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

[Do4600]

Ubisoft does much of the bad things that EA does. What EA does better, or I suppose worse, is actively buy up the most creative and worthwhile developers and their properties, give them a project with crippling requirements and deadlines and then when the game fails they fire everybody and stomp the company out of existence. They use franchises and developers as hostages. It's gotten to the point within the last five years that you can't see the game amidst the schemes. Every new game they make seems to be trying ever more intrusive ways of getting into your wallet somehow. The most ludicrous practice, pay money to EA to play the game, then pay money to EA to shorten the amount of time you have to play the game to win. When the fans do finally complain, they have press releases that insult and lie to them.

Ubisoft might be evil, but they are chaotic evil, EA is lawful evil, they seem to have a very explicit plan and a set of guidelines that maximize the damage they can do to their customers.

 

[Scow2]

Another thing to keep in mind is that Ubisoft has actually apologized for its anti-consumer policies: They went through a "Stupid Corporate Phase", pissed everyone off, and started backtracking since then. Unlike EA, they seem to learn from their mistakes.

 

[Pseudonym]

For me, when I think of Ubisoft I think of games made by Michael Ancel and his team. (I'm most familiar with rayman and beyond good and evil from Ubisoft) Ubisoft was involved in creating those games by means of doing whatever it is publishers do. That makes them at least somewhat of a force for good in my eyes. Ubisoft also makes somewhat unique openworld games like assasins creed and far cry 3 and while I think the gameplay of both those two franchises isn't exactly executed the way I would have liked it to be I can see there is some kind of creative vision there. Even the shooters I've played from them like Bia and Rainbow six feel somewhat unique. Ubisoft seems like a company where, for all their shitty business decisions there is still some commitment to quality and art. If I look at origin what games do I see? Battlefield, titanfall, simcity, thesims, fifa, madden, plants vs zombies. Now none of those games in and of themselves are horrible but these are all really safe investments that aren't bringing much new to the table. When they are lined up like this I see shooters, sports games and simsgames. It all feels commercial, having 'mass appeal.' That isn't a problem with the games per sé but with the lineup taken as a whole. That whole commitment to art, uniqueness and quality seems to be missing. There seems to be more of a commitment to pleasing shareholders by making safe investments. Now obviously this isn't much of an argument I am making here so I am going to cover my ass by saying that this is the feeling or 'vibe' I get from EA which might say more about me than about them.

 

[ProtosOmega]

EA killed off a lot of franchises and companies for under performance.

EA has also pumped out more annual franchises than either Ubisoft of Activision, and destroyed the core idea of a lot of series to popularise them (Dead Space 3...)

Ubisoft may have Assassin's Creed, but off the top of my head, I can't think of one other annualised series they have been pumping out sub-par sequels to.

 

[TomWiley]

I'd say it's because that ubisoft puts out less condescending rejections of criticism than EA does. Do they still do that? Yeah, but not nearly as much as EA. That's why EA gets more hate.

It's the same thing with console hardware. Both the ps4 and the xbox one have no backwards compatibility, but the Xbox One got way more bad press because not only did it try always online DRM with the console and check ins and forced kinect, but the marketing bosses got all smug and dismissive towards the customers before the company backed out on the policies anyways.

This excuses nobody, however. Executives really need to stop being such morons.

Well considering the avalanche of shit those executers have to personally deal with whenever the reactive masses of us gamers upsets over something (read daily) it's understandable if they get a little bit dismissive after a while.

Especially if half of the aggressive crap you have to deal with are just people getting angry over misconceptions and things that just aren't, as in the case of the Xbox One shitstorm you mentioned.

 

[Brian Tams]

Its because EA is more vocal about their idiocy. You don't see Ubisoft saying in interviews that their shitty DRM practices aren't as shitty as gamers make them out to be. The reason why we focus our anger on EA is because they hog the media spot light. If they would just shut up for a good four months then they wouldn't be as hated as they are.

 

[Flutterguy]

They don't have a stranglehold on sport game contracts and have a far less aggravating PR/advertising departments.

 

[Cerebrawl]

I'm sure I'm misinterpreting what you said... But how is this a bad thing? It only takes a shorter time to get to a reasonable price, that seems to be all good to me...

On Topic Ubisoft is evil, no doubt. I think they get less flac because EA is just more widely known (apart from the action/AAA crowd they also cater to sport and racing game fans )and a lot of it is just people hating on them because it is the popular thing to do.

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

Yeah I was listing one of the reasons why they aren't as hated as EA, they actually have a pretty reasonable pricing model, even if their DRM sucks.

EA is quite a bit greedier. Both in waiting a long time to drop prices or put anything on sale, and of course the latest fad of putting microtransactions in full price games(and the Free to Wait mobile thing).

 

[Use_Imagination_here]

They don't?

Well I fucking hate ubisoft, so there.

 

[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.

 

[EXos]

As mentioned by others EA fucks up sequels.
While Ubisoft's quality goes up and down. The first AC was a good game and AC2 was Great the spin-offs were neutral but I liked their stories. AC3 was mediocre and they fixed it by making AC4 great again.

Now for EA... The main reason I hate them can be summed up like this:

 

[Xdeser2]

Well, simply put, Ubisoft doesn't acquire devs and then ruin their games.

The Assassin's Creed games (While some may be more "meh" than others) have never been bad. Far Cry has only gotten better over the years, and the fact that they didn't mess with the South Park guys and Obsidian is kind of great. (I mean, they were making a licensed RPG. with no season pass! that's gotta drive boardroom members crazy!)

 

[Ieyke]

Ubisoft is just trying to protect their stuff against piracy, so they try different DRMs.
When people hate it, they generally listen. They fix things that are broken. They acknowledge when they fuck up and apologize.

I really don't have any problem at all with Ubisoft. I almost always get what they're trying to do, and they seem to try and do it without pissing people off (and not necessarily always succeeding).

At worst, you have to sign in to uPlay, and that's actually fairly minor.

EA is approximately a thousand times worse in every respect.
They're unrepentant douchebags, their shit doesn't work most of the time, and they won't even begin to consider changing anything until people are so pissed off that it starts crippling their profits.
Also, EA buys good developers and ruins them.
Likewise, ruining good games and franchises (SimCity, Dungeon Keeper, etc).
And it does exclusivity BS with Origin (and Microsoft, apparently).
A lot of people rather just NOT play a game than play it through the abomination that is Origin.

 

[Ieyke]

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*

 

[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.