Fun fact: Quadruple A is a term in baseball used to describe someone who was really great at the college level, but crashed and burned hard when they got into the pros. I remember coming across this fact online when reading a review for a bad game that called it a quadruple-A experience.
They thought when we said wanted a pirate game without the Assassin's Creed stuff, we meant "take out every aspect of gameplay that was ever in any Assassin's Creed game other than Black Flag", not "take out all the meta sci-fi present day/ancient aliens stuff".
Being french, I think the end of Ubisoft is great news. While we do have smaller cool companies making nice games, Ubisoft is sucking a lot of local talents, and waste their potential. If/when Ubisoft falls appart, a ton of devs will join/build new companies and produce nice stuff.
@@EnclavegovtofficialUSAIf only. That might be good for us gamers, but the giant companies could easily make the case that such a law interferes with ‘sensible business operations’.
@@EnclavegovtofficialUSA There's already some kind of EU legislation around for that. That's the reason why emulating a game, going around copyright protection and copy the game for your own safekeeping is legal, not even Nintendo managed to stop that, and they tried hard. But since the fall of hard copy sales, that legislation became useless.
Ubisoft thinks they're taking the Bismarck on the Titanic's voyage when they're actually taking the Titanic on the Bismarck's voyage. Does that about some it up?
the problem with ubi, is that it's french. meaning there's french government money in it. and that means that it'll get bought up the moment that happens.
@@JJ18355 the cost has sunk so low at this point that in order for the theoretical ship to reach said depths it'd have to be crushed and reduced to sawdust from the overwhelming pressure of the water
Ubisoft talking about using AI to write NPC dialogue shows how much they value both artists and players. They see you as nothing more than a mindless content consumer, one so uninterested in quality that you can be sold randomized gibberish pumped out endlessly by a machine.
NPCs reacting to what you say dynamically could be very cool, I think you're being a tad too cynical about the idea. The implementation, however... I have 0 faith in ubisoft.
"artists" yea these people shouldnt be valued if you see the crap they produced in the last years. if they use ai instead paying sweet baby inc thats a good thing
He literally just had a video about how we need to save the gaming industry jobs and then the next vid is dunking on a gaming company's latest release. Ubisoft going to see this vid and fire 20% of their staff 😖
Sure, but he's also Nintendo's biggest diehard shill. Not to say he's never scrutinized Nintendo before, definitely not. It's just ironic that he's always willing the give the most anti-consumer company a pass.. but also dunks on other companies like this. Ubisoft certainly deserves it but where is Arlo when Nintendo is coming after preservation and emulation? I feel like THAT is something that deserves his attention more tha.. Ubisoft's frequent blunders. Dude is a Nintendo RUclipsr talking about Ubisoft and he is HARSH with his takes, (again, ubisoft deserves it) but where tf is that energy with Nintendo???
Pay $15 for battle pass cosmetics but also not have it unlocked immediately... so you gotta grind within a few weeks to unlock cosmetics. If you don't have time to beat the battle pass.... you're SOL
Every time they charge extra $10 it makes me wanna get any game less and less. I would rather support indi from now on. I don't think there has been any mainstream game i picked in the last few years, they all just reek so bad and no amount of price tag they choose for them will change their quality, or rather the lack of.
When Ubisoft sinks you can be sure that the people keeping it afloat right now are going to be drowning on the lower decks while the ones who set the bad course will be taking the safety boat that just so happens to be loaded with the remaining treasure.
The funniest thing is, a mere 8 days before the release of Skull and Bones, a Live Service game, made by a then nearly unknown company, Helldivers 2, was released, and that one exploded simply by... being a good game.
And then also look at Helldivers 2, a game that lost the majority of it's players simply because of bad management decisions. HD2 is the perfect example of "a good game that doesn't try to milk it's players and destroy immersion will do well" and also the "lets milk the customers and break it for a lot of people" and everything just because Sony needs to get people into their broken infrastructure so they can say "look, psn gains1!!1!!!!1"
@@maskharat As an active player of Helldivers 2, the PSN nonsense certainly didn't help, but if you look at how the player numbers are shaping up, you can see that a slow but steady decline was consistent before and after the boycott. Reality is Arrowhead is just way over their heads. They are a reasonably small studio who expected to manage a game with an active player base of a few thousand at any given time. And they are using an engine that is... not the greatest, it's a licensed engine that got discontinued years ago, so now they have to internally have to fix its issues. And with a mainstream game like this, people expect regular content updates, not a notice that "hey, yeah, friendlists in game still don't work, we'll probably fix it after our summer break, so late August". They simply don't have enough people to fix stuff and release new stuff regularly, so people have their fill, figure that they saw everything the game has to offer, so they stop playing.
It's inevitable for a game to lose most of its playerbase a while after release once the hype dies down and players have seen most of the content available. Looking at the steam charts during the PSN thing, the trend was unaffected. Unsurprisingly people didn't care shortly after they threw in the towel and backtracked on it. Probably a bigger problem than their management decisions was the unsustainable update schedule which led to rushing things out the door in a bugged state, and then balancing around that. Fortunately things seemed to have improved there, though personally it still has a ways to go before being as fun as it was in the first couple of months.
Helldivers is cooked. One buff brought back 80K players imagine if the devs added illumates or even… new missions and content ez 100K players if a buff brought back 20K to 80K
We all knew skull and bones was going to be a disaster. All it took was the knowledge that they were being my forced to finish it by the Singapore government
The ship is sinking. It's keeping itself above water, but sooner or later, its stamina bar will run out. And yes, apparently, ships have stamina bars. According to ubisoft.
To add to the analogy. Ubisoft is not only run by a captain who is sinking his ship for treasure while hurting his crew. The treasure he finds at the end is "The friends we made along the way." While all the crew lays beaten and dead with the captian unharmed and confused and underwhelmed at their prize.
Worse yet, he's trapped in a room where the mechanism holding the door shut requires blood, which if he had even half a crew available, they would be able to spare enough blood apiece to satisfy the debt without passing out, but because he has sacrificed them to every trap on the way to the treasure, he will have to pay in full if he wants to leave.
-Now for my personal head cannon- The crew has a mutany but decided to leave the captain to pilot his own ship... eventually the French sailors are picked up by a Japanese Yacht called the Miyazaki and all get employed having successful fulfilling careers in game development designing poison swamps😂😂
@@jordanhunter3375 I think we're really stretching the sinking ship analogy at this point, that's basically 70% of an action-adventure novel you just wrote.
I really fuckin hate to see it because there are soooo many talented enviromental designers in ubisoft. Its seriously the one thing they always nail 100%
Honestly, a pirate game is an idea that writes itself. Spiritual successor to black flag. Customizable player character captain, give em a backstory if you wanna be spicy. Customizable lead ship. Baldur's Gate 3 style of npc crew and crew management. Maybe give it a supernatural potc style undercurrent/subplot as a differentiating 'upgrade' to black flag. Boom done. If it needs multi-player, set that in a secret sea beyond the coral reef or something so you're not trying to make your main ocean both a plot AND a crowded wifi arena.
To be fair: the AAAA moniker is technically accurate. The phrase we associate with big budget titles and superior quality actually originated as a business term describing budget size, and if there's one thing that Skull and Bones has shown us, it's that if you want to build a build a money bonfire, it's gonna take a LOT of cash.
AAA has never been about quality. Always been about the budget. Personally I've stopped caring about AAA games 20 years ago because they didn't appeal to me at all.
@@bretonfabrice AAA was always the blockbusters of gaming - big budget, fancy tech, maybe not the deepest piece of art but nonetheless quite fun and a benchmark for what can be achieved with current tech (for the most part). Meanwhile current day AAA is only the outrageously overbloated budgets and barely anything else, not even the tech is all that impressive as it's mostly copy-pastes from whatever they released last year with barebones optimisation (S&B is the first game in years that I said looks actually ugly for what it's trying to be - quadruple A? sure, if it was released in 2016, maybe). Granted, improvements in game graphics aren't anywhere near as massive and noticeable as they were, say, in the 90's but it's still telling when a pixel art indie title feels like it has better graphics than a billion dollar AAAA title.
They crippled Black Flag recently too. It's unplayable past a certain point without a mod to fix the once online part of the game and if you use that mod, your newly attached Ubisoft Connect account will get banned and without the ability log-in, the game simply won't launch making it online only... despite the online portion being no longer supported... Basically, I'm not shocked and I just hope Steam/modders can undo their evil nonsense.
thats not even the worst thing. The Crew, one of my favorite racing games, just became COMPLETELY UNPLAYABLE because it was a constant live service game. despite 90% of the game being playable offline. its funny because fans digging through the code found that there was a beta for a "play offline" mode that never saw the light of day. the modders cant get to it though because its encrypted. all ubisoft has to do to make the game work is essentially flip a switch, but they can't be bothered
@@houndofculann1793Yeah, like the other bro said... but you didn't used to be required to log in... so they added a required login after removing the only online portion which is just... What.
I interviewed with Ubisoft about 3 years ago to work on the Splinter Cell remake. They gave me a vibe that once the game would be finished that they were going to lay people off. During the interview, I said, don't hire me if you plan on laying me off in one years time. I couldn't get a straight answer from them, so I pretty much knew the deal. I have friends who still work there, and they've told me terrible things about Ubisoft. They try so hard with their whole DEI BS, but its just a front for their toxic culture.
Especially with the gatekeeping considering the assassin's creed team have wanted to do a game with just a female protagonist but had to add a male option to appease upper management
Given you have friends inside Ubisoft, I must ask why on Earth do people work at such a shitty workplace? Its not like gaming is an essential industry.
There’s a part of me that wants Ubisoft Milan (or whichever division does the Mario Rabbids game) just breaks off from Ubisoft taking the Rayman Rabbids IP with them to save them from Ubisoft’s clutches 😭
@@peachymiku6432 Nintendo wouldn't let Ubisoft tarnish the Mario brand in that way, they heavily monitored that to make sure they released them in a good state
I once heard a joke that whenever a game is in development Hidetaka Miyazaki the CEO of FromSoftware spends the entire time adding poison swamps. The rest of the company’s job is to remove those swamps before the game comes out. Anything they don’t get to stays in the game. I feel like Ubisoft is like that. All the developers are trying their best to make good games without the suits noticing, if any of the suits do notice they ruin it however they can. Good Ubisoft games are good in spite of Ubisoft’s best efforts.
He also does the same for patches and the moonlight greatsword There are stories of him turning employees' homes into poison swamps for removing either of those two (i joke)
The bizarre thing is that they're _not_ getting more money doing it like this. Almost every single one of Ubisoft's recent games have been major commercial "failures" according to their "expectations". The biggest exception I can think of was the first Mario+Rabbids game!
The Sly Cooper 3 ship section is INSANELY GREAT. I love the game, and the pirate section of that game felt so short since the ship combat was only a few missions, but damn was it making me wanting more
My friend worked at Ubisoft. When he said that he had a friend who loved Starlink in a meeting one of his bosses laughed and said "you found the entire audience who is enthusiastic about Starlink!"
It's crazy how Kingdom Hearts III is like 10% pirate simulator, and that's the most fun part of the game, and Ubisoft makes an entire pirate simulator that's a flaming disaster. How do you get shown up by a fraction of another game that isn't even the same genre?!
Assassin's Creed 4 is literally already a better pirate game than this, and that one's from Ubisoft! All they needed to do was swap out the assassination bits with more ship customization and some fleet control, yet somehow they managed to fail in every possible way...
It's amazing, given the time it's taken to make Skull & Bones, that another company didn't look at the reveal, see the fan outcry, make the game people were asking for themselves, and release it BEFORE Skull & Bones.
I thought the people of these comments should know RUclipsr Ross Scott (Accursed Farms) the creator of some of the oldest Machinima on the platform has put together a campaign to make governments create laws against Live service games, using the termination of The Crew and Ubisoft as the major focal point but his scope includes all companies that do this. If you would like to get involved there are 3 videos on his channel that cover what you can do depending on what country you live in, the more people get involved the more likely it is to see action.
The thing is it's not live service itself but rather extremely poor implementation of it being the problem. if you put in the resources and time it can work but they won't do that because they don't want to use the money they horde.
@@davidmccall4024 the thing i hate about it is making singleplayer games that dont need to be online rely on a central server so when the server goes down you cant play your game.
Ubisoft has also destroyed Just Dance. They turned it into a live service, stripped out many functions, made so many features behind their Just Dance+ subscription, a service that has less than half the songs in their previous Unlimited service. They deleted customized playlists. They put the previously free kids mode behind a paywall. They turned a party game into a single player game by only allowing one player's scores to be retained. They removed the World Dancefloor multiplayer mode. They stopped porting over songs from Unlimited into JD+. They made new season maps available only to JD+ despite saying they will add free content all year long. Most people I know that play Just Dance are sticking with 2022+Unlimited, but Ubisoft will turn off Unlimited soon. I know most gaming sites and channels blow Just Dance off, but it is probably Ubisoft's biggest cash cow and now they are chasing that game's loyal players away. The developers say most changes came from the execs. They said they know the current live service game is majorly lacking but they can't do anything about it. It seems like Ubisoft execs are determined to destroy all of their successful franchises.
Sounds like JD needs it's own version of the spiritual successor to Guitar Hero, Clone Hero. I'd be surprised if there wasn't some form of fan effort to open source JD.
You want more of this, go give The Jimquisition a watch. Stephanie's been on the AAA industry's ass like this since the days of horse armor and the dawn of DLC. 😂
Skull and Bones' development is reflected in the game. They started going strong(literally just remake Black Flag for next gen), made some bad moves due to poor choices early on(the quest marker was in the wrong spot) then ran out of steam and had to slog for way too long to reach their destination(they ran out of stamina). Then once it was all said and done, they realized that they had spent a ton of money for a pile of poop, just like we did buying the game.
Publicly that is, pretty sure the other 'AAA" companies checked but saw no easy way to implement it so they didn't announce it. Can't tell me i.e. Blizzard didn't at least studied ways to implementing NFT's in shit like hearthstone or WOW. (ie 'nft' mounts). If they could have they would have but imo the NFT craze died before they could.
Skull & Bones was a good idea when the scope of the game was on par with For Honor. A small game specifically for fans of the naval combat. The problem is that they took this niche concept and decided it would be a AAAA super blockbuster that everyone in the world wanted to play.
*This is important:* I'm surprised you didn't talk about *The Crew.* Ubisoft is not simply stopping support, not simply delisting the game from stores, but Ubisoft is *intentionally breaking the game.* Meaning that *every single person who purchased this game will not be allowed to play it anymore because Ubisoft simply decided this to be the case.*
they own the ip, players own a license to their ip. I don't understand why people don't understand that a license is not ownership of the product. You agreed to their terms when you bought the game, they warned you you would not own the ip, and that they could do whatever they wanted with their ip regardless of your purchase.
@@n1lknarf And for the people that bought discs of The Crew, what do they get but a useless piece of e-waste? I know licensing is the reality of games ownership right now and the industry is more digital than ever, but it would take them a day or two to flip a switch that allows offline play for the rest of time. No amount of "you accepted the terms" will ail the waters of the pure dissent Ubisoft shows for game owners. You should have standards for this bullshit, as should everyone else.
That refuted *zero* things I said. I don't care if Ubisoft is taking people's games away because they "said so." What Ubisoft is doing here is undeniably scummy and deserves to be called out. Whether or not Ubisoft gets the picture other not, companies need to understand that this is *not okay.* @@n1lknarf
This video was hilarious and insightful but let's not sleep on how impressive Arlo's puppeteering is. Between the AAAA moment and the cell phone bit at the end I thought it was as professional as the Muppets. Super impressive work. I don't know what training Arlo has with puppets but I so wish I could do that!
It's funny you say that. I literally thought while watching this, "I wonder if they work on Sesame Street for their day job?" The puppeteering looks that professional!
"Piracy" isn't stealing in the first place. If you illegally copy software, the original owner still has their original copy = not stolen. If you take Bob's car, he no longer has that car = you've deprived Bob of that car and any usage of selfsame car = stolen. "Piracy" and "theft" are propaganda/brainwashing from the software industry (started by Gates in the 70s with that "don't copy that floppy" campaign), because nobody gave a rat's ass when they told the truth: "copyright infringement".
@@hauntorthegiraffebiscuitit’s overused. If you’re gonna pirate, pirate. Don’t pretend to moralise. These are video games, not water. Nobody needs to sit around and play video games all day. They just want to. Big difference. So just steal that shit without acting like it’s somehow virtuous.
Fromsoftware's ship: sailing over the waves through the power of slow, steady, well done work, pioneering and exploring new lands with extreme success and bravery Pokémon Company: A tiny boat full of holes with a rope tied to Nintendo's mother ship. Capcom's: full of fans rowing with the power of friendship
I’m convinced GameFreak gave up when they realized that they’re just Nintendo’s Pokémon broodmare after each and every single one of their non-Poké-projects were total DUDS I’d refuse to finish a complete game too if I knew people would still buy it and actively defend it as if it were their own life *cough* Scarlet & Violet *cough*
@yeez13 My friend keeps defending Scarlet and Violet because he didn't encounter any bugs. Knowing him, he also probably didn't put more than a few hours into it tbh.
As someone who played the original beta and then the new ones I can say that my interest in S&B sank so fast there were no survivors. It was like my interest was HMS HOOD and Ubisoft delivered a direct hit to my magazine.
Finally watched this in light of yesterday's news. The stock price has dropped even further to the point where even the passengers have begun to notice that the ship is taking on water and have begun an uproar. Star Wars looks to underperform and I dont think Assassin's Creed Shadows is gonna make Valhalla numbers. Wow, this really is a sinking ship.
I'm 43 and nearly my whole life I believed that Spinal Tap was a real band until last year when my friend told me they are a parody band. I didn't believe it until I checked Wikipedia.
Vaas: Did I ever tell you what the definition of insanity is? Insanity is doing the exact... same fucking thing... over and over again expecting... shit to change...
@@WobblesandBeanyou know you've lost the plot when you have people like myself. Who are left leaning. Telling you that shit is too PC. RUclips and Facebook are run by pansy ass AI algorithms.
I hate this quote so much. Worst game quote ever fr. It's repeated so often that people assume it's true, rather than learn what the actual definition of insanity is (and it's very different). I'm not saying you necessarily thought it was true, it's kind of beside the point, which is that as far as quotes in games go, I can't think of one I feel more distaste for because of how widespread it got and the fact it's a straight up lie masquerading as a fact. Only Bethesda...
@@jasonashley9853it goes beyond PC, it's just nonsensical, poorly designed rule sets being enforced by teams of the most clueless AI that doesn't get like 90% of context and just flat shadow bans you cause you had too many secret naughty phrases. They do an abhorrent job and the only reason it's prevalent everywhere is that literally zero social media companies give even the slightest shit about their products or user experiences any more. We're just another expendable commodity to them, now.
The saddest part about beyond good and evil 2 taking the vaporware crown duke nukem forever is that at least duke nukem had the excuses of going through thr hands of multiple different developers.
You're pretty spot on. I think the bigger picture you are missing here is this: Ubisoft is not really a games company. It is a games-focused investment portfolio. This is generally true of all businesses at the macro-level. Beyond a certain point, owners and investors are only interested in a company as an investment. They have no understanding or regard for what the company makes or how they do it. What they want is to sell their stock for more than they paid for it.
Case in point, Iger stopped caring about Disney after 2019 or so (if he ever did care), and now sees the company as nothing more than an investment to pay off.
I bailed on Ubisoft years ago. Truth be known, it is very challenging to find a AAA game you really want to play, enjoy playing - that does not get yeeted. In the side bar videos to this one, there's a video asking, "Is 2024 the Year the Game Industry Collapses?". You know, it just might be for these AAA producers.
Too many rtards buying this stuff for that to happen. I haven't bought a ubisoft game since Creed 2.Haven't purchased a cod game since ghosts. Borderlands 3 was the nail in the coffin for 2k, and I won't be buying their games either. You may ask me what game is there to play then? My answer almost fcking nothing it's all old stuff. Even Kingdom hearts 3 was a huge letdown for me. Squareenix was supposed to not go down that path, but they did. Everything in our lives is MONEY MONEY MONEY it's annoying asf
I wish games went back to the old PS2/GC/XBOX era mindset, just make a good game under a reasonable budget and ship it out, they don't need to be AAAA games or live services, just good games that people want to buy
This. I don’t mind most recent games being cinematic and cutscene heavy (well almost) but just give me some style and gameplay variety. No one wants 20 different walking simulators with the same boring objectives. God, I could boot up San Andreas on my ps2 and instantly fuck around and do anything I want. Doesn’t bog me down with anything. Don’t get me wrong, some old games were cutscene heavy as well, but the creativity was off the charts. Nowadays games try to be like films and it’s getting stale.
@@frankiecedeno3724I think your getting the Government mistaken with Ubisoft there fantastically happy that it went over budget that money went back in to there economy and all those people where able to have a Job for nearly a decade for a country that’s a win you think they gave a damn about that shitty game selling well?
@@YOUNGPADAWON idk if it was actually made in Singapore or if Singapore is like an investor. If it was made in Singapore then yeah they would be happy it went over budget as it goes into their economy but if they are acting like an investor (which was my assumption) then it’s horrible that the game took so long, went over budget, and bombed because that’s just a straight up loss.
Ubisoft rn is that scene in PoTC where literally everyone gangs up on HMS Endeavor and the only thing Cutler Beckett can say in response is *_"It's just.... good business......"_*
The great thing is gaming culture doesn’t need the gaming industry. Because entry to the market is lower than ever. Even if the infrastructure of the old guard completely evaporates, games can and will still be made
I love Mario and Rabbids Kingdom Battle, and Sparks of Hope is a great followup. I hope Nintendo salvages that one development studio after Ubisoft is sold for parts.
Am I truly watching a blue muppet/sesame street looking puppet making an honest review about the state of Ubi, which can be applied to gaming in general as just a few of MANY issues? Finally a side of the internet where I am safe.
I wish there were more companies like From Software in the world. Just make a good game, sell the thing, maybe develop an expansion or two afterwards if it makes sense for the game, and then repeat the cycle.
Which is pretty depressing because even FromSoft has really bad working conditions from what I last heard. Severely underpaid, insane amounts of overtime and crunch.
Sadly Bamco still presents a problem given how much they’re overpricing the collectors edition for JUST THE DLC.. not even the full game like ACTIVISION priced The Sekiro collectors edition for the same amount and that was a FULL GAME with much more physical merch.
@@lometraid6798well we shall see. FromSoft dlc are very good and even better than the base game at times. And since this is From's biggest expansion to date most are willing to pay 40 dollars for the expansion. I unsure of the collector's edition though but the statue does look cool and something hardcore fans want.
Fromsoft is the Ubisoft of Asia. They've released the same king's field for decades with a fresh coat of paint, their latest iteration being elden ring. They've never made anything original or interesting, they only copy other studios, like they did with elden ring copying breath of the wild; dark souls exists because they cloned ninja gaiden very poorly. It's one of the most mediocre companies that exist, alongside ubisoft. The company you wish there were more in the world is Koei Tecmo. Team Ninja's games are all different and unique, and Koei Tecmo gives them all the support they need for their games. Recently we got Wolong after Nioh 1 and 2, and now they're doing a fullblown edo period game, completely dedicated to historical accuracy.
Came back to this after the news Ubisoft shut down their Montpellier studio. The one that made Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown as well as Rayman Origins & Legends. This ship just keeps sinking.
I mean, you can pretty much name any multi-billion dollar tech company and this would be mostly true. Companies that big aren’t interested in selling a product for people to buy, they’re only interested in creating a service for paid subscribers to use for a consistent income.
But Arlo would disagree and say that Disney is nothing like Ubisoft when he unfortunately doesn’t know that they’re just the same because Arlo lives under a soundproof Boulder thinking that it’s his luxurious castle and that he is the all knowing king.
@@otakumarcus lmao you just sound like an underage dork, something about the diction gives me the impression of a passionate but not very bright preteen
Does anyone remember the Pirate Ship Wars gamemode in Garry's Mod? There was this map where one ship spawns at the top of a waterfall, and I think you can tell what sort of chaos ensues from such a setup. Imagine nuking a pirate ship with another pirate ship.
Ubisoft lost me definitively when they stopped Might & Magic X authentication servers, which made the game unplayable. A decent company would have sent a last patch to disable their DRM in the game, but Ubisoft didn't. They eventually fixed the issue, but it was too late.
They're like a dumpster fire but instead of doing anything to quench it they just keep adding garbage and be like 'look, it keeps the heating bill down'
First Quadruple A Game??? that is quite a statement It really is disgusting how bad Ubisoft turned out, I hope the best for the employees in horrible working conditions
I’m not even interested in Beyond Good and Evil, but I swear, if Ubisoft even suggests adding live-service elements into their record-holding sequel, everyone will seek to cast a spell that DISMANTLES the entire ship.
RUclipsrs (who don't just upload music) with only auto generated or no subtitles is a consideration to not watch. as Tom Scott said 'it's just [i can't remember how much for subtitles], or just a little bit of your time.' I don't need subtitles, but it helps so much with faster paced videos and keeping my brain awake!
Props to Arlo for sticking with the nautical pirate terms for the whole review. When you manage to successfully add 'sextant' in a relevant way, that's dedication.
Fun fact: Quadruple A is a term in baseball used to describe someone who was really great at the college level, but crashed and burned hard when they got into the pros.
I remember coming across this fact online when reading a review for a bad game that called it a quadruple-A experience.
Lol
Ironic lol
Nice.
unbelievable the amount of irony that company drips out trying to peddle it as gold
Talk about "self fulfilled prophecy".
It's called "Skull & Bones" because the game is barely a skeleton of what Black Flag was.
"But it will get better" I am sick of the asshats who defend these companies. I am a old school assassin creed player. They ruined my games.
They thought when we said wanted a pirate game without the Assassin's Creed stuff, we meant "take out every aspect of gameplay that was ever in any Assassin's Creed game other than Black Flag", not "take out all the meta sci-fi present day/ancient aliens stuff".
More like “Skin & Bones”
Well done for copying someone elses comment
@@MagicSpartan1992skin & bones implies there is more than just bones
Being french, I think the end of Ubisoft is great news.
While we do have smaller cool companies making nice games, Ubisoft is sucking a lot of local talents, and waste their potential.
If/when Ubisoft falls appart, a ton of devs will join/build new companies and produce nice stuff.
I want ubisoft to last JUST long enough that legislation can be passed banning the killing of games
No they won't. They'll get bought up by other big studios or trend chasers.
@@EnclavegovtofficialUSAIf only. That might be good for us gamers, but the giant companies could easily make the case that such a law interferes with ‘sensible business operations’.
@@lalehiandeity1649 theyre french. Not American. France doesn't give a fuck
@@EnclavegovtofficialUSA There's already some kind of EU legislation around for that. That's the reason why emulating a game, going around copyright protection and copy the game for your own safekeeping is legal, not even Nintendo managed to stop that, and they tried hard. But since the fall of hard copy sales, that legislation became useless.
“It’s hard to sink a ship this big”
Pretty sure that’s what they said about the Titanic and the Bismarck
Hindenburg! It's an air ship 🌈
Ubisoft thinks they're taking the Bismarck on the Titanic's voyage when they're actually taking the Titanic on the Bismarck's voyage.
Does that about some it up?
In fairness, it was genuinely hard to sink the Bismarck
But "hard" is not "impossible"
And the Costa Concordia
the problem with ubi, is that it's french. meaning there's french government money in it.
and that means that it'll get bought up the moment that happens.
You could say that Ubisoft's unyielding dedication to live service games and microtransactions has become something of a "sunken" cost fallacy
Case in point: The game Skull and Bones, that's already dead on arrival AND dead in the water, too.
@@JJ18355 the cost has sunk so low at this point that in order for the theoretical ship to reach said depths it'd have to be crushed and reduced to sawdust from the overwhelming pressure of the water
@@sackfu7952because boats
@@JJ18355That’s the joke
NFTs
Ubisoft talking about using AI to write NPC dialogue shows how much they value both artists and players. They see you as nothing more than a mindless content consumer, one so uninterested in quality that you can be sold randomized gibberish pumped out endlessly by a machine.
You hit the nail in the head there.
and the worst part...there not completely wrong if sales has anything to say about it in the past
NPCs reacting to what you say dynamically could be very cool, I think you're being a tad too cynical about the idea. The implementation, however... I have 0 faith in ubisoft.
"artists" yea these people shouldnt be valued if you see the crap they produced in the last years. if they use ai instead paying sweet baby inc thats a good thing
@@atomanni-k5m If you look into how these things actually come about it has little to nothing to do with the actual devs.
Arlo talking down on AAA gaming is becoming one of my favorite genres
"AAAA" game you meant 😅
He literally just had a video about how we need to save the gaming industry jobs and then the next vid is dunking on a gaming company's latest release. Ubisoft going to see this vid and fire 20% of their staff 😖
More RUclipsrs should start calling these companies out for their practices regardless of whether or not they'll actually have an impact.
Sure, but he's also Nintendo's biggest diehard shill.
Not to say he's never scrutinized Nintendo before, definitely not. It's just ironic that he's always willing the give the most anti-consumer company a pass.. but also dunks on other companies like this. Ubisoft certainly deserves it but where is Arlo when Nintendo is coming after preservation and emulation? I feel like THAT is something that deserves his attention more tha.. Ubisoft's frequent blunders.
Dude is a Nintendo RUclipsr talking about Ubisoft and he is HARSH with his takes, (again, ubisoft deserves it) but where tf is that energy with Nintendo???
@@pilotsayshello1758 I recall him giving similar energy when it comes to Pokemon and I'd even say Zelda as well.
AAA game industry today: "Pay us $70 to play our game. Now pay us $10 more to not have to play it."
"And then buy this cosmetics pack for 15 dollars. Or every individual item for 5, there's 6 items per set... and 10 cosmetic sets to choose from!"
Pay $10 for the intended play through or don’t pay, and grind 50 extra hours to get to the point where you can have a normal play through.
Pay $15 for battle pass cosmetics but also not have it unlocked immediately... so you gotta grind within a few weeks to unlock cosmetics. If you don't have time to beat the battle pass.... you're SOL
Ubisoft+
Every time they charge extra $10 it makes me wanna get any game less and less. I would rather support indi from now on. I don't think there has been any mainstream game i picked in the last few years, they all just reek so bad and no amount of price tag they choose for them will change their quality, or rather the lack of.
The crew may be bailing water, but the captain is helping by drilling another hole to let the water out.
nah the crew just became unplayable lmao (forgotten ubisoft racing game)
@@oinkitysploink2213 You know that meme of that kid holding a sandwich and looking like, "HUR HUR HUR HUR HUR HUR HUR!"? That.
Beellow the waterline naturally.
When Ubisoft sinks you can be sure that the people keeping it afloat right now are going to be drowning on the lower decks while the ones who set the bad course will be taking the safety boat that just so happens to be loaded with the remaining treasure.
Sadly it is always people in the bottom felt the bad first and people at the top collect the reward first.
What a great society we have. What, it's always been this way? Wild
@@armorhide406 yep. functional societies oldest foe, nepotism.
And capitalism too
@@thechosenone2123 if you think its an issue unique to capitalism..
You tell them Cookie Monster
HMMM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM 🍪 🍪
Arlo reminds me more of Grover than Cookie Monster but without a big nose because they're both slim.
@@TrevortheTrainFan This is Cookie's son, he does not share the same cookie addiction, so he isn't as big
this is video game monster the son of the King.@@robertallen5091
@@robertallen5091 I thought it was his nephew.
The funniest thing is, a mere 8 days before the release of Skull and Bones, a Live Service game, made by a then nearly unknown company, Helldivers 2, was released, and that one exploded simply by... being a good game.
And then also look at Helldivers 2, a game that lost the majority of it's players simply because of bad management decisions. HD2 is the perfect example of "a good game that doesn't try to milk it's players and destroy immersion will do well" and also the "lets milk the customers and break it for a lot of people" and everything just because Sony needs to get people into their broken infrastructure so they can say "look, psn gains1!!1!!!!1"
@@maskharat As an active player of Helldivers 2, the PSN nonsense certainly didn't help, but if you look at how the player numbers are shaping up, you can see that a slow but steady decline was consistent before and after the boycott. Reality is Arrowhead is just way over their heads. They are a reasonably small studio who expected to manage a game with an active player base of a few thousand at any given time. And they are using an engine that is... not the greatest, it's a licensed engine that got discontinued years ago, so now they have to internally have to fix its issues. And with a mainstream game like this, people expect regular content updates, not a notice that "hey, yeah, friendlists in game still don't work, we'll probably fix it after our summer break, so late August". They simply don't have enough people to fix stuff and release new stuff regularly, so people have their fill, figure that they saw everything the game has to offer, so they stop playing.
It's inevitable for a game to lose most of its playerbase a while after release once the hype dies down and players have seen most of the content available. Looking at the steam charts during the PSN thing, the trend was unaffected. Unsurprisingly people didn't care shortly after they threw in the towel and backtracked on it.
Probably a bigger problem than their management decisions was the unsustainable update schedule which led to rushing things out the door in a bugged state, and then balancing around that. Fortunately things seemed to have improved there, though personally it still has a ways to go before being as fun as it was in the first couple of months.
Only to die 6 months later due to incompetent devs
Helldivers is cooked. One buff brought back 80K players imagine if the devs added illumates or even… new missions and content ez 100K players if a buff brought back 20K to 80K
We all knew skull and bones was going to be a disaster. All it took was the knowledge that they were being my forced to finish it by the Singapore government
That thing is still releasing? I forgot it existed.
This was never even confirmed. Just a rumor.
@@Openreality It came out a month ago.
impossible! it's a AAAA game!
@@Bababaaaa
I still forgot it existed lols. Goes to show how little i care anymore i wasn't holding out that it would be good because greedy soft.
"I used to genuinely think they were a cool company, I didn't really know anything about them." Cut. Print. Beautiful.
Why? Because it's a complete sentence?
@@INFILTR8US Read it again and consider the implication
The ship is sinking. It's keeping itself above water, but sooner or later, its stamina bar will run out.
And yes, apparently, ships have stamina bars. According to ubisoft.
Their little sea legs get tired from running around all the time
….as someone who was ONLY interested in skull and bones because I specifically love naval combat….what the hell…
@@Blackdragon271if you are on PC try holdfast, it might be dead now but was a pretty funny indie game
@@Blackdragon271they got the stamina bar from Zelda skyward sword in that one level with the ancient sea
Some people who love this game cope saying ships having stamina is realistic
To add to the analogy. Ubisoft is not only run by a captain who is sinking his ship for treasure while hurting his crew. The treasure he finds at the end is "The friends we made along the way." While all the crew lays beaten and dead with the captian unharmed and confused and underwhelmed at their prize.
Worse yet, he's trapped in a room where the mechanism holding the door shut requires blood, which if he had even half a crew available, they would be able to spare enough blood apiece to satisfy the debt without passing out, but because he has sacrificed them to every trap on the way to the treasure, he will have to pay in full if he wants to leave.
-Now for my personal head cannon- The crew has a mutany but decided to leave the captain to pilot his own ship... eventually the French sailors are picked up by a Japanese Yacht called the Miyazaki and all get employed having successful fulfilling careers in game development designing poison swamps😂😂
@@jordanhunter3375 I think we're really stretching the sinking ship analogy at this point, that's basically 70% of an action-adventure novel you just wrote.
It's called Quadruple-A because it makes you want to shout "AAAA!"
at the start of last year,2023,i made a "so,A=20 bucks." joke reflecting upon the base price of the first ever game claiming to be an AAAA-Forspoken.
It's also the sound the junior-level devs are making in the basement.
Damn I laught a lot reading this comment 😂
its actually called AAAA because its supposed to be called AAAA(ss), you could also say that they meant the battery size!
The only game I know of that can at least justify itself being a AAAA game is Star Citizen.
I really fuckin hate to see it because there are soooo many talented enviromental designers in ubisoft. Its seriously the one thing they always nail 100%
Also I had a lot of fun with breakpoint but, like the video mentioned, the game play loop is just so much of the same
Yeah, the game looks gorgeous!
Honestly, a pirate game is an idea that writes itself. Spiritual successor to black flag. Customizable player character captain, give em a backstory if you wanna be spicy. Customizable lead ship. Baldur's Gate 3 style of npc crew and crew management. Maybe give it a supernatural potc style undercurrent/subplot as a differentiating 'upgrade' to black flag. Boom done. If it needs multi-player, set that in a secret sea beyond the coral reef or something so you're not trying to make your main ocean both a plot AND a crowded wifi arena.
That sounds really fun actually
Lol literally so many gamers with great ideas. It's like no one at ubisoft plays games and isn't interested in directly asking us what we want.
Hey, wanna play Mount and Blade with a pirate skin?
Game is called Carribean: Blood and Gold
@@Jaguar21010Those that do have no power, and those with power probably haven't touched a game since Pong. Ubisoft is cancer.
So Sea of Thieves?
To be fair: the AAAA moniker is technically accurate. The phrase we associate with big budget titles and superior quality actually originated as a business term describing budget size, and if there's one thing that Skull and Bones has shown us, it's that if you want to build a build a money bonfire, it's gonna take a LOT of cash.
AAA has never been about quality. Always been about the budget. Personally I've stopped caring about AAA games 20 years ago because they didn't appeal to me at all.
@@bretonfabrice AAA was always the blockbusters of gaming - big budget, fancy tech, maybe not the deepest piece of art but nonetheless quite fun and a benchmark for what can be achieved with current tech (for the most part). Meanwhile current day AAA is only the outrageously overbloated budgets and barely anything else, not even the tech is all that impressive as it's mostly copy-pastes from whatever they released last year with barebones optimisation (S&B is the first game in years that I said looks actually ugly for what it's trying to be - quadruple A? sure, if it was released in 2016, maybe).
Granted, improvements in game graphics aren't anywhere near as massive and noticeable as they were, say, in the 90's but it's still telling when a pixel art indie title feels like it has better graphics than a billion dollar AAAA title.
They crippled Black Flag recently too. It's unplayable past a certain point without a mod to fix the once online part of the game and if you use that mod, your newly attached Ubisoft Connect account will get banned and without the ability log-in, the game simply won't launch making it online only... despite the online portion being no longer supported...
Basically, I'm not shocked and I just hope Steam/modders can undo their evil nonsense.
There was an online portion in Black Flag?
@@houndofculann1793Yeah, it worked like that mode in Metal Gear Solid V where you sent soldiers to fight in missions overseas.
thats not even the worst thing. The Crew, one of my favorite racing games, just became COMPLETELY UNPLAYABLE because it was a constant live service game. despite 90% of the game being playable offline. its funny because fans digging through the code found that there was a beta for a "play offline" mode that never saw the light of day. the modders cant get to it though because its encrypted. all ubisoft has to do to make the game work is essentially flip a switch, but they can't be bothered
@@houndofculann1793Yeah, like the other bro said... but you didn't used to be required to log in... so they added a required login after removing the only online portion which is just... What.
To make you buy new games more or less, wouldn't put it past them, definitely up their alley at this moment.
"I'm not a fan of evil people. It's just...not my thing" Bless you Arlo.
whn you realize every workplace has abuse
@@luluna5228that’s an over generalization if I’ve ever seen one
the virtue signaling is so obvious 🤪
(I'm not serious)
@@JGr2000it also ignores the fact that abuse is scalable
To be fair, some evil deserves fans, the Joker is a great villain, and Megamind was the true hero regardless.
Honestly kind of an insult to sinking ships
Yeah, at least Titanic was entertaining
Sinking ships actually have the decency of actually sinking 🤷♂️
The longest, slowest sinking in history (I quit ubi years ago)
@@pinguman13 Ubisoft the Ghost Ship
@@thekiss2083 Depending on whether you mean the movie or the real life event, this could be a 1/10 or a solid 11.
I interviewed with Ubisoft about 3 years ago to work on the Splinter Cell remake. They gave me a vibe that once the game would be finished that they were going to lay people off. During the interview, I said, don't hire me if you plan on laying me off in one years time. I couldn't get a straight answer from them, so I pretty much knew the deal. I have friends who still work there, and they've told me terrible things about Ubisoft. They try so hard with their whole DEI BS, but its just a front for their toxic culture.
Especially with the gatekeeping considering the assassin's creed team have wanted to do a game with just a female protagonist but had to add a male option to appease upper management
DEI is toxic in and of itself. It's discrimination based on race and sex.
@@mrheroprimesThat's some good irony right there.
@@mrheroprimes Sounds about right.
Given you have friends inside Ubisoft, I must ask why on Earth do people work at such a shitty workplace? Its not like gaming is an essential industry.
You either die a hero or live long enough to become a Triple-A Game company.
*Quadruple-A
Or are Valve and switch lanes
@@smokescreen100i mean, they kinda did die as a game producing company, its all platforms now no?
Ubisoft was always shit, don't pretend they were ever "heroes"
@@wiwysova
Always shit? Rayman’s okay I guess. I’d say back then they were more morally gray than anything else.
There’s a part of me that wants Ubisoft Milan (or whichever division does the Mario Rabbids game) just breaks off from Ubisoft taking the Rayman Rabbids IP with them to save them from Ubisoft’s clutches 😭
Yes, agreed. Protect Mario + Rabbids from Ubisoft!
Let them have rayman too
Ubisoft Milan + Ubisoft Paris
And have Ubisoft Montepellier do the same with Prince of Persia
@@peachymiku6432 Nintendo wouldn't let Ubisoft tarnish the Mario brand in that way, they heavily monitored that to make sure they released them in a good state
I once heard a joke that whenever a game is in development Hidetaka Miyazaki the CEO of FromSoftware spends the entire time adding poison swamps. The rest of the company’s job is to remove those swamps before the game comes out. Anything they don’t get to stays in the game. I feel like Ubisoft is like that. All the developers are trying their best to make good games without the suits noticing, if any of the suits do notice they ruin it however they can. Good Ubisoft games are good in spite of Ubisoft’s best efforts.
He also does the same for patches and the moonlight greatsword
There are stories of him turning employees' homes into poison swamps for removing either of those two (i joke)
"They said we couldn't do it, they said we shouldn't do it, they begged us NOT to do it, but we did it anyway!" - Ubisoft probably
Thank you Soldier TF2
22:20 'companies don't want a lot of money... companies want ALL THE MONEY' Arlo just encapsulated corporate greed at its core
I thank James Stephanie Sterling for enlightening us with that knowledge all those years ago. THEY WERE RIGHT!!!!
@@PsychoDiesel48We love Steph
Evil
@@PsychoDiesel48hwnbaw
The bizarre thing is that they're _not_ getting more money doing it like this. Almost every single one of Ubisoft's recent games have been major commercial "failures" according to their "expectations". The biggest exception I can think of was the first Mario+Rabbids game!
Aged like fine wine
Sly Cooper 3 walked so that Black Flag could run.
Meanwhile, Skull n Bones is trying to fly, but is looking to have as much lift as a lemming.
lmao i played through sly 3 last week. I was thinking about the ship section aswell 😂
No Sly 3 is a good game...BF has some good pirate sections on your ship. That's all.
You mean Dodo.
The Sly Cooper 3 ship section is INSANELY GREAT. I love the game, and the pirate section of that game felt so short since the ship combat was only a few missions, but damn was it making me wanting more
@@GoodlyPenguin Not to mention the bossfight on the ship! It absolutely slaps! Mechanically annoying but the whole scene was just a great experience
My friend worked at Ubisoft. When he said that he had a friend who loved Starlink in a meeting one of his bosses laughed and said "you found the entire audience who is enthusiastic about Starlink!"
haha i was there i laughed when he said that he’s right btw
ngl that’s a pretty funny line lol
*Man, a lot can happen in 6 months...*
The Ubisoft that made Rayman 2, Prince of Persia: Sands of Time, and Assassin's Creed 2 is long gone and I just have to accept that. Sigh.
Such a shame /gen
Same with me except for rainbow six vegas series
And Mario + Rabbids. And Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown.
At this point I hope they just do remakes and remasters those are most of the only good games they got. Just give me rayman 2 HD and I'll be so happy
@@AlphaladZXAsomewhere, a monkey’s paw curls
Pirate games more fun than skull and bones:
1. Sea of thieves
2. Actually pirating black flag on a PS3 emulator
3. Becoming a pirate irl
check out Sid Meier's Pirates! a classic
I mean, Black Flag has a PC port, you don't have to go to the trouble of getting a PS3 emulator.
@@TheMultiTasker3 I was thinking more both
Hee hoo pirate the pirate game and not really wanting to give uni any more money
4. Sly cooper 3
Shadow Gambit...
I'm new to the channel and I have to say, the conceit of a blue monster pretending to be a man operating a blue monster is just beautiful.
It's crazy how Kingdom Hearts III is like 10% pirate simulator, and that's the most fun part of the game, and Ubisoft makes an entire pirate simulator that's a flaming disaster. How do you get shown up by a fraction of another game that isn't even the same genre?!
KH3 has a million problems but that Pirates level is perfection on all fronts.
Totally! And Ubisoft has done it successfully in the past too haha
Assassin's Creed 4 is literally already a better pirate game than this, and that one's from Ubisoft! All they needed to do was swap out the assassination bits with more ship customization and some fleet control, yet somehow they managed to fail in every possible way...
I mean, Sly Cooper 3 'bout perfected simple pirate simulation, and that was more than ten years ago.
@@tomforge614 hell yeah glad to see someone else bring it up!
It's amazing, given the time it's taken to make Skull & Bones, that another company didn't look at the reveal, see the fan outcry, make the game people were asking for themselves, and release it BEFORE Skull & Bones.
Oh you mean Sea of Theives?
Sea of Thieves: "Am I a joke to you?"
@@mmmario8004 yes. At this point I can't see any reference to that game and not immediately think of Lazerpigs video.
@@jadedflamesi like sea of thieves but its still pretty mediocre sometimes and it was way worse when it came out
@-lord1754 Is every game since updates became a thing not better than when it came out?
I thought the people of these comments should know RUclipsr Ross Scott (Accursed Farms) the creator of some of the oldest Machinima on the platform has put together a campaign to make governments create laws against Live service games, using the termination of The Crew and Ubisoft as the major focal point but his scope includes all companies that do this. If you would like to get involved there are 3 videos on his channel that cover what you can do depending on what country you live in, the more people get involved the more likely it is to see action.
YESS!! I was honestly expecting to see more of this in the comments. thanks for spreading the message
The thing is it's not live service itself but rather extremely poor implementation of it being the problem. if you put in the resources and time it can work but they won't do that because they don't want to use the money they horde.
@@davidmccall4024 the thing i hate about it is making singleplayer games that dont need to be online rely on a central server so when the server goes down you cant play your game.
@@MrRattlebones640 that is an issue
Ubisoft has also destroyed Just Dance. They turned it into a live service, stripped out many functions, made so many features behind their Just Dance+ subscription, a service that has less than half the songs in their previous Unlimited service. They deleted customized playlists. They put the previously free kids mode behind a paywall. They turned a party game into a single player game by only allowing one player's scores to be retained. They removed the World Dancefloor multiplayer mode. They stopped porting over songs from Unlimited into JD+. They made new season maps available only to JD+ despite saying they will add free content all year long. Most people I know that play Just Dance are sticking with 2022+Unlimited, but Ubisoft will turn off Unlimited soon.
I know most gaming sites and channels blow Just Dance off, but it is probably Ubisoft's biggest cash cow and now they are chasing that game's loyal players away. The developers say most changes came from the execs. They said they know the current live service game is majorly lacking but they can't do anything about it. It seems like Ubisoft execs are determined to destroy all of their successful franchises.
Sounds like JD needs it's own version of the spiritual successor to Guitar Hero, Clone Hero.
I'd be surprised if there wasn't some form of fan effort to open source JD.
Absolutely love this trend of content of Arlo not pulling punches on exposing this screwed up industry. Keep it coming, good stuff.
He literally pulls his punches on nintendo
@@lckfan3696 So you weren't around for the "okayest direct ever" drama
You want more of this, go give The Jimquisition a watch. Stephanie's been on the AAA industry's ass like this since the days of horse armor and the dawn of DLC. 😂
@@SherlocksLeftNipple Oh fuck no, its 20% wrestling and watching a shadow of JIM FUCKING STERLING, SON!
I miss Total Biscuit :(
Skull and Bones' development is reflected in the game. They started going strong(literally just remake Black Flag for next gen), made some bad moves due to poor choices early on(the quest marker was in the wrong spot) then ran out of steam and had to slog for way too long to reach their destination(they ran out of stamina).
Then once it was all said and done, they realized that they had spent a ton of money for a pile of poop, just like we did buying the game.
maybe we should stop buying these games and check out the reviews first? vote with your wallet
Anyone remember Ubisoft's NFT attempt? They were only two companies to really jump in on that craze, along with Squeenix
I thought people will Gobble it up, just like they Gobble everything else, but I laughed so much when I read only few ppl bought it
Square is still very much invested in NFT's
but Ubisoft has pulled out
They still are doing NFT stuff… the new launch they did a month or so ago went well
Publicly that is, pretty sure the other 'AAA" companies checked but saw no easy way to implement it so they didn't announce it.
Can't tell me i.e. Blizzard didn't at least studied ways to implementing NFT's in shit like hearthstone or WOW. (ie 'nft' mounts). If they could have they would have but imo the NFT craze died before they could.
Skull & Bones was a good idea when the scope of the game was on par with For Honor. A small game specifically for fans of the naval combat. The problem is that they took this niche concept and decided it would be a AAAA super blockbuster that everyone in the world wanted to play.
Six months later: You were right. At this point it was Ubisoft who intentionally sunk their own ship.
*This is important:* I'm surprised you didn't talk about *The Crew.* Ubisoft is not simply stopping support, not simply delisting the game from stores, but Ubisoft is *intentionally breaking the game.* Meaning that *every single person who purchased this game will not be allowed to play it anymore because Ubisoft simply decided this to be the case.*
they own the ip, players own a license to their ip. I don't understand why people don't understand that a license is not ownership of the product. You agreed to their terms when you bought the game, they warned you you would not own the ip, and that they could do whatever they wanted with their ip regardless of your purchase.
@@n1lknarf And for the people that bought discs of The Crew, what do they get but a useless piece of e-waste? I know licensing is the reality of games ownership right now and the industry is more digital than ever, but it would take them a day or two to flip a switch that allows offline play for the rest of time. No amount of "you accepted the terms" will ail the waters of the pure dissent Ubisoft shows for game owners. You should have standards for this bullshit, as should everyone else.
That refuted *zero* things I said. I don't care if Ubisoft is taking people's games away because they "said so." What Ubisoft is doing here is undeniably scummy and deserves to be called out. Whether or not Ubisoft gets the picture other not, companies need to understand that this is *not okay.* @@n1lknarf
Found the bootlicker
@@n1lknarf I'm sure that's how Ubisoft likes to think of it.
This video was hilarious and insightful but let's not sleep on how impressive Arlo's puppeteering is. Between the AAAA moment and the cell phone bit at the end I thought it was as professional as the Muppets. Super impressive work. I don't know what training Arlo has with puppets but I so wish I could do that!
It's funny you say that. I literally thought while watching this, "I wonder if they work on Sesame Street for their day job?" The puppeteering looks that professional!
Even the Titanic didn't sink as fast as Skull & Bones.
The Titanic sank relatively slowly at around 2.5 hours . The Lusitania and Empress of Ireland sank in under 20 minutes.
@@randomlyentertaining8287 And yet it had more time to save things than that game.
Skull and Bones got blown up in the dry dock
Insert overused “if buying isn’t owning then piracy isn’t stealing”
Is it truly overused if it keeps being relevant and further being proven valid?
"Piracy" isn't stealing in the first place. If you illegally copy software, the original owner still has their original copy = not stolen. If you take Bob's car, he no longer has that car = you've deprived Bob of that car and any usage of selfsame car = stolen.
"Piracy" and "theft" are propaganda/brainwashing from the software industry (started by Gates in the 70s with that "don't copy that floppy" campaign), because nobody gave a rat's ass when they told the truth: "copyright infringement".
@@hauntorthegiraffebiscuitit’s overused.
If you’re gonna pirate, pirate. Don’t pretend to moralise. These are video games, not water.
Nobody needs to sit around and play video games all day. They just want to. Big difference.
So just steal that shit without acting like it’s somehow virtuous.
@@JupaIt's not stealing it's piracy they are different things
Buying is owning but piracy still isn’t stealing.
I'm reminded of an old Doctor Who quote.
"Everything has its time and everything dies" (2005).
Everything dies, except Rayman, Rayman is eternal.
GIVE US RAYMAN 4!!
Unfortunately that includes Doctor Who
@@Fraxzor doctor who died the Capaldi regenerated
Doctor Who is famously the only thing that doesn’t die, lol. Just churns out insane amounts of great content every year.
Memento mori
Even farther down into the ocean
Just gotta say, your puppetry is just so good in this video. The frustration motions feel so damn genuine.
That's because he is literally just a blue guy
Arlo is just some guy, you know?
I have never seen Arlo go in so ruthlessly on a company before and I am absolutely here for it
"Some people are having fun..."
There's no accounting for taste...
Fromsoftware's ship: sailing over the waves through the power of slow, steady, well done work, pioneering and exploring new lands with extreme success and bravery
Pokémon Company: A tiny boat full of holes with a rope tied to Nintendo's mother ship.
Capcom's: full of fans rowing with the power of friendship
I’m convinced GameFreak gave up when they realized that they’re just Nintendo’s Pokémon broodmare after each and every single one of their non-Poké-projects were total DUDS
I’d refuse to finish a complete game too if I knew people would still buy it and actively defend it as if it were their own life *cough* Scarlet & Violet *cough*
capcom made 1 hole with their weird stance on pc gaming recently but otherwise yeah mostly fine surprisingly.
And then there’s Toby Fox with his crew of 10 and First Mate Temmy.
@@yeez13 I completely lost any and all hope I ever had after Little Town Hero became a thing
@yeez13 My friend keeps defending Scarlet and Violet because he didn't encounter any bugs. Knowing him, he also probably didn't put more than a few hours into it tbh.
As someone who played the original beta and then the new ones I can say that my interest in S&B sank so fast there were no survivors.
It was like my interest was HMS HOOD and Ubisoft delivered a direct hit to my magazine.
I don't think enough people appreciate the greatness of that reference.
Drachinifel where are you??
Finally watched this in light of yesterday's news. The stock price has dropped even further to the point where even the passengers have begun to notice that the ship is taking on water and have begun an uproar. Star Wars looks to underperform and I dont think Assassin's Creed Shadows is gonna make Valhalla numbers.
Wow, this really is a sinking ship.
Every time I've heard Ubisoft refer to the idea of a "AAAA Game," all I can think is Spinal Tap. "....This one goes to 11."
Same lol
I'm 43 and nearly my whole life I believed that Spinal Tap was a real band until last year when my friend told me they are a parody band. I didn't believe it until I checked Wikipedia.
@@TheItalianTrash Oh. Oh, you sweet summer child. It's ok though, "Tonight I'm Gonna Rock You Tonight" still slaps.
Vaas: Did I ever tell you what the definition of insanity is? Insanity is doing the exact... same fucking thing... over and over again expecting... shit to change...
Man, I miss the days when I could use that language without youtube deleting my comment.
@@WobblesandBeanyou know you've lost the plot when you have people like myself. Who are left leaning. Telling you that shit is too PC. RUclips and Facebook are run by pansy ass AI algorithms.
I hate this quote so much. Worst game quote ever fr.
It's repeated so often that people assume it's true, rather than learn what the actual definition of insanity is (and it's very different).
I'm not saying you necessarily thought it was true, it's kind of beside the point, which is that as far as quotes in games go, I can't think of one I feel more distaste for because of how widespread it got and the fact it's a straight up lie masquerading as a fact. Only Bethesda...
@@jasonashley9853it goes beyond PC, it's just nonsensical, poorly designed rule sets being enforced by teams of the most clueless AI that doesn't get like 90% of context and just flat shadow bans you cause you had too many secret naughty phrases. They do an abhorrent job and the only reason it's prevalent everywhere is that literally zero social media companies give even the slightest shit about their products or user experiences any more. We're just another expendable commodity to them, now.
@@Loctorak wut
I'm a 35 year old man that just received a lecture on evil business practices from a muppet and I'm here for it.
The saddest part about beyond good and evil 2 taking the vaporware crown duke nukem forever is that at least duke nukem had the excuses of going through thr hands of multiple different developers.
And the game was redone from the ground up multiple times as technology and graphics changed over the years.
ubisoft makes the highest budget shovelware ive ever seen
You're pretty spot on.
I think the bigger picture you are missing here is this: Ubisoft is not really a games company. It is a games-focused investment portfolio.
This is generally true of all businesses at the macro-level. Beyond a certain point, owners and investors are only interested in a company as an investment. They have no understanding or regard for what the company makes or how they do it. What they want is to sell their stock for more than they paid for it.
Case in point, Iger stopped caring about Disney after 2019 or so (if he ever did care), and now sees the company as nothing more than an investment to pay off.
I bailed on Ubisoft years ago. Truth be known, it is very challenging to find a AAA game you really want to play, enjoy playing - that does not get yeeted. In the side bar videos to this one, there's a video asking, "Is 2024 the Year the Game Industry Collapses?". You know, it just might be for these AAA producers.
Good riddance. There's enough great content from smaller publishers to support a gaming hobby of any size, even if you play thousands of hours a year.
Too many rtards buying this stuff for that to happen. I haven't bought a ubisoft game since Creed 2.Haven't purchased a cod game since ghosts. Borderlands 3 was the nail in the coffin for 2k, and I won't be buying their games either. You may ask me what game is there to play then? My answer almost fcking nothing it's all old stuff. Even Kingdom hearts 3 was a huge letdown for me. Squareenix was supposed to not go down that path, but they did. Everything in our lives is MONEY MONEY MONEY it's annoying asf
And the funny thing is, Rare produced Sea of Thieves. Practically, announced at the same time, and released far sooner.
Gotta admit, the puppet cooked hard on this one
I wish games went back to the old PS2/GC/XBOX era mindset, just make a good game under a reasonable budget and ship it out, they don't need to be AAAA games or live services, just good games that people want to buy
This. I don’t mind most recent games being cinematic and cutscene heavy (well almost) but just give me some style and gameplay variety. No one wants 20 different walking simulators with the same boring objectives. God, I could boot up San Andreas on my ps2 and instantly fuck around and do anything I want. Doesn’t bog me down with anything. Don’t get me wrong, some old games were cutscene heavy as well, but the creativity was off the charts. Nowadays games try to be like films and it’s getting stale.
Fully agree on this 💯
Hi-Fi Rush was a game that felt like it worked under that mindset and it feels like a game you'd find in the PS2 library.
@@Viper-ft3tk Hif Fi rush is great exception
@@skibidi.G no
The Singaporean government deserves a round of applause for managing to force Ubisoft to reap what they sew
*sow
@@ainternet239nah, he means they have to wear the shitty clothes they made 😂
I’m sure the Singaporean government is very happy their investment that undoubtedly went absurdly over budget was also a massive flop
@@frankiecedeno3724I think your getting the Government mistaken with Ubisoft there fantastically happy that it went over budget that money went back in to there economy and all those people where able to have a Job for nearly a decade for a country that’s a win you think they gave a damn about that shitty game selling well?
@@YOUNGPADAWON idk if it was actually made in Singapore or if Singapore is like an investor. If it was made in Singapore then yeah they would be happy it went over budget as it goes into their economy but if they are acting like an investor (which was my assumption) then it’s horrible that the game took so long, went over budget, and bombed because that’s just a straight up loss.
Ubisoft is pretty much sunk at this point. they are hated (for good reason)
What will happen first?
(a) Arlo gets curtains for the weird window.
(b) The Switch 2 is released.
A
C. He uses the Switch 2 AS a curtain
Ubisoft rn is that scene in PoTC where literally everyone gangs up on HMS Endeavor and the only thing Cutler Beckett can say in response is *_"It's just.... good business......"_*
Btw... It's still sinking 😂
The great thing is gaming culture doesn’t need the gaming industry. Because entry to the market is lower than ever. Even if the infrastructure of the old guard completely evaporates, games can and will still be made
My prediction for the future of Ubisoft
CEO: "It's just...good business..."
VP: "Abandon ship! All hands, abandon ship!"
Ubisoft really turned into Abstergo Interactive Entertainment
I love Mario and Rabbids Kingdom Battle, and Sparks of Hope is a great followup. I hope Nintendo salvages that one development studio after Ubisoft is sold for parts.
ubisoft isnt going to be sold at all, even more for parts.
@Shyontheinternet99 Sold at auction, usually.
Sparks of Hope is good game when u pirate it
The company sure is a Farcry from what it once was.
Bud dum tiss
They do everything to Just Dance around the obvious elephant in the room.
Am I truly watching a blue muppet/sesame street looking puppet making an honest review about the state of Ubi, which can be applied to gaming in general as just a few of MANY issues?
Finally a side of the internet where I am safe.
I wish Totalbiscuit was still alive to rant about this.
o7
Ubisoft shot themselves in the Foot after they blatantly said Gamers should feel comfortable not owning the Games they paid for, so...
"We are no longer selling products."
... "Why isn't anyone buying our products?"
A Great man once said, "If it's not fun, why bother"
I wish there were more companies like From Software in the world. Just make a good game, sell the thing, maybe develop an expansion or two afterwards if it makes sense for the game, and then repeat the cycle.
Which is pretty depressing because even FromSoft has really bad working conditions from what I last heard. Severely underpaid, insane amounts of overtime and crunch.
Sadly Bamco still presents a problem given how much they’re overpricing the collectors edition for JUST THE DLC.. not even the full game like ACTIVISION priced The Sekiro collectors edition for the same amount and that was a FULL GAME with much more physical merch.
Maybe one day companies will realize that it really is just as simple as just releasing something good and letting that be a standalone thing
@@lometraid6798well we shall see. FromSoft dlc are very good and even better than the base game at times. And since this is From's biggest expansion to date most are willing to pay 40 dollars for the expansion. I unsure of the collector's edition though but the statue does look cool and something hardcore fans want.
Fromsoft is the Ubisoft of Asia. They've released the same king's field for decades with a fresh coat of paint, their latest iteration being elden ring. They've never made anything original or interesting, they only copy other studios, like they did with elden ring copying breath of the wild; dark souls exists because they cloned ninja gaiden very poorly. It's one of the most mediocre companies that exist, alongside ubisoft.
The company you wish there were more in the world is Koei Tecmo. Team Ninja's games are all different and unique, and Koei Tecmo gives them all the support they need for their games. Recently we got Wolong after Nioh 1 and 2, and now they're doing a fullblown edo period game, completely dedicated to historical accuracy.
Arlo: I used to like Ubisoft.
**paper mario music fades in**
The Arlo special
2:52 "my opinion of ubisoft could not be lower than what it is now" and they took it as a challenge
9:23 ok but we can all agree that transition was really smooth
Smooth sailing, you could say.
There’s too many great small/indie developers like Edmund McMillan, concerned ape, and supergiant to worry about Ubisoft!
So many wonderful games and so little time to play them all!😊
Edmund is not that great. You might be saddened if you look into who he really is.
@@Critirus I know nothing of his personal life other than the inspiration for his games.
Came back to this after the news Ubisoft shut down their Montpellier studio. The one that made Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown as well as Rayman Origins & Legends. This ship just keeps sinking.
This whole video basically describes modern Disney as well
I mean, you can pretty much name any multi-billion dollar tech company and this would be mostly true. Companies that big aren’t interested in selling a product for people to buy, they’re only interested in creating a service for paid subscribers to use for a consistent income.
@@jimmynagy2662AKA Capitalism sucks on a fundamental level.
Yep. It's called Corruption.
But Arlo would disagree and say that Disney is nothing like Ubisoft when he unfortunately doesn’t know that they’re just the same because Arlo lives under a soundproof Boulder thinking that it’s his luxurious castle and that he is the all knowing king.
@@otakumarcus
lmao you just sound like an underage dork, something about the diction gives me the impression of a passionate but not very bright preteen
Wow... I've never seen Arlo come down so hard on a company! But then again, they've earned it!
So wait... you're telling me UBISOFT... of all devs do not know what the definition of insanity is?
Oh the irony.
Does anyone remember the Pirate Ship Wars gamemode in Garry's Mod? There was this map where one ship spawns at the top of a waterfall, and I think you can tell what sort of chaos ensues from such a setup.
Imagine nuking a pirate ship with another pirate ship.
Ubisoft lost me definitively when they stopped Might & Magic X authentication servers, which made the game unplayable.
A decent company would have sent a last patch to disable their DRM in the game, but Ubisoft didn't.
They eventually fixed the issue, but it was too late.
They're like a dumpster fire but instead of doing anything to quench it they just keep adding garbage and be like 'look, it keeps the heating bill down'
First Quadruple A Game??? that is quite a statement
It really is disgusting how bad Ubisoft turned out, I hope the best for the employees in horrible working conditions
You know what will save it? Trashing the fans! That'll do!*
*It won't.
I’m not even interested in Beyond Good and Evil, but I swear, if Ubisoft even suggests adding live-service elements into their record-holding sequel, everyone will seek to cast a spell that DISMANTLES the entire ship.
preach arlo
I'm so glad you talked about the employee abuses
So many people turn a blind eye to that
When I first heard of it, I was honestly crushed. Now that I hear about so often, I take notice.
Actual subtitles THANK YOU!!!
RUclipsrs (who don't just upload music) with only auto generated or no subtitles is a consideration to not watch. as Tom Scott said 'it's just [i can't remember how much for subtitles], or just a little bit of your time.' I don't need subtitles, but it helps so much with faster paced videos and keeping my brain awake!
wym, just read his lips
@@dank-mayo8373 a ba ba ba ba ba ba ba
@@dank-mayo8373 this is hilarious tysm
Ubi Games aren't even worth pirating anymore.
Props to Arlo for sticking with the nautical pirate terms for the whole review. When you manage to successfully add 'sextant' in a relevant way, that's dedication.