The Woes of Ubisoft
So that happened. After a disastrous 2024 in which Ubisoft lost half its share price, the French game developer is flailing, as Luis has reported previously. Now, as the Guillemot family contemplates a buyout from Tencent and fends off attempts by minority shareholders to dethrone them from leadership of the company, the launch of last-ditch effort Assassin’s Creed: Shadows has been completely compromised as somehow electronic and even physical copies of the game have leaked into distribution a month early. No, this is not piracy. According to Reddit, some people have been literally able to buy physical copies of the game, suggesting a disastrous mismanagement of rollout on a logistical level.
Should We Care?
As a card-carrying Ubisoft hater, I say “no”, because Assassin’s Creed is basically historical travel porn riddled with bloated maps, meaningless side quests, gutless storytelling, and weird sci-fi shit involving the Templars. Seriously? I confess to playing AC Odyssey all the way through and Valhalla at some length, but its all astonishingly forgettable for games that costed $60 a pop. Likewise, given Ubisoft’s incoherent and pussy-footed response to Shadows’ racial controversy along with that incident with the torii gate, the marketing and launch for this game is rapidly descending from “face-palm” territory to “and the SAG Award for Outstanding Action Performance by a Stunt Ensemble in a Television Series goes to…” level bad.
I mean, c’mon, some of that early combat footage looks like basically a clunkier version of Ghost of Tsushima, which, while not a flawless game on a writing level or in its boss battles, nonetheless managed to shamelessly steal Ubisoft’s entire template and execute it in a more fun and less bloated manner. If it never quite lived up to it’s cinematic pretensions, oh well. There were moments of glory. At this point I’m beginning to seriously doubt AC Shadows will stick the Leap of Faith landing. Who knows? AC Shadows could still be an unexpectedly great game when all the bullshit is over and done, but there may be no magical hay bale for Ubisoft to fall into in the end. Just take some advice from Shogun’s own resident failson: when in Japan, do not run with swords in the brothel pond.
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