Ubisoft is Falling Apart

0:01 Hey, I'm back.

0:03 [laughter] [snorts] What?

0:05 I said I'd come back on Thursday.

0:07 Is it?

0:08 Yeah, it's Well, well, I mean, it's a Thursday.

0:11 Look, you should have seen the line for milk.

0:13 It was crazy.

0:15 Guys, I hope I'm not speaking out of line here,

0:18 but Ubisoft ain't looking so hot.

0:20 The company wants to slash around 18% of the staff at its Paris headquarters

0:26 as part of a sweeping major reset

0:28 aimed at stopping the company's ongoing collapse.

0:31 Thanks to France's extremely strong worker protection laws,

0:35 these layoffs depend on both the workers

0:37 union and French authorities agreeing to the plan.

0:41 But if they're tetatet goes well, roughly 200 jobs are on the line.

0:47 Ubisoft may have an argument for the necessity of layoffs.

0:50 The company just cancelled six games and closed

0:53 two studios as it struggles to stay competitive.

0:56 They really should have just stuck with the Red Steel franchise.

0:59 At least those games made sense.

1:00 Ubisoft workers in France have already voted to strike,

1:04 accusing leadership of mismanagement, constant strategic whiplash,

1:08 and burning through talent while executives don't really do much to help.

1:11 But worst of all, Insider Gaming's Tom Henderson said

1:14 on his podcast that the Watchdog franchise is effectively dead.

1:20 What?

1:21 NO, NOT MY DOGS.

1:24 HECK, Ubisoft has been canceling so many

1:26 games they forgot to tell actress Iman Ayaz,

1:29 who spent 3 years working on the Prince of Persia: Sands of Time remake,

1:33 that it was cancelled despite having filmed marketing

1:36 material for the game just two months ago.

1:38 She found out from reading it online.

1:40 This would imply that somehow news outlets are finding

1:42 these things out before the people Ubisoft actually employs.

1:46 Quick, we can use the dagger of time to go back and email our agent.

1:50 There's lots of other things we could useful things we could do, too.

1:53 But you may have heard news this week about Highguard,

1:55 the debut PvP raid shooter from Wildlife Entertainment,

2:00 a studio built by veteran developers from Apex Legends,

2:03 Titanfall, and Call of Duty.

2:05 That's quite a pedigree.

2:06 So why did it launch on Monday to mostly negative reviews?

2:10 The studio is blaming the negative reception on somewhat of a bungled release.

2:14 They had originally planned to shadow drop

2:16 the game like Respawn famously did with Apex Legends.

2:20 That went well, but the spirit of enthusiastic

2:24 Dorkhood aka Jeff Keley liked the game so

2:27 much he offered the developers the coveted one

2:30 more thing last spot at the Game Awards.

2:33 And who [music] could pass that up?

2:34 I mean, I would take that spot and I don't even have a game.

2:38 I'd just stand there and say, "Wow, this is awesome.

2:42 I love you, Jeff Keley." And he'd say it back.

2:45 Unfortunately for Wildlife,

2:47 the Game Awards trailer didn't explain the unorthodox gameplay very well

2:52 and left most viewers somewhere

2:54 on the spectrum between confused and underwhelmed.

2:57 And if that wasn't enough, the studio went effectively silent for the 43

3:01 days between the Game Awards and Monday's launch.

3:04 Studio co-founder Dusty Welch stated that they

3:07 didn't make any more announcements because

3:09 they were focused on development and they wanted the game to speak for itself.

3:13 And speak it did.

3:15 Highgard launched to a peak of 97,000

3:18 concurrent Steam players and only 37% positive reviews.

3:21 According to some though,

3:22 the community might be jumping the gun on dumping on the game because many

3:26 of these reviews come from people with less than an hour of play time.

3:30 And if you were to filter to people who played the game for more than 3 hours,

3:33 the reviews become 76% positive,

3:36 conclusively proving that people who like a game will play it for longer.

3:41 Now that's science.

3:42 Player complaints ranged from server instability to maps

3:46 being too big for the 3v3 format.

3:49 Things aren't over for Highg guard, though.

3:51 The devs say they're listening to feedback and working

3:53 on patches with a new patch for the game dropping today.

3:56 So, as they say in the world of Highguard,

3:59 onward shall your uh your team I don't know what they say in Highguard.

4:06 I'm sorry.

4:06 I don't think anyone does.

4:09 That's the problem.

4:10 Marathon, the next game from Destiny and Halo creator Bungie,

4:14 will launch in about a month on March 5th.

4:17 Bungie announced the new marathon in 2023

4:20 as a resurrection of the studios shooter trilogy from the9s.

4:24 In 2024, financial troubles led to the loss of about a quarter of their staff.

4:28 And the game's 2025 alpha was overall disappointing.

4:33 People weren't really feeling extraction shooters,

4:35 especially if it was going to be another one of these studio

4:38 renowned for storyrich campaigns is driven to live service multiplayer.

4:43 C Anthem, C [music] multiple Ubisoft games, etc.

4:47 Alpha players requested a delay and Bungie actually listened.

4:52 It gave them time to reach a resolution with the artist whose

4:56 work was plagiarized for the game and replace the game's creative director.

5:01 But also in that time,

5:02 another extraction shooter has breathed life into the genre, Ark Raiders.

5:08 You may have heard of it.

5:09 And instead of blocking marathon success,

5:11 there's a chance that Ark Raiders has wetted players appetite

5:15 for an extraction shooter that leans more heavily towards PvP than PvE combat.

5:20 But even if Marathon flops next month,

5:23 it was all worth it for these stunning character designs and trailers,

5:26 courtesy of art director Joseph Cross

5:29 and Emmy-winning animation wizard Alberto Miielgo,

5:32 who defined the whole look for the Spider-Verse movies

5:35 and a bunch of movies out of it, guys.

5:37 So, even if Marathon dies, it'll be aura farming to its last breath,

5:44 which is not the primary purpose of games,

5:46 it should be fun, like the games you can play on our sponsor, HTC's Viviverse.

5:51 You know, sometimes I feel a little bit like Bilbo Baggins.

5:54 I just want to yell at my nosy neighbors,

5:56 I'm going on an adventure, as I run off into the world.

5:59 But then I realized I can have an adventure in my own home

6:02 with HTC's Viverse where it's easy to jump into these interactive 3D worlds.

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6:34 And no nosy neighbors.

6:36 Check out HTC's Viverse in the link below and go on an adventure of your own.

6:43 Ah, sorry.

6:45 I forgot that reading gaming news is thirsty work.

6:49 I need a little stat boost to do the quick bits.

6:51 Best alternative milk, by the way, not a sponsor.

6:55 Valve was sued for656 million pounds

6:58 in the UK over allegedly unfair steam prices back

7:02 in 2024 and a tribunal just ruled that the class action can proceed to trial.

7:07 In the UK, it's called a collective action

7:10 because they have to have special words for everything.

7:12 The case that has these limey lawyers so

7:15 steamed up claims that Valve is forcing game

7:18 publishers to sign price parody obligations which prevents

7:21 titles from being sold cheaper on rival platforms.

7:24 According to the suit,

7:25 this lets Steam charge an excessive commission of up to 30%.

7:30 Which, it must be pointed out is and has been the standard

7:34 platform commission for a lot of things for a long time.

7:37 But that doesn't mean we can't change it.

7:39 That's how America was born.

7:41 and see how that turned out.

7:43 Maybe we should maybe we should leave it.

7:44 Xbox says it wants to be more consistent about launching its first party games

7:49 on the PS5 after a year of being kind of back and forth on the subject.

7:53 They said they'd put Halo on that console, but it's not there yet.

7:57 It's making me go wart like the like the al like the elites,

8:03 like the guy, you know.

8:04 Xbox Game Studios boss Craig Duncan admitted

8:07 the rollout has been uneven with some games launching

8:11 day one on PlayStation and others showing up

8:13 months later depending on when plans changed mid development.

8:17 The goal now is clarity, consistency, and reaching more players.

8:21 A prime example being the new Fable that reportedly will be available on PS5.

8:26 I think it's cool that Xbox's promise to fans is

8:29 the same one I make to my lady every six months.

8:32 We need you to show up more consistently,

8:34 not just big gestures when you realize you forgot my birthday.

8:39 I'm sorry.

8:39 EA has trademarked FC the grounds,

8:42 hinting that EA Sports FC27 might be getting an openw world mode.

8:47 Basically, FIFA is doing the whole WWE 2K the island thing,

8:53 except instead of proving you're the best there is,

8:55 the best there was, and the best there ever will be,

8:58 like Brett the Hitman Hart did successfully,

9:01 your notoriously unfaithful soccer player Kyle Walker,

9:04 and your mistress is threatening to tell

9:06 your wife unless you buy her a new Ferrari.

9:08 EA Sports, it's in the game,

9:10 and also the rest of the world, which includes the game.

9:14 Despite the Nintendo Switch eShop having somewhat

9:17 questionable guidelines on what counts as too LWD,

9:20 Nintendo has apparently decided that narratively justified superhero

9:24 nipples is where the line must be drawn.

9:27 [music] The new Switch and Switch 2 versions of character-driven superhero game

9:31 Dispatch are censored by default with no option to turn it off,

9:35 meaning all nudity and funnily enough, middle fingers,

9:39 too get slapped with giant black bars.

9:42 The game's developer, Ad Hoc, told Eurogamer that the core

9:45 narrative and gameplay experience remains identical,

9:48 explaining that they worked with Nintendo to meet platform criteria,

9:52 which is fascinating considering Conquer's Bad Fur Day

9:55 once had promotional condoms and matching urinal mats.

9:59 What happened, Nintendo?

10:00 I could go for for urinal mats.

10:03 Resident Evil Reququum releases in just under a month.

10:07 And apparently there's a reason why this time around Leon Kennedy is aing snack.

10:12 According to director Koshi Nakanishi,

10:15 female Capcom staff were on a mission to make sure the older

10:19 and more weathered Leon Kennedy lived up to their fant expectations.

10:24 And in my opinion, they succeeded if they wanted to make him look

10:28 like the kind of guy who forgets to bring his wallet to dinner.

10:32 Oh, can you get this, babe?

10:33 I know it's your birthday, but I promise I promise I'll pay you back.

10:36 In an interview, the director stated that women

10:38 at the studio were pretty strict when reviewing his design,

10:42 pointing out and commenting on even the finest details,

10:46 like the wrinkles on his neck.

10:48 I didn't even know women cared about that.

10:50 But, you know, there's probably a whole

10:52 subculture of Tik Tok edits about neck wrinkles.

10:57 Nakanishi said it wasn't just about Kennedy's looks.

11:00 He actually got more opinions on Lyon's

11:02 personality with staff telling him things like,

11:04 "Leon would definitely not act like that in this kind

11:07 of situation." You just don't know him like we do.

11:11 Leon would definitely put some cream on his wrinkles.

11:14 And then come back next Thursday for more gaming news.

11:17 We're doing these once a week to start with.

11:20 Find out what they say in Highguard.

11:22 Let me know and then maybe we'll do