General Gaming Inside Ubioft - From Low Morale to Internal Tensions (Tom Henderson/Insider Gaming)

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

Inside Ubisoft - From Low Morale To Internal Tensions - Insider Gaming

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From Low Morale To Internal Tensions, let's take a look behind the curtain at Ubisoft, one of the world's biggest gaming companies.

 

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As industry-wide layoffs continue to plague headlines, Ubisoft, the sixth-largest video game company by employees, is at a crossroads. Internally, morale is at an all-time low and employees fear that the publisher could be next to see a major restructuring, inevitably resulting in a high number of people losing their jobs. 

 

The lack of job security is the current feeling felt across the industry, but as Ubisoft leadership continues its never-ending ambition to pursue trends, usually resulting in wasted resources or lackluster results, it won’t be them shown the door if the company needs to reduce costs.

 

Since the start of 2023, over 15,000 game industry workers have lost their jobs, with over 5600 being lost in January 2024 alone. Ubisoft hasn’t escaped unscathed, as 124 layoffs hit the company in November 2023, but sources, who spoke with Insider Gaming under the condition of anonymity, believe that the writing is on the wall and that number is likely to grow.

 

But with one of its best pipelines of games in over a decade, why exactly are internal tensions at boiling point? Over the past several months, I’ve been speaking to a number of employees at the company to understand why.

 

 

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The Wild Goose Chase

 

In recent years, Ubisoft’s strategy has moved away from innovation and creativity and led the company on a wild goose chase to produce what was popular at the time. From trying to produce the next colossal free-to-play battle royale to its desire for NFTs and web3, the never-ending pursuit has left countless projects being canned, talent being wasted, and a massive amount of money being flushed down the toilet.

 

At one point in late 2021 to early 2022, the company had around a dozen battle royale games in development, sources said. Many of these projects ultimately failed to captivate players during playtesting and were subsequently canceled.

 

 

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Constant Delays & Management

 

In recent years, there has been one thing that you can probably count on with a Ubisoft game – its inevitable delay. It’s a frustration that’s been felt publically and internally, mostly boiling down to unrealistic internal deadlines and poor management.

 

One of the most well-known examples of constant delays is Skull and Bones, the decade-long-in-development pirate game that has seen six public delays. The game is estimated to have cost in the region of $200 million to produce, a figure that is not expected to be made back, sources said. For the most part, delays stemmed from a plague of power-hungry managers trying to elevate their careers. The constant changes in vision created a rotten atmosphere, with some developers confused as to what they were meant to be doing on a day-to-day basis. 

 

“Some days I would just be sat there watching YouTube videos”, said one former employee who worked on the project.

 

 

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By the Numbers

 

Unfortunately, the years of constant delays and out-of-touch decisions have hindered the reputation of the company with players. Resentment is being felt, with some employees believing that it’s now being reflected in player numbers.

 

In early January, Ubisoft released one of its highest-rated Metacritic games in the past decade, Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown. The game hit a height of 88 (Nintendo Switch) with its critic score and a 9.1 user score, leading many to believe that the game could already be in the running for several Game of the Year awards. Despite the impressive scores though, the game has around 300,000 players at the time of writing (estimated $15m in revenue).

 

Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora, a game that was announced to be in development at Massive in March 2017, was intended to launch to coincide with The Way of Water and capitalize on its inevitable success. However, after several delays, the game launched in December 2023 with limited marketing. At the time of writing, sources revealed that the game has accumulated 1.9 million players (estimated $133m in revenue). For context, Massive’s last two AAA games, The Division (2016) and The Division 2 (2019) did $330m and $264m (roughly) in their initial launch weeks.

 

 

[XxEvil AshxX]

Ubi used to be one of my favorite publishers. They had three of my favorite online franchises, Ghost Recon, Rainbow Six, and Splinter Cell. The trifecta.

 

Then they turned Ghost Recon into Far Cry. Then they turned Rainbow Six into Counter-Strike.

 

I'll concede to the fact that Rainbow Six eventually became extremely popular and that gamble paid off for them, but that game could have succeeded under any title. The fact that it was called Rainbow Six had nothing to do with it. It could have easily co-existed in the Clancyverse alongside RS.

 

I don't trust Ubisoft to make a good Clancy game anymore. The Division was good, and I would definitely play a Div 3, but even then it lacked that pick-up-and-play quality that the older games had, when you could get a group of people together in a lobby and just play individual missions. So much easier than culling down your group to four guys and asking them to devote a few hours to trudging along an open world doing... whatever.

 

I've lost almost all faith in Ubisoft as a developer. And as a publisher they don't even fund 3rd party projects anymore. They're such a boring company now.

[SuperSpreader]

They're French, they should know the fix starts at the top 

[crispy4000]

1 hour ago, XxEvil AshxX said:

Ubi used to be one of my favorite publishers. They had three of my favorite online franchises, Ghost Recon, Rainbow Six, and Splinter Cell. The trifecta.

 

Then they turned Ghost Recon into Far Cry. Then they turned Rainbow Six into Counter-Strike.

 

I'll concede to the fact that Rainbow Six eventually became extremely popular and that gamble paid off for them, but that game could have succeeded under any title. The fact that it was called Rainbow Six had nothing to do with it. It could have easily co-existed in the Clancyverse alongside RS.

 

I don't trust Ubisoft to make a good Clancy game anymore. The Division was good, and I would definitely play a Div 3, but even then it lacked that pick-up-and-play quality that the older games had, when you could get a group of people together in a lobby and just play individual missions. So much easier than culling down your group to four guys and asking them to devote a few hours to trudging along an open world doing... whatever.

 

I've lost almost all faith in Ubisoft as a developer. And as a publisher they don't even fund 3rd party projects anymore. They're such a boring company now.

 

Closest I've been to being a fan of this company was the Prince of Persia Sands trilogy.  Then maybe BG&E, the Mario Rabbids and Rayman series.  I liked the original Rainbow Six for the time, but never got into later ones.  Splinter Cell always felt a bit soulless to me.

 

Maybe Outlaws will do something for me.  And the 2d PoP game looks good.  If those two games are more of the trajectory they'd go in, I'd be happier.