Make a good fucking game. That’s your job. Get out of the creatives’ way and quit insisting that garbage microtransactions be inserted into everything.
It isn’t hard. Gaming companies were able to do it for decades. It’s the rent-seeking executives who are fucking up the gaming industry the same way they’re fucking up everything else.
How is he so disconnected from the reality? At the same time I know what he meant but did it in the worst way possible. Why corporations are so big that they don’t recognise their bad decision. “We are not the problem, it’s just you” and then swallows gamers and enshititifaction again.
He’s very clearly talking about celebrating people losing their jobs, and does so without saying anything super crazy.
Full quoteI rarely post on social media, but today I am sad. Ashamed and sad. > >The gaming industry is rough at the moment, we all know it. > >But seeing how “gamers” react on social medias, wishing ill-fate to companies and people alike is sad. (And not only towards Ubisoft) > >Even though it is always the vocal minority that express themselves on social media, I was hurt, hurt and ashamed to be a part of this community. > >What is even more revolting, is coming on Linkedin and seeing the same comments from people within the industry. > >On top of exposing yourself as a clearly non-decent human being, you are affecting thousands of employees that are already impacted by all the hate despite doing their best to deliver incredible experiences. > >How can you wish a company to fail simply because they do not cater to you or that the product does not please you is beyond me. > >We are all on the same boat, please please please, stop spreading hate, we should all uplift each other instead of bringing each other down.
Ubisoft as a company deserved to fail though. It sure sucks for the poor bastards working there but something tells me the tune would be a lot different if this was just another round of layoffs.
I don’t disagree with that. But he’s almost definitely responding to all the vitriol directed at employees losing their jobs as a result of bad decisions passed way down the chain to them, and this article is trying to make it some gotcha hit piece.
I do think being in charge of monetization at a company that does so in the way almost any AAA studio does is an inherently unethical job and will have a hard time feeling sorry for him personally, since he’s willing to do that job, but people are also being miserable assholes to everyone else who just is trying to work on a game for a stable employer. And all he’s actually saying is “maybe don’t be an asshole to people”.
He literally says “How can you wish a company to fail simply because they do not cater to you or that the product does not please you is beyond me.” I’m not saying he never mentioned employees or hate towards them, but his statement definitely comes off as purposefully misleading. Is there hate on the internet? Yes. People are sometimes hateful, but he even mentioned it being a vocal minority. To post something like this while there’s active backlash against the company and their games when he admitted to not posting much makes his intentions pretty clear. The majority of the “hate” is towards the company not the employees, but by being a concern troll he gets to lump in valid criticism of the company with a minority of people being hateful to the employees (some of which are directly responsible for the bad decisions of the company btw).
Maybe you disagree, but bad companies deserve to fail, and people responsible for harmful decisions the company makes should be held accountable. I think it’s ok for people to say that. I don’t want anyone anywhere to be treated poorly, but he seems to care more about the hate hurting their bottom line than actually hurting the people there. His statement would have read very differently otherwise.
“I understand if you are upset with decisions made by companies, including ours, but please do not direct hate towards individuals trying to do their jobs. If you take issue with the behavior of an individual, you should be able to express that while still respecting the person.” Or something like that.
People don’t hate these companies because they “don’t cater to them”. They love or loved the games, but these companies then turn around and try to screw their own fans out of every cent, nugget of personal data, and free time, that they have. There is no anger like the anger of a true fan.
To get that pissed, you had to have cared quite a lot to begin with.
The rest, are simply indifferent.
That, is why people are upset enough to experience schadenfreude when their stocks and releases fail. Because that is an event that SHOULD be proving to these companies that if they keep pushing the bullshit, they soon won’t be catering to anyone anymore. Hence it’s something that gives fans hope that they will pull their shit together and get back to doing right by their own franchises and talent.
And we are not all in the same boat. Some of us just want good games.
Even when companies like Ubi make good games, they come with a shitload of strings like “but the monetisation is unethical” or “the devs were forced to crunch” or “the company leadership did nothing about a festering company culture of criminal mysogyny”.
Simply by operating as ruthlessly as they do, these companies are slowly convincing the world they are “non-decent” institutions. Such institutions need massive restructuring, when the don’t deserve complete disassembly.
And angering your fans is a process that only goes one way. Every fan you piss off enough to make them swear to never again give you a chance, is one you probably wont ever have as a customer again.
Yeah, some will be malicious enough to cheer at the individuals getting screwed over when megacorps eat shit. But every sane person is cheering because there is now a large pool of talent looking to do something good with their skill, out from under the thumb of managers demanding every mechanic be optimized for monetization, rather than gameplay.
This person isn’t wrong to be disgusted with people who cheer at jobs being lost, but he is also MASSIVELY out of touch with how his own company is operating, and how it is coming to be viewed by the world as a result.
No matter what he meant, he sounds like he’s trying to paint the people with legitimate gripes about the way he handles the company as the harrassers when he is a huge driver of the problem.
It’s like Republicans complaining about the quality of current public schooling and blaming ‘woke’ policies when they’ve been the ones cutting school funding for decades, and they know it. It’s feigned concern.
So what you’re saying is you’re victim blaming the people the director here is expressing sympathy for?
There is a huge harassment campaign based around flagrant racism, and there are probably some racists who are more excited to attack ubisoft because it’s a shitty company in general, but that’s just icing on the cake when the main content is racism and someone who doesn’t have a horse in that race isn’t going to be involved in the same way.
It sure seems to me like you’re trying to find a way of talking around the racist harassment campaign like the author in the OOP does. Really makes you think.
I couldn’t possibly know your motivations, nor the author’s, I just find your choice to whitewash racism disreputable. Maybe you just have such a burning hatred for EA that you think that it’s expedient to run cover for racists – I think you wouldn’t be alone in that mindset, though not in good company either – but I think it’s silly to waste time on such speculation into the internal state of some random account. All I am concerned with is the result.
Coming from their director of monetization, all I hear is “waaah waaah booo waaah”
All this nickel and diming is super profitable and it shows. Just because it makes them fuckloads of money doesn’t mean we should applaud it, because it awful for the customers.
The man is mad that people don’t like how he monetizes Ubisoft games and game mechanics. He is upset at the messages he gets when he upsets a game to inject a micro transaction. He is part of the wave of business professionals that don’t see game players as people - we are just cash waiting to be harvested from idle wallets. This is what quid-pro-quo looks like; he is seeing what we look like to him and he doesn’t like it. He wants to be a person with a name and friends and credibility that allows mistakes to be made in good faith. We want to have fun, sometimes with friends and other times alone, in a game world where we can be a person with a name, friends, and have the ability to explore. We both want the same thing.
So why is he treating people like cattle instead of people who are trying to have fun with the system they have been given? Fuck this narcissistic piece of executive hypocrisy. He doesn’t deserve peace until he exits the industry or finds a way to be actually useful.
A more accurate description of the situation is that a broken clock is right twice a day as he validly complains about racists sending hate to his employees.
The monetization director should never say anything ever and should be beaten with a stick if he tries, but the standpoint the article is writing from is clear:
the unveiling of Assassin’s Creed Shadows, which quickly gained controversy for numerous allegations that Ubisoft was mispresenting Japanese heritage through unpopular artistic design choices.
“unpopular artistic design choice”, hm? What does that mean?
Neither the author’s writing nor the quote from the director actually name it specifically, but we can infer that it’s probably talking about Yasuke, which means that unfortunately this ghoul director is probably completely right and this author is no better than a concern troll.
I get that you should cultivate the audience you want to play your game, but Ubisoft can’t win for losing. This should have gone through 20 publicists. I expect that mong Hero Hei to leap on this shit.
Fuck Epic. I will never forgive them for buying Rocket League and ripping it away from my Linux library on steam. I will never do business with them, never play any of their games, never give them a dime, never even sign up to claim their free slop of the week. Fuck Epic with a cactus.
Tbh without epic I doubt the game would’ve survived 2020. If you recall, the whole fanbase was unhappy with how things were stale. Epic didn’t improve anything obviously but the free to play did boost it’s active nunber of players. Nevertheless fuck epic.
Wasnt it already a PS+ game years before epic? It literally had millions of players on day one.
I dropped it after my steam copy first time asked me to register an epic account, but till then I didn’t see huge issues with the game apart from the DLC milking.
It’s pretty much the same in terms of maps and gameplay. Had some regressions like removal of trading system and other things i forgot. Has voice channel now. Servers are the same except there are more now. It’s still fun for a quick match or two.
I own the original CD release of Unreal Tournament 2004, made by Epic, it includes a native Linux installer on disc, you get the full game, and it worked fine.
It makes me so sad that they did a complete 180 on this.
My theory has always been they wanted to keep the door open for Microsoft if things just go under. When you think about it, they were struggling quite a bit in the early 2000’s until gears. Microsoft really propped them up with that franchise, then they made fortnite, lost a lot of money until they pivoted to the BR mode and now they make millions every damn day.
EGS was always shit, I've said it since the beginning, and if they totally shut down and a bunch of dipshits lose their free libraries, all I'll do is laugh. Every downvote I've ever gotten for saying Epic is shit is just another tear for my collection.
You should have been able to see this coming the first (and every) time they bought a dev studio and immediately blocked game sales on Steam, or set games to exclusive for no reason other than locking out people who don't use their shitty store. Companies that can compete on their own merits don't have to do that, and being a fanboy because they gave out free games you probably already bought is fucking stupid.
I've heard of people getting banned from online play on steam, but haven't heard of anyone losing their library. I guess if you only play online, it could be the same effect (so maybe don't be a douchebag when playing online?)
I don't play multiplayer, except the rare occasion, and it's usually direct connect (which you can't be banned from), so I wouldn't care.
At any rate, I'm not saying steam is perfect or should be the only store, just that EGS fucking sucks. I agree with Randy Pitchford; We should have many viable competitors. Options are good. Epic is not a good option.
I have a large library of non-DRM games from multiple sources, to say nothing of physical releases and homebrew.
Even if I didn't, I have every right to say that an anticompetitive shitbag company's hack-job store sucks ass. Same goes for the Nintendo eShop. They don't care about their customers' experience, they only care about making money.
I mean, you can run any game through Proton. You don't even need to buy anything, just open steam, add the non-steam game, select proton compatibility, and off you go. This is how I play a lot of my Itch.io games on Steamdeck or my laptop (I don't have a windows install on any of my systems).
This CEO may think it’s developer-friendly, but I highly doubt if Epic will keep such developer-friendly stance if Epic becomes a giant in this industry.
Epic burnt so much money on Epic store these years. If it succeeds, it’s very likely Epic will try to earn it back. From player? Will players willing to pay more in Epic store than the others? If the answer is no… Sometimes it really makes me wonder if these CEOs are really that stupid…
Yes, and at wholesale rates it’s a pretty good bang-for-your-buck, as an advertising scheme. Advertising is a numbers game about getting as many eyeballs as possible on the product, and I know I actively check for free games on the Epic launcher most weeks. Even if I don’t ever buy anything because of that specifically, it keeps the app on my computer and keeps me checking back in.
Edit: And I shit you not I just opened it to check 'cause I can’t remember if I looked at this week’s free game. Turns out it’s a good thing I did too, the Fallout collection is free right now!
“Even if I don’t ever buy anything” is why I doubt it’s going to work out. Epic is publicly right now saying that it’s great at acquiring users. Yeah, I’ll bet it is. People love free stuff. Is it great at turning those users into paying customers? Even at wholesale rates, I’ve gotten hundreds of games for free from Epic, which means they spent thousands of dollars on me, and I can’t foresee an instance where I’ll ever give them a cent back.
Yeah, obviously they’d want to earn it back and yeah, obviously from customers. You make that sound malicious. Steam is doing the same thing. With the amount of money Steam makes, they could drop their share in half and still make a killing. Epic wouldn’t have to do anything that Steam isn’t to recoup costs if they were competitive with Steam.
That said, Epic does take less revenue from developers, which is nice. This doesn’t translate to less for the end user though because Valve uses their market dominance to force the same price across marketplaces or you aren’t allowed on Steam. It’s fucked up.
Just pointing out, once again, that games sold on the Epic store can be different prices to Steam. “Valve uses their market dominance to force the same price across marketplaces” is a nonsensical, incorrect statement.
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