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Ubisoft Apologizes For Assassin's Creed
BarbaraHudson writes in with the latest in the Assassin's Creed Unity debacle. This time it's good news. "As an acknowledgment of the botched launch of Assassin's Creed Unity, Ubisoft has offered free additional content to everyone who purchased the title, cancelled the game's season pass and offered a free game to users who purchased the pass. The anticipation for Assassin's Creed Unity was such that the myriad of bugs and technical issues experienced at launch felt like an even greater slap in the face for gamers. In a blog posted yesterday, Yannis Mallat, CEO of Ubisoft Montreal & Toronto said: 'Unfortunately, at launch, the overall quality of the game was diminished by bugs and unexpected technical issues. I want to sincerely apologize on behalf of Ubisoft and the entire Assassin's Creed team. These problems took away from your enjoyment of the game, and kept many of you from experiencing the game at its fullest potential.'"
Really? They were unexpected? Testing didn't bring ANY of these issues up?
I could understand a few bugs might slip through the cracks but I would have thought a game publisher would not have these kind of issues after launching many games without major bugs. (I have no citation on this, by I would figure that most of their games aren't this bad on launch day).
The net effect of these ludic-buggy games is that the actual game disk itself is entirely worthless for playing the game. Pretend that while browsing for 8 bit NES games, you finally found a game you wanted- say The Guardian Legend, a truly top-tier title. You grab it for cheap, walk it home... and instead of instantly booting into Miria racing towards Naju, it instead needs an overnight update from a service that hasn't existed in a decade to work properly, or at all.
These bugs are a feature to companies like Ubisoft and EA. The apology is only issued because the launch was truly and shockingly ludicrous- enough to get mocked world wide, in articles such as Cracked's:
http://www.cracked.com/blog/7-...
That are well outside of the normal area of video game journalism / forums / reviews.
There is a reason they want you to buy the game before any reviewers or other users start commenting on it. It's what enables them to sell broken crap like this. They've already got your money.
The hype train, preorder bonuses, review embargoes are all meant to allow them to get away with selling broken crap. That's exactly what they've done. All the complaining in the world won't do a whole lot about that, now.
If you really want to put a stop to companies like EA and Ubi doing this - never preorder a game. Any game worth buying on launch day is still worth buying two weeks later, and you'll save yourself quite a lot of money by avoiding duds.
-- "So they told me that using the download page to download something was not something they anticipated." - Bill Gates
I am loath to join the general chorus of hate for Ubisoft and EA. Complaining about these companies being too focussed on commercial success and not enough of user-entertainment/"art" seems futile: they are, first and foremost, commercial companies.
Nonetheless, considering it strictly as a commercial proposition, should the senior executives of these companies not be worried that their brand has negative value?
When I see news of a game, knowing that it is going to be published by Ubisoft - or, to a lesser extent, by EA, makes me shy away. I am less likely to buy. I am less likely to follow the hype, for fear of being sucked in by it, because I expect to be disappointed. I am less likely to engage with their product or marketing in any way, because of the poor track record that they have establish, the negative brand value that they have created.
If they bought a small publishers, and published the very same game through that new label, I would be more likely to engage with and buy their product for that reason - as long as I was not aware that Ubisoft (or EA) lay behind it. Knowing that they are there, I expect to be disappointed.. That's negative brand value in action.
This is not just a gamer whinge. I would think that was a customer reaction that ought to concern senior commercial management, and shareholders in these companies.
I've put in a few hours of gameplay with it (PC version), and the game definitely has some bugs, but on a decent gaming computer it is the most ambitious game in terms of graphic content on the screen that I have ever seen. The number of rendered objects is crazy, and the number of NPC on the screen at once is astounding. Sure a few NPC pop in and out (before the patch) and some people go through the floor. But that happens in Borderlands the PreSequal just as much if not more, and it is a much less demanding and ambitious game. Ubisoft fucked up with the launch, and should have tested it on older hardware. But it is hard to believe they can get that much stuff on the screen with the lighting effects they have, and still have it run at all. It is not the buggiest game I have ever bought, but it does have the most graphical content by far, and the frame rates are very playable. (Intel i7 3.3 GHz with 12 GB ram and Geforce 7800 GTX)
A brain is a terrible thing to waste... Mind? That's debatable.
I saw nothing in that post which reflects what you claim.
If you want to go on a posting vendetta against someone, expect to get marked as a Troll because that's what you're doing.
If you want to get legit votes, keep your criticism for his viewpoints in articles related to the subject, or in replies to posts where he brings it up.
What is missing in this industry that others often have is clear consumer protection laws and an awareness among consumers that they can enforce their rights. A game's entire value is normally in the entertainment it provides. If it simply doesn't work properly, and as a result that entertainment value is dramatically reduced, then it isn't fit for purpose.
The situation is complicated because these laws vary widely with jurisdiction and over time. For example, here in the UK, there have been several relevant changes to consumer protection laws this year specifically to close gaps and clarify rights in the context of digital content. The bottom line, though, is that like any other purchase, you are entitled to get something of satisfactory quality for your money, and if you don't then the vendor who takes that money will normally have some obligations to replace/repair/refund to fix the problem. (Don't assume you can just go in and demand a 100% refund every time without giving them any other chance to fix things first, though; I don't know any jurisdiction where the law is that one-sided.)
Of course with software there is always a question of what constitutes a reasonable quality since there will inevitably be bugs, but a lot of these games ship with such obvious and sometimes entirely game-destroying howlers that I don't see how the vendors have a leg to stand on.
If someone orchestrated a mass campaign where a significant proportion of the customers of one of these games did actually assert their consumer rights and claim a reasonable fix-or-refund remedy, even just once, I expect the shockwaves through the AAA game business would be felt for a long time.
Unfortunately, that's probably not going to happen, and next year the same hard core group will probably pre-order the next destined-to-fail-at-launch edition of each big franchise, thus further confirming to the games companies that their current practices are commercially acceptable. :-(
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
When you have the hype machine going a year in advance aimed at a certain date, promotion contracts with Gamestop and such for a certain date, and even something simple like shelf space at Walmart for a certain date, changing that date is not without consequences.
Digital distribution tends to make this easier, but this is predominantly a console game and so retail matters.
-- "So they told me that using the download page to download something was not something they anticipated." - Bill Gates