I talked to Ubisoft Devs, it's far worse than we thought

things at Ubisoft are far worse than I ever could have imagined after my last video chronicling the rise and fall of Ubisoft I had both current and former Ubisoft developers reach out for comment today what we're going to be doing is we're going to be talking about the issues that the studios face today from the perspective of their own employees everything from me to movement allegations to agenda driven content I want to contrast the comments made in these interviews with what we've seen from Assassin's Creed shadows and Star Wars Outlaws this company has a deep

rooted leadership issue going as far to think that the vast majority of online criticism is just a toxic minority of Gamers this company and its leadership think that they are on the righteous path little do they know it's a dead end Assassin's Creed Shadows has been steeped in controversy and criticism since its initial reveal online discourse surrounding the game has been almost entirely negative with long-term fans of the franchise General audience and Japanese audience is up in arms over the creative Liberties that Ubisoft has taken with the depiction of Yas the fabled Black Samurai and

feudal Japan Japanese creators as well as just random bystanders have taken to Twitter Tik Tok and YouTube and Reddit voicing their concerns offended by The Game's representation of their history and culture inaccuracies like using Chinese architecture instead of Japanese the legitimacy and relevance of the game's protagonist yasuke and even going as far as stealing a flag and imagery from the SEI hor aotai a historical reenactment group where the company had to formally apologize for not asking for permission to use their materials ubisoft's Adventure into Japanese history has been a complete disaster and it's only going

to get worse on September 11th of 2024 an article was penned by the New York Times titled the fight over a black samurai in Assassin's Creed the writer Zachary small misrepresents the controversy and player concerns is merely those of a toxic minority of angry Western Gamers and the entire time he fixates on the race of Yas and not the broader implications at play in ubisoft's mishandling and the Frank disrespect for Japanese culture and history this article was a collaboration between Ubisoft and the New York Times in an attempt to redirect the discussions surrounding Assassin's Creed

shadows and minimize the feedback the writer spoke with Kazuma Hashimoto a consultant and translator for the games industry later to be found out to be an employee of Sweet Baby Incorporated that did consultant work for Ubisoft but Hashimoto claimed that it was people in the west who were upset with seeing yasuke as a Samurai and that many of the online negative comments were written in Japanese appeared to be roughly translated from English effectively hand waving the increasingly loud and valid concerns of the Japanese asserting that it's all made up outrage nothing more than the gamers

war against Dei or inclusivity in video games I find it all too poetic and predictable for a AAA publisher to brush off player concerns and use their their connections in the media to try to steer public discourse and sentiment into a favorable Direction all these claims made by the New York Times as well as other writers are patently false you can see the criticisms of ubisoft's recent releases and the future release in Assassin's Creed Shadows everywhere it's impossible to ignore videos and promotional material ratioed by dislikes and comments in Mass numbers videos like mine and

many others reaching widespread appeal because we have that many people that agree or share similar opinions with that said I couldn't imagine that it was possible for anyone to ignore this level of feedback and Ubisoft has to be seeing it so I spoke with a few developers from Ubisoft to shed some light on these issues I started off by asking how Ubisoft internalizes and discusses General criticism from players and the rest of the industry whether that's its repetitive design agenda driven content or predictable games they responded saying at a high level they rarely talk about

it at a project level they brush it off as toxic G talk as asmin gold correctly pointed out in a video of his Ubisoft is filled with toxic positivity that prevents any growth I then ask what about the Japanese community's backlash over Assassin's Creed Shadows it's obvious that they haven't done their research and even the smallest details are going to be noticed by a culture that's as proud as the Japanese they responded by saying that the criticisms haven't been talked about and they've only issued demands that we mustn't engage with discussion on that topic publicly

meaning everything that we've set up into this point all all the criticism that we've had over the years for Ubisoft games even that of the industry itself has fallen on deaf ears I don't know if it's sad or if it's somewhat yeah you know it's somewhat cathartic to have that validated I mean it's the main complaint that the vast majority of Gamers have had over the years which is that these companies aren't listening to us in this case I have developers that are telling me yeah they're not listening to you one because they don't want

to take criticism and two because they don't know how to differentiate bad from good criticism I think this is my patented catchphrase by now but when you have this much negative discourse surrounding your games you need to be listening regardless of whether or not it's good or bad feedback in your eyes regardless if you align with these people's political beliefs or social political beliefs or whatever it might be none of that matters when you have your games on fire as much as Ubisoft games have been lately you need to put those fires out somehow and

the only way that you can do that is by listening to them and implementing whatever feedback you possibly can into your games to make them better regardless the other thing is I'm sorry I am sick of I am disgusted by the blatant baned virtue over how much they care about Japanese culture and history I'm sorry you are bastardizing Japanese culture and history for profit that's what you're trying to do here you're not trying to make a history piece we know that it's Loosely based on very Loosely based on Japanese culture and history look at you

guys you put out a Tory gate figurine a half Tory gate figurine with your characters on it without knowing the cultural relevance of the half Tory gate after Hiroshima and Nagasaki do you have any idea what that means to these people what's wrong with you at the end of the day it all comes down to leadership when you look at ubisoft's messaging the lackluster delivery of titles like xde and Star Wars Outlaws the inaccuracies and screw-ups with Assassin's Creed Shadows you see a developer that has no clear plan or vision for what players want what

good games look like or how to even do their job I took the time to talk to the Ubisoft developers about workplace culture about the initiative that they've taken for diversity hiring and what happens behind the scenes at Ubisoft and it's wild to see how accurate some of the assumptions that have been made by myself and others now continuing my convers with one of the developers I wanted to find more about the workplace structure and management and seeing as though the company has had initiatives that been put in place to make the workplace a little

bit more diverse I asked what benefits have you seen is there more diversity in thought or is it creating a more one-sided environment they said that so far the initiative hasn't had any impact on the team that I'm a part of however it's clear that some topics are taboo what happened is now that people end up in a meeting with HR for trivial stuff not adding smiley faces to a message or adding an exclamation point at the end of a message because some people reporting it for harassment one of the things that wasn't in your

video is that Ubisoft had some controversy During the me2 period letting go of a manager in high positions and some left on their own because they knew they'd be discovered I then asked what was the impact of this in the workplace they responded by saying the editorial Direction and overall mindset shifted from the boys club to Safe content reaching for pling characters like K and Star Wars is a perfect example of this the idea to have beautiful characters such as balers gate or Uncharted is met with distrust the developer shared sentiment saying that safe content

also leads to limited opportunities on the gameplay side even for Star Wars we had to work with Disney which would have shut down most attempts at depicting a true criminal underworld with cruelty and drama when you put this developer perspective in line with the recent failures and controversies at Ubisoft or any AAA developer at this this point it all makes sense an overcorrection in sensitivity brought on by the boys club days that many studios experienced during their early years as such many games today lack the teeth and grit that players crave because those things are

seen as problematic or unsafe to make in the workplace don't use emojis or exclamation points you could offend someone holy [ __ ] how soft have we gotten it reminds me of the time where the hell divers 2 Community manager went on a band spree on their disc Discord because players were using a throwup emoji on furry art that was posted in their Discord sometimes people need to be offended while I'm going to try to resist the pull yourself up by your bootstraps tie raid friction on some levels is necessary in life now that doesn't

mean that people should be allowed to openly harass others but there are major issues that arise when you have emojis that can get you fired this overreaction and overcorrection leads to a workplace that is actively hostile towards freedom of thought expression and criticism as one of the interviewees mentioned earlier they noticed a culture of toxic positivity from my perspective toxic positivity is fake people saying fake things and in the case of Ubisoft making fake products nobody wants to live their entire life being terrified that someone is going to misunderstand them and when you're at a

studio like Ubisoft and you're not even allowed to make characters attractive otherwise it might upset people at the studio you have a problem this culture of fear and forced uniformity stifles creativity Innovation it's no wonder that Ubisoft is struggling to produce anything of real substance when their own developers are walking on eggshells more worried about HR complaints than creating groundbreaking games how can you make bold impactful content when every idea is scrutinized for being too risky too offensive or too unsafe it's a workplace where mediocrity is rewarded and we're pushing boundaries the very things that

games are supposed to do is seen as a liability this workplace culture this overreaction and overcorrection has infected just about every single industry that's out there I worked in construction for seven years up until last December and the company that I worked for was more afraid of HR issues than they were of injuries we worked with hydrogen sulfide and hydrogen cyanide gases that if released could kill half of a city you know we've discussed modern audiences the mythical magical modern audiences and soft modern game we found the audience it's the people that are running these

companies nowadays you have folks that are walking around on eggshells afraid to say anything anecdotal but just like a few weeks ago or a month ago or so I remember I was live streaming and instinctively I said something was [ __ ] I'm a millennial we all grew up saying it it's a product of my upbringing say what you will I didn't say it consciously it just came out and one of my Chatters pops up and says how often do you say that word I Bann the [ __ ] out of them get the [

__ ] out of here with that are you kidding me people that are out there that are waiting prepared to be offended I'm sick of it you cannot have workplaces that are out there where every single thing that you say you have to watch every word that comes out of your mouth otherwise it could be your livelihood and I'm not again I'm not saying that you can walk around saying anything that's not what this is everybody knows I think that's the most frustrating part when you have these kind of conversations is that you know exactly

what I'm talking about you know exactly what I'm talking about but the intellectual dishonesty around this kind of thing is just it's [ __ ] mindboggling we have workplace environments that actively work against any type of creative or constructive criticism that's how you get games like this this is how games and products are being ruined over time is because nobody's allowed to criticize things properly you have places you have people in the work that are like ah I don't think that these characters are going to be received well by the fans but they're not allowed

to say anything about it they can't say it's not hot enough it's not masculine enough they can't say that because it's problematic to say so tame and safe are the antonyms of exciting and daring balers Gate 3 was exciting and daring Star Wars Outlaws payman safe whether it's their poor job at representing Japan or the trailers of Assassin's Creed there are clearly levels of incompetency at work as many players have pointed out in the game trailers the promotional materials that are meant to sell the game you can see frame rate issues texture issues poor Collision

detection weapons clipping through characters and more controversies aside this game doesn't look like it's ready for launch and in fact it's developer just recently came out and cancelled their appearance at Tokyo game show and announced that the game would be delayed until February along with the delay Ubisoft CEO recently issued a memo to their employees that ended up getting leaked publicly and it showcases just how out of touch this company is with their players rather than acknowledging their real missteps they're clinging to critic scores pointing out Star Wars Outlaws had a solid 76 on Metacritic

oh I didn't know that you were trying to sell the game to game reviewers that makes a lot of sense seeing as though that you're completely ignoring player feedback that clearly shows that your game is hovering in mediocrity even worse they believe that Black Friday sales are somehow going to magically turn things around not realizing that no amount of discounting will make up for a product that fundamentally misses the mark and nobody's interested in the memo reads more like a corporate spin than a genuine reflection of failure no mention of the controversies or deeper issues

that are plaguing the company they talk about how all players want are highly polished games on launch day when the truth is players are craving meaningful risk-taking authentic content things that Ubisoft hasn't seen in decades even in their own memo to their own employees they can't speak frankly about their mistakes this sanitized messaging shows just How Deeply disconnected the company is from the people that it should be listening to the players interested in the perspective of the employees who received this memo I had a few questions on their thoughts of the messaging and the leadership

of the company I asked what has been the message from management to the staff about ubisoft's declining sales what do they believe is the reason behind it they responded the fun fact is they don't talk much about it they mainly focus on the fact that they reach their financial objectives which are mainly achieved through casual player sales not the vocal gamer minority that are sick of what you described in your video also something to know is that through the years the number of management floors has increased to ridiculous amounts so communication is often blurry unless

they come directly from HQ and even then it's almost entirely corpo [ __ ] that isn't useful in the end I asked another employee to verify the increase in management at the company fearing that this is likely one of the biggest issues that's facing the company seeing that lack of clear and Creative Vision they painted a picture of a company that's not only overrun with management but that's passively aggressive about removing higher paid and talented employees while slotting in under skilled and unexperienced management at a cheaper rate they claim that Ubisoft as an employer shows

little regard for their developers what happen in practice is that they essentially push out senior Engineers promoting Junior Engineers to senior roles after just a few years of experience oft times with experience in just one engine meanwhile experienced developers with far broader skill sets are being overlooked this constant cycle of turnover with inexperienced leaders leads to noticeable drops in quality with bugs appearing in their games the passionate dedicated developers leave while those who are just going through the motions stay behind this doesn't just affect the tech technical quality of their games but also impacts the

design and creativity for instance you'll find designers working on FPS mechanics who have never played in fps game before or Engineers who don't understand how the mechanics they're building are supposed to feel there's a lack of passion and skill across the board and the results are obvious that line about designers working on FPS games and leading FPS projects struck a chord with me not long ago Ubisoft released X defiant a military shooter that was meant to compete with the likes of Call of Duty however since the game's released they've lost the vast majority of their

player base with Ubisoft claiming that the game isn't dying despite it reportedly losing 94% of its players on Xbox why is X defiant ran into so many issues net code hit registration and general shooter gameplay issues common problems that are normally ironed out well before a game ever hits the market especially a shooter its core to the game play if you're playing a live service shooter all you do is shoot that's the game play but when the shooting doesn't work you don't have a game ubisoft's leadership is completely disconnected from the reality of game development

and player expectations the problems stem from a bloed management structure that's prioritizing reaching Financial targets through casual player sales rather than listening to the core Gaming Community that's sick of their tired formulas even their own developers are frustrated as they watch as talented senior Engineers are pushed out of the studios and inexperienced juniors are promoted far too quickly leading to a noticeable drop in quality it's no wonder their games are riddled with bugs and lack any real Innovation this company is more focused on appearances rather than creating meaningful engaging content the quality of their games

doesn't matter as long as they aren't offending anyone when you see the issues that plague Assassin's Creed Shadows the pandering the generic virtue the lies the coverups and the lack of understanding of what they're apparently inspired by when you see how safe and tame how boring buggy and soulless Star Wars Outlaws is when you see how their most anticipated shooter in ex defiant is riddled with the most common issues bugs all kinds of different things that normal Shooters would never have on day one that's made by developers and led by developers that haven't even played

an FPS game you see a studio and a publisher that lacks integrity and a spine cowards in leadership roles afraid to loosen their grip on the wheel developers afraid to speak out and unable to express any of their creativity franchises destined for obscurity Ubisoft isn't just losing its way it's already lost and the only thing left is to watch it burn you know it's crazy to speculate about these kind of things but it's an entirely different Beast to find out what you've been believing this entire time is absolutely true and I want to take the

time to thank the developers that reached out to me it was daring for them to do something like that obviously their identities are being kept secret for very obvious reasons most of these folks could lose their job over having these kind of discussions but you keep in mind what's really sad about this is that there are developers that are working at these Studios that want to see things change that want to fix things that see these obvious issues but they're not allowed to do anything about it that's that sucks that's something that all of us

can empathize with I'm pretty sure that anybody that's watching this video right now has likely worked with some level of management that took them in the direction in the wrong direction and led them down the wrong path you know the biggest issue for Ubisoft is that the damages are already done their brand is already torched their name and their reputation is in shambles by now and looking at looking and seeing that they have pushed back Assassin's Creed Shadows it's for obvious reasons while they're going to say that it's for fixing issues in the game There's

issues that we saw on the trailers so that's totally believable the game likely does need more you know more time in the oven more than anything else but outside of that you know I really think it's just them trying to distance it from all the bad press because there's a lot of people that have been talking about Ubisoft there's a lot of people that have been talking about Assassin's Creed shadows and it doesn't look good and pushing it all the way to February I don't think any of that's going to change anything if anything seeing

how often they like to put their own foot in their mouth when it comes to Assassin's Creed Shadows you're just giving me and a bunch of other content creators more time Farm you more than anything else I was talking to one of the developers about the delay and they're like one of the thing that one of the things that really confused the whole group of developers is that they're like well we need more time to fix bugs and issues but we're also going to add more quests and side content they're like those two things don't

have anything to do with one another and one creates more issues this doesn't make any sense and also you push it to February the month at Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 and Monster Hunter Wilds release you're cooked what you doing what are you doing I don't know man I I want to thank everybody thank you guys for watching the last video as well it was my first 1 million view video that's just a wild achievement one that I wasn't really sure that I'd ever be able to achieve and you guys made that possible so thank you

guys for that again if it wasn't for your guys' support stories like these wouldn't be able to come out I hope I get to do more stuff like this in the future because I had a great time making this video this is probably the favorite this is my my most favorite video that I've ever made um but yeah outside of that thank you guys uh if you guys have enjoyed the content make sure that you're sharing these videos make sure you like the video comment down below let me know what you guys think subscribe to

the channel if you haven't already what are you doing come on man just on board you guys want to catch me live you can follow me on Twitch I'm live two days a week I'm working on videos four days a week I'm sleeping one day a week uh but outside of that my friends stay cool stay righteous stay safe I'll catch you guys next time family family family family