Why is Ubisoft so bad ?

[TheDawg]

I didn't hate them till I noticed everyone else hating them.
Now I really HATE them.

[Vevster]

Originally Posted by Letum

Silent Hunter 5

Ubisoft rushed the Dev team into producing a horribly buggy, unfinished game with a horribly restrictive DRM.
It an attempt to appeal to a console playing audience, they dumbed down the content of the game, giving crew members super abilities like extra explosive torpedoes or the ability to make a soup that causes the sub to dive faster (I kid you not).
In addition, due to fear or licensing issues, no American plans where in the game. They where replaced by strange Franken planes.

This didn't stop them hypeing it up with a website and marketing scheme that was entirely disconnected from the actual game.

The released game was unfinished and covered in some horrid bugs. At first ubisoft told us that there would be addon packs to add the missing content, patches to fix the bugs as well as some basic tools to open the game up to modders. None of these things happened and ubi let the game sink. the only thing they did do is to eventually remove the DRM.

It was an utter disaster and SH3 with mods remains the best Atlantic subsim by a long shot, despite it's age.

It was shameful.

I totally agree that SH5 is quite a poor game.
I totally disagree that the Dev Team was rushed. To the contrary. The development team took too much time developping the game compared to what they had promised to deliver.
Ubi was putting money into more time for, it seems, not much progress.
Launching the game as it was though, may have been a bad choice.

Maybe cancelling it completely would have been better.

Originally Posted by speculum jockey

Well you have to give them credit for the amazing job they're doing to promote Cliffs of Dover. . . they have a "web site". . . . well, a front page.

Pretty much all the hype built up for the game is due to 1C and Oleg actually releasing content themselves and giving interviews. Ubisoft only cares about A++ titles that they can make for consoles and maybe do a crappy port to the PC.

Plus they like to "buy" a dev team, squeeze out a product as fast as possible, and then lay them all off as soon as the game goes gold. That's one reason why their patches suck, because they don't have anyone from the original team working on them.

Got some examples?
Because Ubi's development teams went up quite a bit between 2008 and 2009 for instance. And not many people seem to have been laid off.


About the marketing of CoD, Ubi can do only with what they have. Wonder if Oleg gave them much to chew on over the years, and even now.
But for sure, we cannot expect the same level of marketing they give to a AAA title. That would mean losing money. Let's not kid ourselves, sales of CoD will not reach the levels of Assassin's Creed, even if the marketing put on it on CoD was huge.

Originally Posted by Kikuchiyo

Ubi is loathed for their draconian DRM. They even attempted an always connected DRM that ultimately failed, and cost them and the franchises they did this with dearly. They aren't the worst publisher for seeming to hate gamers, but many consider them a very close runner up. I'm glad that Ubi's only involvement is publishing when 1C Maddox was ready for the game to be released.

That, I totally agree with

[Avala]

Because they can?

[Sasha]

The way they humiliated players with DRM (SH5) and disguisting explanations of "DRM advantages"... You don't have to occupy your hard-disc with save games, you can play from various PC-s ...etc

This was black date in single player history... the second one was announcement that Oleg signed the marriage with devil... DRM CoD


God Thanks that moders made great Il-2 1946 cosmetics:
[IMG][/IMG]

[DrPepper]

Originally Posted by Sasha

God Thanks that moders made great Il-2 1946 cosmetics:
[IMG][/IMG]

What map is that, any special mods installed for that, looks really nice. Would like to try the same out on my rig and see what it looks like.

[Flying Pencil]

Originally Posted by brando

Slightly off-topic, but I noticed that Ford US is suing Ferrari for calling its new F1 racing car the Ferrari F-150. F-150 is 'apparently' the name of a popular Ford truck and their lawyers are laying down the same kind of BS that NG laid on UbiSoft and OM over copyright.

Mind-numbingly stupid

I wonder if Activision will sue UBI for trademark/copyright infringement?

Of course it is acronyms, but these days suits are filed for the remotest of reasons.

[Flying Pencil]

Originally Posted by TheDawg

I didn't hate them till I noticed everyone else hating them.
Now I really HATE them.

Well, look at it this way:
Publishers are in purely to make money off of other peoples blood, sweat, and tears, using its printing and distribution skills to make that money.

Good publishers should serve the developer, listen to their desires and needs and offer what help they can (but have some, not much, but some limits).

Bad publishers get a title and do what they want with it, and pressure developers to hurry up, and just right rough shod on the hapless programmers.
UBI created the name for this game (despite years of Storm of War), chose a CoD that sounds like CoD, and used IL-2 despite the fact their is nothing related between the two, AND the IL-2 airplane is not even in CoD!!

At the very start, it is already looking like UBI is messing up the game....


Perfect example:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JBg6L4H7WdE#t=15m49s

Originally Posted by K_Freddie

With the IL2 series, Oleg (1C) were under a UBI contract, and there were many unknown squabbles on exactly this.. 'Releasing products before they were ready'.
Luckily for us Oleg stood his ground and the COD development (AFAIK) is completely disconnected from UBI. 1C are using UBI for distribution though, which makes sense as long as UBI have no say in the product activation.

The other sims were in-house to UBI, and thats why they're stuff-ups.
UBI is a distributor, not a developer... period. And as soon as they realise it the better... Maybe with SH5 this message has sunk into those accountants.

And then you have Assasin's Creed that is rewarded across the planet ?

I think that develppers and Publishers have allways been in the crossfire of many " conflict of interests" between budget reality and "what is good enough " for release...After reading all the comments, I conclude that it is probably the status of all Publishers beeing a bit to greedy and at the same time tired of pouring money in endless developpement....
As for support, mayby that Ubi is in fact the worse of all...But I could not say....
Thanks !

[mazex]

Originally Posted by Biggs [CV]

Ubi soft bought "Red Storm Entertainment" The Tom Clancy franchise that included the insanely popular Rainbow 6. They made successful games like Ghost Recon and Rainbow 6: 3 Raven Shield, among others. Then they got stupid. They started rushing games out the door,quantity over quality, the games were buggy as hell. They ignored the fans pleas for the games to be fixed (patched). And every time they did release a patch it fixed 1-2 problems but created 3-4 more. Rainbow 6 : Lockdown was a major flop as it was unplayable upon release and died quickly. Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter did alittle better but most people moved on quickly. Recently they have screwed up the WW2 submarine simulator Silent Hunter 5.
Many people who loved these games and supported UBI now are disgusted by the attitude of the UBI hierarchy.

And let's count the number of sub sims (or sims of any kind) released by the other large publishers? Sure - the DRM for SH5 was not a good idea, but they DO release niche games like that, and the other SH games like SHIII which is really a great game that they obvioulsy get no credit for... And how about the whole IL2 series that they have supported? They DO release and support Cliffs of Dover which is a niche game (yes, lets face it!) - and what do they get for that?

[mazex]

Originally Posted by speculum jockey

Well you have to give them credit for the amazing job they're doing to promote Cliffs of Dover. . . they have a "web site". . . . well, a front page.

And let's compare that with the marvelous Silverlight Only "front page" for Microsoft Flight?