The upcoming Assassin’s Creed Shadows represents much more than just the latest in the long-running franchise taking players to Japan for the first time. This game represents a do-or-die moment for Ubisoft, the company behind the rise, stagnation and fall of their major franchises like Assassin’s Creed and Far Cry. After ruling the industry for so long, almost being too big to fail at points, never before has the former gaming behemoth felt in such a defining moment, set to determine the future of the entire company and its place in the industry.
Assassin’s Creed Shadows is one of March’s most anticipated gaming releases, but it comes after extensive delays, cancellations and flops of other Ubisoft titles, as well as the stagnation of an entire genre of game. This combined with mismanagement within the workplace and miscommunication with their audience has slowly edged Ubisoft towards a cliff with Shadows, and it’s time for them to make their own leap of faith, without knowing what awaits them at the bottom.
Criticism towards Ubisoft has been going on for a long time at this point. There was a time when their gameplay tools used within Assassin’s Creed and Far Cry defined the entire open world genre. Towers used to unlock sections of the map, camps of enemies to conquer and take their loot, assassination options to stealth through enemy outposts without any open combat and more ‘Ubisoft-isms’ were seen across the industry, from Nintendo’s Zelda to Sony’s Horizon.
Ubisoft does have really recognizable gameplay, and given its formula is used in so many successful games there is clearly some merit to it. The issue however is how Ubisoft didn’t stop using that formula, and shake-ups were minimal. The broad opinion of Assassin’s Creed began to slip after its fifth main entry, only rising in critical opinion once it shook up its progression systems in favor of a more RPG-like skill tree and equipment system. Once this landed, they once again kept doing it for three entire games, each increasingly more bloated with more side content that felt more filler than fun. This trope became so tired that they even dedicated an entire game to removing the bloat and going back to more conventional stealth-action led gameplay with 2023’s Assassin’s Creed Mirage.
Ubisoft defined a genre, but it also was responsible for stagnating it too. Assassin’s Creed was revolutionary – then they made 13 mainline games in 16 years. When they made good changes they didn’t make any more, and when they made bad changes they also didn’t do anything about it. It’s not just gameplay mechanics defined and stagnated by Ubisoft, they even have an infamous, extremely cluttered style of UI. Just one quick Google search for ‘Ubisoft UI’ generates a ton of memes pointing out how needlessly full the screen of a Ubisoft-developed title is, with lots of words and icons but very little substance.
So, we know Ubisoft stagnated their brand and eventually they realised it too – so what about new stuff? Well, about that… Ubisoft cancelled around ten games in the last three years. In 2022 they cancelled four unannounced games, in 2023 they cancelled three more, and 2024 came with another three, high profile game cancellations. Last year saw the scrapping of The Division Heartland, Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown’s sequel, and the original free-to-play shooter XDefiant was shut down less than eight months later. Each one of these major cancellations wasn’t just an innocent refocus of their efforts; they each represent gigantic financial losses. Video games, especially Ubisoft ones, can cost hundreds of millions of dollars to develop, advertise, maintain and more. Every single one of these failures, whilst some will have been smaller scale, represents a total loss for Ubisoft with nothing gained.
Not everything got cancelled – but a lot of it got delayed. Ubisoft did try a new original game with Skull and Bones, despite it being heavily inspired by the naval combat of Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag. The issue here isn’t what they were making but how they made it, as Skull and Bones was delayed six times. Yes, there were six delays on Skull and Bones, which inevitably gave it a development time of longer than 10 years which must have resulted in an eye-watering budget. Development time and costs were so high that the price tag of the game was raised to $70, and given the absolutely hilarious branding of ‘AAAA’ by Ubisoft to try and emphasize its nature as a premium product. Despite this gigantic price tag, the game still has in-game purchases, event passes and all the monetization of a free-to-play game by the way. All that for the game to get a 59 on Metacritic and failing to cross a million players on their ‘AAAA’ game. Sometimes all you can do is laugh!
When Ubisoft wasn’t delaying original games they were releasing them, so let’s take a look at their most recent big title with Star Wars Outlaws. Sure it’s an established universe, but Ubisoft does try something new with the game set in the iconic sci-fi universe. It’s been a moderate success, with a 75 on Metacritic indicating generally favorable but hardly rave reviews. Commercially speaking, Ubisoft themselves described the sales performance as “softer than expected” but want to secure long-term performance through swift implementation of updates that “polish and improve” their game for those who choose to buy it later. It’s time to say something nice about Ubisoft now – this was sorely needed and a welcome change of attitude.
For too long, Ubisoft have been incredibly slow to change in the face of criticism. That’s what made their iconic series stagnate for so long, they were just too slow with their changes. Star Wars Outlaws was the warning sign of their current predicament they find themselves in, which is they just can’t afford to keep missing. Unfortunately however, whilst everyone was begging for a good game with non-intrusive microtransactions, Ubisoft did still decide to launch an NFT blockchain game. No, I’m not kidding.
The mismanagement at Ubisoft and complete inability to read the room resulted in Champions Tactics: Grimoria Chronicles, a PVP game where you buy NFTs to collect and battle other players. A few days after launch, there were NFT figurines costing $63,000, and approximately zero people willing to play the game. Sure, some crypto-bros probably do play in an effort to make money, but that game is not going to last.
The endless bad decisions, delays, cancellations and overall waste of people’s money and time all stem from bad management. This isn’t even diving into the disturbing allegations of workplace misconduct, or the employee strikes earlier this year due to discreet layoffs and changing in remote work policies. All this drama, wasted potential and bad decisions has inevitably resulted in a talent drain at the studio, with some of Ubisoft’s talented staff either getting laid off discreetly or leaving of their own choice amidst the crumbling ruins of the former gaming giant.
But that brings us back to Assassin’s Creed Shadows, the last flickering light to guide Ubisoft on their leap of faith towards redemption. As we discussed with Star Wars Outlaws, Ubisoft is slowly learning that responding to player criticism and actually changing things they don’t like results in people liking things. What a concept! In fact, the only reason we’re not playing a broken and money-hungry version of Assassin’s Creed Shadows right now is because they delayed the game to work on it longer, and remove some of the things fans don’t like.
In September 2024 the game was delayed from November that same year to February of 2025. This delay apparently came from Ubisoft’s insights in the failure of Star Wars Outlaws, and their realization that it’s now or never to make changes. In a shocking move, they cancelled the game’s season pass monetization method, and refunded all pre-orders. With the removal of the season pass, they also trimmed down the number of game versions, in favor of now just having a standard and a deluxe edition with bonus content. All players, regardless of version, will receive the first story expansion for free if pre-ordering, and will likely be able to buy the additional story expansions standalone without the need for an unnecessary season pass in future.
Ubisoft also are making efforts to unify their player base with Assassin’s Creed Shadows, as the PC version of the game will have a simultaneous launch across its three platforms of Steam, Epic Games Store and Ubisoft Connect. Those playing on Steam will also no longer be forced to download a secondary launcher to play the game, unlike past Assassin’s Creed titles that were needlessly demanding on the player.
After this September delay, another followed in January which gives us our new final release date of March 20, making us just a few weeks away from launch. It hasn’t all been good news, as Ubisoft faced severe criticism from some online for their use of a fictional version of a black samurai and female shinobi. This was followed by a wave of extremely unnecessary (in my opinion!) scrutinizing exactly how accurate Shadows really is to 16th century Japan. I personally find it interesting that everyone is a historian when a game’s protagonists are a black man and a woman, but when the game talks about an ancient god-like species living on Earth that shaped all humanity then suddenly that’s not a problem. That’s just my opinion though!
Ubisoft has handled this wave of criticism surprisingly well, saying the choice of a black samurai protagonist with Yasuke was to give the player “the eyes of a foreigner” into ancient Japan, whilst still giving them a native look with Japanese female protagonist Naoe. Of course, she’s still a woman which some people will never be happy with for as long as their outrage grifting tweets and YouTube videos pay the bills. Ubisoft took this head on too, responding to a ringleader of the “anti-woke” circus directly with a troll tweet and ratio that should be enough to indicate there’s an audience that actually enjoys Ubisoft’s decisions, and is open to playing a fictional game as fictional people in a fictional version of a historic land.
All this does somewhat set Ubisoft up for at least for a good run towards the leap of faith they’re investing in Assassin’s Creed Shadows. The pre-orders for the game are reportedly on par with those of Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, which is the second best-selling game in the franchise and thus is a welcome company to be paired with. It’s not all good news though, as Ubisoft also suggested that if this goes well then they will keep making Assassin’s Creed products of some variety on a yearly basis again. This would be a gigantic mistake in the long run, but let me at least try and keep this conclusion a bit optimistic.
That leaves us here. Two weeks away from one of the most important game launches in Ubisoft’s history, as Assassin’s Creed Shadows represents potentially their last chance to deliver a hit. They’re struggling with investors, lost hundreds of millions of dollars on unreleased games, what has made it to market has been tepid at best and they have a “culture war” brigade flooding their every post. It’s never been more dire for Ubisoft, and they’ve never shown more signs of being able to change and speak up if it means their audience will return. With Assassin’s Creed Shadows officially going gold (and leaking), Ubisoft are in freefall. They’re barreling toward the ground after their leap of faith, and time will tell if Assassin’s Creed Shadows sales money will act as a haystack waiting to break their fall, or leave them to crash from the great height they once held.
That’s my opinion at least! How do you feel about Ubisoft’s decisions over the past few years, and the place we find ourselves in now ahead of Assassin’s Creed Shadows launch? We’d love to hear your thoughts, so fire them off in the comments below and keep your eyes on GameLuster for more Assassin’s Creed coverage as we approach the launch.
