UBIsoft in potential financial trouble

[Nisaaru]

Activists in the board room is the simplest explanation. It's not a conspiracy. It's just ideology.

No, it has been coming from the investor side. Blackrock set the woke/DEI investment policies post Occupy Wallstreet. Shareholder companies and managers followed it for investment/career reasons. They then just enabled/hired opportunists/ideologues to execute their ideological drivel.

Cause&Effect.

Anybody which paid attention noticed how this creeped into movies, gaming, sports and whatnot.

This was *no* accident.

 

[nutball]

No, it has been coming from the investor side. Blackrock set the woke/DEI investment policies post Occupy Wallstreet. Shareholder companies and managers followed it for investment/career reasons. They then just enabled/hired opportunists/ideologues to execute their ideological drivel.

Cause&Effect.

Anybody which paid attention noticed how this creeped into movies, gaming, sports and whatnot.

This was *no* accident.

Bibble. You think that Blackrock is woke (whatever TF that means)?

Anyway that makes life quieter. Goodbye.

 

[Johnny Awesome]

Woke is pretty well defined. I explained it in detail in an earlier thread.

I think Nisaaru and I are both right. It's activists in the board room, encouraged by entities like Blackrock.

Consumers will ultimately decide how much they care about this stuff. My general thinking is that if the game is good enough, people look the other way. But when you're on the edge, it can hurt you.

PS: A lot of straw man arguments come up when discussing this stuff. Someone objects to something woke and all of sudden that person is called a woman hater or something. It's disingenuous to say the least.

 

[Malo]

Bibble. You think that Blackrock is woke (whatever TF that means)?

Of course not. They have been chasing the ideology for investment purposes though, like most companies. As soon as it's no longer deemed profitable, they'll all drop those initiatives like we've already been seeing.

None of them actually give a shit about the ideology or the people it represents.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

But isn't that ideological push associated with crashing business? Was there ever any evidence that chasing that ideology hard would result in greater profits? this whole thread is about how Ubi is losing money because of politics, so it's clearly not the case that social agenda == Moare Monies.

I can't fathom how an investment firm would conclude that such a push is in their economic interests,

In specific relation to Ubi, are there notes from board meetings where it's clear the shareholders have requests politic changes?

 

[trinibwoy]

I can't fathom how an investment firm would conclude that such a push is in their economic interests

The calculus on Wall Street is that wealth is (slowly) accruing to minority groups and therefore in order to make money off of people who aren’t old white men they need to up their game. Part of that is having a more diverse organization so they can attract those wealthy diverse clients. This has been in the works for decades.

The classic examples are wealthy women and wealthy athletes. The idea is that if you take a bunch of old white men to a client meeting you’re less likely to win their business.

So it’s 100% about making money. Yes some Wall Street executives also want to make the world a better place but that’s just a side benefit. Anybody who thinks these guys are throwing away profits to chase some ideology is woefully mistaken.

 

[Cappuccino]

Blackrock set the woke/DEI investment policies post Occupy Wallstreet.

BlackRock holds retirement accounts and runs ETFs, most of which are run of the mill index funds. ESG stuff is not even close to most of what they do, nevermind the majority of funds.

Bibble. You think that Blackrock is woke (whatever TF that means)?

It’s not entirely incorrect. There are BR iShares funds that invest in proportion to both market cap and an ESG score, which is essentially a ‘woke’/DEI score (points for women in leadership, points for being net-zero, points for social involvement, etc). Their thesis is that these firms will in the long run outpace the market. I think their thesis is wrong (and I’ve got my own thoughts on these funds being in 401ks but whatever that’s a side discussion for an investment forum not here).

In specific relation to Ubi, are there notes from board meetings where it's clear the shareholders have requests politic changes?

I don’t think there’s an institutional push to make the ninjas black or whatever, explicitly written into the minutes of a meeting. But I don’t doubt the fact that many AAA firms are now filled with very liberal people who push this kind of thing. It’s probably nearly subconscious as when 80% of an organization believes in ‘woke stuff’, for lack of a better term, it’s probably not even debated.

I mean why else would the main character in a game set in feudal Japan be black and gay? I’m being told you romance a ‘non-binary’ character? Non-binarism was invented on Tumblr in like 2010, why would this be a concept in feudal Japan?

I recognize that AC games aren’t historically accurate (at least not 100%), I’ve been a fan for many years. However they at least tried to be rooted in accuracy, besides the supernatural stuff. There is a way to be bombastic and inaccurate that isn’t ridiculous and it’s obvious they chose these characters as part of some strange diversity-first agenda.

 

[Cyan]

Japan's prime minister is mad about Assassin's Creed Shadows Shigeru Ishiba, the Prime Minister of Japan, has spoken about Assassin's Creed Shadows during a government meeting, saying, 'It is an insult to the nation'

https://twitter.com/x/status/1902076585588424897

 

[Nisaaru]

Bibble. You think that Blackrock is woke (whatever TF that means)?

Anyway that makes life quieter. Goodbye.

Sigh, Blackrock is obviously not "woke" but they forced the DEI *agenda* through their investment policies. They pushed for a culture revolution to destabilise/transforming society.

This is hardly new.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Blackrock isn't really a topic for this thread. Considerations of outside influences need to be rooted firmly in Ubi's decision making.

 

[arandomguy]

Ghost of Tsushima hit 77k and it was a PC port of an old game. 26k is just ok for Ubisoft's big release of the year. We'll see how it all plays out, but AC: Shadows had the potential for mega hit given that so many people have been clamoring for a Japanese AC game for decades and Ubisoft isn't going to be happy with 1/2 Odyssey numbers.

Interestingly Ghosts of Tsushima as the nearest near competitor is also considered a woke game according to the "woke content detector" Steam group due to -

Contains overtly pro-LGBTQ+ and overtly pro-DEI messaging. Features multiple LGBTQ+ npcs with the player character responding with modern-day sentiments. Many female front-line combatants and leaders.

Personally I find all this stuff, either side of the aisle, not of interest so I'll just defer to them.

The other thing is Assassin's Creed has been on a slide in terms of popularity for quite some time now. Looking at the data it seems the series peaked in terms of relative popularity with AC3 (when the main character was first a minority as mixed race, white/native american) or AC4 (which people claim is more of a pirate game as it's reason for success) depending on how you want to look at the metrics. AC Unity did draw the interest of the graphics crowd but at least anecdotally my impression was the actual relevance of the series/IP was all downhill in terms of broader relevance.

I don’t think there’s an institutional push to make the ninjas black or whatever, explicitly written into the minutes of a meeting. But I don’t doubt the fact that many AAA firms are now filled with very liberal people who push this kind of thing. It’s probably nearly subconscious as when 80% of an organization believes in ‘woke stuff’, for lack of a better term, it’s probably not even debated.

Here's the contradiction. Given the above it suggests there is a high prevalence of woke games on the market, and as the market as whole is still tending towards growth and popularity then that would mean that direction in itself is not solely indicative of the business success and reception of the content?

Looking at this list from that "woke content detector" Steam group for instance - https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet...WAkYdDahBrxDiwqWMGsWEcEnpdKTa4/htmlview?pli=1

There's plenty of games that are successful on there, including some that I can recall in terms of discourse was lauded because of type of content.

Or another thing that is brought up in the discourse is games that hire Sweet Baby Inc. as consultants. Interestingly AC Valhalla was the only the game that consulted with them and it was the most successful of the latter AC games after they peak with AC3/4. Suicide Squad is brought up as a failure but they also consulted with Alan Wake 2, Spider-Man 2, and God of War Ragnarok which we don't see brought up as failures.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

First milestone, 1 million in one day:

Assassin's Creed Shadows hits day one player milestone

Assassin's Creed Shadows has hit an impressive 1m players in its first 24 hours on sale.

www.eurogamer.net

 

[Nisaaru]

Blackrock isn't really a topic for this thread. Considerations of outside influences need to be rooted firmly in Ubi's decision making.

Unless you're part of UBI management you obviously can't prove that but if the market forces are pushing into that direction and it happens everywhere it should be common sense that UBI as a public company follows the money.

 

[Cappuccino]

First milestone, 1 million in one day:

Assassin's Creed Shadows hits day one player milestone

Assassin's Creed Shadows has hit an impressive 1m players in its first 24 hours on sale.

www.eurogamer.net

40k players on Steam for what is probably the most anticipated AC game since Revelations or Brotherhood seems rather mediocre.

Beyond the nonsense it doesn’t seem like a bad game. The dialogue seems like it continues to be a weak point, these games always look beautiful but dialogue is nails-on-chalkboard, now I’m hearing AI generated NPC voice lines. I remember in Origins you’d hear the same little kid voice line like 1000 times when you’d run through cities. Odyssey wasn’t much better there.

Honestly I always wondered why devs don’t just use the native language of the region? GoT does this, feels more authentic and frankly I won’t notice bad voice acting because I don’t speak Japanese/Greek/whatever Egyptians spoke in Ptolemaic Egypt.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Unless you're part of UBI management you obviously can't prove that but if the market forces are pushing into that direction and it happens everywhere it should be common sense that UBI as a public company follows the money.

Ubi's money comes from making and selling products. What good is investors wanting certain types of products if those products fail in the market place? Heck, what use is it to those investors even?!

40k players on Steam for what is probably the most anticipated AC game since Revelations or Brotherhood seems rather mediocre.

As I mentioned earlier, Steam concurrent users isn't representative for this series. Odyssey had 62,000 peak user, 2 days after launch, and sold 10 million. AC:3 had 15,000 peak user and sold 15 million.

Honestly I always wondered why devs don’t just use the native language of the region? GoT does this, feels more authentic and frankly I won’t notice bad voice acting because I don’t speak Japanese/Greek/whatever Egyptians spoke in Ptolemaic Egypt.

Isn't there some native language option? Doesn't that apply to NPCs? But the reason for native-language translations is because the protagonist speaks it so would understand it, thus you should as a the protagonist. If the speak a language you don't understand, you become an outsider. Ultimately the extreme of your idea is just make a pseudo-language up and have them talk gibberish; I can't imagine that proving very popular either.

 

[Johnny Awesome]

I would caution looking at "woke content detector" as some sort of definitive source when they go overboard with what they label as woke. They're just jumping on the anti-woke bandwagon a little too hard. It's clickbaity.

If we're going to talk about Steam concurrent users, we need to normalize the data for the increased popularity of Steam over time. AC:3 2012 Steam numbers don't really matter compared to recent AC:S Steam numbers, for instance. It's not that surprising that 13 years ago AC:3 wasn't as big on Steam, despite fantastic sales numbers.

It's still pretty clear that really good games like BG3 will get a pass on controversial (not just restricted to "woke") elements, but what we haven't determined is whether or not it can hurt sales for more regular releases. I would suggest that it depends how controversial the element is and what the target audience for the game is. Can't we at least agree that a monster truck simulator probably shouldn't lean heavily into transgender politics?

The target audience for AC is somewhere in the middle on a lot of this stuff I imagine, but whether the offended outnumber the enamored is hard to say at this point.

 

[techuse]

Without knowing what % of that one million players is sales as opposed to subscriptions and other lower revenue avenues of access, it’s fairly meaningless. Didn’t Valhalla actually sell almost 2 million copies on day one?

 

[cheapchips]

2. If we're going to talk about Steam concurrent users, we need to normalize the data for the increased popularity of Steam over time. AC:3 2012 Steam numbers don't really matter compared to recent AC:S Steam numbers, for instance. It's not that surprising that 13 years ago AC:3 wasn't as big on Steam, despite fantastic sales numbers.

Not sure how you' really normalise it. The general games market, PC market and Steam are all a bit of a moving feast over that 13 year period.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

2. If we're going to talk about Steam concurrent users, we need to normalize the data for the increased popularity of Steam over time. AC:3 2012 Steam numbers don't really matter compared to recent AC:S Steam numbers, for instance. It's not that surprising that 13 years ago AC:3 wasn't as big on Steam, despite fantastic sales numbers.

It's not that scientific and there's no means to draw a meaningful correlation. Peak users will not tell us sales figures. The only thing it offers is a comparison of AC games on Steam, where Shadows is not performing worse than other titles. If it had been dropped for being the reasons of the vocal minority, it's performance relative to other titles on the same platform should be worse.

So, Steam proves the game hasn't bombed hard. It doesn't prove if it's a financial success or even big seller.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Without knowing what % of that one million players is sales as opposed to subscriptions and other lower revenue avenues of access, it’s fairly meaningless. Didn’t Valhalla actually sell almost 2 million copies on day one?

Valhalla's peak Steam users was 15,700, 12 days after release. Quick Google suggests 1.7 million sales in first week.