Ever the disappointment, aren't you?
Oh Ubisoft, it seems like you're ever the disappointing mole on the face of your own catalogue, as whenever you've a new shift in direction or policy everyone grits their teeth and longs for some fictional Ubisoft in the past that would have made better choices. I'm going to level with you, I don't recognise that Ubisoft, or at least I don't think I've lived long enough to ever have seen their face. When has Ubisoft been anything more than the trend chasers with the few lucky foots in the market that they've milked to exhaustion? Was it in the Prince of Persia days? Before that? And do not misunderstand me, I do enjoy a Ubisoft game every now and again, but I haven't really been blown away by anything special out of them since probably Assassin's Creed Brotherhood. (And that's going back a long way) I suppose what I'm saywing is: somehow even when their dropping terrible tidbits of news about their future leanings as a company it reeks with unoriginality. Ya'll can't even come up with a direction for your company without looking over to your partners notes and copying down their answers? Seriously!? So I'm not shocked by this latest controversy, not even really all that mad, just tired. Someone save these guys from themselves, please.
Of course, I'm referring to the very recent reveal of where Ubisoft management are leaning their huge European development studio in the years to come, courtesy of an investor call. (The bain of all shifty business choices trying to avoid public scrutiny) Here the heads of the brain tried to sell the grand idea to the money men; the key idea that would lead them all to future riches; in order to become rich they would transition from creating three or more AAA games a year to dropping a Free to Play title in there or two. Wait what? How does that... where did you go wrong? It's as though the execs correctly identified that their output quota was actively killing their creativity, but somehow utterly failed in translating that over into a solution. What you need is breathing room for your studios to make a game that's actually interesting and risky, with the chance to break new ground and maybe even start it's own trend if you get lucky. But instead we're getting more Free to play. Yay, I guess.
So we're into the 'Free to play' argument again, are we? The question of whether or not it's better to exchange a one-time fee for an equivalent experience, or have that money (and usually more) extracted out of you piecemeal through soul crushing whittling and barebones panhandling. (I'm sure that, from my tone, you can guess which side of the fence I'm sitting on.) Now of course, 'Free to play' isn't the mark of the beast and there can be some titles out there that don't just do the model injustice, but absolutely rock it and make it shine. I play a few of them. But if that isn't the exception and not the rule I don't know what is, and if there's one assessment I can make regarding Ubisoft as a whole, it's been a very long time since that studio has been 'exceptional'. What they have been, more often of late, is predisposed towards taking shortcuts in favour of benefitting greed. Take the 'time saver' packs they released in place of game balancing, the retexture skins they sell on the marketplace for ludicrous prices, the overbloated yet somehow underfilled, games that get flogged at full price. If anyone's going to take advantage of a Free to Play model in all the worst ways, it's Ubisoft.
For fans, however, there's a sense of a changing of the guard which a lot of them are taking as a personal loss. Because Ubisoft aren't just slapping Free-to-play versions of all their top brands on the slate for the price of nothing, oh no. Every action must have an opposite or equal reaction, afterall; thus we're going to be seeing less of the big releases that all those people flocked to Ubisoft for in the past. Their bread and butter is going to be scaled back and rationed so that they have enough provisions to nurse some diseased lung of a f2p life service into the world; what a deal? From the way they make it sound, as well, it's as though we can expect a good many of these Free to Play games coming yearly, as Ubisoft are shifting their weight heavily onto this train expecting the dividends to flow as freely for them as it has for all the others who started the ball. (You know, despite that not exactly working out in practise just earlier this year with... what was it called?... the Battle Royale... Nuts....'Hyper Scape'! Had to look it up.)
Many a despondent eulogy was shared on Twitter in the wake of this announcement from the masses seeing this as the end of an era for Ubisoft games going forward. Some who managed to listen in on the call reported that the Inventors, too, were at least dubious if no downright sceptical about this announcement. So I guess this isn't just a case of money men talking a language that us paupers can't understand, even people with finance on the mind aren't sure why Ubisoft is so darn certain that their gold lies at the end of pre-plundered rainbows. After Fortnite, Warzone, Genshin Impact, Path of Exiles and all others of it's ilk have made their fortunes by being pioneers, Ubisoft trails behind for scraps and wonders why there isn't more. I don't know, maybe this is actually genius and Ubisoft is just dripping with great and groundbreaking ideas that would only work with a Free-to-play model. I certainly don't believe that to be the case, but as they say 'Assumptions' make an 'ass' out of 'you' and 'me'. (Or something like that, I don't know, I always hated that expression.)
Ubisoft on the otherhand, predictably, don't see the problem. ("It's all cool guys; what are ya worrying about?") In a canned jar of rhetoric chucked through the Eurogamer office windows, Ubisoft said the following: "Our intention is to- blah blah- excited to be investing more in free-to-play experiences, however we want to clarify that does not mean reducing our AAA offering." Except it does though, guys. "We are moving away from our prior comment regarding 3-4 premium AAAs per year" sort of explicitly implies there will be less AAAs. And assuming that this is just a 'lost-in-translation' issue, you expect us to believe what? That Ubisoft is going to turn around and make 3 AAA games a year ontop of new Free-to-play games every once and a while? With what army of development studios? Or are they going to shove these F2Ps onto the big studios as side projects that they can hardly afford to take on because they're already stretched thin as it is? Or ship these off to inexpensive contractors who don't know the difference between a game and a wall port? Or heck, maybe they literally intend to double their entire staff load within a year in order to fuel these cursed ventures; then at least some folk would actually be getting jobs out of this deal. (We'll call that the silver lining if that turns out to be the case.)
Ubisoft insist theirs is a steadfast commitment to sharing premium experiences from all of their favourite franchises, (answering a query that no one asked) from "Far Cry 6, Rainbow Six Quarantine, Riders Republic and Skull and Bones". Huh, so that's your line-up, is it guys? At least one of those games has been delayed so much it isn't even funny and you seem to have conveniently forgotten how 'Beyond Good and Evil 2' has been in limbo for the past half century. But there seems to be something missing... something deeply important to- oh yeah; Where the heck is my Splinter Cell!? I know I'm kind of shoving it in here, but darn it I need an outlet! It's been too long without a premium stealth game on the market, we need someone to rise up and take the mantle! Oh, but are you waiting for someone else to claim the topspot and revive so that you can follow in their shadow and scoop up the excess? Yeah, that'd be fitting for you guys; wouldn't it?
Somehow commenting on how this is 'typical behaviour from Ubisoft' isn't very comforting. These are the people in charge of the biggest European game studio collective still around, so they have uncomfortable reach with their poor decisions. If there's one thing we can hold out hope for, it's the fact that Ubisoft have, in pulling this move, proved themselves as unreliable when it comes to executing plans, so we could be right back to square one in a year from now. One can only hope so, because at this rate Ubisoft's looking ready to do a pro-Konami move and systematically dissolve every last bit of fandom adoration they've saved up over their long career. Don't think it's possible? Remember that Metal Gear was a series 8 years older than Ubisoft's whole time in the game's industry; and look what happened to my boy Snake. (Consequences come for us all.)
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