I’m starting to think execs in general have no grasp on reality.
Maybe surrounding yourself with bootlickers just isn’t so smart?
No they’re fully aware - there just aren’t any negative consequences.
The shareholders love it, until they don’t. Then these people get golden parachutes contracted from day 1.
True but in Ubisoft’s case, it really just seems like the market did a full 180° on the whole AAA open world, feature-heavy games. I don’t feel very sorry for the execs but it isn’t like the quality of the games themselves nosedived. They just couldn’t innovate.
it isn’t like the quality of the games themselves nosedived
I would argue it has. the early games were very story-driven and well written. the latest few, if they’ve continued the trend from Odyssey, which is the last one I played, are bloated, repetitive, boring, the writing is terrible, and the story is almost impossible to follow because you can play for several hours between consecutive plot points, and sometimes have to because of level-gating
I will just leave this article from 5 days ago here:
Ubisoft Barcelona Celebrates Successful Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced Launch With Layoffs
Despite Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced being considered a successful launch by Ubisoft, 51 employees at Ubisoft Barcelona, many of whom worked on the game, will be celebrating its launch by seeking new employment.
Announced on June 10, 51 employees at Ubisoft Barcelona face layoffs, with those who spoke to Insider Gaming saying the layoffs felt premeditated and were going to happen no matter how successful Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced was.
A big danger? It’s already happened multiple times over to please your shareholders and buy new yachts for the C-suite.
LOL Like, they just now considered that?! C-Suites needed to take a pay cut instead and keep people hired to make games that would get them out of the financial fuckery the C-Suites got themselves into.
Executive paycuts aren’t going to cover the delta of 1000 job cuts per year. Everyone loves to cite that one time Nintendo did that, but the math just usually doesn’t work out to the point where this solves layoffs or something. What’s going to get them out of financial fuckery and keep their talent retained is if they stop wasting hundreds of millions of dollars on projects like Hyperscape, Star Wars Outlaws, and Avatar that people don’t want and instead make games that their customers do want.
Okay, criticize Ubisoft and other publishers for a lot of shit, but in my view things like Star Wars Outlaws are off limits.
Is the game amazing? No. But it’s an idea using a fresh character in an underserved IP. They put together a lot of things based on unique ideas - and it didn’t hit.
That’s a consequence of a company taking risks, even though we generally want them to take risks. They put out 8 new singleplayer IPs, 7 are junk to be forgotten while one becomes the next Halo franchise.
Taking paycuts to execs can better excuse paycuts at low level, and can slow the bleed if the company is to accept going into the red during a new game’s development.
I’ll agree with you that a lot of projects are getting overfunded. Good games don’t need thousands of people working on them. It can help with tertiary objectives like accessibility, marketing, or other features.
things like Star Wars Outlaws are off limits
That’s a bit too far in the other direction, innit?
Games (or anything really) don’t get immunity from criticism just because they take risksI have no criticisms myself for Star Wars Outlaws, as I didn’t play it, but the market didn’t want it, and Star Wars is for sure not underserved. I have been inundated with so much Star Wars since Disney bought it that I’m sick of it, and I’m not even seeking it out. The other thing I’m sick of is the Ubisoft Open World Game. I’ve played a lot of those. They built an efficient machine for churning those out. The market seems to be sick of them, too, at least relative to its former appetite. It’s not surprising that people are tired of both Ubisoft’s formula and Star Wars. You take a risk with Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown, a moderately budgeted game. You don’t take a risk with $200M+; that’s lunacy. Even with The Lost Crown, they reminded me via their Ubisoft launcher and additional DRM why I haven’t missed purchasing Ubisoft games for so many years.
Instead they can waste hundreds of millions on executive salaries.
The CEO makes $1.5M per year in cash, so I very much doubt they’re spending hundreds of millions on executive salaries.
“We’re all trying to find the guy who did this.” 🌭
The company’s report underscores a growing problem in the industry: great games cannot just be made by anyone, and, in this consolidation-heavy time, that may mean that a company gaining an IP but losing the people who defined it doesn’t really get it much in the end. In fact, everyone loses out.
You think? Hire a painter to make a painting, then fire them. Now hire me, someone who cannot paint, to make a better version of that painting. Ain’t gonna happen, is it?
I feel awful for the people working at a ghoulish corp like Ubisoft.
seriously, despite Ubisoft being a shitty company, they had pretty great talented people working there. I wouldn’t deny their games are pretty, and technologically seems pretty good too (e.g. AC Mirage can run on mobile devices).
Welp too bad if they’re going to lose that quality. Not that I’m a regular buyer, their games are expensive af. So honestly I don’t care that much except for the people who lost their jobs.
Surely the C-suite thought about this. Or they had Claude think about it.
I think the C in C-suite stands for Claude or ChatGPT now xD
Meanwhile Koei Tecmo is hiring a lot more people.
Whoever is steeing that ship is doing a bad job
Most key talent left or was forced out years ago. Ubisoft execs are fucking clueless.
