Speaker 1: Welcome to Tech Stuff, a production from iHeartRadio. Hey there,
Speaker 1: and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host, Jonvin Strickland.
Speaker 1: I'm an executive producer with iHeartRadio. And how the tech
Speaker 1: are you. I am on the road to recovery myself.
Speaker 1: I hope all of you are well well. Back in
Speaker 1: November of twenty twenty, I did a three part series
Speaker 1: about the history of the video game company Ubisoft or
Speaker 1: you be Soft, depending on how you want to pronounce it.
Speaker 1: They pronounce it different ways within the company itself, so
Speaker 1: there's no universal agreed upon pronunciation, so I'll probably say
Speaker 1: Ubisoft anyway. The video game company actually traces its history
Speaker 1: back to farm machinery for reels. I'm not going to
Speaker 1: go into everything that I covered in those twenty twenty episodes.
Speaker 1: You could easily go back and listen to them if
Speaker 1: you like. I do think that's a fun bit of
Speaker 1: trivia to consider. Now. The company was founded in France
Speaker 1: back in the late nineteen eighties by a group of
Speaker 1: five brothers, the Guillelmo Brothers. One of them, Eve Guillelmo,
Speaker 1: remains CEO to this day. And I'm going to go
Speaker 1: over a little bit of the stuff I talked about
Speaker 1: in those episodes just to kind of remind us. All But,
Speaker 1: like I said, if you really want to dive into
Speaker 1: the history of Ubisoft, then check out those episodes that
Speaker 1: published in November twenty twenty to get the full story.
Speaker 1: All right, let's get back to like kind of an overview.
Speaker 1: So the studio became known for several game franchises, ranging
Speaker 1: from Rayman, which was the earliest big franchise for the company,
Speaker 1: to Assassin's Creed and far Cry in more recent years.
Speaker 1: They expanded tremendously in the nineteen nineties, in part because
Speaker 1: the company made lots of acquisitions. They bought up lots
Speaker 1: of other game developer studios. Notably, they purchased a development
Speaker 1: company in North Carolina called Red Storm, and in two thousand,
Speaker 1: UBI Soft required red Storm and in the process got
Speaker 1: access to games with Tom Clancy's intellectual property. So I'm
Speaker 1: talking about stuff like Splinter Cell, Ghost Recon, and Rainbow six,
Speaker 1: among others. The Tom Clancy games would become kind of
Speaker 1: bedrock for Ubisoft over the years, like a very strong
Speaker 1: foundation for the company. The two thousands saw Ubisoft Dodge Duck,
Speaker 1: Dip Dive, and Dodge various attempts to acquire the company.
Speaker 1: First up was Electronic Arts or EA. They showed interest
Speaker 1: in Ubisoft for quite some time. EA purchased a fifth
Speaker 1: of Ubisoft's stock at one point, but EA never actually
Speaker 1: made an overt move to acquire the company. There was
Speaker 1: obviously some feelers out there, but nothing ever coalesced into
Speaker 1: like a hostile takeover or anything like that, and by
Speaker 1: twenty ten EA had sold off its shares of Ubisoft.
Speaker 1: But that experience had a really big effect on Ubisoft itself.
Speaker 1: The company had played things a bit more conservatively then
Speaker 1: they might have otherwise, and didn't make as many big
Speaker 1: choices while under the potential threat of an acquisition. The
Speaker 1: thing is the EA move was just the first time
Speaker 1: uvie Soft was under the potential shadow of a hostile takeover.
Speaker 1: A similar situation unfolded in twenty fifteen when another large
Speaker 1: French company called Vivendi started scooping up shares of Ubisoft,
Speaker 1: more shares than the brothers Guielmo themselves owned. Vivendi threw
Speaker 1: its weight around and demanded that Ubisoft include Vivendi executives
Speaker 1: on Ubisoft's board directors, but the brothers were able to
Speaker 1: drum up enough support among other shareholders to keep that
Speaker 1: from happening, because even though Vivindi owned more stock than
Speaker 1: the brothers dead, the brothers were able to rally other
Speaker 1: shareholders to support them. Now, the battle for control of
Speaker 1: the company lasted about three years, at which point Vivendi said, fine,
Speaker 1: keep your stupid company. We're selling our shares and we
Speaker 1: won't buy them back for at least five years. Then
Speaker 1: maybe then we will come back. We'll just have to
Speaker 1: wait and see. And at that point, Vivendi held nearly
Speaker 1: thirty percent of all the shares in the company, so
Speaker 1: it was a truly significant amount. And since then another
Speaker 1: company bought up a bunch of shares and would be soft.
Speaker 1: That would be the Chinese mega corporation Tencent. I'm sure
Speaker 1: we won't see history repeat itself again. Right, Well, we'll
Speaker 1: probably mention Tencent again before we end this episode today.
Speaker 1: There are a few other things I want to mention
Speaker 1: before we pick up where we left off in late
Speaker 1: twenty twenty at the end of the last episode of
Speaker 1: that series. First up, the video game industry is notorious
Speaker 1: for its crunch culture. Not just do be soft, I
Speaker 1: mean like the industry in general is known for this,
Speaker 1: and that is as a game is in development, particularly
Speaker 1: as you get later in its development cycle, companies have
Speaker 1: been known to pressure developers into working longer hours, sometimes
Speaker 1: giving up weekends or really in extreme cases, discouraging them
Speaker 1: from even going home. Then, as you might imagine, this
Speaker 1: becomes a stressful and unpleasant situation. In more recent years,
Speaker 1: we've seen employees and allies of employees push back against
Speaker 1: the whole crunch culture of the video game industry. And
Speaker 1: to be clear, crunch is not just something that happens
Speaker 1: in the video game industry. It happens in lots of industries,
Speaker 1: you know, like overall developers, not just in video games.
Speaker 1: It happens there, but it can happen in lots of
Speaker 1: other situations as well. Now, in some instances, staff who
Speaker 1: work at video game companies have actually unionized to create
Speaker 1: more leverage with their respective companies. There's a union among
Speaker 1: Ubisoft Paris developers, for example. But there are other Ubisoft
Speaker 1: offices all around the world, and some of them are
Speaker 1: unionized and some of them aren't. And Ubisoft was no
Speaker 1: stranger to crunch. In fact, in the early days of
Speaker 1: the company they actually located their office in a chateau
Speaker 1: in Brittany, France, and this was a sort of a
Speaker 1: ploy to lure young developers to work for Ubisoft and
Speaker 1: you know, not necessarily want to go home at the
Speaker 1: end of a long day. And it worked at least
Speaker 1: until the costs of maintaining a chateau proved to be
Speaker 1: a bit too steep and were eating into profits, and
Speaker 1: then they relocated to Paris. On a related note, Ubisoft
Speaker 1: had identified something pretty concerning so by twenty nineteen, through
Speaker 1: the various studios that the company had acquired over the years,
Speaker 1: which again are all over the world, right, Ubisoft figured
Speaker 1: that it employed around sixteen thousand developers. That's astronomical, that's
Speaker 1: such a huge number of developers, and it was spinning
Speaker 1: out triple A video game titles at a rate that
Speaker 1: left competitors in the dust. And in case you're not
Speaker 1: familiar with the term triple A video game, that's just
Speaker 1: a big budget, major release right like Assassin's Creed typically
Speaker 1: falls into Triple A video game category. Things like Halo,
Speaker 1: you know, or Grand Theft Auto. These are triple A
Speaker 1: video games. You might get spinoffs that are not triple A,
Speaker 1: but the main entries all fall in the Triple A category. Ubisoft, however,
Speaker 1: though it was releasing more Triple A games than any
Speaker 1: of its competitors were, was not releasing a linked rise
Speaker 1: in revenue and from a net revenue generated per employee perspective,
Speaker 1: as in, how much money are we making? If we
Speaker 1: say we've got X number of employees, we're making why
Speaker 1: amount of money? How much were we making per employee?
Speaker 1: They were were starting to lag behind others. In other words,
Speaker 1: other companies were making more money per employee. Maybe not
Speaker 1: more money overall, but per employee, they were making more
Speaker 1: money than Ubi Soft was. So Ubisoft started to kind
Speaker 1: of pump the brakes a little bit on Triple A
Speaker 1: video game development, because that developing a Triple A video
Speaker 1: game is uber expensive. And this was partly to give
Speaker 1: development teams more time to polish games, and it was
Speaker 1: also partly to try and focus on alternatives to these huge,
Speaker 1: flashy and expensive Triple A titles, like what other types
Speaker 1: of games could we make that would be less expensive
Speaker 1: and more profitable. Now, the second thing that I want
Speaker 1: to bring up before I move on to what's been
Speaker 1: happening at Ubisoft since November of twenty twenty is that, Ubisoft,
Speaker 1: like a lot of other companies, began exploring ways to
Speaker 1: make games an ongoing revenue generator. So in the old days,
Speaker 1: you would head off to the game store you know,
Speaker 1: or whatever, and you would buy a copy of the
Speaker 1: game you wanted, and that was it, right end of transaction.
Speaker 1: You purchased your game, and then you brought it home
Speaker 1: and played it. Maybe sometime later, the game company would
Speaker 1: release an expansion pack to the game you had purchased,
Speaker 1: and you could go out and buy that and it
Speaker 1: would add some more content to the game you loved.
Speaker 1: But that was about it. Like that was the only
Speaker 1: options open to a video game developer company, and even
Speaker 1: that meant that you still had to pour resources into
Speaker 1: developing and releasing an expansion pack. By twenty twenty, a
Speaker 1: lot of things had changed in the video game industry.
Speaker 1: The Internet was essentially the facilitator for this change, because
Speaker 1: now companies could stagger out downloadable content or DLC. Some
Speaker 1: of that DLC could be free, but a lot of
Speaker 1: it would usually require at least a small fee to purchase,
Speaker 1: and the transaction mechanism could be inside the game itself
Speaker 1: and would hit the player just they were on the
Speaker 1: verge of getting that dopamine release, but it's being denied,
Speaker 1: so like you can't beat that final stage Boss Babe,
Speaker 1: if you spent five bucks or a new mega bazooka thingy,
Speaker 1: you can manage it. And a lot of companies, including Ubisoft,
Speaker 1: experimented with free to play games or freemium games. So
Speaker 1: with these titles, you don't even have to buy the
Speaker 1: base game at all. It's free for you to download
Speaker 1: and play, but for it to be fun or to
Speaker 1: flesh it out, you might have to pay some cash
Speaker 1: to buffet up a bit. You know, the best freemium
Speaker 1: games are fun to play even if you never spend
Speaker 1: a dollar on them, but that's kind of counter productive
Speaker 1: for the companies that make these games because they need
Speaker 1: to be able to generate revenue or else they go
Speaker 1: out of business. So ideally, you create a game where, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's fun to play even if you never sink any
Speaker 1: money into it, but if you do sink money into it,
Speaker 1: it's more fun. Or in a lot of cases, it's
Speaker 1: not that it's more fun, it's just it's less frustrating,
Speaker 1: which is kind of a grim way to look at things.
Speaker 1: But that's how this free to play business model works.
Speaker 1: The base game is free, but all the cool stuff
Speaker 1: is locked behind micro transactions. Then we get to the
Speaker 1: third element, the least pleasant of the three, and that's
Speaker 1: to put it lightly. So, word got out that Ubisoft
Speaker 1: had a toxic corporate culture, absolutely rife with instances of
Speaker 1: sexual harassment and discrimination, and this was company wide. Like
Speaker 1: a lot of the discussion was focused on Ubisoft Paris,
Speaker 1: the home office for Ubisoft, the headquarters, but allegations spread
Speaker 1: throughout the company and its various offices in places like
Speaker 1: Canada and the United States and Singapore and things like that.
Speaker 1: And word was that the company these human resources department
Speaker 1: had effectively attempted to dismiss any allegations that executives in
Speaker 1: particular were guilty of either you know, doing acts of
Speaker 1: sexual harassment or ignoring acts of sexual harassment, essentially allowing
Speaker 1: it to happen. Now, possibly the reason why HR was
Speaker 1: not really paying attention to this is that those accusations
Speaker 1: went way way up the leadership chain in the company,
Speaker 1: including but not limited to the creative director for all
Speaker 1: of Ubisoft, a guy who had the ultimate yay or
Speaker 1: nay on essentially everything that was under development within the company. Eventually,
Speaker 1: news of these allegations in Ubisoft got out to the
Speaker 1: public and the French authorities launched an investigation into the company.
Speaker 1: Now the company couldn't afford to turn a blind eye
Speaker 1: to what was going on after all, these these bombshell
Speaker 1: news reports were coming out, and soon the media would
Speaker 1: start to cover a series of dismissals and resignations as
Speaker 1: various Ubisoft executives were shown the door. That's kind of
Speaker 1: where I left off in November twenty twenty, so let's
Speaker 1: pick up again to see what's been going on with
Speaker 1: Ubisoft since then. Now, I'll go ahead and mention the
Speaker 1: reason I decided to do this episode in the first
Speaker 1: place is because recently those French authorities detained a group
Speaker 1: of former Ubisoft executives based off serious accusations of illegal conduct,
Speaker 1: primarily in the form of sexual harassment or some reports
Speaker 1: reported as outright sexual violence. The investigation, which is technically ongoing,
Speaker 1: it's been a really lengthy and thorough one, as reported
Speaker 1: in the French newspaper Liberation or Liberacion I guess I
Speaker 1: should say Libee is how it's often referenced. A French
Speaker 1: union representing video game workers brought allegations against various ex
Speaker 1: ub Soft employees back in twenty twenty one. Now, this
Speaker 1: was after the scandal at Ubisoft. I know, I'm going
Speaker 1: back and forth on the pronunciation. It's driven me crazy too.
Speaker 1: Just know that as you hear me say ub Soft
Speaker 1: or ub soft and you're going crazy, I'm also going crazy. Anyway,
Speaker 1: let me get back to that. So, this was after
Speaker 1: the scandal at Ubisoft became public news. Two other individuals
Speaker 1: also approached police with accusations. They obviously were not named,
Speaker 1: because if you're naming the victims of sexual violence in papers,
Speaker 1: that's not typically a good thing to do in the
Speaker 1: middle of an investigation. So the police launched their own investigation.
Speaker 1: They interviewed more than fifty current or former Ubisoft employees,
Speaker 1: and the whole thing took a place over the course
Speaker 1: of more than a year, and the detainment happened on
Speaker 1: October third and October fourth, which of twenty twenty three, which,
Speaker 1: as I record this and publish it was last week. Now.
Speaker 1: Among the five people detained was a guy named Serge Hascut,
Speaker 1: whose name I have butchered. I'm gonna be butchering lots
Speaker 1: of names. I mean, they're all French names, and I
Speaker 1: am not a French speaker, so my apologies for that.
Speaker 1: Let's just blame my ignorant American tongue. Anyway, Serge had
Speaker 1: served as the creative director for all of Ubisoft for
Speaker 1: many years, so this was the person who had the
Speaker 1: year nay say for pretty much everything. The other person
Speaker 1: who was named was Tommy Francois, who had been vice
Speaker 1: president of editorial and Creative Services. I'll talk more about
Speaker 1: those charges, the allegations, and the ongoing investigation, and then
Speaker 1: get into what else Ubisoft has been up to over
Speaker 1: the last few years. But first let's take a quick break. Okay,
Speaker 1: we're back. So before the break, I'm mentioned that the
Speaker 1: creative director for UBI Soft, Serge Pescut or Serge I'll
Speaker 1: just say, because I know I'm butchering the name, and
Speaker 1: Tommy Francois, the vice president of editorial and Creative Services,
Speaker 1: had been detained by French authorities. The French authorities did
Speaker 1: not identify the other three people they had detained as
Speaker 1: part of this investigation, so I do not know their identities.
Speaker 1: There were several high level executives who left UBI Soft,
Speaker 1: like in twenty twenty as part of the big scandal,
Speaker 1: So there are multiple options as to whom those three
Speaker 1: could be. Initial reports indicated that the police had detained,
Speaker 1: but not formally arrested these five former UBI Soft employees.
Speaker 1: From what I can tell, they have made no arrests
Speaker 1: so far. Like I tried to follow up on this
Speaker 1: and see what was going on, and I did look
Speaker 1: at some French publications, obviously translating them into English using
Speaker 1: Google Translate because my French is terrible. But the lawyer
Speaker 1: who represents the plaintiffs, you know, the people making the accusations,
Speaker 1: have made it has made it clear that the charges
Speaker 1: are really serious, and that they're not limited to just
Speaker 1: these five individuals, and that, in fact, the charges point
Speaker 1: to a systemic problem within Ubisoft itself, and the departments that,
Speaker 1: at least on the surface, were meant to provide employee
Speaker 1: protection were really nothing but a way to protect the
Speaker 1: company and to squelch any efforts by employees to speak
Speaker 1: out about the toxic culture and harassment that they faced.
Speaker 1: It's really ugly stuff and it's still ongoing, and maybe
Speaker 1: there will be arrests that follow as part of this
Speaker 1: ongoing investigation, but as it stands, right now as I
Speaker 1: record this, I am unaware of any actual arrests. But yeah, serious,
Speaker 1: serious stuff, and I'm sure I'll touch on it again
Speaker 1: because there are allegations about a different arm of Ubisoft
Speaker 1: that recently came to light. Leave that behind now and
Speaker 1: talk about other stuff in the company. So, while Ubisoft
Speaker 1: was embroiled in this scandal, it still faced the challenge
Speaker 1: of developing and publishing games right. The world did not
Speaker 1: come to a halt as it was dealing with this.
Speaker 1: They were trying to forge a new strategy and perhaps
Speaker 1: reverse a trend of diminishing returns like I had talked
Speaker 1: about before. So in February twenty twenty one, Ubisoft held
Speaker 1: an investor call to talk about the company's performance in
Speaker 1: twenty twenty and what it planned to do moving forward.
Speaker 1: The chief financial officer, Frederick Dugway, I think, emphasized that
Speaker 1: Ubisoft would not be leaning as heavily on triple A
Speaker 1: titles as the company had in the past. So to
Speaker 1: quote him, he said, quote, we said for a number
Speaker 1: of years that our normal template is to come with
Speaker 1: either three or four triple A games, So we'll stick
Speaker 1: to that plan for fiscal twenty twenty two. But we
Speaker 1: see that we are progressively continuously moving from a model
Speaker 1: that used to be only focused on Triple A releases
Speaker 1: to a model where we have a combination of strong
Speaker 1: releases from Triple A and strong back catalog dynamics, but
Speaker 1: also complementing our program of new releases with free to
Speaker 1: play and other premium experiences. End quote, so again indicating
Speaker 1: that games as a service was something that the company
Speaker 1: was really interested in. This, by the way, games as
Speaker 1: a service has kind of had a really rocky go
Speaker 1: of it as of late, Like a lot of game
Speaker 1: studios are reevaluating that approach because a lot of players
Speaker 1: have kind of rejected that version of games. They don't
Speaker 1: like the idea of being sold to again and again
Speaker 1: and again just to play a game they wanted to play.
Speaker 1: That's not to say that it can't work, but that
Speaker 1: it requires a very careful approach for it to work
Speaker 1: well and for players to feel like it's fair and
Speaker 1: not predatory. So it's a very tough line to walk,
Speaker 1: and not a lot of games are able to do
Speaker 1: it super well. Also, to touch on something else he mentioned,
Speaker 1: he said talked about the back catalog of games as
Speaker 1: it stands, Ubisoft's back catalog is an incredible contributor to
Speaker 1: their revenue, Like something like more than ninety percent of
Speaker 1: the game sold tend to be games from the back catalog.
Speaker 1: And it may not surprise you to know that Ubisoft
Speaker 1: is also looking into releasing remastered versions of some of
Speaker 1: their older games because people want to play them, and
Speaker 1: that's a way of generating more revenue by updating the games,
Speaker 1: giving people what they want, you know, making everything look pretty,
Speaker 1: maybe fixing some gameplay issues that existed in the original
Speaker 1: version of the game, and charging you know, seventy bucks
Speaker 1: a copy or whatever. The company was also starting to
Speaker 1: really eye mobile games as a possible opportunity for growth.
Speaker 1: At that time, less than ten percent of Ubisoft's business
Speaker 1: came from mobile games. But Tencent had made and a
Speaker 1: significant investment into Ubisoft, and Tencent is a company that
Speaker 1: has a deep investment in mobile games, and the fact
Speaker 1: that they were investing into Ubisoft suggested that things might
Speaker 1: change soon. There might be more of a focus on
Speaker 1: mobile games moving forward. However, it turns out that if
Speaker 1: there was going to be a dramatic shift for Ubisoft,
Speaker 1: it hasn't quite happened yet. Not that Ubisoft hasn't been
Speaker 1: developing mobile games, but they haven't really changed as far
Speaker 1: as how much they contribute toward revenue, at least not significantly.
Speaker 1: All Right, so let's talk about some of the titles
Speaker 1: that have been released since I published my episodes in
Speaker 1: November twenty twenty. Now, Remember the strategy here was to
Speaker 1: back away a little bit from Triple A games and
Speaker 1: focus more on things like freemium type stuff. But also
Speaker 1: remember video game development cycles can last years and years
Speaker 1: and years, so it can take some time before you
Speaker 1: start to see a dramatic strategy reflected in actual releases. Right, Like,
Speaker 1: a change in strategy might take a while to be
Speaker 1: evident in a company's releases because so many games were
Speaker 1: still already in the development phase while the announcement was made.
Speaker 1: So Assassin's Creed Valhalla came out right around the time
Speaker 1: I was publishing my episodes in November of twenty twenty. Now,
Speaker 1: the Assassin's Creed franchise is enormous. The major games, they're
Speaker 1: like thirteen of them, so there's more than a dozen
Speaker 1: games in the main series. Then you've got like around
Speaker 1: twenty spinoff games on top of that. The basic concept
Speaker 1: behind the Assassin's Creed games is that there's this millennia
Speaker 1: old conflict between two groups. You have the Assassins on
Speaker 1: one side and the Templars on another side, and generally speaking,
Speaker 1: the Assassins are all about free will and choice, the
Speaker 1: Templars are all about creating order, and both sides are
Speaker 1: wanting to see sort of a peaceful existence, but it's
Speaker 1: through two different directions. So the Assassins believe that only
Speaker 1: through free will can you really have true peace, and
Speaker 1: the Templars believe that only by locking folks down into
Speaker 1: a very orderly system can you actually guarantee piece. And
Speaker 1: that's where the maiden conflict comes from. There's also all
Speaker 1: this stuff about a precursor to human civilization and some
Speaker 1: science fiction elements of various items that when assembled would
Speaker 1: give incredible power. It gets pretty convoluted. Complicating this even
Speaker 1: more is that while the Assassin's Creed titles are set
Speaker 1: throughout history, there's a modern day component to the story.
Speaker 1: So typically in an Assassin's Creed game, you play as
Speaker 1: a modern day person who more often than not, is
Speaker 1: a descendant of some historical character who was involved in
Speaker 1: this ancient conflict between Templars and Assassins, and using some
Speaker 1: science fiction technology, you're able to inhabit the ancestral memories
Speaker 1: of these people from your ancient past, and in the
Speaker 1: process you uncover some of the mysteries that are at
Speaker 1: the core of the struggle between the Assassins and the Templars,
Speaker 1: mostly like trying to get an idea of where some
Speaker 1: of these sci fi artifacts from this precursor civilization could
Speaker 1: be hidden. Now, I've only played a few of the
Speaker 1: Assassin's Creed games. Personally, I find the historical segments to
Speaker 1: be far more enjoyable to the modern day ones. I
Speaker 1: find the sci fi stuff kind of silly and convoluted,
Speaker 1: and the historical components are maybe only slightly less goofy,
Speaker 1: but I just find them more enjoyable that That's just my
Speaker 1: own personal opinion of the games anyway, Valhalla, as I'm
Speaker 1: sure you can imagine, taps into Norwegian history and mythology.
Speaker 1: The historical segments are set in the late ninth centuries
Speaker 1: of the late eight hundreds of the Common Era, and
Speaker 1: if we go by historical chronology, that would mean this
Speaker 1: is the fourth game if you look at the historical segments.
Speaker 1: If that's how you order the Assassin's Creed franchise, which,
Speaker 1: by the way, there are obviously lots of different ways
Speaker 1: you could order the franchise. Most of them end up
Speaker 1: making everything make no sense. But if we were to
Speaker 1: just go by the historical segments, first up would be
Speaker 1: Assassin's Creed Odyssey, then would be Assassin's Creed Origins, so
Speaker 1: ironically that actually comes after Odyssey. Then the new game,
Speaker 1: Assassin's Creed Mirage, would be next, and then after that
Speaker 1: would be Assassin's Creed Valhalla. Although Mirage and Valhalla butt
Speaker 1: up against each other a super close because Mirage would
Speaker 1: have been taking place like a decade before Valhalla starts.
Speaker 1: Assassin's Creed Valhalla is a huge game. IGN estimated that
Speaker 1: it would take about sixty hours to complete it, so
Speaker 1: that would actually make it the longest game by playtime
Speaker 1: in the entire Assassin's Creed series so far. By contrast,
Speaker 1: the new title, the one that just came out, Assassin's
Speaker 1: Creed Mirage, is far less complex. It completely gets rid
Speaker 1: of any modern day story at all, so you're just
Speaker 1: focused on the historical element. It's really stripped down the
Speaker 1: game to its stealth and assassination components, and it debuted
Speaker 1: on October fifth, twenty twenty three, you know, just shortly
Speaker 1: after all those Zubiesoft executives had been detained by police. Anyway,
Speaker 1: it's interesting to compare and contrast Valhalla with Mirage, because
Speaker 1: one is a huge, sprawling game with tons of content
Speaker 1: that generally got positive reviews, but some critics were calling
Speaker 1: it out as being a little too long, that it
Speaker 1: had excessive length to the main storyline. According to gamer Rant,
Speaker 1: Valhalla falls pretty much in the middle of all the
Speaker 1: games by gamer By metacritics score, It's a little bit
Speaker 1: on the bottom side of the middle, so not smack
Speaker 1: dab in the middle. It's a little too early to
Speaker 1: make a call on Mirage, but as I record this,
Speaker 1: Metacritic has Mirage at a score of seventy seven, kind
Speaker 1: of averaged out among more than eighty critics. If it
Speaker 1: holds at seventy seven, that would put eleventh on the
Speaker 1: list of thirteen games, so toward the bottom end. So again,
Speaker 1: it's interesting because it depends, I guess, on whether or
Speaker 1: not you value the strip down core gameplay of Assassin's Creed,
Speaker 1: which would suggest that you would prefer a game like
Speaker 1: Mirage or if you prefer, you know, sort of the larger,
Speaker 1: more sprawling kind of gameplay of something like Valhalla. And
Speaker 1: again it's sarly maybe other reviews will change that score
Speaker 1: over time. It'll be interesting to see if we be
Speaker 1: softicides that the Valhalla approach is better than stripping things
Speaker 1: down to their roots. Also, while Ubisoft would release downloadable
Speaker 1: content or DLC for Valhalla, they've said that they're not
Speaker 1: going to do that for Mirage. Mirage does have microtransactions
Speaker 1: included in it, but it's purely for cosmetic elements. So
Speaker 1: you can pay to have different cosmetic features added into Mirage,
Speaker 1: so you can change like the appearance of your character
Speaker 1: and their costume, that kind of stuff, but you won't
Speaker 1: be getting additional content. So very interesting that they're taking that.
Speaker 1: I guess they're kind of testing the waters to see
Speaker 1: what resonates with gamers more because if it is something
Speaker 1: where it's like a stripped down version, that could potentially
Speaker 1: mean a smaller investment resource wise into game development and
Speaker 1: perhaps a better payoff down the line. But if it
Speaker 1: turns out that gamers kind of reject that, then it
Speaker 1: may mean like, well, I guess we're stuck with planning
Speaker 1: out these really huge games. Now, let's go over some
Speaker 1: of the other games that have come out since November
Speaker 1: twenty twenty. Besides Assassin's Creed, Valhalla, and Mirage, there were
Speaker 1: several you know, TV or game show or board game
Speaker 1: based games that came out, like Family Feud or Trivial Pursuit,
Speaker 1: that kind of stuff. Family Feud, by the way, in
Speaker 1: case you're not aware, is a long running TV game show,
Speaker 1: and so that was one of the titles that Ubisoft
Speaker 1: released since November twenty twenty. Then let's see there was
Speaker 1: three different Just Dance games came out, because there's one
Speaker 1: every year, So Just Dance twenty twenty one, twenty twenty two,
Speaker 1: and twenty twenty three all came out since November of
Speaker 1: twenty twenty. There were several Tom Clancy titles that came
Speaker 1: Mount Sin Sin Rainbow six Siege and Rainbow six Extraction
Speaker 1: were two of those. Ubisoft also released Scott Pilgrim Versus
Speaker 1: the World, the Game Complete Edition. The game had been
Speaker 1: out before, but this was kind of a remastered full
Speaker 1: version of the game. Then there was also far Cry
Speaker 1: six in twenty twenty one. Far Cry series is one
Speaker 1: of those. That's also like a long standing franchise with
Speaker 1: Ubisoft Far Cry. Typically you take on the role of
Speaker 1: a person who is stuck in an environment where there
Speaker 1: is an oppressive leader of some sort, and you are
Speaker 1: essentially trying to either escape or overthrow that leader, depending
Speaker 1: upon which Far Cry you're looking at. And Far Cry
Speaker 1: six got some mixed reviews, which is a shame because
Speaker 1: gian Carlo Esposito, the actor who I think of as
Speaker 1: Gus Frang from the Breaking Bad series, he played the
Speaker 1: villain in Far Christ six, a character named Antom Costillo.
Speaker 1: I have not played far Crai six. I think the
Speaker 1: last Far Krai game I played was Blood Dragon, which
Speaker 1: was quite a ways back, but from what I understand,
Speaker 1: it also received mixed reviews and people were generally a
Speaker 1: little disappointed in it, which is a shame because, I mean, again,
Speaker 1: that's a series that has a lot going for it,
Speaker 1: but I think a lot of people feel that it's
Speaker 1: a little formulaic, and so a lot rests on the
Speaker 1: story of those games, because if the gameplay is pretty
Speaker 1: much the same as the previous one in the series,
Speaker 1: you got to make sure that the story really sets
Speaker 1: it apart. And I think a lot of people didn't
Speaker 1: resonate with that story based upon my impressions from reading
Speaker 1: various reviews and such. Anyway, that's just a selection of
Speaker 1: some of the games that Ubi seft released over that period.
Speaker 1: They also had lots of other games as well. Shouldn't
Speaker 1: be because again, Ubisoft has offices all over the world
Speaker 1: these days. But already we can see that the pace
Speaker 1: of releases is different from earlier years at the company.
Speaker 1: Like let's take Assassin's Creed for example. We got Mirage
Speaker 1: just last week, and before that we got Valhalla in
Speaker 1: late twenty twenty. But let's compare that to the era
Speaker 1: of twenty ten to twenty nineteen. So in that ten
Speaker 1: year period, Ubisoft released nine Assassin's Creed games. Started with
Speaker 1: Assassin's Creed Brotherhood, which came out in twenty ten, and
Speaker 1: the last one in that era was Assassin's Creed Odyssey,
Speaker 1: which came out in twenty eighteen. So the pace today
Speaker 1: is absolutely glacial compared to back then. Anyway, there's a
Speaker 1: selection of games that Ubisoft has released over the last
Speaker 1: few years. But what about a game that hasn't been
Speaker 1: released yet, one that's been development for more than a decade.
Speaker 1: Has slipped launch dates half a dozen times and has
Speaker 1: experienced development hell on a level that rivals that of
Speaker 1: titles like Duke Nukem Forever. I am talking, of course,
Speaker 1: about the long awaited pirate game Skull and Bones. We're
Speaker 1: gonna go into the drama behind Skull and Bones, but
Speaker 1: first let's take another quick break. Okay, before the break,
Speaker 1: I alluded to Skull and Bones, which you could, if
Speaker 1: you wanted to keep with the Mariner theme, you could
Speaker 1: say what has been an albatross around the corporate neck
Speaker 1: of Ubisoft for a few years. The general public first
Speaker 1: got a look at Skull and Bones back in twenty
Speaker 1: seventeen during E three, which I'll remind you used to
Speaker 1: be a thing. But the game had been in development
Speaker 1: for several years already, mostly over at Ubisoft Singapore, and
Speaker 1: in part that's where a lot of Ubisoft's problem comes from.
Speaker 1: Not that the developers at Ubisoft Singapore are bad or substandard,
Speaker 1: but that the deal Ubisoft made with Singapore the country
Speaker 1: has kind of put the company in a bit of
Speaker 1: a bind. So when Ubisoft set out to establish the
Speaker 1: Singapore office, which was back in two thousand and eight,
Speaker 1: Ubisoft had to negotiate with Singapore's government, and this is
Speaker 1: to establish stuff like tax breaks and incentives and that
Speaker 1: kind of thing. And you can land those sorts of stuff,
Speaker 1: but typically you have to offer something in return. So
Speaker 1: part of those negotiations included Ubisoft guaranteeing that they would
Speaker 1: hire a certain number of people in Singapore to staff
Speaker 1: the office, so they wouldn't just be bringing people to
Speaker 1: Singapore to do it, they would be hiring from the
Speaker 1: developer community within Singapore itself. Another was a commitment that
Speaker 1: the Ubisoft Singapore office would release original IP games, so
Speaker 1: not gay that belonged to other franchises, but that this
Speaker 1: office itself would become known for creating original IP Also,
Speaker 1: the developers at Ubisoft Singapore were largely responsible for the
Speaker 1: ship gameplay mechanics of one of Ubisoft's best reviewed games,
Speaker 1: and that would play a part, in fact, a primary
Speaker 1: part in the Skull and Bones story. So, according to Kotaku,
Speaker 1: Uisaft first launch development of Skull and Bones back in
Speaker 1: twenty thirteen. Now at that time, the idea was this
Speaker 1: was just going to be an expansion, a multiplayer expansion
Speaker 1: for Assassin's Creed for Black Flag that just happens to
Speaker 1: be my favorite Assassin's Creed game that I have ever played.
Speaker 1: But keep in mind, I've only played like three or
Speaker 1: four of the titles, so I haven't played the vast
Speaker 1: majority of Assassin's Creed games. It's possible that if I
Speaker 1: played one of the other ones, more of the more
Speaker 1: recent titles, I'd say, oh, well, this one's actually my favorite.
Speaker 1: But for now, Black Flag is my favorite. And in
Speaker 1: that game, you play as a privateer slash pirate slash
Speaker 1: eventually an assassin, and it includes sections of the game
Speaker 1: in which you control a ship and you can engage
Speaker 1: in ship to ship combat and pursue you know, generally
Speaker 1: piratical pursuits. So the initial plan was to create a
Speaker 1: multiplayer feature where gamers could purchase this multiplayer expansion to
Speaker 1: Assassin's Creed four and set their own skills against other
Speaker 1: players and have ship to ship battle against people who
Speaker 1: are controlling the other ship. However, while in development, the
Speaker 1: team added more features and components, and this kind of
Speaker 1: inspired executives to expand the project and it went from
Speaker 1: being just an expansion to a full spin off of
Speaker 1: Black Flag, and it had the working title of Black
Speaker 1: Flag Infinite and that decision wasn't just because of the
Speaker 1: game getting fleshed out more or it was also an
Speaker 1: indication that the games as a service model was really
Speaker 1: appealing to Ubisoft. So why spend so many internal resources
Speaker 1: to make an expansion to an existing game that you
Speaker 1: can only really sell the one time? Instead, why not
Speaker 1: create a fully fledged game that has the ability to
Speaker 1: generate revenue repeatedly from the same player base for however
Speaker 1: long that game's life cycle lasts. You know, whether it
Speaker 1: comes in the form of subscriptions or micro transactions or whatever,
Speaker 1: it means you can keep making money off the same
Speaker 1: title year after year. I mean, like, look at Grand
Speaker 1: Theft Auto Online. That's a great example of a game
Speaker 1: that has done that incredibly effectively. Meanwhile, a problem that
Speaker 1: has hit lots of game developers was hitting this particular
Speaker 1: development project. Actually, you could argue that two very common
Speaker 1: problems within video game development hit the Black Flag Infinite Project.
Speaker 1: One was that while developers were hard at work on
Speaker 1: the project, technological innovation in the game hardware space kept
Speaker 1: on going, which meant some of the assets that the
Speaker 1: team had been using were starting to really show their age.
Speaker 1: And this leads to a pretty tough choice. Do you
Speaker 1: adopt newer technologies knowing that this means a lot of
Speaker 1: your earlier work will no longer be usable right as
Speaker 1: you adopt these new technologies, it means you got to
Speaker 1: toss a lot of stuff you've already built. Or do
Speaker 1: you stick with the stuff you've already created and you
Speaker 1: just resign yourself to the problem that folks are going
Speaker 1: to think your game looks outdated at launch. They're going
Speaker 1: to say, oh, this looks like a last generation game.
Speaker 1: So you be self decided they were going to go
Speaker 1: with the first option. They were going to adopt the
Speaker 1: new technologies, but it meant that they were going to
Speaker 1: lose a lot of that early development work. Now, the
Speaker 1: other big problem that a lot of game companies have
Speaker 1: faced is feature creep. So this is when you have
Speaker 1: a set of defined features that you want in your
Speaker 1: project and then someone typically you know, someone in charge,
Speaker 1: decides that, hey, while we're doing all this, we should
Speaker 1: also add in feature X. Except adding feature X means
Speaker 1: that you also have to do a whole lot more
Speaker 1: work not just to have feature X work, but to
Speaker 1: have it work within the context of the overall project.
Speaker 1: Right because just including feature X might break other stuff.
Speaker 1: So it's a lot of work, and it's rarely just
Speaker 1: feature X. Often it becomes feature X and Y and Z,
Speaker 1: and next thing you know, you've run out of letters
Speaker 1: and you've got to start with numbers and stuff, and
Speaker 1: your project becomes bloated and difficult to manage. That happened
Speaker 1: to Ubisoft's project of Black Flag Infinite as well. Now
Speaker 1: a little bit later, you Besoft decided to divorce the
Speaker 1: game from the Black Flag title entirely, which also meant
Speaker 1: Skull and Bones. The new title would be one of
Speaker 1: those original ips that they needed to produce out of
Speaker 1: Ubisoft Singapore, So that would solve that problem, right Like
Speaker 1: here would be a brand new intellectual property that sure
Speaker 1: was drawn from the experience of designing Assassin's Creed Black Flag,
Speaker 1: but had no other connection to it. Now the game
Speaker 1: changed scope and gameplay several times. So originally it was
Speaker 1: meant to be set in the Caribbean. It was going
Speaker 1: to be this ship to ship combat between players where
Speaker 1: you would have these specific instances of ship to ship combat.
Speaker 1: Then after a while it migrated to a fantasy setting
Speaker 1: called Hyperborea for a bit. Another variation had a floating
Speaker 1: pirate citadel called Libertalia as a focal point of the game,
Speaker 1: but then it would ultimately migrate over to the Indian Ocean.
Speaker 1: It had, actually, according to at least some histories I read,
Speaker 1: had moved to the Indian Ocean before and then got
Speaker 1: moved out. Now it's back in the Indian Ocean. That's
Speaker 1: the setting for Skull and Bones as it stands today. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: the video game developer Rare was at work on a
Speaker 1: similar concept. This one called Sea of Thieves, would be
Speaker 1: a multiplayer game in which players would form small pirate crews.
Speaker 1: They would command ships. They would go on adventures, which
Speaker 1: could include ship to ship combat as well as adventuring
Speaker 1: on land and searching for treasure and that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1: Rare also decided that progression in the game could be
Speaker 1: marked with cosmetic items, and to not lock any weapons
Speaker 1: and tools and such behind that so that way, you know,
Speaker 1: you wouldn't just log into the game for the first
Speaker 1: time and then find yourself obliterated by a veteran player
Speaker 1: who's using I don't know, capt'n Chonky's Intercontinental Ballistic cannonball
Speaker 1: or something. So Rare began developing Sea of Thieves around
Speaker 1: twenty fourteen, so not too long after Ubisoft had started
Speaker 1: on what would become Skull and Bones. Rare first announced
Speaker 1: the game in twenty fifteen at E three, so this
Speaker 1: is before ub Soft would announce Skull and Bones and
Speaker 1: the original plan was to release Sea of Thieves in
Speaker 1: twenty seventeen, but that got delayed till twenty eighteen. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: back at ub Soft, the project that would become Skull
Speaker 1: and Bones hit some choppy waters. To fit in with
Speaker 1: the metaphor, developer leadership was mercurial. It changed multiple times,
Speaker 1: and that also changed the direction of the development of
Speaker 1: the game, and so it meant that developers were working
Speaker 1: and working and working on this project, but they weren't
Speaker 1: any closer to getting a finished game, and that was
Speaker 1: very much demoralizing. Ubisoft announced the game in twenty seventeen.
Speaker 1: They launched their own preview video at E three. That year.
Speaker 1: Sea of Thieves was not yet out, so now we
Speaker 1: knew about two Pirate Crew games that were coming out.
Speaker 1: The twenty seventeen preview of Skull and Bones showed off
Speaker 1: what appeared to be an encounter involving four ships. First,
Speaker 1: what seems to be a navy ship succumbs to an
Speaker 1: attack led by a female pirate captain, but her victory
Speaker 1: celebration doesn't last very long because just as she's looking
Speaker 1: over the spoils of her attack, two other pirate ships
Speaker 1: come into view, and they flank either side of her ship,
Speaker 1: and then all three vessels open fire on each other,
Speaker 1: and it looks like all four of them sink, and
Speaker 1: that was the end of the preview. The graphics and
Speaker 1: Sea of Thieves tends toward the cartoony, whereas Skull and
Speaker 1: Bones looked more aligned with what you would see in
Speaker 1: an Assassin's Creed game. Again, no big surprise since it
Speaker 1: did spawn from Assassin's Creed originally, but it didn't really
Speaker 1: show any gameplay in that trailer. This was like a
Speaker 1: cinematic approach really didn't give you a sense of what
Speaker 1: you could experience while playing the game. Internally at do Besoft,
Speaker 1: there was chaos. There was concern that Skull and Bones
Speaker 1: didn't have enough sticky content to keep players interested. If
Speaker 1: the game only involved player versus player combat, how long
Speaker 1: before that gets old and people stop playing? And if
Speaker 1: it's meant to be a games as a service where
Speaker 1: you're generating revenue over time. You want people to keep
Speaker 1: playing your game for as long as possible, so they
Speaker 1: got to development on some PvE elements. PvE stands for
Speaker 1: player versus environment, so the player is pitted against stuff
Speaker 1: that's under controlled by the game itself rather than under
Speaker 1: the control of a different player. In twenty eighteen, Ubisov
Speaker 1: showed off some of that PvE stuff in a preview
Speaker 1: called Skull and Bones the Hunting Grounds, where the Hunting
Speaker 1: Grounds showed off some of the things you could do
Speaker 1: in player versus environment missions, and at the end of
Speaker 1: that trailer it proclaimed the game would launch in twenty nineteen.
Speaker 1: Obviously that did not happen. In fact, the whole Hunting
Speaker 1: Grounds version of Skull and Bones would suffer the same
Speaker 1: fate as many other decisions during the development cycle. It sank.
Speaker 1: So instead you'd be Soft was looking at a different
Speaker 1: set of games that were becoming really popular around this time,
Speaker 1: and those would be survival games that includes stuff like
Speaker 1: resource management and crafting, So games like Arc are in
Speaker 1: that category. I play a game like that called Seven
Speaker 1: Days to Die, and that's a Zombie Hordes survival game
Speaker 1: that has some of those crafting elements. And resource management
Speaker 1: included in it. So now Skull and Bones would need
Speaker 1: to adopt those kinds of features as well, and the
Speaker 1: development would drag on because it's not just as simple
Speaker 1: as saying, well, let's add an inventory, right, You had
Speaker 1: to build a whole new player economy. It would change
Speaker 1: motivation for why the player is playing the game like
Speaker 1: it has massive impact on the game's development. So the
Speaker 1: changes would mean that players would need to venture on
Speaker 1: land to find and collect resources, so there had to
Speaker 1: be new ways to manage that inventory. The game would
Speaker 1: have to have an entire crafting mechanism built into it
Speaker 1: to make it all work, and the existing foundation of
Speaker 1: the game wasn't really suitable for all this kind of gameplay,
Speaker 1: so it made it even harder to achieve the new
Speaker 1: direction of the title. So what was actually going on here?
Speaker 1: It's not like game development follows some sort of natural progression.
Speaker 1: The leadership on the project spread out across multiple managers
Speaker 1: and appears that not everyone was on the same page.
Speaker 1: According to some of the folks that Kotaku talked to,
Speaker 1: it seemed like a lot of leadership practiced a passing
Speaker 1: the buck routine when it came to making you know,
Speaker 1: critical difficult decisions, which meant those decisions just didn't get made,
Speaker 1: so things were left in limbo. Then there's the fact
Speaker 1: that Ubisoft Singapore was a young studio that never had
Speaker 1: shipped its own full Triple A title. It had participated
Speaker 1: and contributed to them, but never made its own, so
Speaker 1: that was also an issue. Is possible that, you know,
Speaker 1: the studio itself just didn't have the experience to really
Speaker 1: tackle this and it was a little too soon out
Speaker 1: of the gate for the studio to helm such a
Speaker 1: big title. The game has had three different creative directors
Speaker 1: of the course of its development. The most recent creative director,
Speaker 1: Elizabeth Pellin, left the project back in September. She still
Speaker 1: works for Ubisoft, but now she's back in the Ubisoft
Speaker 1: Paris studio, and Ubisoft announced and missed launch dates for
Speaker 1: the game six times so far. Currently, the plan is
Speaker 1: to release it in twenty twenty three or twenty twenty four,
Speaker 1: and since we're coming up on the end of twenty
Speaker 1: twenty three, I think most folks now are assuming that
Speaker 1: we're looking at twenty twenty four at this point. But
Speaker 1: the game has been in beta, so it's not like
Speaker 1: it's totally behind closed doors. People have had a chance
Speaker 1: to experience the game a select number of people, some
Speaker 1: of them people who work at prominent video games websites.
Speaker 1: They've taken part and reported on it, and the reviews
Speaker 1: are mixed. Some of them are positive, some of them
Speaker 1: are more meh. I don't think I've seen anything that
Speaker 1: was outright negative. The one person said that he was
Speaker 1: bored most of the time, but not like the game
Speaker 1: was outright bad. Not everyone finds the gameplay really that engaging,
Speaker 1: But for the people with whom it clicked, it sounds
Speaker 1: like it clicked really well. So it sounds like, for
Speaker 1: at LEAs some types of players, this is going to
Speaker 1: be a pretty fun game. The Kotaku report on the
Speaker 1: development of Skull and Bones, which came out in twenty
Speaker 1: twenty one, I might add, and you know, the game
Speaker 1: still doesn't come out two years later, say that Skull
Speaker 1: and Bones at that point was well over its initial budget,
Speaker 1: having hit more than one hundred and twenty million dollars.
Speaker 1: This actually has a really big impact, not just on
Speaker 1: the company, but also the developers themselves, because you see
Speaker 1: at Ubisoft, developers are eligible for a bonus depending upon
Speaker 1: how well their game does when it hits release compared
Speaker 1: to how much it cost to make the game. But
Speaker 1: because Skull and Bones was so grossly over budget and
Speaker 1: not at the full of the developers necessarily, it meant
Speaker 1: that there would be no way for the game to
Speaker 1: do well enough to trigger those bonuses. So, according to
Speaker 1: Kotaku's sources, Ubisoft had to do an internal write off
Speaker 1: on the game in order for there to even be
Speaker 1: a chance for developers to get a bonus at all.
Speaker 1: And again, the game hasn't come out yet, so we
Speaker 1: don't know if there will be a bonus. In twenty
Speaker 1: twenty one, Libbey, that French newspaper, reported that Ubisoft Singapore
Speaker 1: had shared some of the toxic traits of the overall
Speaker 1: ub Soft company, and then an investigation was launched into
Speaker 1: the charges of sexual harassment and racial discrimination at that office.
Speaker 1: That probably had a huge impact on the development of
Speaker 1: Skull and Bones as well. More recently, there's been reports
Speaker 1: that the Singapore Creative Media and Publishing Union or CMPU,
Speaker 1: has been campaigning within Singapore's office to try and get
Speaker 1: workers there to unionize and to organize. That has not
Speaker 1: yet happened, but apparently that's been going on for about
Speaker 1: a month now. Ubisoft has also faced other instances of
Speaker 1: labor resistance. Earlier this year, there were members of the
Speaker 1: Paris office who did a walkout around forty of them
Speaker 1: in protest of how Guielmo had released a man stating
Speaker 1: that the problems that the company had faced with were
Speaker 1: largely due to developer issues. And they were saying, Hey,
Speaker 1: it's not us, it's the people you put in charge
Speaker 1: who created this terrible toxic environment. How dare you say
Speaker 1: it's because of us and other demanding things like an
Speaker 1: increase in pay and a four day work week and
Speaker 1: some other considerations. And yeah, then there's Tencent, right. Tencent
Speaker 1: got a forty nine point nine percent economic stake in
Speaker 1: a company called the Guielmo Brothers Limited. This company actually
Speaker 1: holds the stock that belongs to those five brothers who
Speaker 1: founded Ubisoft. So this one entity actually holds the stock
Speaker 1: that belongs to the brothers, and now Tencent owns almost
Speaker 1: half of that company. In addition, it has about ten
Speaker 1: percent ownership of Ubisoft stock overall. Ironically, this is kind
Speaker 1: of old worries that ten Cent could take over ub
Speaker 1: Soft entirely because ub Soft shareholders have indicated they would
Speaker 1: not consider a buyout unless the Ubisoft stock was trading
Speaker 1: for around sixty to seventy euro per share. And when
Speaker 1: Tencent made this this acquisition deal for like fifty percent
Speaker 1: or forty nine point nine percent of the holding company,
Speaker 1: the stock price for Ubisoft fell fifteen percent to thirty
Speaker 1: six point six euros, So it's far below the threshold
Speaker 1: that shareholders would consider for a buyout. And as I
Speaker 1: record this episode, Ubi saft stock price is just below
Speaker 1: twenty nine euro per share, so yeah, it's not on
Speaker 1: track for that buyout option, at least according to shareholders.
Speaker 1: I should also mention Ubisoft's hope that mobile gaming would
Speaker 1: make up a larger percentage of revenue has not really
Speaker 1: panned out that way, at least not yet. It's still
Speaker 1: hovering around the ten percent mark, which is what it
Speaker 1: was at back in twenty twenty, so that might change
Speaker 1: in the next year or two, but so far it
Speaker 1: just hasn't really skyrocketed the way the company had hoped.
Speaker 1: So that kind of gets us up to speed as
Speaker 1: to what Ubisoft has been up to since twenty twenty.
Speaker 1: Felt good to get through all of that. I should
Speaker 1: probably also do this for Blizzard because I did one
Speaker 1: a series on Blizzard not too long ago, and I
Speaker 1: should do an update on that, especially with all the
Speaker 1: Activision Blizzard acquisition shenanigans that have happened over the past
Speaker 1: year and a half or so. But that's enough for today.
Speaker 1: I hope you are all well, and I'll talk to
Speaker 1: you again really soon. Tech Stuff is an iHeartRadio production.
Speaker 1: For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.