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.
Wait…you can just do that?
You can do whatever you want there, as long as you are ok with the penalties.
You… can…
But its… kind of a really bad move, from the perspective of anyone with money, involved in Ubisoft.
This is roughly the equivalent of an unannounced, sudden bank holiday, you know, right before everything over the FDIC insured 250k gets cleaned out.
Yes because stocks are a straight up scam. It should be able to swing up and down as the market demands, but it doesn’t because every time there’s a potentially life changing movement up or down they halt it. They’ve done it many, many times before.
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.
Don’t forget AA, doing pretty good too.
Yup, AA and indie make up >90% of my gaming dollars and hours.
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
Isn’t this how the gaming boom and bust cycle always worked?
Indie(ish) games boom, AAA studios buy them and make them bust.
Not necessarily. Minecraft kinda went that way, but Factorio is still independent, and they were both released around the same time.
AAA games are often based on someone else’s IPs (e.g. Tom Clancy) or derived from a successful competitor (e.g. indie games). But I haven’t seen a ton of cases where the indie studio was bought outright.
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.
Genuine curiosity: does 3D really give more opportunities for asset reuse than 2D does?
Yes! For instance, say you’re making a character action game about big flashy jumping attacks. It took a long time to make the attack animations and now you need to provide the player with unlockables to encourage exploring, or some DLC.
If you have a 2D game, you’d need to do a LOT to integrate any new cosmetics, or characters, into your existing protagonist. But in 3D, if your character finds a hat, it’s very simple to just attach it to the model. Even swapping to a new playable character, you can retarget animations as long as proportions are similar.
I’m still not quite getting your point, sorry. Why would 3D make it easier to attach a hat to the character or retarget animations than 2D? That seems like a specific engine feature limitation and not inherently a shortcoming of 2D in general? It sounds like you’re comparing 3D to a primitive 2D engine where you need to manually draw and animate everything on screen instead of to a modern 2D engine with character bones, parenting, etc. Perhaps I’m actually out of the loop regarding the current limitations of 2D game engines and am thinking more in terms of a comparison between 3D and 2D animation software.
With 3d you make the model and it’s “naturally” 3d (obviously). If you want to make a 2d sprite have a different perspective, you need to animate (often times draw) it specifically. As they mentioned it before, it’s mostly useful for animations and movement. It may not even be “reusability” as much as “lack of need to think about perspective” or “scalability”.
Another point is that with a 3d engine under low-storage concerns (like say, the N64) you can do a lot of fuckery like having a total of ~10 textures and just apply various color tints (and maybe a blur here and there) to make it seem like there’s more. While 2d engines do support this nowadays, it’s still hard for artists to “fake” such a wide gamut of sprites, just by the nature of the medium. There’s no model to apply a texture to, so you’re limited to having a base sprite and recoloring it.
You could do a modular approach in 2d. For example, a character is built of the body (arms+face), hair, pants, shirt and shoes and change them individually. Same for houses with roofs, doors, windows and walls, etc.
However, as already said, you’re limited by perspective a lot. Each new perspective requires almost double the sprites.
With 3d you make the model and it’s “naturally” 3d (obviously). If you want to make a 2d sprite have a different perspective, you need to animate (often times draw) it specifically. As they mentioned it before, it’s mostly useful for animations and movement. It may not even be “reusability” as much as “lack of need to think about perspective” or “scalability”.
Oh, absolutely. I was thinking more in terms of 2D doing traditional flat 2D views like side-view platformers or top-down views. I can completely understand that as soon as you try to emulate 3D with even something as simple as an isometric view it’s going to be much more work than just doing straight 3D.
Another point is that with a 3d engine under low-storage concerns (like say, the N64) you can do a lot of fuckery like having a total of ~10 textures and just apply various color tints (and maybe a blur here and there) to make it seem like there’s more. While 2d engines do support this nowadays, it’s still hard for artists to “fake” such a wide gamut of sprites, just by the nature of the medium. There’s no model to apply a texture to, so you’re limited to having a base sprite and recoloring it.
I can understand this too.
You could do a modular approach in 2d. For example, a character is built of the body (arms+face), hair, pants, shirt and shoes and change them individually. Same for houses with roofs, doors, windows and walls, etc.
I imagine that a lot of 2D games use these kinds of techniques.
However, as already said, you’re limited by perspective a lot. Each new perspective requires almost double the sprites.
Got it, thanks!
It might be simple attachment if a character is using skeletal animation, eg Intrusion 2. That art style isn’t used often because the direct limb tweeting is often overly visible. Often, most character frames are hand drawn or at least prerendered.
In these hand drawn styles, a character’s head could appear to enter Z depth as part of the drawing (imagine a 6 frame animation of a character spinning a sword like a top). When that happens WHILE they’re also wearing an attached hat, the hat must rotate and adjust for the depth as well - which means new drawings, even if you’re able to specify the positions of the character’s head during each frame of the animation.
We could be talking past each other with bad descriptions that need visuals, though.
I appreciate your more detailed description. I think I get what you’re trying to explain. It just seems to me (at a very shallow level, I’m no expert) that all else being equal, 2D should be able to do just about anything that 3D can, but more simply (with some exceptions, of course - trying to reproduce a 3D look and behavior in 2D would obviously be an order of magnitude more work than just doing it in 3D).
To your point, I’ve generally noticed that bone-driven 2D animations tend to look kind of janky, like marionettes, but I didn’t think that it was a technical limitation as much as just the animators taking a lot more shortcuts. In other words, why would limb tweening be inherently more overly visible in 2D vs. 3D? It seems that it would be hard to do a pure comparison that controlled for other variables, but intuitively it seems to me that in a comparison that did control for those 2D would turn out easier to produce content for than 3D.
Again, to your point, I can understand that if we compared popular hand-drawn or pixel art 2D assets and environments with popular styles of 3D assets and environments in common usage, especially across indie games, 3D could very likely come out ahead in productivity.
Sorry if I have dragged this conversation out too long. I have an interest in game design/development and game art and hope to some day get into both myself with some small games, so this is a topic that I would very much like to have a solid understanding of so I can make the most efficient use of my time.
I see the points that you made to another commenter but SNES and Sega Genesis were 16-bit consoles. They were a dramatic improvement (and many games on them were the pinnacle as far as I’m concerned) over the 8-bit NES and Sega Master System. I’ll take well-designed 16-bit games over pretty much anything else.
When the bubble pops it will be destruction on a scale we’ve never seen before. The size of this mistake is absolutely staggering.
The later it pops the worse it will be.
I suggest you play some classics.
Indie games pale in comparison.
What are some examples of classics and indies you have in mind?
Play Symphony of the Night instead of the indie knockoff.
The indie market is just another tool to reduce people’s standards.
Right, Terraria and Stardew Valley constantly releasing new content for free is lowering standards… 🙄
So it sounds like you’re talking about knockoffs and not indies in general. Trying to make them equivalent ignores that the majority of game design innovation has come from indie games for many years.
No, I’m still talking about indies in general.
I gave 1 example because giving more isn’t worth my time.
the majority of game design innovation has come from indie games for many years.
Okay, buddy.
Symphony was incredible for the time, but its difficulty was all over the place and pretty much becomes zero in late-game. Many, many Metroidvanias by indie developers have far surpassed SotN in quality.
It’s one of my favorite games of all time, but I understand that nostalgia plays a big part in that.
Both are great. Here are some great indies:
- Factorio
- Hollow Knight
- Subnautica
- Celeste
- Hades
- Tunic
That covers a wide range of genres, none are particularly derivative, and those are just off the top of my head.
I play great classics all the time, but I also play great new indies.
Yeah, I think all of those games are trash.
But I’m glad you like them.
Your standards are weird. Several of these games are considered the current pinnacle of their genres.
Saudi Arabia:
e-sports washing
Its not sports anymore. Its just media washing.
Comedy, games, whatever they can get their blood soaked hands on.
There AAA games.
Then there’s one AAAA game.
Next must be the AAAAA game they’re working on. It’s an extraction shooter.
Roguelike Deckbuilder Extraction Shooter.
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?
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.
https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Association_amicale_des_amateurs_d'andouillette_authentique
Sorry, the page doesn’t exist in English :(
The only possible explanation is that they didn’t use enough AI.
To make the games, or to cook their books?
Yes.
You’re correct! They should have fired at least 20% more of their staff and used AI to build everything, and not test any of it. It’s the only way.
Ubisoft is a textbook example of what happens when you pin your companies revenue on a small handful of IPs and milk them to the absolute fucking limit. I like assassins creed, but I’ve played enough of them for the rest of my life. Make something new my dudes.
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 noticing it happens with all companies.
They start out small and can’t afford to pay businesspeople to figure out how to fuck over their customers as hard as possible.
Then, after the company is successful thanks to the hard work of the workers, the business-school people start applying in droves to make sure every company operates like gas stations across the street from each other.
It results in companies making decisions like having higher budgets for advertising than what they spend on actually making a product, because the data says it will make them more money and stupid customers keep reinforcing it.
Nothing will meaningfully improve until our culture stops valuing people based on their wealth. I have no hope for that to happen in my lifetime.
This exactly what happens when you rely on rhetoric, instead of you know, making games that people like.
Either way, he recommended that everyone “freak the fuck out for the next few days and speculate as much as possible until they announce something,”
Advice after my own heart. Freaking out and speculating are always the best move.
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.
If they can save $10 a day somehow they’ll do it for the shareholders at the cost of anyone else around them.
That’s why they’re fucked now and I’m here for it. Screw the greed.
Well starwars outlaws was supposed to sell 5.5 million copies to break even and they sold 1 million.
The CEO told people to get used to not owning the games they pay for
And overall every game they have made lately is soulless corporate suits driven slop.
They lost what made them special and unique and doubled down on it for years.
What didn’t they screw up?
Doesn’t really answer the question for people like me who didn’t follow their every action
No, sorry. Sometimes I don’t want to answer a question and just feel like being a smartass to hopefully get a chuckle from a handful of people.
Xotic56 has you covered.
This is good news for everyone who is not an ubisoft shareholder
Why? What relevance is Ubisofts poor record keeping to non-shareholders?
how so?
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.
In the Ubisoft trading community that I mentioned, some folks blamed UbiSoft’s downfall for “being woke”. As if Ubisoft’s blind chasing of money, abandoning most of their IP, selling broke products, and last but not least an executive telling consumers to get used to not owning games are not bigger factors.
Uh-oh! Wait, you already said that.
Ruh-roh!
This is what happens when you abandon Splinter Cell.
It’s what happens when you operate your company with an accountant mentality. The focus is 100% on money, and 0% on creativity.
They always realize too late that customers won’t just give you money, you have to offer them something decent in exchange, but accountants don’t know how to do that, which is why you NEVER let accountant craft the business strategy for a company.
If they try to offer suggestions, you scream at them to get back to their hole and count the money like they’re supposed to, and when their opinion is needed, it will be solicited, which will be NEVER.
The irony is that they actually have some pretty unique and creative ideas spread out in most of their open-world games despite the jokes about how they’re all the same. If they cared about making good shit and not just money, they could have a game that rivals or surpasses Grand Theft Auto.
Or consistently fail to make Beyond Good and Evil 2 for several decades.
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.
I have a lifetime boycott of all things Ubisoft for this very reason. I bought game after game after game from the late 90’s until early 2000’s. 100% of them were legal purchases and with the CD in the drive… "please insert CD " error
Then I became the lead developer for gameloft.com and saw how completely incompetent the French leadership of the company is. Absolute morons to the highest levels.
Never another penny shall be conveyed to Ubi from my holdings.
edit: You wanna know what I’m talking about? Ok. They import the director from France. He does not speak English, he does not speak Quebecois, which is very different than Parisian French. He has no knowledge of the games industry whatsoever, but is a cherished family friend. He cannot communicate with anybody in written or verbal ways. He shows up for work at 10am and takes 2 hour coffee with other “leadership” and then lunch. Then he comes back from a 2 hour lunch, and him and come C-Level turnip laugh at his Billy Bass for 30 minutes. I am not making any of this up. This man installs a friend he met into the position of Executive Producer. The man’s previous experience was managing an Esso gas station. No embellishment. So I’m the Sr dev and I’m the fucking acting director, account manager, game designer, executive producer, producer, technical producer, project manager, director of production, developer, creative director, QA lead, every god damned thing just to get some corny-ass games produced.
edit2: Laughing at a Billy Bass. A Billy. Bass. Singing. Fish. Laughing at it uproariously.
Oh wow you anger much less easily.
I started boycotting when they started forcing uPlay even in Steam games.
All you had to do was make good and fun games. How do you fuck THAT up???
By treating their paying customers like worthless trash/criminals/scum/pirates/etc. Which is what Ubisoft has spent the past 10 years doing.
“We’ve finally decided to listen to fans. We’re releasing a new Splinter Cell…animated show!”
Or “We’ve finally decided to listen to fans. We’re releasing a new Splinter Cell…addon for an always online single player game that no one likes…"
Fans: “We get to play as Sam Fisher again? Awesome!”
UBI:
Nah fuck that if they make a new splinter cell game it would end up being open world with a cosmetic store
Not only that but E33 showed people what ex-ubisoft devs could do when you actually let them be creative.
