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submitted 1 day ago by ZippyBot@lemmy.zip to c/gaming@lemmy.zip
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[-] centipede_powder@lemmy.world 6 points 11 hours ago

Has Ubisoft published anything worth playing in the last decade?

[-] gwl 6 points 12 hours ago

Correction to title:

People are playing less slop games, and new slop releases are "struggling", says slop-peddler Ubisoft UK, whilst peeing their pants

Games are just as popular as ever, if anything the market has widened significantly, people are just more savvy now too

No longer willing to slap down £50 on Day Zero for a game that they've not seen any reviews for and/or not seen any gameplay footage for.

As well as Indie Studios having a renaissance after their struggle era.

[-] rayquetzalcoatl@lemmy.world 3 points 13 hours ago

Ubisoft? The sex crimes company? Huh, didn't know they published games. Thought they mostly did sexual harassment tbh.

[-] ICCrawler@lemmy.world 2 points 12 hours ago

Wonder if Ubi will eventually collapse and get bought up by UAE as well.

[-] echodot@feddit.uk 7 points 16 hours ago

Maybe it's just a ubisoft problem. Maybe they should just try making it good game.

[-] FatVegan@leminal.space 1 points 13 hours ago

I played over 200 hours of crab champions. Where would i find time to play shitty overprices ubisoft games?

[-] BlameTheAntifa@lemmy.world 19 points 23 hours ago

No, people are playing other games. Ones that aren’t half-assed, overpriced, and infected with DRM malware. This is a U problem, Ubisoft.

[-] carlossurf@lemmy.ca 4 points 17 hours ago

Because new games come with micro transactions in fucking single player games. Actual good games still get bought like the indiana jones game was amazing and felt like a classic old school game

[-] belated_frog_pants@beehaw.org 2 points 16 hours ago

Turn out a bunch of copy paste shit, rush releases and make everything a fucking "live service" and sales go down. "Wow what happened????"

[-] crunchy@lemmy.dbzer0.com 96 points 1 day ago

Fewer of your games, maybe.

Yep. Indie games are boomin as usual :D

[-] brucethemoose@lemmy.world 3 points 23 hours ago

TBH the story with indies seems to be "a few hits have it really good, but the vast majority of indie devs are struggling"

...So I wouldn't generalized too much just because Hades 2 and Silksong are doing well.

[-] azertyfun@sh.itjust.works 3 points 20 hours ago

The more accurate picture is "A/AA games are doing great in terms of creative&cultural output with many mainstream successes despite being completely choked out by out-of-touch AAA studios capturing most capital investment". 2025 has objectively been a great year for (semi-)indie games and a humiliating slap in the face for AAA studios.

But yeah I would still strongly advise against switching to a gamedev career regardless of whether the industry eventually sees reason and shifts away from AAA to AA. As with the rest of the entertainment industry, it's ontologically exploitative and is famously a dream-crushing machine. Too many starry-eyed kids to be a healthy job market.

[-] cRazi_man@europe.pub 13 points 1 day ago

Someone needs to tell Ubisoft to git gud.

[-] CookieOfFortune@lemmy.world 12 points 23 hours ago

Ubisofts full releases this year:

  • AC: Shadows
  • Just Dance 2026
  • Anno 117

So literally all sequels. They’re just hoping people will dish out their annual franchise spending.

But the bar is so high these days. Spending millions on graphics just isn’t sufficient.

[-] djsoren19 5 points 20 hours ago

I dunno why so many people are dunkin on Ubisoft here. Sure, they make shit, but they're commenting on an industry wide issue.

and it's not just their industry. People are also going out to the movies less. Restaurant profits are down as people are staying in more often. I haven't checked, but I imagine bars are likely struggling right now as well. It's almost like Western economies are reaching a breaking point, and people are unable to afford anything beyond the bare necessities.

[-] dbtng@eviltoast.org 4 points 18 hours ago

Do you want to know why? Read what people are saying. Ubi's DRM policies have caused many, many people to lose access to their games. I have at least 4 Ubi games in my Steam Library that I can't play. So ... what's that? A good $150 they owe me that I'll never see? Gee. Why would I dislike them? Because they personallyh fuked me.

[-] djsoren19 1 points 15 hours ago

okay, but that's not really what this story is about. it's about an industry that is seeing the opening salvo of an impending economic collapse.

[-] dbtng@eviltoast.org 2 points 14 hours ago

Read what people are saying. We disagree with your perspective and feel that this issue is justly deserved by Ubi's behavior. Everyone was very, very clear about this. Our take is this is Ubi trying to hide their failure and blame it on an industry slump. So there ya go. Now you understand the article.

[-] magic_lobster_party@fedia.io 35 points 1 day ago

That’s what years of screwing customers over does. Ubisoft is no longer a brand people associate with quality products.

[-] Hawke@lemmy.world 6 points 1 day ago

This has been the case for as long as i can remember (since the early 2000s)

[-] ZoopZeZoop@lemmy.world 5 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

The reputation carried them for a while because they still sell older games, plus the occasional good new game.

[-] trevor 60 points 1 day ago

They should try making good games and putting them on Steam and GOG and not their shitty launcher.

It's so satisfying watching one of the worst actors in the gaming industry eat shit and die. I hope Activision, EA, and the other purveyors of overpriced, malware-laden, microtransaction slopware can meet the same fate one day too.

Download our shitty launcher, make an account, connect to the internet, buy the ultimate gold deluxe premium spunky cock edition, give us kernel level access to your computer! Now you can play the 1000th game we've released this year, and it will be vapid shit like every other one.

[-] tacosanonymous@mander.xyz 7 points 1 day ago

Even if their games were better, I still wouldn’t buy them. They are corrupt and disgusting.

[-] trevor 2 points 1 day ago

Valid :) I wouldn't either.

[-] favoredponcho@lemmy.zip 1 points 15 hours ago* (last edited 15 hours ago)

These people have made a bajillion Assassin’s Creed games. I guess sequels usually excite the existing player base, but I always felt that was a double edge sword because they often fail to engage new players. I personally missed Assassin’s Creed 1 through 8636292, so it’s hard to see why I should start at 8636293. Also, I think existing players do get tired of a franchise some times.

[-] dejected_warp_core@lemmy.world 18 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

"Consumers are playing fewer games, playing them for longer, and as a result, outside of a few notable exceptions, many new games are struggling to stand out and achieve the sales they may once have had, whilst the market is more volatile and the potential for any specific title less predictable as a result,"

Really, this is about buying fewer Ubisoft games.

Edit: also someone is trying to get out ahead of the next quarterly report, especially since we're in x-mas buying season right now.

[-] brucethemoose@lemmy.world 5 points 23 hours ago* (last edited 23 hours ago)

I think Ubisoft is poking at a legit issue here. A few games 'snowball,' especially with stuff trending on social media, and gamers spread themselves out less these days.

...Ubisoft are the absolute worst entity to say it, but still. It's not just them that's saying it:

https://www.wired.com/story/death-occurs-in-the-dark-indie-video-game-devs-are-struggling-to-stay-afloat/

[-] etherphon@lemmy.world 11 points 23 hours ago* (last edited 23 hours ago)

There is just so much choice it's insane, every day there's dozens of new games out. There's some real gems in the indie game space, I feel like gaming is kinda following how music went now. All the major labels are putting out crap, you have to look at the indie labels for good stuff, but that can be a lot of work in itself.

[-] brucethemoose@lemmy.world 6 points 23 hours ago* (last edited 23 hours ago)

+1

An anecdote: I know a working couple, well off in a good house, young, no kids, like video games, nerdy to the point they self host stuff... Yet they don't game as much this past year or two. They don't watch as much TV either. Work drains them, so more entertainment time now consists of favored YouTubers before bed.

...What I'm getting at is that maybe the 'gaming population' is more drained from life, in this age? Especially when you factor in hunting for a good game, especially when a common preference is to be served choices via algorithms instead.

[-] bitwolf@sh.itjust.works 4 points 18 hours ago* (last edited 18 hours ago)

This tracks.

I'm so drained from work now. They keep cutting out teams and expecting more output anyway.

I changed the games I play, I no longer play RPG games that take a huge time investment and defer to Arcadey indie games I can pick up and put quickly.

Yes I'd love to play Dark Souls to completion, for example, but I don't have the energy for that.

I also don't engage in grind mechanics in games at all anymore. Id rather play something skill / reflex based rather than putting time investments to level up woodcutting to 99.

[-] etherphon@lemmy.world 2 points 23 hours ago

I'd definitely agree with that, I was a much bigger gamer when I was a kid/teen/YA, the only real franchises were Pac Man, Mario and Donkey Kong, so the field was wide open with all sorts of new and innovative games, the sorts of games that are still coming out but just harder to find. I feel like there's a lot of people just looking a the AAA titles being announced in the presses and then just being underwhelmed when there's a lot more going on, but as you said there's a lot more to life as an adult so that can be too much time. On the upside, a lot of those indie games are much shorter so you can find time to play them.

[-] brucethemoose@lemmy.world 2 points 23 hours ago* (last edited 23 hours ago)

And what I'm getting at is the era.

As examples, work got a lot harsher post COVID, once mandatory return-to-work kicked in. It's almost like they're trying to get people to quit. Interest rates went up, costs went up, financial pressure went up. Political conflict with older generations in the family is going up too.

IDK where you are; this is just my perspective from the US. But it seems like video gaming could be an early casualty of all that pressure.


You make a good point about announcements too. I feel like the video game news pipelines is a little muddy, with all the 'oldschool' written outlets having shrunken so much?

[-] etherphon@lemmy.world 2 points 22 hours ago

Yeah I gotcha, I suppose there's two types of people in those situations: those who will put down the games and see them as a distraction or waste of time in the face of all the other things they have to do and all the serious/bad things going on in the world, or those who dive full on in and escape the world through gaming. Another perspective, games used to be light and fun, hella challenging, but still fun, you could pick them up and put them down. Nowadays if you stop playing a game for a week or two you almost have to start over, at least that's how it is for me with my sieve brain. I'm also in the US.

[-] etherphon@lemmy.world 19 points 1 day ago

Maybe you could try putting some more money into great writers and storytellers instead of GRAPHICS GRAPHICS GRAPHICS, but no.

[-] xploit@lemmy.world 6 points 1 day ago

And then the graphics are still shit anyway, except the game now performs at <30fps on the GPU that replaced one of your kidneys

[-] etherphon@lemmy.world 3 points 1 day ago

"Graphics are good enough now that literally anything in your imagination can be brought to life"
"Ok, lets make everything look as close to reality as possible :D"

That reminds me, I saw some Pac Man collection the other day, the old 2600/7800/arcade games, it was a few games and some history stuff, it was 17 GIGABYTES, FOR PACMAN.

[-] SpikesOtherDog@ani.social 3 points 23 hours ago

I'm guessing all the old games were most likely less than 50mb, if you include everything up to SNES, guess if you make AI upscaled images you can bloat that space.

[-] Marshezezz 16 points 1 day ago

I haven’t slowed down on gaming, I just don’t buy ubisoft bullshit

[-] jjjalljs@ttrpg.network 16 points 1 day ago

Capital needs to pay people more if they want people to spend money. Sadly, food shelter and health come before video games.

[-] Someonelol@lemmy.dbzer0.com 11 points 1 day ago

Maybe if it got rid of insisting on logging on to a Ubisoft launcher, intrusive DRM, in-game stores, buggy releases, and formulaic map exploration it could do better. That won't happen though because it's a piece of shit corporation that won't give up an ounce of control for the fiduciary sake of its stockholders. I hope it shutters soon so the gaming landscape can heal a little more.

this post was submitted on 17 Nov 2025
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