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.'"

Comments

Unexpected technical issues

[Anonymous Coward]

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).

Re:Unexpected technical issues

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

I suspect that this was not the cause of the failure to find the raging pile of bugs in the PS4 and XBox One versions, since there isn't much hardware variation among released models.

Much more plausible (if still an example of terrible testing practice) with any bugs in the PC version that can be linked to a specific GPU driver version or the like. Even there, though, PC gamers(of the type interested in new-release action games) may not have the newest hardware; but tend to be fairly good about updating GPU drivers and DirectX runtimes.

Re:Unexpected technical issues

[Tridus]

Usually, testers find these things and management decides that they can be fixed with a patch later, because missing the ship date would cause marketing problems.

Sometimes they get away with that. Sometimes the problems are worse than management thinks and a debacle like this happens.

Re:Unexpected technical issues

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Let's put it this way: When a game doesn't suck publishers generally don't embargo reviews until 12 hours after release...

Even games that end up releasing in pretty dubious shape often manage to score fairly positive pre-launch press through some combination of assurances that 'those little issues won't be in the final version, just see the promise!' and the degree to which the reviewer depends on the goodwill of the publisher for future access, so if reviewers aren't allowed to talk about it even after it is on the shelves, you might want to run away. Maybe pick it up for $20 a year from now, if they actually do fix it.

Re:Unexpected technical issues

[lennier1]

Unespected?

Their news embargo basically equaled a goddamn GAG ORDER and they really want to convince us that this wasn't because they knew all along what a train wreck they were about to sell and to prevent he media prom warning the customers??? It was fraud, plain and simple and they now want to get people to accept some of their other crap as compensation so they won't be able to join a class-action lawsuit.

Bugs are DRM

[cfalcon]

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.

Yet again - Preorders are for suckers

[Tridus]

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.

Brand un-value

[malx]

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 wonder if anyone here has actually played it?

[The Real Dr John]

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)

Re:marketing and reputation

[Tridus]

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.