Technology

Not really, Ubisoft.

Much like music, movies and TV, you just need to make sure your content is both available for purchase for people who don't want a subscription and consistently available on a subscription service for those that do.

It's when you start fucking around and taking them off again because somebody else is offering you more for exclusivity that we get pissed off and just pirate things. You can't expect Assassin's Creed Black Flag to still be making you a noticeable amount of money, but a subscriber can rightfully expect it to be on your service.

I'm of the opinion that if a game is on a subscription service, be it PSN or Game Pass, then it should stay there except in very extreme circumstances. A game can take weeks to play through, and it's only going to take one large game going AWOL at 90% completion for me to sour on the whole idea.

Imagine playing a Ubisoft game

Snarky comments and people joking about Ubisoft's practices but in reality many if not most will simply accept that, spread their butt-cheeks and prepare for all the shoddy practices to be rammed up their ass. Once they get one foot in the door it's just incremental steps from there, be it visual downgrades, selling experience boosters for games they made slower on purpose, day one DLCs, pre-orders, special editions, accounts for "offline" game, etc. Anything goes if they can squeeze another dollar from their customers. There's a message stronger than words when Ubisoft is constantly voted most hated company and yet remains one of the biggest.

Not sure what to tell you masochistic fans but Eves said spread the cheeks some more, there's nothing else for you to do obviously. Bend over.

I’m already confident with having 0 Ubisoft games in my library.

What a fucking piece of shit. Yuck.

I love hearing these stories of big gaming companies being shitty as usual, knowing I only play indie games and I'm not giving theme a dime

Ubisoft needs to get used to me never buying their repetative lazy games every again.

What a shame. FC3, 4 and primal are some of my favorite games..

Subscriptions are taking off, just not Ubisoft subscriptions because most of their games are derivative shit.

And personally I don't have an objection with the concept of subscription as an option. It's no worse than streaming music or videos, or renting a DVD / VHS back when. But whatever the service is will have to have a LOT of content, not just back catalogue but new stuff too with fair & reasonable terms for people to want to subscribe. If Ubisoft wants to ever see its stuff streamed it will have to be as part of some other, better service than the one they offer that's for sure.

Ubisoft and EA are the only games I pirate. Fuck those shitty cancer companies.

Pretty easy to not own a Ubisoft game. Assassin's Creed and Far Cry series are pretty boring IMO.

Ubisoft doing God's work.

And by that I mean not having their games available on steam so I cannot purchase them.

oh, i forgot that it's 2024 and video games haven't really "taken off" yet

It's hard to not be cynical about this pattern. To me, it's starting to look like a lot of companies are setting up long-term plans to weather a recession, and patiently wait for baselines to shift in order to normalize stuff like this.

Another way to frame it is, given enough time, a business will ultimately engage in rent seeking behavior if they see no alternative to adding value. Which kind of makes sense, as Ubisoft now builds absolutely monster sized games (e.g. Assassin's Creed 22 - Find all the Things Edition), with all the DLC, online content, and cosmetic bolt-ons imaginable; they've saturated that market. There's literally nowhere else for them to go, unless they take on much bigger risks like building a whole new franchise or two.

That's okay, you just need to get comfortable with me pirating your games... Then again that's Ubisoft, I don't think I even want to pirate their stuff.

UbiSoft needs to get comfortable with execs not making sales targets.

These guys need to remember they are selling a novelty...a toy. It's not an essential good. Their consumer can just "stop" seeking new games

I am comfortable, it is called piracy. Just try me.

This is one positive about the Switch, cartridges are still a thing and I hope this trend continues with future Nintendo releases. Other than that fuck this, if that's their stance I will be comfortable to sail the high seas.

MMO without the MM

But I don't want subscriptions to take off...

Just downloaded the original Assassin's Creed from JC141 and I'm having a blast.

It's crazy how much ubisoft games have fallen.

What's funny to me is the streaming model for media already has shown this won't work out well for gaming companies. When a new game drops people will sign up for a month, binge it, then cancel their subscription. They could try and trickle out DLC to get people to stay subscribed, but unless the DLC is significant people will probably just wait a while until a bunch of DLC is available then binge it again.

Personally I can only focus on one or maybe two major games at a time so I'd be happy to only pay a small monthly fee to one major game company at a time over paying for several $80 AAA titles a month.

Makes one want to sail the high seas out of principle.

I’m not necessarily against one subscription service having a ton of games from a lot of developers. The problem is that a ubisoft service isn’t gonna have games from everyone and that playing a full game takes me 2-3 months with the time I have. Just buying the game is probably cheaper for me and gives me more guarantees.

I dont want to pay a subscription for a bunch of games I'm not interested in. I want to buy and own the specific games I want to play. Fuck off ubisoft

We need time get comfortable trusting games companies that have the track record they do not to fuck customers that have trusted they'll continue to provide access to their games rather than arbitrarily removing them, adding game-ruining monetisation, fucking with subscription prices gating access to their libraries and generally acting like shady arseholes?

Suuure - sign me up.