A year ago Ubisoft exec gave an interview where he said that the next leap in gaming industry should be fueled by gaming subscriptions, and that gamers should get comfortable playing by subscription as opposed to buying and owning game licenses.
He then proceeded to give an example on how players got comfortable switching from physical media and full ownership to digital licenses.
This caused a massive player backlash on the wave of protests against the migration from ownership to subscriptions (aka “You’ll own nothing and be happy”). Ubisoft has got a financial dent as sales and subscriptions dropped, and is now facing a problematic financial future.
That’s what happens with DRM and digital licensing, which was considered by the exec to have most players already onboard.
Here, he was talking about gaming subscriptions, i.e. paying a monthly fee to have access to a library of games. Once you stop paying, games become unavailable, and games outside the subscription are not available either. His idea is to make more gamers comfortable with the subscription model despite it taking away any possibility to play when you stop paying.
It is difficult to know where to start, since there have been a lot of unpopular actions. A lot of these are pretty standard for the triple A studios unfortunately. Think DRM with always online and authentication server issues, toxic workplace, decommissioned games by removing the servers for them and not giving ways for people to self host, rehashing existing properties to milk success, having their own launcher so having double layers of authentication, microtransactions, subscription based model pushing, game variants locking out certain content unless more money is payed etc.
This is rather pedantic and obfuscates the reality and consumer rights. Don’t shill for big corp with that narrative, you could argue you don’t “own” a book either if we’re just doing silly talk in here.
Devil’s advocate: you obviously own the physical media that constitutes the book, but do you really “own” the contents of the book if you’re not allowed by law to make a million copies of it and sell them?
First off, I only called them a moron on a condition, and I stand by my assessment.
Second, playing devil’s advocate is meant to enhance discussion. What they’re doing is muddying the discourse and playing into the hands of copyright-holders. It’s very close to the “just asking question” bullshit that’s so prevalent recently.
You don’t, though. Or rather, you don’t own its contents. It’s not being pedantic, it’s simply correct.
This isn’t a perspective shilling for big corp. If anything, understanding that society has already sleepwalked into a post-ownership era long ago, and that technology has only just now appeared to let the logical conclusion of that come home to roost, should only increase one’s unease of mass unchecked corporate ownership.
You can’t buy a book, copy it, and profit from those copies because you don’t own the IP. But you own the book for your personal use (and you can lend or sell it) in perpetuity, without any dependence on whoever sold it to you. That last part is no longer possible in the digital world with games that are architected specifically so that core functionality is server-side only.
Like with pirating, it was always an issue of expense. They could legally take away your disk at any time and force you to uninstall the software from your computer. It just would never be worth it to go after any specific individuals for any minor infraction of the license. Digital licensing just made them capable of doing that with the press of a button.
It seems I’m miscommunicating. I’m being interpreted as saying, “We’re already here, and this is fine actually.” My point is “We’ve been on the setup for ages, you shouldn’t be surprised this is where we are going without intervention, and we need to intervene right now”.
The world hasn’t slowly built up to being this bad. They’ve been laying the traps for a long time. We’re in the late game, not the early game. There is a lot to undo.
It was not like this back in the '90s. Games you purchased were on disk/disks. You installed the game and played the fully completed game that did not require an online connection. You owned that game.
After the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998 things changed. So it has not always been like this.
Before the internet, the concept of game ownership was much easier. Whatever the seller chose to call it, as long as I had complete control over when and where I could play the game, I owned it. I would consider any game where the ability to play it cannot be willfully taken from me by digital means to be owned by me. Nowadays, that mostly applies to cracked games or systems only. No game that requires an online connection to play would apply.
Oh that’s easy. For me at least. In my analysis, the law is wrong.
Where are the assets stored. On local storage? Then I own a copy of the assets.
Where is the game logic executed? Locally? Then I own a copy of that game logic. A server? Then I own non of that logic. A hybrid of the two? Then I own a copy of what my hardware processes.
Where is the game save data stored? Locally? Again, that a copy I own. On a server? I’m licensing it.
Here’s a good analogy: Monster Hunter: Processing, assets, and saves are all on individual machines. I can be cut off from the internet, and still play. I own a copy.
Diablo IV: the assets are local, processing my inputs is local, but my saves and the game logic are all processed on a server. I own a copy of the assets and input logic. Blizzard owns the rest as they process the rest.
If they want to do the whole “resources=expense” then I get to consider MY resources as expense too.
I don’t think most people’s sense of “ownership” of a copy of a game has anything to do with whether or not they’ve legally bought a license.
For most of my collection, I own a physical thing, that represents the ability to play that game, using hardware I bought, whether I bought those things today, last year, or even a decade ago. Some of my games are digital, but I still have possession of a copy I bought, and can play it whenever I want. I paid money for the right to play a game when I want, and that’s a notion of ownership.
If someone can take it away from me, that isn’t aligned with my notion of ownership, and also isn’t worth spending money on imo. I own some GameCube games, and yes, technically that means I have a license, but they still work physically and legally. There’s nothing to enforce against me.
The thing that changed is the ability to revoke that license. And that amounts to a different concept than ownership. One not worth paying for.
That’s not what they meant. The person who said it was “director of subscriptions.” They meant gamers need to get used to all games being SaaS because they are of the opinion that that’s what’s going to happen. SaaS is capable of generating magnitudes more money than any other paradigm, so this is of course the wet dream of the bean counters.
The problem with the statement, of course, is threefold:
People don’t like being told things that sound a lot like "just hand over your money and like it, dumbasses"
SaaS is also capable of failing spectacularly
(most important) In no conceivable world would it be possible to have every single game be a subscription service
Shit, the world can’t even support half a dozen streaming video subscription services, but they think everybody’s going to gladly pay monthly fees for every game they play?
Not sure what you mean. They needed more NFTs and AI from what I can tell! /s
Honestly though whenever I hear big companies like this fail, it keeps making me go back to the Steve Jobs interview: www.youtube.com/watch?v=NlBjNmXvqIM
I mean, it’s not true inside a bubble. I’m sure there’s some incredible games that have been made by one person that didn’t find the kind of success that Stardew Valley, Minecraft, Super Meat Boy, etc did. But at a giant corporation like Ubisoft, they’re not on their own! They have marketing people, interns, studios and sub-studios, finance people, trend analysts, etc.
Ubisoft has some great IPs. But all of their best games came out over 20 years ago! So yes, quality is not the only thing, but it definitely matters.
I’ve hated what ubisoft has done to gaming ever since the fc3. Only shining beacons were early siege and rayman games. They have incredible artists and programmers working at it and could make some great games but the directors completely double down on the most generic, most mindeless wide appeal possible. I regret buying wildlands because the setting is unique. The game is as tactical as far cry which is just mindleslly run into camp, use your overpowered character against deaf and dumb enemies and complete the collectable.
I remember “Far Cry Blood Dragon” as the only entry that really stood out. The gameplay was exactly what you described but dialed to 11 (as it should be).
FC 3-6 … same game, identical mechanics, less over the top fun more boring and repetitive tasks. Somewhere at Ubisoft there is someone who is responsible for this, including all the consequences.
FC3 was a game changer. It was absolutely wild in its time. It’s just a shame that all of its successors went the same road… I stopper playing midgame FarCry V because it was… bad. The scenario was shit. The gameplay was shit. The map was huge but lacked substance.
Not for me since i had already played better open world games. Games like stalker which had amazing a life and animals that were programmed to act like real ones rather than spawning a tiger and an antelope 20m infront of you and setting one hostile to other, fc2 which was flawed but the ai interactions were mind blowing like sniping out a guys leg and watching allies drag him to cover, arma, crysis etc. all were better but fc3 was casual, accessable and marketed.
My solution to this is to buy at a price I think the game is worth for me, and if I overpay, I think of it as supporting the developer to make more like it.
As a whole? Hopefully no one. But a fire sale of all their properties and équipement might be interesting.
Also times like this experienced developers often start their own companies and snatch up their co-workers. Probably already happening from the mass layoffs earlier, that.
From what I’ve heard its playable on Steam Deck but since I don’t own one I can optimize it a 100%. Maybe after the game is out and many people ask about steam deck I will try and get one and make it compatible . I’m really sorry I can’t do more right now
I know people working there, in towns where little other opportunities for such jobs exist. I… really don’t fancy the prospect of Ubisoft going bankrupt.
I know people who work there that used to steal my parking spot with their baby Blue Ford Mustang, on a residential street two blocks from the Ubisoft building. They can all go away.
Same with Far Cry which is a shame because it used to be a really fun dumbshooter series. I got FC6 on sale last month and had to slog through it, I swore off the franchise after finishing the game and haven’t touched it since, even though there’s plenty of post-game content left for me.
Far Cry 6 made some decisions that didn’t make sense to me. I was always running out of ammo, which is something you shouldn’t have to worry about in a Far Cry game. Having essentially just 4 magazines doesn’t go far in a protracted firefight, and the Supremo is inconsistent to use. In Far Cry 5, the amount of ammo you could carry was roughly double the amount.
You could also change your weapons at any time through the menu (so you’re essentially carrying like 50 weapons) but you can’t change your ammo type unless you’re at a workbench (although I think they fixed this later on), which is the opposite of the previous games.
The game map is nice and large but it suffers from generic Point of Interest syndrome that is common in Ubisoft games.
At least the plot was zany at times, particularly the side missions.
Sad to see our resident AAAA game developer not doing well, but it was largely of their own making here.
I haven’t played FC5 nor 6, but the running out of ammo really feels like FC2. Having to scavenge for weapons in the middle of fights or using mounted guns and grenades to kill enemies. Wich I think really improves the game, but it could not be as good in these other releases.
I’m not a fan of the current trend of remakes, but a re-release of Far Cry 2 might be the only thing Ubisoft could make that I’d still be interested in.
The degrading weapons, fire physics, and stealth* were leagues better than anything in the later games. If they fixed the instant enemy respawning, added more fast travel stations, and toned down the OP DLC guns that made scavenging weapons pointless it’d be a nearly perfect game.
YMMV. It had “fire from the brush and reposition while the enemy searches for you” stealth rather than the “crouch behind someone and you’re completely invisible” stealth of later games. I liked it but a lot of people hated FC2’s stealth gameplay.
Im honnestly impressed by how much of a slog FC6 was. God at launch the people delivering your cars were so painfully slow everyone just resorted to shooting the driver once they showed up. I don’t even know if they’ve fixed that.
If you want a stupid fun “kill infinite number of baddies working for an insane BBEG” style game, Just Cause is a blast. 2 and 3 were both fantastic (3 smartly gave you infinite explosives) and the amount of silly chaos you can cause (and are rewarded for causing too!) is brilliant.
For an example, in JC2 there’s a mission where you have to destroy a rocket which is launching using a fighter jet and blow up the rocket before it reaches orbit. The ongoing challenge was simply that I’d shoot it until I got too close, not start maneuvering for a second pass until it was too late and instead crash into the rocket dying in a fiery explosion, followed by the rebel leader telling me over the radio that I’d failed and to try again. Then one of the time, I shot the rocket until I got too close, started maneuvering too late, exploded as the plane crashed into the rocket and the rebel leader started saying something over the radio, except it was a congratulatory statement, and I realized I’d instinctively ejected from the plane at impact, and was now falling down to the ground with only my parachute and lots of enemy aircraft trying to kill me. So I grappled to a helicopter, persuaded the crew to let me in (aka beat them up and threw them out) then got shot to hell by another helicopter, which I conveniently would grapple to, persuade its crew to let me in, and keep repeating the process until I finally was close enough to the ground to grapple down to the ground and steal a fast car to evade the enemy army.
JC3 one-ups this by instead of having you blow up a rocket (an ICBM in this case) but instead catch up to and ride the ICBM so you can redirect it to save a major city.
It was even better than that in my opinion once. FC1 and 2 were fairly intelligent, capable, and innovative shooters. FC3 was dumb fun, but importantly sold ridiculously well so they decided that’s all it would ever be and that gets stale fast.
Honestly, it wasn’t even Assassin’s Creed anymore, it was more like Warrior’s Creed starting from Odyssey to Valhalla, and then they backtracked to more assassin like gameplay with Mirage. I stopped buying their games when I realized how bad Far Cry 5 and Odyssey were.
I like the concept of Origins and Odyssey (I only played some of Odyssey and haven’t cared about AC in ages). You’re right that it shouldn’t have been an AC game though. They could have set it in the same universe and just called it something else, but we can’t have new IPs. Honestly, if they wanted to do the same thing but make more sense for the gameplay, I think you playing a Templar would have been an interesting way to do it. I don’t remember much of the lore, but that seems like it’d work.
Man Ubisoft could be so great but they just land so meh. Watchdogs, tom Clancy wildlands, the division, farcry. They all have potential but just don’t have that last 15%
This is exactly the problem with capitalism, which is intended to be you do a thing i need/like for me i give you money
But was infiltrated by a bunch of people whose only purpose is to give less and less of what i need for more and more money until i tell them to fuck off, meanwhile they accumulated all the money and roam to greener pastures. it is basically like cut and burn farming, where the crops are all given to very few people and all the rest are to deal with the consequences
The last DLC is from 2022 and every DLC was great. They announced Anno 117 mid of last year and I see nothing that would indicate that 117 would be any less good
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Aktywne