3 parties they publish (apart for pushing UPlay, but that just business).

EA is primarily Publisher and with sub Developer (EA Sports) which buy other peoples popular/successful IP's, buy other popular/successful Developer companies to develop under them and fuck them up.

Ubisoft actually does it's own work and sometimes gets it wrong.

EA sit in its HQ making bad decisions that screw up 1000 peoples work.

 

[WouldYouKindly]

Uplay does annoy the piss out of me, especially since it still fires up for games I bought on steam. Now I've got two resource suckers in the background stealing a frame or two a second.

There's also the matter that they make games that have a good single player drive and have backed off the more intrusive forms of always on DRM.

There seems to be less fuckery with management in Ubisoft. They seem to put out a lot of major titles that are at least somewhat experimental. While I don't like what they've done with Splinter Cell of late, it's at least not just copying an old formula again and again. It just seems like their design houses have more creative freedom than EA, with the exception of being forced to slice parts out for DLC.

In the end, they are a member of a dying breed. Square Enix isn't doing too hot, mostly due to bloated marketing budgets. You'll see most of these hype machines go away or restructure to have less overhead and stop making so many damned commercials. Web ads are much cheaper and will definitely reach your target audience. I'd love to see a hoard of publishers like Paradox Entertainment. They have 0 media presence and it doesn't matter because their audiences seek out their games. That's what niche audiences do.

 

[Darth Marsden]

EA has done very little, if anything, right for years, and even when it DOES do something well, it then turns around and screws it up.

One major flaw about EA is their tendency to buy out developers, tie them to harsh deadlines and restrictive development 'guidelines', and then when the games don't do as well as their stupidly inflated expectations say they need to, then close the studios down. Bullfrog, Origins, Pandemic, etc.

On top of this, they're also experts at completely ruining their own franchises - Command & Conquer, Dead Space, Dungeon Keeper, Medal of Honor, Sim City, etc - while failing to learn any sort of lessons about WHY they fail, or simply let their franchises waste away. Mirror's Edge is pretty much the only exception to that, sadly.

They also push microtransactions and co-op into games that have no business including them, they frequently allow games to ship in unfinished states and when online-only servers are needed for games to work they frequently aren't ready at launch.

Finally, Origin. Trying to compete against Steam is stupid. Forcing people to use your software instead of Steam is bulls**t. Forcing people to use your inferior and glitchy software is just f**king INSANE.

Ubisoft, while not exactly being great, are at least willing to try different things, allow more creative risks (like Rayman Origins - a full-blown 2D platformer released on disc in this day and age? Yeah, sadly that's a risk), don't treat their franchises like complete crap, listen to what fans want (liked the boat stuff in AssCreed 3? Have a whole game around them!) and their games do tend to be a lot more creative as a result.

Oh, and they release their games on Steam (even if they do still force uPlay on you, but even then uPlay's not THAT bad, and hey, South Park didn't even have it, so they're learning!).

 

[rofltehcat]

I do not know why or how exactly, but my impression of Ubisoft is that they are slightly incompetent and are thus doing some annoying/bad stuff not because they want to mess with their customers but because they are either emulating some of the actions of other publishers but without an "evil agenda" or overall longterm plan behind it. It just doesn't know where to go.
No one really seems to care either for or against them. They are probably as average as a publisher can currently be.

EA on the other hand just seems to me like a company that wants to press the last drop of money out of every customer, every developer and every franchise/game. In this they do not seem to care for the mid- and long-term effect to those. If one thing breaks from overabuse, find another thing to abuse. Their only long-term goals seem to be about gradually worsening things just so the next bad thing to do seems just not bad enough to meet any real opposition. While at the same time being really condescending about it.
They know fully well that people do not like them for their actions but instead of spending a little of their money to improve things or pass on even the slightest profit that would be possible by just being "less evil", they'd rather spend buckets of money on plastic surgery and bombastic marketing displays, then wonder why all the people aren't loving their abhorrent falseness.

 

[st0pnsw0p]

Because they're nowhere near as bad.

The biggest problem I've seen people have with them is uPlay (and the Watch Dogs debacle, which I don't think is as big a deal as the rest of the internet seems to think and will likely be forgotten soon), but they've apparently decided to stop doing that [http://www.joystiq.com/2013/10/31/ubisoft-cans-uplay-passport-for-all-future-games-starting-with/] and they got rid of their always-online DRM back in 2012 so whatever.

Really, I don't have any problems with them, they might milk Assassin's Creed, but they take more risks (Rayman, Child of Light, Blood Dragon) than most other major publishers so it kinda balances out in the end.

 

[Blitsie]

In all honesty, I went through a point where I absolutely loathed them, especially for piledriving Assassins Creed into the ground and treating PC gamers like absolute dirt, casualization of Splinter Cell and neglecting Beyond Good & Evil 2 is also pretty lame of them.

But lately, they've been bettering themselves at least. Assassins Creed IV showed the series still had life in it, they created Rocksmith which still remains the best damn thing I've ever played, Far Cry 3 (and its silly expansion) was fantastic and I had a chance to talk to a bunch of Ubi Montreal's developers and they all look very happy working there, so while Ubisoft is by no means CD Projekt RED levels of good, they're certainly not the very worst.

EA on the other hand, yeahhhh... franchise genocide (I honestly don't think there's any other company out there with more ruined franchises under their belt than EA) alone makes them a much, much worse company, and that's just the tip of the iceberg sadly. EA definitely gets more hate because, quite simply, they're one of the most godawful gaming companies present at the moment. Ubisoft is nowhere near that.

 

[Seracen]

Ubi does get flak for their DRM, don't worry.
They also got bashed for some anti-PC attitudes in the past.

It's just that EA does DRM and so much more.

Usually EA, Ubi and Activision make the top 3 list of gamer grievances.

Also Capcom (DLC). I think I will paraphrase Jim Sterling here, in that EA seems to see all the bad practices of their competitors, then incorporate ALL of them.

However, it seems that all developers everywhere are starting to drink the Kool-Aid. I haven't been so livid at Square Enix in quite a while, and Namco-Bandai seem hellbent on pissing away all the profits and good will they've spent the last two years garnering...

 

[Requia]

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.

 

[Lizmichi]

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.