Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with iHeart Radio and
Speaker 1: I love all things tech and welcome to our third
Speaker 1: installment on the history so far of the video game
Speaker 1: developer company Ubisoft. Now. In our first episode, we learned
Speaker 1: how five brothers in France diversified the family business of
Speaker 1: selling farming equipment by getting into hardware and software distribution.
Speaker 1: You know computer hardware and software as you do. We
Speaker 1: also learned how they took that business and then they
Speaker 1: built a new company centered around developing and publishing video games,
Speaker 1: and how that company, Ubisoft, grew steadily. And in the
Speaker 1: second episode, we followed up on Ubisoft having a success
Speaker 1: with a game called Raymond and an early acquisition of
Speaker 1: a US based video game developer called red Storm, and
Speaker 1: how the company launched into an era of expansion that
Speaker 1: was impressive by any measure. The company opened up new studios,
Speaker 1: they bought out other companies, they acquired assets from organizations,
Speaker 1: some of which were also coincidentally founded by those brothers,
Speaker 1: and all while a bigger fish in the form of
Speaker 1: Electronic Arts was circling the company with a threat of
Speaker 1: a hostile takeover. Now, at the end of that last episode,
Speaker 1: we learned that e A divested itself of a large
Speaker 1: number of shares and Ubisoft, and with the threat of
Speaker 1: a hostile takeover fading away, Ubisoft pushed even harder to
Speaker 1: grow while launching and advancing franchises like Far Cry, Assassin's Creed,
Speaker 1: and numerous Tom Clancy related video game titles. Another asset
Speaker 1: that originally belonged to a different company founded by one
Speaker 1: of the Gilmo brothers was a Quebec studio that had
Speaker 1: been part of long Tail Studios, and that trace its
Speaker 1: origin back to Gerard Guillman. And that's a case in
Speaker 1: point right. Anyway, Ubisoft would purchase that Quebec studio from
Speaker 1: long Tail, and long Tail would retain its other studios
Speaker 1: for the time being, and then you know, Ubisoft just
Speaker 1: folded that into Ubisoft's Quebec office. And I realized, I
Speaker 1: keep saying Quebec and Quebec and that's just me, I guess. Anyway,
Speaker 1: as I mentioned in the last episode, ubi Soft had
Speaker 1: recently purchased a company called Alliant, which what made free
Speaker 1: to play games, and we would soon see elements of
Speaker 1: the free to play micro transaction strategy work its way
Speaker 1: into various Ubisoft games, even those that are not themselves
Speaker 1: free to play games. We would see that micro transaction
Speaker 1: make its way into Triple A titles. So let's see
Speaker 1: what happens next, because this episode should bring us up
Speaker 1: to present day, and it's going to include some particularly
Speaker 1: dramatic story, including another possible hostile takeover and widespread allegations
Speaker 1: of serious misconduct within the company. In two thousand twelve,
Speaker 1: Ubi Soft released Far Cry three. Now, if you recall,
Speaker 1: the original Far Cry game came out of a different
Speaker 1: development studio called Crytech. Cry Tech built a game engine
Speaker 1: called the cry Engine and built the original Far Cry
Speaker 1: in that game engine. Then Ubisoft bought that i P
Speaker 1: for the Far Cry series, as well as the right
Speaker 1: to use that particular version of the cry Engine, and
Speaker 1: from that moment forward, the cry Engine forked into two pathways.
Speaker 1: At Crytech, it remained the cry Engine and continued to
Speaker 1: evolve there. Under Ubisoft it would turn into the game
Speaker 1: engine called Dounia, and it would evolve separately. So these
Speaker 1: diverging pathways, UBI Soft continued to tweak and build onto
Speaker 1: the Dounia engine, and far Cry three came out of
Speaker 1: Dounia two, which included some new features like global lighting
Speaker 1: and lighting and video games is a really big deal,
Speaker 1: which I get sounds pretty obvious, because, after all, our
Speaker 1: vision is based off of how light interacts with the
Speaker 1: environments around us. A lot of recent focus on video
Speaker 1: game graphics has really been about the interplay of light
Speaker 1: with different surfaces. You may have heard of ray tracing
Speaker 1: that mostly refers to the way light behaves with specific
Speaker 1: types of surfaces, like a pane of glass or a
Speaker 1: reflective puddle of water. Well, the Dounia two engine was
Speaker 1: kind of a step toward that direction, although ray tracing
Speaker 1: wouldn't really be a thing you would hear about in
Speaker 1: the video game world for a bit longer. Far Cry
Speaker 1: threes pre sales were a little bit underwhelming. Now, just
Speaker 1: in case you're not aware somehow, pre ordering or pre
Speaker 1: sales that just means you lay down your cold hard
Speaker 1: cash for a game before that game is even available,
Speaker 1: and the idea is that the moment the game does
Speaker 1: come out, you've secured your coppy. Now, in the old days,
Speaker 1: when physical media dominated the video game market, this was
Speaker 1: something that gamers would do at retail stores, so that
Speaker 1: when those game copies showed up to their local store,
Speaker 1: they would have a reserved copy of their own, and
Speaker 1: in theory, they wouldn't have to worry about the store
Speaker 1: having sold out of the game before they were able
Speaker 1: to get there. Today, in the era of digital delivery,
Speaker 1: a pre order means that again in theory, anyway, you
Speaker 1: should be able to download a game the moment it
Speaker 1: goes live, and so your gaming experience will start as
Speaker 1: soon as you've got enough of the game downloaded to
Speaker 1: launch it, and so it's kind of dependent on your
Speaker 1: internet connection speed. In recent years, companies have even allowed
Speaker 1: downloads to begin way ahead of schedule. And then the
Speaker 1: moment a game goes live is kind of like a
Speaker 1: switch turning off, and it allows gamers to access a
Speaker 1: game that has already been installed on their systems. So,
Speaker 1: let's say a game goes live of at midnight, the
Speaker 1: game has already been downloaded to the gamer's machine. It's
Speaker 1: just that the activation code isn't uh isn't actually active
Speaker 1: until midnight, and then boom, you can start playing game.
Speaker 1: Companies love pre orders because it looks great on a
Speaker 1: balance sheet, you know, to get those revenue numbers up early.
Speaker 1: It's a great thing to share with shareholders, to say
Speaker 1: to your your stockholders, hey, this game is going to
Speaker 1: do incredibly well. It helps bring the share price of
Speaker 1: your company up, The value of your company goes up.
Speaker 1: Lots of positive things can happen due to those numbers
Speaker 1: from a corporate standpoint, and it really helps balance out
Speaker 1: the costs of development. And I mentioned that in the
Speaker 1: last episode that those can get really high. We're gonna
Speaker 1: talk more about that in this episode. But from a
Speaker 1: gamer perspective, it satisfies an urge for gratification, at least
Speaker 1: for the feeling that you get when a game comes
Speaker 1: into your possession, But it also comes along with risks.
Speaker 1: But as of the game isn't very good or if
Speaker 1: it has a lot of bugs or other issues, then
Speaker 1: the gamers who pre ordered it are stuck with it.
Speaker 1: You didn't give the industry time to dive into and
Speaker 1: dissected the game, right. You didn't get a chance to
Speaker 1: read the reviews and find out if the game was
Speaker 1: actually any good or if it was well made. Maybe
Speaker 1: you saw an awesome trailer for the game and that
Speaker 1: sold you on the experience, so you PLoP down your
Speaker 1: sixty dollars or whatever to pre order the game. Only
Speaker 1: when the day comes and you finally get it, you
Speaker 1: realize that the playing experience just doesn't live up to
Speaker 1: that trailer. If you pre order, you also typically pay
Speaker 1: whatever the highest price is for that version of the game.
Speaker 1: And sometimes games will launch and for whatever reason, it
Speaker 1: becomes clear that there's just not a big place in
Speaker 1: the market for that game, at least not as big
Speaker 1: as what the company was anticipating, and typically companies will
Speaker 1: mark down the price of a game when that happens.
Speaker 1: Recapturing some of the cost of development is better than
Speaker 1: not getting anything, so it can pay if you just
Speaker 1: wait a little bit, even just for a short while,
Speaker 1: to make sure that one the game is worth it,
Speaker 1: and to maybe the price comes down so that even
Speaker 1: if the game wasn't perfect, with the lower price, it
Speaker 1: is worth it. Pre Orders would later introduce other issues
Speaker 1: in the gaming industry in general. For example, one way
Speaker 1: to encourage people to pre order a game is to
Speaker 1: pay exclusive content to a specific outlets pre order system.
Speaker 1: So if you were to pre order a game with
Speaker 1: one retailer, then you would get one set of exclusive content.
Speaker 1: But if you had gone with a different retailer, you
Speaker 1: would get a different set of exclusive content, and there'd
Speaker 1: be no way for a completionist to get everything because
Speaker 1: of how that content gets sliced up like that. Now,
Speaker 1: later on you might get a Game of the Year
Speaker 1: edition that groups them all together, but that's much later,
Speaker 1: and this would be something that gamers would complain about
Speaker 1: with Ubisoft titles further on, particularly with Watchdogs. The Far
Speaker 1: Cry three numbers, as I mentioned, were a little disappointing.
Speaker 1: Now that being said, once the game came out and
Speaker 1: reviews started coming in, sales actually started to pick up.
Speaker 1: Most reviews praised the game play and the setting. There
Speaker 1: were some criticisms that were leveled more against the story
Speaker 1: and the characters, which saw gamers take on a protagonist
Speaker 1: who is trying to rescue his friends who have been
Speaker 1: captured by modern day pirates and smugglers. Some critics felt
Speaker 1: that the speed at which your character, who kind of
Speaker 1: starts off just as a normal average guy, suddenly becomes
Speaker 1: like an unstoppable killing machine was just unrealistic. And it
Speaker 1: also follows the trope in which you've got a group
Speaker 1: of natives who are incapable of helping themselves, and so
Speaker 1: they have to rely upon some white champion to come
Speaker 1: into the picture and save them. Ubisoft developers were creating
Speaker 1: a game in which morality wasn't an absolute, so you
Speaker 1: could play in a way that was, you know, considered
Speaker 1: morally good or morally evil. But in the process they
Speaker 1: also relied kind of heavily on some pretty negative narrative elements.
Speaker 1: So far, Cry three would end up being a success,
Speaker 1: but it would take a little more time for those
Speaker 1: sales numbers to come up. Meanwhile, Ubisoft was really leaning
Speaker 1: heavily on the Assassin's Creed franchise, releasing Assassin's Creed three
Speaker 1: in two thousand twelve. Now, you might have heard me
Speaker 1: say in the previous episode that Ubisoft is a company
Speaker 1: frequently associated with crunch around this time, and crunch refers
Speaker 1: to the amount of intense work that leads up to
Speaker 1: the release of a game. When you look at the
Speaker 1: release schedule of Assassin's Creed games, you start to realize
Speaker 1: that this could be a pretty grueling schedule. Uh. I'll
Speaker 1: just talk about the main release games in the Assassin's
Speaker 1: Creed series. These are the ones that came out for
Speaker 1: consoles and computer systems. But keep in mind there were
Speaker 1: a ton of Assassin's Creed games, some of which were
Speaker 1: released for handheld systems, some for mobile devices like smartphones,
Speaker 1: some for computers and consoles, but they weren't part of
Speaker 1: the main storyline. So I'm just gonna look at the
Speaker 1: main one. You've got the first game in two thousand seven,
Speaker 1: you had Assassin's Creed two, which came out two years
Speaker 1: later in two thousand nine. Then you've got Assassin's Creed
Speaker 1: Brotherhood and add on kind of to Part two that
Speaker 1: came out in two and Assassin's Creed Revelations in two
Speaker 1: thousand eleven, which also tied back to Assassin's Creed two.
Speaker 1: Now I just mentioned that Assassin's Creed three came out
Speaker 1: in two thousand twelve, Assassin's Creed four Black Flag, which
Speaker 1: was again my personal favorite of all the Assassin's Creed
Speaker 1: games that I have played, but I have not played
Speaker 1: all of them. That one came out in Assassin's Creed
Speaker 1: Rogue and Assassin's Creed Unity both came out in two
Speaker 1: thousand fourteen, so we got two Assassin's Creed mainline games
Speaker 1: that year. I have a little bit more to say
Speaker 1: about unity in here. But just imagine two major releases
Speaker 1: of a flagship franchise in the same year. That is crazy.
Speaker 1: Assassin's Creed Syndicate would follow in two thousand fifteen, and
Speaker 1: then we finally would get a one year gap between
Speaker 1: major releases in the main storyline, with Assassin's Creed Origins
Speaker 1: hitting in two thousand seventeen. Then we get Assassin's Creed
Speaker 1: Odyssey in two thousand eighteen, then we get another one
Speaker 1: year gap, and this year we got Assassin's Creed Valhalla. Now, again,
Speaker 1: those are just the major games. There are at least
Speaker 1: an equal number of other titles that are spinoffs of
Speaker 1: this franchise, but they don't qualify as part of the
Speaker 1: main sequence of Assassin's Creed titles. Now, it was almost
Speaker 1: as if the Assassin's Creed franchise was like a sports game,
Speaker 1: because you know, every year we expect to see a
Speaker 1: new version of specific sports franchises like Madden right, and
Speaker 1: we expect to see an updated player roster to reflect
Speaker 1: the most current version of teams in various sports. But
Speaker 1: we were getting that in this fantasy sci fi Assassin
Speaker 1: based game series. There was a real danger of oversaturating
Speaker 1: the market and burning out the player base, not to
Speaker 1: mention working the developers into an early grave. Though to
Speaker 1: be fair, it wasn't like the exact same group of
Speaker 1: developers were making every single game in the series. This
Speaker 1: was spread out across the global network of studios at
Speaker 1: UBI Soft, with specific studios kind of taking point on
Speaker 1: the big titles. Ubisoft Montreal was largely responsible for the
Speaker 1: main development of the main series, but this also meant
Speaker 1: that as Zubi Stuft tried to keep up the pace,
Speaker 1: it would occasionally release games that, at least initially were
Speaker 1: pretty darn broken. Assassin's Creed three had its historical setting
Speaker 1: take place during the American Revolutionary War, so it actually
Speaker 1: took place in the American colonies. The game added lots
Speaker 1: of new features to the Assassin's Creed franchise, including the
Speaker 1: ability to command a ship like a sailing ship, and
Speaker 1: that would become a much larger part in Black Flag later, obviously,
Speaker 1: because that's a that's a pirate game. But it also
Speaker 1: featured a pretty long lead up to the point where
Speaker 1: anything assassiny happens. You're playing that game for a long
Speaker 1: time before you start getting into something that feels like
Speaker 1: Assassin's Creed. Now, overall, the game got positive reviews, though
Speaker 1: a lot of articles that rank the various entries of
Speaker 1: the Assassin Creed series will frequently put Part three in
Speaker 1: the bottom half. It's not the bottom bottom, it's not
Speaker 1: the worst of the games, but it typically does not
Speaker 1: merit inclusion in the top fifty percent on a lot
Speaker 1: of lists. In two thousand thirteen, Ubisoft made another pair
Speaker 1: of acquisitions, purchasing the Future Games of London studio out
Speaker 1: of um well it says here London, the UK, and
Speaker 1: also the Digital Chocolate studio that was in Barcelona, Spain. Now,
Speaker 1: these studios focused primarily on developing games for mobile and
Speaker 1: social networking platforms. Also side note, the company Digital Chocolate
Speaker 1: was founded by Trip Hawkins. Now that's the guy who
Speaker 1: founded Electronic Arts, which coincidentally was the company that for
Speaker 1: a while looked like it was on the verge of
Speaker 1: doing that hostile takeover of Ubisoft. But Trip Hawkins had
Speaker 1: left long before that. And he's also the guy who
Speaker 1: was behind the failed three D O console, which I
Speaker 1: covered in a recent tech Stuff series. Anyway, Ubisoft acquired
Speaker 1: the Barcelona studio, but not the overall company of Digital Chocolate.
Speaker 1: Hawkins had already stepped down from leadership at Digital Chocolate
Speaker 1: a year earlier, and the company would only be in
Speaker 1: business for one more year before it sold off its
Speaker 1: games to another company, so it didn't stick around for
Speaker 1: very long. That summer, Ubisoft went public with some news
Speaker 1: that wasn't so pause. Someone had managed to find a
Speaker 1: vulnerability in Ubisoft's corporate network, probably through a web vulnerability,
Speaker 1: and they breached Ubisoft systems. According to the company, this
Speaker 1: meant that up to fifty eight million people may have
Speaker 1: had their user names, their email addresses, and their encrypted
Speaker 1: passwords exposed. Now that's obviously not great, but it could
Speaker 1: have been a lot worse. The fact that the passwords
Speaker 1: were at least encrypted means they weren't immediately useful to
Speaker 1: the hackers. The hackers would first need to break that
Speaker 1: encryption to get at the passwords that were encrypted underneath.
Speaker 1: But it serves as a great reminder for all of us. First,
Speaker 1: we should all choose strong passwords for the services we use. Second,
Speaker 1: we should use a unique password for every single service,
Speaker 1: because if someone manages to breach a service you use,
Speaker 1: they could potentially get at your password, And if you're
Speaker 1: using the same password everywhere. You've just handed them the
Speaker 1: key ease to everything, right. You don't want to do that.
Speaker 1: It can really put you at risk. Or if you're
Speaker 1: trying to be really careful and you find out that
Speaker 1: your password was potentially stolen, then you have to go
Speaker 1: through the hassle of changing that password for every service
Speaker 1: you use, which is not super fun. The third point
Speaker 1: I would like to remind people to do is to
Speaker 1: get a password vault program to keep all your passwords.
Speaker 1: A lot of them also have password generators built in,
Speaker 1: and those will create really strong passwords on your behalf
Speaker 1: and keep track of them. Uh. It takes a lot
Speaker 1: of the work out of trying to practice good security habits,
Speaker 1: so quick reminder there. Ubisoft stated that this security breach
Speaker 1: did not touch any systems that stored payment information, so
Speaker 1: that was also a big relief. People with accounts on
Speaker 1: Ubisoft services received messages that urged them to change their passwords,
Speaker 1: since a determined hacker might actually go through the trouble
Speaker 1: to decrypt passwords if they had enough time. I'm in
Speaker 1: processing power. Security experts criticized Ubisoft, saying that it failed
Speaker 1: to be transparent about what security measures were actually in place.
Speaker 1: A few experts pointed out that while passwords may have
Speaker 1: been encrypted, there was no indication as to how Ubisoft
Speaker 1: was encrypting them, and weak encryption could really be an issue. Generally,
Speaker 1: the response was that Ubisoft's approach didn't inspire confidence, and
Speaker 1: a more recent hack this year seems to give a
Speaker 1: bit of credence to those concerns. Now, when we come back,
Speaker 1: we'll revisit the subject of hackers, except this time it
Speaker 1: will be within the context of playing a hacker in
Speaker 1: a video game. But first, let's take a quick break.
Speaker 1: In Ubisoft launched a new I P in the form
Speaker 1: of Watchdogs. The game series is set in a world
Speaker 1: not too different from our own, one in which electronic
Speaker 1: devices gather endless amounts of data that corporations then used
Speaker 1: to make let's see, I think the technical term is
Speaker 1: gobs of money. In each of the games, you play
Speaker 1: as a hacker protagonist or sometimes multiple protagonists, who has
Speaker 1: to navigate this dystopian surveillance world and compromise systems and
Speaker 1: turn the technology against the corporate overlords, and navigate the
Speaker 1: seed criminal underbelly of society, and generally try and accomplish
Speaker 1: specific goals that may or may not be selfish. Ubisa
Speaker 1: Montreal was responsible for the first title in the series,
Speaker 1: and they would also create the sequel that would come
Speaker 1: out in the third game in the series, watch Dogs.
Speaker 1: Legion just recently launched in but this one actually came
Speaker 1: out of Ubisoft Toronto, not Montreal. Now, I've mentioned a
Speaker 1: few times about how games have become incredibly complex and
Speaker 1: as a result, the cost of development goes up, which
Speaker 1: in turn puts a lot more pressure on finding ways
Speaker 1: to make a profit from a game. And just to
Speaker 1: give you some perspective, the budget for the first Watchdogs game,
Speaker 1: which had been in development since before, was nearly seventy
Speaker 1: million dollars. Now these days, it's not unusual for a
Speaker 1: triple A title to have a budget comparable to what
Speaker 1: you would see for a feature length film, which is incredible.
Speaker 1: In addition, around one thousand people worked on Watchdogs, and
Speaker 1: Ubisoft Montreal built it using a brand new game engine
Speaker 1: called Disrupt, which Ubisoft Montreal had also built. Those guys
Speaker 1: are pretty busy. The title sold four million copies in
Speaker 1: its first week, which broke the company and the industry's
Speaker 1: then record for most copies of a brand new I
Speaker 1: P sold within that first week. It would then go
Speaker 1: on to sell at least another six million copies, So
Speaker 1: that first Watchdogs game wasn't without some road bumps upon
Speaker 1: its release. Some people were upset that Ubisoft created not one,
Speaker 1: not two, but four different Collectors editions of the game.
Speaker 1: In addition, a few people alleged that Ubisoft had purposefully
Speaker 1: and artificially made the game look better graphically when they
Speaker 1: did a video preview of the title at E three.
Speaker 1: They claimed that the end game, the one that actually
Speaker 1: came out, that the graphics had been downgraded. Ubi Soft,
Speaker 1: for its part, categorically denied this claim. Critics praised the
Speaker 1: game's gameplay and the setting of Chicago, but there was
Speaker 1: a less of a positive consensus about the story and
Speaker 1: the characters of the game. Now, I'm going to go
Speaker 1: ahead and close out the Watchdogs discussion here because as
Speaker 1: I just think it makes more sense to to follow
Speaker 1: up on that rather than the go year by year.
Speaker 1: So the sequel, Watchdogs Too, came out two years after
Speaker 1: the first game. So this one came out in Twix,
Speaker 1: and this one was set in San Francisco, and the
Speaker 1: protagonist was again a hacker, but a different character than
Speaker 1: from the first game. Would be Soft tweaked a lot
Speaker 1: of the gameplay elements after having received feedback on the
Speaker 1: first Watchdogs game, and Watchdogs two would launch with a
Speaker 1: few glitches and bugs, which frustrated critics and fans, but
Speaker 1: it would be Soft would fairly quickly follow up the
Speaker 1: launch with a game patch that helped smooth out these problems.
Speaker 1: Generally speaking, critics also seemed to like the tone of
Speaker 1: the second game more than they liked the tone of
Speaker 1: the first game. The original Watchdogs had a fairly serious tone,
Speaker 1: and the sequel had some more lighthearted and silly moments,
Speaker 1: and also had a protagonist who wasn't so stoic as
Speaker 1: the main character of the first game. Many people, however,
Speaker 1: also pointed out that the main character of the second game,
Speaker 1: his name is Marcus, was written in such a way
Speaker 1: as to make him a good person within the narrative
Speaker 1: of the game. And that's fine, except the game also
Speaker 1: allows players to do stuff like harm or kill innocent
Speaker 1: bystanders that doesn't affect the way the story unfolds, So
Speaker 1: you could play Marcus like a homicidal maniac, but narratively speaking,
Speaker 1: within the game, you would be treated as if you
Speaker 1: were still this really good guy with a strong moral code.
Speaker 1: So there's a bit of a disconnect there. Like Far
Speaker 1: Cry three, the pre or sales for Watchdogs two didn't
Speaker 1: meet company projections. It would take more time for players
Speaker 1: to commit to buying the game and reaching the sales
Speaker 1: figures that Ubisoft had been hoping for. And then we've
Speaker 1: got watch Dog Legion, developed primarily by Ubisoft Toronto. This
Speaker 1: title came out in late October twenty twenty after being
Speaker 1: delayed half a year. Um and I'll talk a little
Speaker 1: bit about the decision to postpone games towards the end
Speaker 1: of this episode, and I'm sure the pandemic didn't help
Speaker 1: at all, But this game shifts the action to London, England,
Speaker 1: and it also features a pretty neat concept for the protagonists.
Speaker 1: So instead of playing as an established main character and
Speaker 1: playing that character all the way through, in Legion, you
Speaker 1: pick a starting character. But then you can also switch
Speaker 1: identities as you play as characters who are recruited into
Speaker 1: an underground hacker resistance organization. So recruiting someone gives you
Speaker 1: access to them as a playable character, and each in
Speaker 1: game candidate has their own skills and quirks. Some might
Speaker 1: be really good at hacking industrial equipment, some might be
Speaker 1: able to call upon friends to help them out in
Speaker 1: the scuffle. And there's also a spy who is a
Speaker 1: total James Bond gadget guru type. London is pretty dang dystopian,
Speaker 1: even for a Watchdogs game with an authoritarian government that's
Speaker 1: cracking down on the hacker group. The game has received
Speaker 1: fairly positive reviews, though not as high as the previous
Speaker 1: games in the franchise. Also, I mentioned earlier that there
Speaker 1: was another Ubisoft data breach in and it ties into
Speaker 1: Watchdog Legion because a ransomware group. You may have remembered
Speaker 1: that I just recently did an episode about ransomware. But
Speaker 1: a group called e Gregor claimed to have copied the
Speaker 1: source code for Watchdogs Legion and then threatened to release
Speaker 1: it if they weren't paid off. And at first there
Speaker 1: was some skepticism about whether or not they had access
Speaker 1: the the source code. Uh, and then apparently they were
Speaker 1: not paid off, and then not too long ago, the
Speaker 1: source code has been found with various tracker programs leaked
Speaker 1: on the internet. So that's kind of yikes. Alright, So
Speaker 1: back to Ubisoft's timeline. In two thousand fourteen, Ubisoft would
Speaker 1: release Assassin's Creed Unity, often cited as one of the
Speaker 1: lesser entries in the main series because of some bugs
Speaker 1: and other issues. The company also opened up the door
Speaker 1: for more criticism as well when gamers discovered that there
Speaker 1: would be no playable female characters for multiplayer. There was
Speaker 1: a call on Ubisoft to explain why that was, and
Speaker 1: the explanation the company gave boiled down to it would
Speaker 1: have been too hard to include playable women. Essentially, it
Speaker 1: would have been too much work to put in that
Speaker 1: art and the animations, and that in turn caused a
Speaker 1: series of discussions in which critics and even a former
Speaker 1: Ubisoft developer questioned their reasons that they gave. The messaging
Speaker 1: was clear from external sources anyway, Representation in games was
Speaker 1: really starting to matter now. You could argue actually that
Speaker 1: it always mattered, it just wasn't paid attention to until
Speaker 1: relatively recently. Let's get back to and what would another
Speaker 1: year be like without an acquisition or fifteen would be
Speaker 1: Soft bought a French game company called Ivory Tower, which
Speaker 1: had developed the online racing game The Crew, and would
Speaker 1: be Soft also acquired a Halifax studio from a well, hey,
Speaker 1: look at that, long Tail Studios, the same Guillamont founded
Speaker 1: studio that gave UBI softmore developers in Quebec a few
Speaker 1: years earlier. Yep, long Tail Halifax, which originally launched in
Speaker 1: two thousand nine, would become UBI Soft Halifax in two
Speaker 1: thousand fifteen. Speaking of Ubi Soft Quebec, the studio was
Speaker 1: the lead developer in its first Triple A title that year,
Speaker 1: that being Assassin's Creed Syndicate. Now. In this game, the
Speaker 1: player would be able to control a pair of protagonists
Speaker 1: and their brother and sister team, which allowed players to
Speaker 1: control a woman assassin for the first time in the
Speaker 1: main series of games. Now, there had been smaller Assassin's
Speaker 1: Creed spinoff titles that had a female protagonist already, which
Speaker 1: was another piece of evidence actually that seemed to contradict
Speaker 1: the women are too hard to insert into the game
Speaker 1: argument that they used for Unity. Syndicate got mixed to
Speaker 1: generally positive reviews. I have this game. I've played it,
Speaker 1: but I never finished it. I think I got about
Speaker 1: maybe halfway through before I just kind of lost interest.
Speaker 1: And I also always preferred to play as the sister
Speaker 1: ev to the brother Jacob. Uh. She was just a
Speaker 1: much more interesting character to me, much more intelligent, and
Speaker 1: was much more stealth based, and Jacob was like, I
Speaker 1: hit them with my stick real hard. Anyway. On some
Speaker 1: missions you just can't choose. You have to play one
Speaker 1: or the other. You don't get the option. So whenever
Speaker 1: I had to play Jacob, I did. But I always
Speaker 1: looked forward to switching back to Evie because I just
Speaker 1: thought she was a more interesting character. The game was
Speaker 1: set in London in the nineteenth century. It had a
Speaker 1: very steampunk sensibility to it, like the Assassin's Hit Him Blade.
Speaker 1: You had also had like a grappling hook, something that
Speaker 1: some reviewers really didn't like because they felt that it
Speaker 1: kind of took away from the other assassin screed games. Uh.
Speaker 1: I don't think so, but that's just my opinion. It
Speaker 1: also got dinged by critics for other gameplay features, namely
Speaker 1: trying to control a horse and cart on the streets
Speaker 1: of London and various high speed chases and race sequences,
Speaker 1: And yeah, that part of the game was not so
Speaker 1: much fun for me. Much later, various people who worked
Speaker 1: on Syndicate would reveal that bringing Evie into the series
Speaker 1: was a serious challenge because there were internal obstacles that
Speaker 1: writers and developers had to navigate and a yield resistance
Speaker 1: to allowing the team to make Evy a significant part
Speaker 1: of the game in the first place. The general philosophy
Speaker 1: seemed to be a belief that games with a female
Speaker 1: protagonist just don't sell. I mean, that was the message
Speaker 1: they were getting over and over again. And the gamers
Speaker 1: just don't want to play games that have women as
Speaker 1: the protagonist. They just prefer to have, you know, good
Speaker 1: old manly men instead. Now, that attitude went all the
Speaker 1: way up to Sage Escoway, who had been serving as
Speaker 1: the head of creative in Ubisoft for more than a decade,
Speaker 1: almost two decades at that point, and he could get
Speaker 1: really involved with a major plot and character decision in
Speaker 1: Ubisoft games even at that point. So ultimately, if he
Speaker 1: didn't want it in the game, then it wasn't gonna
Speaker 1: go into the game, and he was really dead set
Speaker 1: against having according to other reports anyway, dead set against
Speaker 1: having a female protagonist. Now, sticking with us for a second,
Speaker 1: this issue would again come up in a later Assassin's
Speaker 1: Creed entry. Out of Assassin's Creed Odyssey. Now that one
Speaker 1: came out in two thousand eighteen, and recently as of
Speaker 1: this year, stories have emerged that the development team originally
Speaker 1: wanted to make a character called Cassandra the Soul protagonist
Speaker 1: for this game, but they were shot down by Askaway
Speaker 1: and his team, and the reason that they were given
Speaker 1: was that again that idea that women heroes just don't
Speaker 1: sell games, which, hey, someone should probably let the tomb
Speaker 1: Raider teams know about that, because that seems like a
Speaker 1: problem anyway. Because of that opposition, the developer team was
Speaker 1: compelled to give gamers a choice so they could play
Speaker 1: as Cassandra, as had been intended from the start, or
Speaker 1: they could choose to play as her brother, Alexios. Now
Speaker 1: we'll get back to sexism and misogyny and stuff before
Speaker 1: the end of this episode. It is not a good
Speaker 1: look and in fact makes us look like another you
Speaker 1: B company that I've talked about in the past, that
Speaker 1: be Uber. That's how bad it gets. But one other
Speaker 1: thing that happened in that will focus on next is
Speaker 1: remember when Electronic Arts quietly scooped up a significant percentage
Speaker 1: of ownership and Ubisoft and that led to that fear
Speaker 1: of a hostile takeover. Well, let's get ready to repeat
Speaker 1: history like we're going into the Animus, to go back
Speaker 1: into time, because in the fall of Vivendi, another French
Speaker 1: company which has a history even more complicated than Ubisoft does,
Speaker 1: revealed that it had purchased a big chunk of uby
Speaker 1: Soft shares, And we get ready to go on that
Speaker 1: hostile takeover ride all over again. Before we do that, though,
Speaker 1: let's take another quick break to thank our sponsors. Eve
Speaker 1: Guilmant stated that Ubisoft would fight off any hostile takeover
Speaker 1: attempts from Vivindy, But boy howdy, it sure did look
Speaker 1: like that was how this story was gonna go. It
Speaker 1: looked like Vivindi was ultimately going to take over ubi Soft.
Speaker 1: Between twenty fifteen and eighteen, Vivendi would continually attempt to
Speaker 1: increase its holdings and Ubisoft getting larger and larger percentages
Speaker 1: of shares in the company. Meanwhile, the Guilman brothers, whose
Speaker 1: shares in the company amount to about nine percent of
Speaker 1: total ownership back in twenty we're doing everything they could
Speaker 1: to increase their own holding in uby Soft and secure
Speaker 1: votes from other shareholders to prevent Vivindi from taking over,
Speaker 1: and at one point, Vivindi pressured ubi Soft to try
Speaker 1: and have them include Vivendi executives on the Ubisoft board
Speaker 1: of directors. You know, after all, according to their argument,
Speaker 1: Vivendi owned more than of the company at that point,
Speaker 1: and they argued that that should give them a seat
Speaker 1: at the table at the board of directors. But the
Speaker 1: Guilman brothers countered this argument. They said that such an
Speaker 1: arrangement would be a conflict of interests because Vivendi and
Speaker 1: Ubisoft were competing in the same market place. So the
Speaker 1: brothers were successful and staving off that move, and the
Speaker 1: two sides were in a bit of a stalemate, and
Speaker 1: each side was trying to scoop up shares whenever they
Speaker 1: became available on the market to prevent the other side
Speaker 1: from getting controlling interest. In the meantime, even though Vivindi
Speaker 1: repeatedly said it wasn't seeking a hostile takeover, the company
Speaker 1: would acquire another Guilment operation, the game studio game Loft.
Speaker 1: You might remember I mentioned that one in the last episode,
Speaker 1: and how did Vivendi takeover game Loft while they did
Speaker 1: it via a hostile takeover? So it would be Soft
Speaker 1: executives weren't terribly convinced of Vivendi's sincerity regarding the whole No, seriously, seriously, dude, No,
Speaker 1: I'm not after your company like that just didn't come
Speaker 1: across as genuine. I imagine. In two thousand eighteen, after
Speaker 1: the battle of attrition in which both sides were trying
Speaker 1: desperately to counter the other, they came to some sort
Speaker 1: of agreement and Vivindi agreed that it would divest itself
Speaker 1: of its shares and Ubi software over the course of
Speaker 1: the next couple of years, and at that point, Vivindi
Speaker 1: owned more than twenty seven per cent of Ubi Soft.
Speaker 1: That's incredible. Vivindy also agreed to a condition that it
Speaker 1: would not acquire shares a Ubisoft for at least five years.
Speaker 1: After this transaction, other investors, including the brothers themselves, would
Speaker 1: buy up some of those Vivendi shares, kind of splitting
Speaker 1: them up between them and one investor that acquired five
Speaker 1: percent of all of the shares of Ubisoft was Tencent.
Speaker 1: That's the Chinese conglomerate that has stake in multiple companies
Speaker 1: around the world, and it has created tension in various markets,
Speaker 1: but that's a story for another time. But they are
Speaker 1: a significant holder in in the video games industry in general,
Speaker 1: and this investment represented something of real value for Ubisoft
Speaker 1: as well. It represented the chance to make a bigger
Speaker 1: impact in the Chinese market, and that represents billions of
Speaker 1: dollars in revenue, so it wasn't an unwelcome investment. While
Speaker 1: Lubisoft and Vivendi were still jockeying for position in a
Speaker 1: battle to own the company, Ubisoft kept doing the two
Speaker 1: things that really it had become known for, publishing video
Speaker 1: games and growing, expanding the company even more so. It
Speaker 1: opened up studios in the Philippines, it opened up one
Speaker 1: in Serbia, and it acquired a mobile game studio in
Speaker 1: France called catch App. And Ubisoft did shut down one
Speaker 1: studio in ten that was Ubisoft Casablanca in Morocco. Uh
Speaker 1: They said that the way that the video games industry
Speaker 1: was moving, there was just no real place for that
Speaker 1: studio anymore, so that one got shut down. But also
Speaker 1: in a former Ubisoft developer named Maxim Beaudoir wrote a
Speaker 1: blog post explaining his decision to leave Ubisoft, even though
Speaker 1: it was his quote unquote dream job. Now in that post,
Speaker 1: he revealed that the process of creating a game and
Speaker 1: Ubisoft was just so gargantuan that it was hard to
Speaker 1: feel that you were actually contributing anything significant, and he
Speaker 1: explained that Ubisoft just had so many studios working on
Speaker 1: each title that development literally never stopped during the week,
Speaker 1: because while it was quitting time at one studio, there'd
Speaker 1: be another studio in a different part of the world
Speaker 1: where the day was just getting started, and so developers
Speaker 1: would just be picking right up where the others had
Speaker 1: been leaving off. And with as many as a thousand
Speaker 1: people working on a single game, he said, you just
Speaker 1: couldn't avoid but feel like you were a little cog
Speaker 1: in a giant machine, and cogs are replaceable, which he
Speaker 1: said was having a really big negative impact on morale
Speaker 1: and motivation. He said that if you get to a
Speaker 1: point where each person is specializing to such a minute
Speaker 1: degree because you have just so many different bodies working
Speaker 1: on this game, then it doesn't take a lot of
Speaker 1: imagination too to envision a scenario where the company replaces you,
Speaker 1: because it's a very specific task that you are doing.
Speaker 1: So he said that that was really demotivating for a
Speaker 1: lot of people. He said that these were problems that
Speaker 1: go along with creating huge games with equally huge teams,
Speaker 1: and this was not necessarily specific to Ubisoft itself, but
Speaker 1: rather is an industry problem, and the push to crank
Speaker 1: out title after title in big franchises perpetuates this problem,
Speaker 1: and it can burn out developers in the process, and
Speaker 1: it can also have an effect on gamers who start
Speaker 1: to feel like they're getting too much of the same
Speaker 1: sort of thing. Now, there have been a lot of
Speaker 1: pieces written about the trend of open world games in general,
Speaker 1: because those are some of the biggest, most sprawliest games
Speaker 1: in gaming, and the fact that that has on the
Speaker 1: gaming experience. There's been a lot of criticism directed towards
Speaker 1: games that are huge and open but maybe not that
Speaker 1: interesting to inhabit or to explore or to play in,
Speaker 1: or that these games often have so much busy work
Speaker 1: in the form of like side quests or fetch quests
Speaker 1: or Lord help you if you have escort mission or
Speaker 1: or things like that, and they become tedious to play. Anecdotally,
Speaker 1: I can say at least that there are more than
Speaker 1: a few games that I've been a really big fan
Speaker 1: of that are big and sprawling Like. I love games
Speaker 1: like Skyrim and Fallout and Assassin's Creed, Black Flag and
Speaker 1: that kind of thing, but it's actually pretty rare that
Speaker 1: I finish the storyline of those games. I will pour
Speaker 1: dozens of hours and I will chase down quests, and
Speaker 1: eventually I lose steam before I ever see the end
Speaker 1: of the story. Now, a big part of that is
Speaker 1: my fault, of course, you know, I owned up to that.
Speaker 1: I feel compelled to complete every side quest I can
Speaker 1: before I move on with the story, because I always
Speaker 1: worry that if I continue the story, I might miss out,
Speaker 1: I might go too far to complete certain side quests.
Speaker 1: And I want to see everything until I'm just tired
Speaker 1: and I stopped. So I sabotage myself. But I'm not alone.
Speaker 1: And recently there's been a growing kind of resistance to
Speaker 1: this trend of the big sprawling games, or at least
Speaker 1: there's been a renewed interest in games that are more
Speaker 1: compact and less dependent on this concept of it's got
Speaker 1: to be the biggest X game ever, you know, Fallout
Speaker 1: or sky Rim or Elder Scrolls, I guess I should say.
Speaker 1: And we're starting to see at least some people push
Speaker 1: back against that, although the studios are definitely still going
Speaker 1: down that pathway. In would be Soft acquire the i
Speaker 1: P for a free to play game called grow Topia.
Speaker 1: It acquired Freestyle Games in the UK. They turned that
Speaker 1: into their own Ubisoft studio, and they opened up new
Speaker 1: studios in Berlin, in Bordeaux, in another one in Canada,
Speaker 1: another one in Stockholm, and and it released more games obviously.
Speaker 1: They released games like Ghost Recon wild Lands, and they
Speaker 1: also released a game called for Honor. That last one
Speaker 1: was actually a new i P, which is kind of interesting,
Speaker 1: you know that you weren't seeing a lot of new
Speaker 1: ip s from moviestuft to this point. It was mostly another,
Speaker 1: you know, another entry in the various franchises, but in
Speaker 1: this one players control a warrior who belongs to one
Speaker 1: of four factions. You've got Vikings, You've got European style Nights,
Speaker 1: You've got Japanese Samurai, and you have Chinese Warriors. And
Speaker 1: the game is primarily an online multiplayer action game. There
Speaker 1: is a single player campaign as well, and the online
Speaker 1: multiplayer has seasons of faction wars and during the faction
Speaker 1: war during a season, the activities across all playable platforms
Speaker 1: of this game determine which factions have control of different
Speaker 1: territories on the world map, which is kind of a
Speaker 1: neat idea. And early on there were some technical issues
Speaker 1: with this game, particularly like if someone left a match early,
Speaker 1: it can crash a whole game. But it has since
Speaker 1: been patched and their ded Kids servers that have improved
Speaker 1: its stability. Uh, I don't know how healthy the traffic is, Like,
Speaker 1: I don't know how popular the game is. It does
Speaker 1: seem like Ubisoft has sort of slowed down in its
Speaker 1: support of the game. They aren't releasing as much new
Speaker 1: content for for Honor recently as they hadn't passed, but
Speaker 1: it was interesting that they took this risk. In eighteen,
Speaker 1: UBI Soft would acquire Blue Mammoth Games, which was headquartered
Speaker 1: here in Atlanta, and they also bought four Studio. They
Speaker 1: opened up more studios around the world, including yet another
Speaker 1: in Canada, so many in Canada, another in the Ukraine,
Speaker 1: and one in India, and it launched Far Cry five
Speaker 1: and a real quick aside on that one, So Far
Speaker 1: Cry five moved the action to America and this was
Speaker 1: a big departure for the series. In promotional materials, it
Speaker 1: looked like the antagonists in the game we're going to
Speaker 1: belong to a far right militia slash cult group, and
Speaker 1: there was a lot of buzz leading up to the
Speaker 1: game's release about what sort of political statement the game
Speaker 1: might make given the real world political climate of the
Speaker 1: United States, and much of the criticism myself for the
Speaker 1: game centered on the lack of a real perspective on
Speaker 1: anything substantial. Some critics were a bit more devastating in
Speaker 1: their review than others. For example, Polygon reviews subtitle was
Speaker 1: a horrible story, ruins and enjoyable world. Yikes. Now, I
Speaker 1: have not played this game, so I have no stake
Speaker 1: in this. I don't doesn't do anything for me if
Speaker 1: it's good or not good. But everything I've seen tells
Speaker 1: me that I feel like I would kind of agree
Speaker 1: with that Polygon review based on what I've read. Along
Speaker 1: with the complaints about the lack of substance. Was a
Speaker 1: continuation of a trend of building a game on top
Speaker 1: of a really heavy set of concepts, but then putting
Speaker 1: sort of frivolous and silly and arcady type things on
Speaker 1: top of that, and then on top of that creating
Speaker 1: a sense that you're a bad person for enjoying the
Speaker 1: silly things that the game has put in there for
Speaker 1: your entertainment. I've seen similar stuff in games from other publishers,
Speaker 1: like the Grand Theft Auto series. I've seen that there too,
Speaker 1: But that's arguably a topic for another podcast. Fortunately, I
Speaker 1: have another podcast that is coming out soon. That's a
Speaker 1: that's foreshadowing. By two thousand nineteen, Ubisoft head around sixteen
Speaker 1: thousand developers in its various studios around the world, which
Speaker 1: is an astoundingly large number of developers. It was producing
Speaker 1: more Triple A titles than its competitors, sometimes two or
Speaker 1: three times as many titles per year as their competitors.
Speaker 1: How Where, it was also lagging behind its top competitors
Speaker 1: when it came to certain metrics like the net revenue
Speaker 1: generated per employee at the company. The financials pointed to
Speaker 1: sort of a law of diminishing returns. Ubisoft made the
Speaker 1: choice to postpone half of the titles it had planned
Speaker 1: to release in twenty nineteen and pushed them back to
Speaker 1: and the goal here was to give the titles more
Speaker 1: time to evolve and develop. Now, generally, Ubisoft had a
Speaker 1: decent reputation as far as a more typical production problem
Speaker 1: type approach, like they weren't known for crunch at this stage,
Speaker 1: not like other companies were, not like Ubisoft had been
Speaker 1: known for a few years earlier. But in another very
Speaker 1: critical way, the company's reputation was about to take a
Speaker 1: huge hit. In twenty a ton of allegations about sexual harassment, assault,
Speaker 1: in general toxicity, and Ubisoft's management became public. Like to
Speaker 1: chronicle all of these allegations would take a full episode
Speaker 1: and it would get really ugly, but it became clear
Speaker 1: that there was a deep systemic issue with sexism, misogyny, harassment, abuse,
Speaker 1: and hiding that abuse within certain divisions of Ubisoft, particularly
Speaker 1: in Paris and in Montreal, though definitely in other offices
Speaker 1: as well. Throughout twenty numerous reports surface that detailed a
Speaker 1: really awful situation within the company. Numerous women reported that
Speaker 1: they had either experienced or witnessed firsthand unacceptable and in
Speaker 1: some cases at least arguably criminal displays of behaviors and
Speaker 1: management practices. It also became clear that Ubisoft's HR department
Speaker 1: had fallen far short of where it needed to be,
Speaker 1: like it should have been responding to these allegations, but
Speaker 1: in many cases it seemed as though human resource has
Speaker 1: existed largely to silence allegations and to protect a group
Speaker 1: of executives and managers who are kind of insulated from
Speaker 1: suffering any consequences. And it really did sound a lot
Speaker 1: like Uber when Uber was at its worst, before that
Speaker 1: whole system came crashing down. These accusations went all the
Speaker 1: way up to the executive level, and a lot of
Speaker 1: them were aimed at Sair Gascuay himself. Now, as I mentioned,
Speaker 1: Escoay had served as a creative director at Ubisoft for ages,
Speaker 1: essentially having the ultimate say about what could or couldn't
Speaker 1: go into games. Developers frequently indicated that it was Ascuay
Speaker 1: who would argue that games should feature male protagonists, and
Speaker 1: he was also said to have conducted business meetings in
Speaker 1: places like strip clubs, which I think we can all
Speaker 1: agree on is not an appropriate place to do business, unless,
Speaker 1: of course, you work at or with that club in
Speaker 1: some way, then sure, okay, but it's certainly needed a
Speaker 1: hostile work environment for a lot of people at the company.
Speaker 1: Several women alleged that Ascaway had acted inappropriately with them
Speaker 1: or with colleagues of theirs, and that he made inappropriate
Speaker 1: comments sometimes worse, and he allowed for an extremely sexist
Speaker 1: work environment. There were claims that it was unusual to
Speaker 1: see pornographic images or videos on computers within his department,
Speaker 1: and that this was essentially overlooked or perhaps maybe even encouraged,
Speaker 1: kind of like you know, a fraternity, like the stereotypical
Speaker 1: fraternity at a party college. And it was not, as
Speaker 1: I said, a good look under intense pressure would be
Speaker 1: soft responded by getting rid of many of those leaders
Speaker 1: who came under those allegations. Some of them resigned, being
Speaker 1: told to do that by the company. Essentially some of
Speaker 1: them were fired. There were questions about whether or not
Speaker 1: Eve Guillmant knew about these problems within the company, I mean,
Speaker 1: he CEO after all. At least a few reporters have
Speaker 1: suggested that it would be unusual for him not to
Speaker 1: have known, because some of these complaints stretched back more
Speaker 1: than a decade now. Among those at Ubisoft who left
Speaker 1: were Ash roff Ismail, the creative director for Assassin's Creed Valhalla.
Speaker 1: He left after several uh sexual harassment claims were leveled
Speaker 1: against him. Maxim Belande, the co founder of Ubisoft Toronto
Speaker 1: and the one of the vice presidents of the editorial department.
Speaker 1: Tommy francois another vice president of Editorial and Creative Services.
Speaker 1: Janice Mallett, the managing director of Ubisoft Studios in Canada,
Speaker 1: Cecile Cornet, the head of Global HR, and serge Ascoay
Speaker 1: himself left the company. On top of these, Michel Ansel,
Speaker 1: the creator of Raymond and Beyond Good and Evil, would
Speaker 1: also leave UBI saw on Cell came under fire for
Speaker 1: alleged toxic leadership behaviors. Now, as far as I can tell,
Speaker 1: these did not seem to extend to sexual harassment problems,
Speaker 1: but that he did create a hostile work environment and
Speaker 1: was reportedly very difficult to work with. Now, according to
Speaker 1: the complaints, he would change the requirements of games and
Speaker 1: and throw development into chaos, and some employees said that
Speaker 1: he could be really abusive on sell for his part,
Speaker 1: denies these allegations. He says they're not accurate, and he
Speaker 1: would go on to retire from the games industry, including
Speaker 1: his own studio that he had founded, and go to
Speaker 1: work on a wildlife sanctuary. And he continues to dispute
Speaker 1: the claims that had been made against him, since all
Speaker 1: the complaints would be soft executive leadership have made some
Speaker 1: big changes at the company. They created some new positions
Speaker 1: to oversee workplace culture worldwide, and they created another one
Speaker 1: that will be in charge of leading initiatives to improve
Speaker 1: diversity and inclusion within the company. They also announced that
Speaker 1: bonuses for team leaders are going to be tied to
Speaker 1: creating positive work environments. Meanwhile, the company continues to conduct
Speaker 1: internal investigations as it tries to assure shareholders that real
Speaker 1: change is happening behind the scenes. This isn't performative at least,
Speaker 1: that's the argument being made now. On top of all that,
Speaker 1: there was a recent incident at Ubisoft Montreal. A threatening
Speaker 1: call of some sort was made to the office or
Speaker 1: relayed to emergency services, which prompted the evacuation of the
Speaker 1: Ubisoft Montreal headquarters, with some Ubisoft employees essentially barricading themselves
Speaker 1: on the offices rooftop. Initial reports indicated that there was
Speaker 1: some sort of hostage situation going on, and it was
Speaker 1: a tense situation for many hours until ultimately authorities determined
Speaker 1: that the whole thing was prompted by a hoax. There
Speaker 1: had never been a real rent as of this recording,
Speaker 1: there is no word on who made that initial call
Speaker 1: or what motivation they had for doing it. On the horizon,
Speaker 1: Ubisoft is working on the next Far Cry game, Far
Speaker 1: Cry six. That one's due out in UH. They're still
Speaker 1: work being done on the Beyond Good and Evil two game,
Speaker 1: which I think is a prequel. UH. There is an
Speaker 1: update coming to the city building game The Settlers, which
Speaker 1: I don't think has had a game in that series
Speaker 1: for more than a decade. So that's kind of interesting,
Speaker 1: and I'm sure at some point I will have to
Speaker 1: do a follow up episode on this series to talk
Speaker 1: about what Ubisoft has done in the wake of twenty
Speaker 1: In the meantime, it will be really interesting to see
Speaker 1: how the company handles itself and whether we will see
Speaker 1: a new Ubisoft with new games, new characters, new I
Speaker 1: p new approaches as a result of all this, because
Speaker 1: arguably it should become easier to work in things that
Speaker 1: immediately aligned with saers Ascoway's vision of what games should be.
Speaker 1: So maybe that means in the long run, we're gonna
Speaker 1: get games that that break free of those restraints, and
Speaker 1: that could be really cool, but we'll have to wait
Speaker 1: and see. In the meantime, if you have any suggestions
Speaker 1: for future topics I should tackle on text Stuff reach
Speaker 1: out to me. The Twitter handle is text stuff h
Speaker 1: s W. This concludes our three part series on Ubisoft
Speaker 1: and I'll talk to you again really soon. Text Stuff
Speaker 1: is an I Heart Radio production. For more podcasts from
Speaker 1: my Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.