Fandom Pulse is reporting (paywall), according to a “Ubisoft insider”, that the beleaguered video game company is pushing back on Steam to try and get certain data points removed from public view. This would include data points like peak and concurrent users. The insider continues by saying that Star Wars Outlaws has still failed to surpass the 2 million units sold point having been released for almost 3 months. That’s a far cry (get it?) from the 5 million in the first month some investors were hoping for at launch.
The report also alleges that Ubisoft isn’t alone. Other companies would also like Valve to stop reporting numbers that they’d rather paint their own way on investor calls, or just dodge entirely like Ubisoft has done on recent calls where the lackluster performance of Star Wars Outlaws has come up.
Situations like these show us exactly why nonpublic company run by a sensible person is not only possible but can be good for everyone that matters (none of which are other big companys)
I got the Far Cry joke. I’m a nerd.
But if Ubisoft gets their way, they would not only get to fudge their numbers for shareholders, but also hide when their games completely break on Windows because their kernel level anti-cheat stopped working after a Windows update.
Removed by mod
Yeah, just more bullshit from AAA publishers to hide information that their games are mediocre and games to waste their money.
I won’t even pirate a Ubisoft game these days. Free is still too expensive for the digital slop they put out.
Agreed, my storage space and time is worth more than their slop
Wtf kinda of investor calls don’t have concrete numbers? Nothin makes me more suspicious than when a company tells me things are fine but won’t let me see for myself.
You have evidently not had the misfortune of listening to shareholder meetings of anything involving Elon Musk.
Oh sure, there are numbers. They’re almost all aspirational, or outright lies/misdirects to focus on some other metric that looks better…
But, somewhat more seriously, it is pretty common in shareholder meetings for many different publicly owned companies to only report non-specifically-legally-required concrete numbers if:
A) The board/CEO thinks they are really good.
B) Someone specifically asks for an exact, precise number, which is not as common as you might expect…
… and even then, the easiest thing to do is just say ‘I don’t have that in front of me right now, I’ll get back to you on that’ when its almost always the job of this person to know that number and have it ready for that meeting.
These higher ups are convinced that is just too much detail. Same with conversations on… ok… but how… yeah that’s implementation details… that’s for other people to worry about. Line goes up?
Seems like Valve is still a privatly owned company, poor aaa studios. Let’s see how GabeN feels about that.
They might pull their games from steam and try to sell them on UPlay again
That would be nice, then their games won’t clutter the Steam store so much.
Maybe epic will give them money to go exclusive there.
I couldn’t give a shit either way. Not ever going to buy a Ubisoft game again. I was interested in Star Wars Outlaws until I heard they were involved.
Isn’t the reason they gave up on that because they lost all their customers?
I actually sympathize with their desire to resist silly reporting over player counts, because it can snowball and generally it’s silly not-news. But you do have to actually sell games at some point.
If they focused more on actually making good games, instead of monetizing the shit out of mid ones, their player count problems would solve themselves.
Oh, I’m not saying that the reporting is why they don’t sell games. I just think it’s mostly nonsense.
I’m saying that they have a big enough sample to recognize that pulling off of Steam isn’t a reasonable path forward, because people aren’t willing to deal with their launcher or epic. They know that they can’t push Valve around.
Yeah, sorry, I wasn’t interpreting it that way, it seems clear that they want to eliminate Steam’s reporting just because it makes them look bad, not because the numbers themselves are influencing sales
The only way I’m buying a Ubisoft game is if Valve hides the developer’s name lmao 🤣
Rayman, tho
Ok, look. We all have weaknesses…
I can’t blame you on Rayman. Those games are so so good
Maybe that will be Ubisoft’s next demand of Valve. Might just work.
Modern journalism:
Dragon Age Veilguard: return to form, massive success.
SW Outlaws: Trash only sold 2M, Ubisoft in panic.
Ever since Ubi fended off the hostile takeover, the media has conspicuously focused on portraying Ubi in a far worse position than it is. Maybe it’s because they are a prime target for absorption from a certain company that has been gobbling up everything lately. It just so happens to advertise in almost every outlet nowadays. This smells of a Nokia like job.
To be fair, if your first month estimate is 5 mil and you don’t even sell 2 mil in 3 months that could easily be a panic. And for comparison, fallen order had sold over 8 mil units in about the same time period.
Ubisoft still hasn’t done anything about the plausible sex assaut ring allegations from upper management’s preying on admin.
I’m too offended to play the Ubisoft games I own, let alone buy new ones. And they dove into the microtransactions void even after promising not to.
Ubi is already festering with parasites. It just now needs to die off so all the larvae can go off and pupa up before finding other companies to victimize.
I wonder if Activision, Rockstar, etc also offend you. Maybe between the kids soccer practice?
Activision, for its own reasons.
I take from your disdain you don’t mind at all the poisoned rats ground into the Ubisoft sausage?
I have better things to worry about than if there’s some dude bros working at Ubisoft. Especially after the layoff rounds that hit the industry, where even in its shitty state, Ubisoft was one of the least offenders in relative terms (god bless EU employment laws). I know, I’m boring with my concern for relevant things like unemployment of my peers rather than riding the social media zeitgeist hate fest that usually starts and ends on Twitter with no real repercussions in the real world.
For those of us out of the loop, what company are you talking about?
Microsoft
Things that make companies mad are good things for consumers and that usually turns out to be more information or feedback.
Star Wars Outlaws was a lot of fun. Nothing ground breaking but, it was a decent game.
I’m astonished by the hate UBI is getting for their games. Sure, the company has problems, but there are so many bad actors, if I stop buying games from Microsoft(Bethesda, Blizzard), Tencent(Epic, Riot, Grinding gear games and and and) there literally won’t be any AAA games left. Next to the games not being as bad as claimed. Have yet to play outlaws but it looks fun, and I’ve had quite a good time with ac Mirage. Some annoying bugs but otherwise a well made game with an interesting story. Yet when I post a screenshot of the game on steam, I get asked by ppl who don’t even own the game why I’m playing trash like that. Excuse me? Reviews are good, games runs really well with few bugs, why shouldn’t I?
There are some surprisingly good indie games out there by companies who are more into making games fun than manipulating their end-users to spend more money.
I’m not saying you are under any moral obligation to change over. (You’re not.) Just that there are alternatives, and maybe even spiritual successors without the DRM and without the revenue enhancements, if ever they push you over the brink.
Stop the DEI bullshit and start hiring real talent. Sack the CEOs and bosses and strip them of their bonuses.
Or, maybe people are waking up and not buying the bullshit any longer. If the latter is true, the problem fixes itself eventually.
“Oh no, queer people are in my bideo games” this is what the ‘DEI bad’ argument looks like to anyone with a modicum of common sense.
Sincerely, DEI right now is just the newest made up enemy of chuds. Most of the time devs have to fight against higher ups to include any diversity apart from what gamers have considered “cis white male” adjacent.
Women as a main character? DEI
Pronouns? DEI
White male protagonist isn’t manly enough? DEI
Those are all based on real examples btw
Looks like I triggered your dumbass. Wake up
???
You wrote a comment in a public forum, and I formulated a factual response as to why it’s wrong. What did you expect? For everyone to suck your dick? C’mon, give me an actual response based on facts and logic as to why you’re right. Or are you only capable of declaring everyone else as sheeple without even knowing why they are?
Do people like you even know anymore what dei actually means
I’m far from the average consumer but I think the last Ubisoft game I bought was Farcry 5… before that I think it was Farcry 3. And before that Was AssCreed Ezio saga. Everytime I gave them a chance the game was passable but had some serious flaws that they doubled down on as far as I could tell in press releases for other games.
I really enjoyed the division, with some friends it was a fun playthrough. The last farcry we did not even finish.
This is a consequence of intellectual property laws. What in 60s and 70s was possible to do with recent enough culturally significant things, now has been indefinitely postponed.
But more than that, a consequence of human vanity.
Making nuclear weapons by 50 years old technologies is good enough for those who need nukes.
But personal computers and operating systems of year 1999 kind, which are realistic to do in many places on the globe, are not good enough even for people who may not be able to afford healthy food.
Matrix the movie really was onto something.
