Ya EA/DICE did a bunch of dumb stuff, whether it ended up on social media or they put it out there themselves. BFV felt similar to Mattrick and XB1.

I think the only way Shadows does well is if they delay and go hardcore on historical accuracy, however long that takes, no matter the cost. Then market the snot out of the fact you listened and went the extra mile to give the people what they asked for.

I'm not getting my hopes up.

I'm already seeing some people saying they should remove Yasuke from the game, but I know that's not even remotely possible, even with 5 months before it's next year release, it would still cost them too much time and money to remove all of that.

Really they should have had the Japanese secondary protag as the main one, and have Yasuke as the secondary. Also yeah, they really need to decide on historical accuracy or simply abandon the focus on historical characters going forward and make up whatever (they can't really have both cakes, it doesn't even make sense to want both cakes). 

I'm not getting any hopes up tbh, not since hearing management called for a self investigation, which is only going to waste more time and money, money that could be spent on the game itself (also we know how self investigations go with corps, they "investigate" themselves and claim they solved the issue, while upper management get to keep their seats and the problems continue to escalate). 

I had a quick look at Ubisoft's accounts, their net cash position for FY24 is worse than FY23 and they have quite a lot of debt.
It's not looking good but I doubt they will shut down, but never know what their loan covenants and other obiligations state.

If anyone wants to look:
https://staticctf.ubisoft.com/8aefmxkxpxwl/AwOkNohhzmR1qBmQ4Nj4h/096beaa470c05f39f77417742e4d25b8/Ubisoft_FY24_Earnings_PR_English_final.pdf

Worst case scenario they'll be acquired by Tencent (or someone else if France blocks Tencent) followed by thousands of layoffs and turned into an Assassins Creed/Far Cry factory, actually, I think that's the most likely scenario if someone does acquire them. I do not see Ubisoft shutting down entirely (nor should anyone want that).

But I do think if someone acquires Ubisoft, first thing on the list will be streamlining them down to the size of other publishers via layoffs, moving towards cheap outsourcing instead of internal co-development and cancelling any low-impact IPs (like Beyond Good and Evil 2). Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown team would probably shutdown, likely the Rabbid's team as well, Rainbow Six will stay alive.

Which is like, exactly what this investor everyone keeps talking about wants, Lol.

IIRC as well, Microsoft will have to be informed in who acquires Ubisoft now thanks to them licensing Activision-Blizzard Cloud titles to Ubisoft (between 50m-100m Euros) which Ubisoft has already started to profit on. Due to it being an agreement between Microsoft, Ubisoft and the CMA. So that may make a sale a bit more awkward depending on who it is.

Honestly, I hope Ubisoft can pull through this, it would be better for the industry if they could, I don't want to see another major corporation gobble up another major corporation, I want to see Yves fuck off and step down as CEO though and someone else takeover, preferably someone from within Ubisoft who is well respected and liked, without a bunch of baggage and with a clear direction.

Not Ubisoft related but I wanted to rant a little about this too, how fucking ridiculous are shareholders being here, this industry is an absolute joke at the minute. If investors are going to start pissing their pants about something as useless as Steam CCU then I would rather Steam CCU be removed entirely.

So a game can now sell hundreds of thousands of copies, cover the entire costs of making the game, but if it doesn't get a high CONCURRENT player count, the stock gets battered? What a joke, Steam CCU used to just be something fun to look at and now it's being turned into something horrible, I thought only by forum users but now the goddamn investors too 💀

I haven’t kept up with this at all. Is it all because Outlaws didn’t sell great and people think the next A. Creed is going to do poorly? I don’t know what other games are under them. Rayman?

Remember when Elden Ring came out?. People did the same thing for other single-player games, going solely off Steam's CCU listings, rather than the other factors like:

Wishlist numbers

Total players

Highest Peak

But instead it's always just the CCU, and if the CCU for an SP game is in the lower digits, it's apparently "dead game", which makes no fucking sense at all and likely never will, yet investors are drawn to CCU for games like a moth to the flame. 

I don't think they should erase CCU stats, but I do think Investors should just stay the hell away from Steam stats in general. They are meant to be fun stats for us to look at in general, you know, nerdy stats (or "stats for nerds" as Google calls theirs). Investors are already mucking bigger games up enough as is, and we don't need them gawking at CCU stats.

It has annoyed me recently, Steam CCU used to be a little fun, like a "oh look at how much CCU it hit, that's awesome, okay moving on" but now it's being weaponised a lot, I see "Oh Palworld is dead because it decreased by --%" and likewise for Helldivers 2...Because of course the games are not going to maintain a near 1m CCU FFS. The % drop will be huge if they hit a massive height, Lol.

Developers would kill for the numbers that Palworld and Helldivers 2 are still getting, and this is just Steam CCU, it doesn't take into account Xbox/PlayStation player-bases either, I mean, sometimes you can use Steam CCU to make a fair assessment that a game is dead, like with Concord, but also some games do better on PC than Console and some games do better on Console than PC.

And yup it's even more dumb to use Steam CCU for SP titles and use it as an judgement as to whether a game is a failure or not. As for Frostpunk 2, I doubt it will be that high but it's also on PC Game Pass. God help the industry if these investors start obsessing over Steam CCU FFS. Reminds me of the stupid days of giving bonuses for hitting a certain Meta score, instead of the actual overall performance of the videogame, Lol.

Just became a weaponised thing lately, too many low-evidence claims made because of it and too much gloating.

It's been like that even in the Steam Palworld forums. People bringing up it's CCU count, even from people who don't even own the damn game. It seems to get worse with time, because now if a dev isn't posting a blog about an upcoming update within a given week/2 weeks, people assume a game is dead.

I feel like there's been a weird shift in some people's mentality regarding games being finished up, and games that take time to develop, but I also feel like it's part to blame with the era we've had of live service games (where people expect constant updates, constant feedback to the customer on a weekly/monthly basis), that it's caused people to assume the worst if the CCU is low, or there has been no given update within a few weeks. 

As for myself, I've owned Project Zomboid since it's early access release way back in 2013, and that game is still in dev, and I've been fine with the studio taking their time to improve the game, but I'll by no means mark it down as a dead game given it's time cycle, or CCU count fluctuating. As Gabe once said, "these things, they take time".

Frostpunk 2 has sold well for what it is. it's a hardcore survival city sim. At this moment in time, the game is kinda taxing on the CPU and even GPU side (I've been watching Piratesoftware streaming it on Twitch the past few days and even he notes it's performance tax, and the same goes for ACG's review). I feel like that game has it's own niche to fill, but it's hw demands can be a bit of a roadblock for some (I know I won't be able to cut it on my current rig).

Something you said did remind me of something similar though, in that we see gamers and investors paying attention to game CCU's on Steam, but at the same time we end up seeing publishers paying attention to Steam's overall CCU for logins (the higher the number, the harder is can be to ignore, like Ubisoft coming back to Steam after their stint of leaving it on and off since 2019).

It's weird how the CCU has become the central focus, because the more important aspect should have always been the sales in general, as well as the overall user review scores (mostly to overwhelmingly positive makes for a glowing score to the general public than a CCU count will). 

Its an AC game, it'll be successful but probably not as popular review wise or sell as much as the big popular ones.