Ubisoft employees are terrified

[Citizen Cook]

This is so sad to see.

https://insider-gaming.com/ubisoft-employees-worried-about-layoffs-after-tencent-deal/

I hope all the talented developers at Ubisoft either retain their employment or get work elsewhere.
They don’t deserve to be treated this way by incompetent management.

[Dr.Acula]

Originally posted by Citizen Cook:

Regarding the bloat and grind in Ubisoft games… I don’t know why Ubisoft keep making such large games when the data clearly shows how few gamers actually complete all of that “content”
Surely it would be better to focus on smaller games, quality over quantity?

The problem is that with how big Ubisoft actually is. That makes it very difficult to make smaller games. It's like having a restaurant with 20 chefs in the kitchen and you only want to serve 10 variations of pasta. You'd need the restaurant to be filled with thousands of people every day for it to make sense. If you only get 10 customers then it's bound to fail. This goes especially if you have similar smaller restaurants who can do the same thing with a fraction of the staff in a more consistent manner.

Ubisoft with how they are structured at the moment need to make big productions that sell at least 10 million copies with each release. But the company is infested with people who create problems in this regard.

I'm not just talking about the "woke" crowd who is so focussed on their political agendas that they can't focus on actually making something fun or rather their idea of fun is wildly different from what average players consider fun.

But you also have people who are so focussed on draining as much money from the wallets with awful monetization schemes which will also inevitably collide with the aspect of actually making the game fun.

How can anyone consider ACS good when you can quite literally buy strong equipment (not just style but with actual stats) for real money in the ingame store? It's insane to me to even consider giving money to Ubisoft as a customer at the moment.

[wezard]

too bad

[rolfvonsmirker]

Originally posted by Citizen Cook:

This is so sad to see.

Sad? It's absolutely glorious. lmfao

[Citizen Cook]

Originally posted by Dr.Acula:

Originally posted by Citizen Cook:

Regarding the bloat and grind in Ubisoft games… I don’t know why Ubisoft keep making such large games when the data clearly shows how few gamers actually complete all of that “content”
Surely it would be better to focus on smaller games, quality over quantity?

The problem is that with how big Ubisoft actually is. That makes it very difficult to make smaller games. It's like having a restaurant with 20 chefs in the kitchen and you only want to serve 10 variations of pasta. You'd need the restaurant to be filled with thousands of people every day for it to make sense. If you only get 10 customers then it's bound to fail. This goes especially if you have similar smaller restaurants who can do the same thing with a fraction of the staff in a more consistent manner.

Ubisoft with how they are structured at the moment need to make big productions that sell at least 10 million copies with each release. But the company is infested with people who create problems in this regard.

I'm not just talking about the "woke" crowd who is so focussed on their political agendas that they can't focus on actually making something fun or rather their idea of fun is wildly different from what average players consider fun.

But you also have people who are so focussed on draining as much money from the wallets with awful monetization schemes which will also inevitably collide with the aspect of actually making the game fun.

How can anyone consider ACS good when you can quite literally buy strong equipment (not just style but with actual stats) for real money in the ingame store? It's insane to me to even consider giving money to Ubisoft as a customer at the moment.

When I look back, some of my favourite games n the OG Xbox were Ubisoft games.
Splinter Cell, Sands of Time, XIII, Far Cry etc… were all awesome and totally unique.
My last Ubisoft game was BG&E 20th Anniversary. My last AssCred game was Black Flag. I just couldn’t take the bloat, grind and repetition anymore. Which is really sad because the various time and location settings of the series really interest me; I just wish they were standalone games and not part of the overall AssCred franchise. The franchise mentality combined with the bloat and grind just killed my interest in their games.

Maybe that’s what they hope this Tencent deal will help them get back to; smaller games with reasonable budgets and reasonable expectations for success.

[Dr.Acula]

Originally posted by Citizen Cook:

When I look back, some of my favourite games n the OG Xbox were Ubisoft games.
Splinter Cell, Sands of Time, XIII, Far Cry etc… were all awesome and totally unique.
My last Ubisoft game was BG&E 20th Anniversary. My last AssCred game was Black Flag. I just couldn’t take the bloat, grind and repetition anymore. Which is really sad because the various time and location settings of the series really interest me; I just wish they were standalone games and not part of the overall AssCred franchise. The franchise mentality combined with the bloat and grind just killed my interest in their games.

Maybe that’s what they hope this Tencent deal will help them get back to; smaller games with reasonable budgets and reasonable expectations for success.

I can understand the problem. I basically checked out from Ubisoft games the first time around the time when AC3 got released. I gave it a try back then and within the first couple of hours I simply got bored of the game. I didn't even make it to the part where Connor got to that base of his. This also resulted in me skipping basically all AC that followed afterwards. The same goes for Far Cry and other Ubisoft games. I played Anno 1404 when it got released but skipped all follow up Anno games until I gave 1800 a chance (and was not very fond of that one btw.).

About 2 years ago I actually went back to the AC series and started to play through them in Order (1, 2, Brotherhood, Revelations, 3, 4, Unity, Syndicate). I completed the main story lines in all of them up to Syndicate and if you ever consider taking another look at AC then Syndicate might still be considered good as it was the last one which was basically a true AC game. It already had some RPG elements in it but in terms of combat, general gameplay and writing it was still fun. Also moving around the city was pretty fast. I think they really dropped the ball when they completely changed the formula in Origins and stuck with that.

Anyway Ubisoft has some general issues with the design of their games where they are lacking good new ideas. Let's be honest here. What does ACS actually add to the franchise? Riding around on a horse? Been there, done that. Having two main characters? See Syndicate (and done better there). Having a base of operations? Has been done multiple times before as well. Side activities? Had tons of those (done better as well) in earlier entries.

When I look at people praising ACS every single time it's either about environments looking good (water, trees and whatever else they see) where I still think Black Flag with its environments is at the top of the AC franchise. Or some might praise stuff they can destroy (cutting bamboo). How are they supposed to be selling points for a game?

[Deadly Dan]

But I thought there will be no layoffs? I thought they will just continue like they have been for the last few years, because that is how you save a struggling corporation. At least that's what some of the people here have told me...

[Coldhands]

Originally posted by Trunks:

How many unsuccessful games are you allowed before its ok to be let go? Why do developers get held to such a high standard over a regular persons 9-5?

I mean, Shadows appears to be a reasonably well polished game, with a good graphics, solid gameplay, a number of QoL features. It doesn't sound like most of the developers working on it are a problem.

[JacEEEBABY]

When you keep making bad games over and over like Ubisoft don't be surprised when the mass layoffs hit.

[dulany67]

Originally posted by Coldhands:

Originally posted by Trunks:

How many unsuccessful games are you allowed before its ok to be let go? Why do developers get held to such a high standard over a regular persons 9-5?

I mean, Shadows appears to be a reasonably well polished game, with a good graphics, solid gameplay, a number of QoL features. It doesn't sound like most of the developers working on it are a problem.

You know Veilguard was also competently made. Gameplay was fun if you enjoyed the combat. It was basically well made. But 6 months down the road, it is generally considered a mediocre to poor game. Most of the team were subsequently let go.

Is that fair? Maybe not, but it is the way of things. And I would have a hard time finding any sympathy for Veilguard's writers or decision makers.

[LazyJoeBeard]

Looking at the state of their games it seems like quite a lot of the devs were not talented but they did say for a lot of them its their first game and that makes a lot of sense.

[Kensei]

Now is quite possibly the worst time to be laid off as any kind of software engineer. But in the long run they'll be better off for it. Anyone that's accumulated years of experience as a game dev should just strike out on their own and make their indie game.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yY-P3D63Z18

[Coldhands]

Originally posted by dulany67:

Originally posted by Coldhands:

I mean, Shadows appears to be a reasonably well polished game, with a good graphics, solid gameplay, a number of QoL features. It doesn't sound like most of the developers working on it are a problem.

You know Veilguard was also competently made. Gameplay was fun if you enjoyed the combat. It was basically well made. But 6 months down the road, it is generally considered a mediocre to poor game. Most of the team were subsequently let go.

Is that fair? Maybe not, but it is the way of things. And I would have a hard time finding any sympathy for Veilguard's writers or decision makers.

Sure. It's generally the rank-and-file that get **** on (by gamers and publishers), whether they do their jobs well or not. I'm saying that it really shouldn't be "okay" to let the Shadows devs go just because Shadows may not have met sales expectations. Most of the devs appear to have done everything they could do to make a good game.

And yeah, I don't have a lot of sympathy for the Veilguard writers either, because that part of the last Dragon Age was bad. The rest was decent to good though, so I do feel bad for the rest of the Veilguard dev team; I don't think there was anything else they could have reasonably done to keep their jobs.

[JacEEEBABY]

They are terrified because they have no skills and don't belong in the gaming industry. They got exposed and rightfully so.

[Kensei]

Originally posted by JacEEEBABY:

They are terrified because they have no skills and don't belong in the gaming industry. They got exposed and rightfully so.

A mid, nay even a senior game dev, doesn't really have that much control over the ideological direction of a project like this. They have to fall in line or be jobless and do leet code for eternity while begging for a job on LinkedIn. They don't deserve any resentment or backlash.

They should do what everyone else should strive to do -- work for themselves.

[Gamefan]

Oh thank god people are finally accepting the layoffs are real. All day it’s been nothing but people saying this is actually a good thing! When has something like this ever been good?