Just minutes before it was set to deliver its financial results for the first half of its 2025-26 fiscal year, Ubisoft mashed the brakes on the whole thing, postponing the release of its results to an unspecified future date. The company also requested that European exchange Euronext halt trading of the company’s shares and bonds from November 14 until the publication of its results.
The only games in my Steam library that I can’t play are Ubisoft.
Fuk Ubi. Forever. I would be happy if they went under.They should use prices of $200, 250, and 300 instead of the $70, 110, and 130 AAA reskinned games. That would work. /s
All you had to do was make good and fun games. How do you fuck THAT up??? Especially when you were already doing it.
And not to mention…
“Hey guys, what can we make that people really want?”
“I hear people all the time over the last decade asking for a new Splinter Cell game.”
“Yeah, ok, Brad. We’ll call that plan B… Every year with this asshole. Does anyone have any REAL ideas???”
Because fuck gamers, right, Ubi? Expedition 33 showed the world what current games makers can do when pricks in suits arent around to muddy the waters. The quicker UBI folds, and all that talent leaves to make something that they actually want to make the better.
They are also hellbent on infecting everything they touch with Denuvo malware. I haven’t bought anything of theirs in years for that reason alone.
Saudi Arabia:
e-sports washing
A lot of very confused people here who think an earnings delay means ubi havent made much money. Cant say if they have or not, but if they havent thats still not a reason for this kind of delay
It’s not that, it’s the trade halt that points to something major (and bad for them) happening.
They haven’t been doing too well recently. The trade halt is because they’re afraid that everybody would read the halting of the report as admission they’re barely afloat and start dumping shares, killing the company.
Right, If the truth is theyre barely afloat theyre not going to change anything by delaying the report. The time its reporting has passed.
I don’t think video game companies should have gotten this big and/or complex……
Professional (as in they earn money, not skill level) Xers fuck everything up. (here, X is an arbitrary verb or a brand name)
My anecdotes: Youtube was good before professional youtubers became a thing (systemic problem, people are not the issue but the environment which breeds them), now it’s attention economy and or one topic discussed for 50 minutes (a video explaining the same topic with the same intensity from 10 years ago is 2 minutes long)
Gamers were problematic but harmless, professional gamers caused betting pandemic (sponsored content).
Streamers were funny, professional streamers are sexy/deadly-sells-to-children.
I liked it when people were sharing stuff online because they were bored, and not because they were hungry.
The last line you said is top notch and sums it up well.
I‘m looking forward to next year when AAA studios will continue to disappoint even harder while indie games flourish and gain market share. Maybe the AI bubble pops too. One can only hope.
Then the AAA studios will use some of their Saudi cash to buy out the most prominent indie developers, only to slowly strangle their products
On a pedestrian level, I’ve really liked the slow move from “SNES aesthetic” to “PS1/PS2 aesthetic”. My first console was an N64, so I guess I never had much nostalgia for the 8-bit days, and I feel like 3D gives a lot of opportunities for intelligent asset reuse to give a game lots of content.
Don’t forget AA, doing pretty good too.
This exactly what happens when you rely on rhetoric, instead of you know, making games that people like.
The Ubisoft trading community are coping to justify holding on to their tanking investments. It’s a gambler doubling down on losing.
Christ, how the mighty Ubisoft has fallen. They will go the way of EA and become a spyware company for the decadent Arab royals. I’m just crying that Ubisoft made some of my favourite games growing up and look what they have done to my boy-- a rotting zombie 🥲
It’s disappointing. I’ve been going through some of their older catalog recently and it just has a lot more passion behind it i feel.
AC Shadows felt like when i write an essay, where i get really motivated at the start, completely drop off and try to stuff the middle with as much as possible to reach the page count, then get motivated again at the end just to finish the conclusion. They always had their bugs, but lately it’s felt soulless.
Ubisoft has been shit for a very long time.
I still recoil from the memory of Far Cry 3 dropping in the middle of the game because thier launcher had an issue, three times in one hour. Which reset my progress. Uninstall, never bought shit from them again.
Wait…you can just do that?
You can do whatever you want there, as long as you are ok with the penalties.
There AAA games.
Then there’s one AAAA game.
Next must be the AAAAA game they’re working on. It’s an extraction shooter.
Then there’s one AAAA game.
I mean, they claim there’s one, but evidence says otherwise. Them spending a lot on their shitty arena shooter with boats didn’t make it any higher quality.
AAAAA
The sound one makes when they’re forced to 100% Ubishit’s sandbox games.
What do you mean markers spread everywhere isn’t gameplay?
Roguelike Deckbuilder Extraction Shooter.
Sounds like their recent games that they claimed did so well probably didn’t actually, and that’s about to be a massive problem.
They know. They’re done, and that’s that.
What did they screw up recently?
The most recent release is probably Anno 117 which came out yesterday. While decently looking it’s lacking features of the previous title (like coop mode and mod browser) with the promise they will be added later and is priced at around 60€ or 90€ if you want to gamble on the quality of the promised to be released DLC. They also relied on AI generated images in some of the assets used in the game instead of paying their artists. Optimisation for the game seems to be ok, but not great but it might be too early to judge that fully yet.
That seems like way too recent to have any impact, though. It wouldn’t even have made it into their report data
They tried to build a lot of hype around the game and get people to preorder. Maybe those numbers were (far) below expectations?
I don’t think that alone would justify this move, even if they didn’t sell a single pre-order.
I don‘t get why they’d cheap out on artists, a couple people drawing illustrations is surely not gonna balloon development cost - and arguably one of the easiest places to spot when it‘s AI slop. It‘s as if they think there must be gen AI stuff in the game somewhere or the game‘s worse or something.
If you look at the older titles, there’s so much love and passion that went into the artworks. 1404 is 16 years old and has aged incredibly well, because of the high quality of the work that went into it. This is missing in 117.
Uh-oh! Wait, you already said that.
Ruh-roh!
