Business Video game maker Ubisoft in chaos after anti-DEI backlash - The ‘Assassin’s Creed’ game maker delayed its biggest launch of the year, reduced forecasts, and is facing calls to sell, in what is being called an ‘incel victory.’

[Source Photos: Ubisoft and Pixabay]

On September 24, Ubisoft abruptly canceled its appearance at the Tokyo Game Show and postponed all press previews of the upcoming Assassin’s Creed Shadows. Wednesday, we learned why. Anti-DEI backlash has sent the company spinning.

The Paris-based video game publisher pushed the release of its biggest game of the year from November 12 to February 14 of next year—and warned investors that net bookings would no longer exceed the 2.3 billion euros of last year, but come in at a disappointing 1.95 billion euros. That sent shares lower Thursday, continuing a rough year for the company (UBI.PA). Year to date, shares are down 57%, which has stirred up some activist investors to call for a sale.

The bookings’ shortfall was, technically, due to the delay and disappointing sales of Star Wars: Outlaws. However, the underlying reason for both of those, at least in part, is the far-right opposition to diversity and inclusion.

Outlaws, which has a female lead character, received mostly solid reviews from professional critics; but many players gave it a zero rating out of 10 on Metacritic, citing “forced DEI narratives” and claiming the developers “spent more time on the woke culture than on the story and gameplay.” Some players were also unhappy with the optional season pass model that tacked an additional $40 onto the game’s price for extra missions. (The season pass/downloadable content model has been a popular one in the industry for many publishers, and is used in Fortnite and Dark Souls 3.)

That review bombing, driven by anti-DEI backlash, seemingly worked—and set off a chain of events that led to Wednesday’s announcement.

“We believe Star Wars Outlaws was impacted by a coordinated effort that sought to troll Ubisoft games specifically and Star Wars content in general,” wrote Michael Pachter of Wedbush in an analyst’s note. “This is a case of a rare incel victory that led to Ubisoft having to take down its numbers.”

Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot addressed the controversy directly in announcing the revised guidance.

“Let me address some of the polarized comments around Ubisoft lately,” he wrote. “I want to reaffirm that we are an entertainment-first company, creating games for the broadest possible audience, and our goal is not to push any specific agenda. We remain committed to creating games for fans and players that everyone can enjoy.”

That’s unlikely to quiet far-right critics. In fact, the delay of Assassin’s Creed Shadows, which was already under fire by that group for having a female ninja and a Black samurai as lead characters in a game set in feudal Japan, could embolden detractors. GamerGate-friendly forums on Reddit are already celebrating the announcement and taking a victory lap, with a few racist comments thrown in.

But gameplay mechanics weren’t what caused the prerelease backlash of Shadows. As far back as July, the development team has found itself on the defensive for its choice to include a Black protagonist in the game. (That character, Yasuke, is based on an actual Black samurai from the 16th century.)

“While we strive for authenticity in everything that we do, Assassin’s Creed games are works of fiction inspired by real historical events and figures,” the development team wrote in July. “From its inception, the series has taken creative license and incorporated fantasy elements to craft engaging and immersive experiences. The representation of Yasuke in our game is an illustration of this. His unique and mysterious life made him an ideal candidate to tell an Assassin’s Creed story with the setting of feudal Japan as a backdrop.”

Despite the anti-DEI backlash, Ubisoft doesn’t seem like it’s making radical changes to the next Assassin’s Creed. The company, in its announcement Wednesday, vowed to “[fulfill] the promise of our dual-protagonist adventure, with Naoe and Yasuke bringing two very different gameplay styles.” To boost sales, the company said it would give anyone who preorders the game the first expansion for free.

Pachter said he still expects the game to sell more than 7 million copies, adding “this game has the potential to be one of Ubisoft’s bestsellers ever.”

That might not be enough for some investors. Reuters, on Thursday, reported an activist investor, pushing for the sale of Ubisoft to a third-party or private equity investors, claimed to have the support of 10% of the company’s shareholders.

Article Link

Archive

 

[CharlesBarkley]

It would take forever to get the warhammer because you'd need to send your trusty jackal companion Mbutu out to collect materials for hours while you rescue your old middle school friend N'bonga's gay lover Rico from a cave he got lost in so N'bonga would get over his grief and build it for you.

No, I demand straight Chud.

>Intro: you play as Hank Finnigan, explorer. Walking with proud Aryan stride in the African bush you get knocked out by a rhino but wake up to a bunch of albino tribesmen who nurse you back to health. You become the tribes healing shaman by teaching them things like “incest rape bad” and “don’t touch diseased corpse.”

>Recruited by the Assassins, you find out that homosexual alien apple or whatever everyone is fighting for is in the hands of a large African warlord who is darker than Wesley Snipes butthole. You are tasked of murdering everyone there and taking the golden homo orb.

>you do get a pet, but it’s the ultimate white pet, a golden lab. You can also command it to maw Africans while you do flying knee drops on their neck to execute them.

>To gather mats on downtime, you don’t hire other assassins but enslave captors and force them to mine or pick plants for you. There also is a sweet morality system where you can whip or buck break your slaves to make them work faster, but you get the bad ending.

>good ending had you become king of all West Africa. Bad ending is the knight’s Templar call you a nigger and take the homo orb back.

 

[oh no its pipkun]

I dunno man, delaying it by three months seems like a lot of time to scrub whatever nigger bullshit they were planning to cram in there, enough to skip out on the holiday season altogether. Seems like a pretty big deal to me. Hopefully we get to see what they originally intended to have in the game.

Apparently ubisoft cant code or animate for shit and there were broken bits of animation in the trailers.

 

[Blacklight]

I don't care if they swap out the black dude and put an actual asian guy in his place. I'm not buying, and haven't bought Ubislop since Far Cry 3. The games haven't been good for over a decade.

 

[Grub]

Black samurai, nope but female ninja? That one is easy enough to make sense. A woman whose job is sneakily kill people and dress to hide her features? Perfectly plausible. She would be an underdog who needs stay ahead of her enemies rather meet them head on and her ultimate goal is to find a man or rather men capable of and willing to protecting her. You know stuff that actual successful criminal women have done.

Snk did it better.

 

[TheNoseKnows]

Good news, Ghost of Tsushima has a whamyn character based on a man hating dyke that is proabably a troon. Take that chuds.

 

[Agent Abe Caprine]

Thing is, there have been ‘historical’ games with female warriors and all kinds of shit like that before. It’s just like, don’t be all smug about it or dismissive of your potential customers, game devs want to throw shit in your face and make you eat it. That is just not gonna work out for you. You are not an essential need and there are other devs not up their own ass. I mean fuck no one cried about the accuracy of games like Dynasty Warriors. Because they didn’t have an agenda they were trying to push.

It helps that Dynasty Warriors isn't a series that was intended to resemble historical fiction. Dynasty Warriors is more of a fantasy game. Wacky historical fiction isn't unheard of, of course. Way of the Samurai 4 definitely doesn't take itself very seriously. Yakuza Ishin takes place around the same time period and is pretty much just a comedy. Not sure if Kenzan was as wacky as Ishin, but it probably is.

No one cared that NecroVision wasn't a serious WW1 game because no one was expecting that going into it. They expected a goofy monster killing game that happens to take place in WW1.

 

[TowinKarz]

These companies really do believe they are entitled to people's money.

And even worse?

They don't think that due to delusions that they are artistic geniuses whose works are simply irresistible.

They think that because they believe the average person is so rock-chewingly stupid they'll buy anything with their logo on it in an almost pure stimulus-response reaction.

As far as they're concerned? Once you buy one of their products? They've successfully "got" you and feel they can never lose you no matter what they do. They honestly feel they could change a FPS game about shooting space-demons into a puzzle game about moving colored blocks around, and the only thing you as their customer would ever ask is "When's it releasing?" not "What the Hell are you doing?"

You're too dumb to make a valid personal choice based on objective, let alone subjective, quality, in their eyes.

They don't believe in genuine consumer revolt over poor products.

Clearly, someone ELSE has influence them, someone ELSE is playing their music too loud, someone else is momentarily distracting you.

But, as soon as THEY turn up the volume on the messaging to match? You'll be back, you have to, you are THEIR customer.

Which is why modern companies are on this crusade to find and punish "toxic fans".

It's as funny as it is sad when you get down to it.

 

[Sithis]

Good. I hope Ubisoft crashes and burns for the shit they've done. They have been pushing DEI type shit longer than a lot of other devs, I still remember finding it weird how the first AC game reallllllly wanted you to acknowledge the "diversity" of the team that made it. But that shit was always ignorable and they still produced decent games, but the games they are making now are shit, and their old games even run more smoothly and look better in some cases because the new "diverse" teams at Ubisoft are garbage.

Good news, Ghost of Tsushima has a whamyn character based on a man hating dyke that is proabably a troon. Take that chuds.

I probably won't buy the next Ghost game because I wanted them to follow up Jin's story and not fast forward while changing to a wahmen protag, but it is fucking hilarious that Ghost of Tsushima was already known as "Assassins Creed but better" and now they're gonna steal the female ninja protag thunder from Ubisoft with Yotei. So that leaves Ubisoft with only the fake, controversial negroid samurai as their selling point, and their delayed release means they'll be competing with Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 which is going to almost certainly be a far superior game, just not as normie friendly.

 

[Agent Abe Caprine]

I probably won't buy the next Ghost game because I wanted them to follow up Jin's story and not fast forward while changing to a wahmen protag, but it is fucking hilarious that Ghost of Tsushima was already known as "Assassins Creed but better" and now they're gonna steal the female ninja protag thunder from Ubisoft with Yotei. So that leaves Ubisoft with only the fake, controversial negroid samurai as their selling point, and their delayed release means they'll be competing with Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 which is going to almost certainly be a far superior game, just not as normie friendly.

Can't wait for morons to cry about rural Bohemia not having enough black people again.

 

[kiwirevolving]

Rate me optimistic but I hope that Shadows will be the death of Ubisoft, it's going to get mogged especially by the next Ghost of Tsushima game

“I want to reaffirm that we are an entertainment-first company, creating games for the broadest possible audience, and our goal is not to push any specific agenda. We remain committed to creating games for fans and players that everyone can enjoy.”

How many video games have to flop before these idiots realize that trying to pander to everyone ends up with the company shooting themselves in the foot?

Having a gorilla nigger dressed as a samurai breaking shit and bashing people's heads with a club is the worst way to "appeal to a broader audience", especially considering how many people are into japanese culture. There would be a nation-wide manhunt for him at the first jap he beats

I don't know how popular Assassin's Creed is in Japan, but Shadows is sure as shit not appealing to them since japs are protective of their culture

As for Outlaws, I don't think it flopped because of the female protag (though they somehow managed to make her look ugly as fuck in the game while the real life model is attractive)

I don't know much about the story, but I think it flopped because people are tired of all Ubislop games being the same but with a different coat of paint and because no lightsabers, which is something every Star Wars fanboy likes

 

[>tfw no Asian gf]

(though they somehow managed to make her look ugly as fuck in the game while the real life model is attractive)

Oh that isn't even unique to Outlaws, for some reason plenty of modern western games like to do this where the actual, real life model of the character in question will be attractive but then the game model will be either, fat or ugly, I think the most notorious example of this is Aloy from Horizon: Zero dawn.

 

[X Prime]

Oh that isn't even unique to Outlaws, for some reason plenty of modern western games like to do this where the actual, real life model of the character in question will be attractive but then the game model will be either, fat or ugly, I think the most notorious example of this is Aloy from Horizon: Zero dawn.

Oddly, it happens to men and Debra Wilson much less often for some reason.

 

[Flamin Park]

Hope they do one based on this historically accurate black shaolin monk next time:
https://youtube.com/watch?v=Ek0MvW3eh1U

Someone should make a mod that makes yasuke talk entirely in jive

 

[Pendulous Dong]

"I want to reaffirm that we are an entertainment-first company, creating games for the broadest possible audience..."

That's the fundamental issue with corporate entertainment. By trying to go for the broadest possible audience, you have to remove anything interesting or deep because some people in your audience might not get it.

 

[oh no its pipkun]

As for Outlaws, I don't think it flopped because of the female protag (though they somehow managed to make her look ugly as fuck in the game while the real life model is attractive)

I don't know much about the story, but I think it flopped because people are tired of all Ubislop games being the same but with a different coat of paint and because no lightsabers, which is something every Star Wars fanboy likes

it looks graphically terrible and by most accounts its "GTA meets star wars but you can't be the evil villain."

 

[derpherp2]

They're going to learn nothing, add a joke about MUH ACCURACY RIGHT WING HEEEHEEE somewhere. And then fuck up again, even in black history month. Weeks before monhun wilds as well.

 

[CruelGermanGirl]

received mostly solid reviews from professional critics; but many players gave it a zero rating out of 10 on Metacritic...

I don't even game, but always hilarious to see these idiots in any sector insulting their audience and their spending power. you cant force people to buy what you think they SHOULD want.

 

[ShitLurker]

I always thought Pachter was a faggot but this is ridiculous

Name I hadn't heard in a long time. I remember him from being constantly wrong about what Nintendo should do during the Gametrailers days. That anybody still gives him the time of day speaks to how retarded everything is.

Oy-vey! How does a progressive's head stay attached with all those 180's?

It's trivial when you have no standards or morality.

Yasuke is an interesting factoid of history, and I personally wouldn't mind a game playing as him, but if you're aiming for relative historicity making him a super badass samurai probably isn't going to work out.

The "wash the blank ink out of Yasuke" minigame would be a banger.

What’s the basis for predicting this? I know Pachter is a joke but is this nigger still subscribing to the idea that adding in niggers and women results in some sales multiplier?

Bigger factor. February is also Monster Hunter Wilds release month. And I bet you people will be a shit ton more interested in MonHun than Asscreed. There's also a Yakuza spin off game and Kimgdom Come Deliverence 2 which also are likely to have more good will as of now.

 

[Curzon Dax-sama]

you cant force people to buy what you think they SHOULD want.

That is exactly the kind of power these people want. I mean, how DARE the fucking peasents having their own agency and a say in how they spend money and what things they like? They should be mandated by law only to engage in activities, we (journoscum, corporate suits, tranny commie faggots, you name them) approve!

 

[kobrum]

Yasuke is an interesting factoid of history, and I personally wouldn't mind a game playing as him, but if you're aiming for relative historicity making him a super badass samurai probably isn't going to work out. A super-stylized version of Yasuke where he's a knockoff of Afro Samurai would probably do better. Hell, they could probably get away with making up more historical events if they went that direction.
On that note: ha-ha! Fuck you Ubisoft!

I had a conversation with a friend where I said it would have been fine for him to be in the game, but as the role he was stated to have following history; a retainer. Could have had him be the point of contact that you use for quests.