Ubisoft Exec Says Gamers Need to Get Comfortable with "Not Owning Your Games" | Hacker News Reader

Ubisoft Exec Says Gamers Need to Get Comfortable with "Not Owning Your Games"

thegamer.com

44 pointszzzeek38 comments

> Ubisoft Exec Says Gamers Need to Get Comfortable with "Not Owning Your Games"

-> Gamers say that Ubisoft needs to get comfortable with "not getting your games bought".

:-)

Translated:

"now that the international law and order collapses in on itself, we realize we need that to extract value with our rentseeking behavior. Turns out instability kills us and we accelerated it directly and indirectly. We are happy to go passing our chest of worrn down IP to the public and to be used by future generations as a warning ironic example what happens, when you rely on taxes but are unwilling to pay them yourself. "

Ain't I entertaining you? Unity sepukku. It's been years since I bought anything from ubisoft.

Useless caste really wants to find out

It is better than Gamer says Ubisoft Exec need to get comfortable with "gamers not paying their game".

Haha that's what I was thinking.

It's not that we need to eat comfortable not owning our games, it's that you need to be comfortable with us not owning your games.

"Ubishit" was a term 15+ years ago already...

And nothing's changed. Consumers are entirely incapable of collective action to punish repugnant companies.

> Consumers are entirely incapable of collective action to punish repugnant companies

Consumers do not have milions of dollars to spend on "lobby".

You don't really need to. Just don't buy their games.

My newest game concept: you are the ghost of Adam Smith and your goal is to harvest the souls of corporate rent seekers. You need a lot of them because they're so tiny. But your targets are surrounded by sycophants, shills, and sophists who will use your own words and identity against you - don't allow your own soul to be harvested for profit!

I see what you did there and I like it but inquiring minds must know: will it come with a launcher and preferably a rootki... I mean anti-cheat/drm?

I would never participate in such a conspiracy against the publick.

This is up there with "you guys don't have phones?"

> This is up there with "you guys don't have phones?"

For those who are out of the loop: https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/do-you-guys-not-have-phones

Can't name a single Ubisoft title I've liked or bought in nearly 10 years. Everything they've produced has been some Assassin's Creed-like or Far Cry 3-like bullshit.

Same. I stopped paying attention when they tanked one of the best multiplayers ever, included in the Brotherhood era (plus or minus a game).

Yeah I'm comfortable with that, at least when it comes to Ubisoft games. Every single one of their games feels like Assassin's Creed 2 or Far Cry 3 nowadays.

If they were half the price and like 8 hour games, I might even still keep buying them just to wander around new environments and get a nice tight story. But apparently speedrunning Assassin's Creed Valhalla is 44 hours, while average is 60 hours (and I'm always a little slower than average). Ugh.

When they were super cheap I tried with Assassin's Creed Origins and lost interest after 8 hours, and Far Cry 6 and stopped after 4 hours, felt like I was just rehashing previous games a little too closely. So yeah, I'm good. Don't need to pay attention to Ubisoft anymore.

Far Cry 3 was badass

I liked how after killing dozens or hundreds of people you would get cut scenes where the protagonist complains about how terrible it is to do such things. Dude you just murdered a village then skinned every animal within a kilometre, I think you've gone beyond thinking about the moral implications at this point.

To be fair, that’s a common enough problem in games it’s developed a name: ludonarrative dissonance

Fine, I'll start by not playing Ubisoft games.

The majority of gamers are comfortable with not owning their games. According to a quick internet search "72% of console games sold in 2022 were digital". But, the actual article here (if you click through to the source) is about Ubisoft announcing a new subscription service (Ubisoft+), so it seems to me that this Ubisoft Exec accidentally deployed the wrong talking point (one stuck in his brain from 2013 or so). (Unfortunately for Ubisoft, he's "director of subscriptions".)

The difference is not between digital media and hard copies, but rather having the full ownership of the software so you can have a backup install and play at any point in the future (backwards compatibility aside). This also has to do with modding, which is a big part of many games and it's how lots of genres have been created from Battle Royale to MOBA (i.e. DOTA).

Games as a service can work with some genres but overall it's just large AAA companies running out of creative resources.

Even you buy a physical copy, from what I heard you still need to download the game, so what's even the point.

Yep, this is about prepping gamers to pay a monthly fee to access games

I am very comfortable with not paying for the games I play.

Not going to get used to this for Steam, not for Ubisoft, nor whoever.

Game Pass works for me because I don't have an expectation of owning those games.

He's not saying anything new or surprising here. It's not like you own your Steam games.

I do own my GOG and itch.io games though. Which is why I buy my games there, and/or in physical editions.

Players say Ubisoft needs to get comfortable with not owning as much money.

I'm already pretty comfortable not owning Ubisoft games.

I am about as anti-piracy as it gets, but I'll make an exception for Ubisoft as a treat

I'm fine with not owning my games. I'm not fine paying for it though.

Certain games are better as a subscription, those that are multiplayer with game connection features. Others shouldn't be, like single player story lines.

I don't play anything enough to subscribe. Not going to happen.

In theory, if there is a market and you can vote for better features/ideas with money. In practice they try to subvert and hack the players with loot boxes, dark patterns and pay to win or overpriced cosmetics.

Of course... I mainly mean games in the vein of say WoW, RuneScape and the like where you're playing against an environment and other players, or otherwise matching with similarly skilled players. Etc.

Not that they wouldn't use patterns mentioned on top of subscriptions. But that isn't necessary. Ongoing development and ongoing play as a focus.

If, for example, Quake 3 Arena was a subscription model and ongoing development was happening, more maps, okay styles etc. I might still be subscribed to such a thing.

> Certain games are better as a subscription, those that are multiplayer with game connection features.

Not necessarily. See Overwatch 2.

The very moment I found out that Ubisoft wasn't bringing a game to any other platform but their own, I immediately thought:

"Welp, I guess I don't need to play that game until it makes it to Steam, GOG, etc..." ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Even with these other platforms, we don't truly "own" the games either. As proven with video platforms, content licensers can revoke the license at anytime, and poof there goes your ownership of that digital asset. Ye olde Thanos snap of digital data.

Hey Ubisoft ? See that money ? That's mine, and you will never see a dime of it.

Ubisoft is a cancer in the gaming world.

Seriously. I had friends in the 2000's we would all buy a copy of current games, and everyday after work we would gather and play together. Play fools inside the games and laugh for minutes long by dropping grenades by surprise on the ass of friends.. and shooting ourselves with tear-gas paintball guns...

Ubisoft did put out so much games that would crash that it ruined this for us. Every single time one of us hosted, either the hosting would crash, or someone would have his/her game to crash, and we had to restart everything. Again, and again, and again, sometimes with 5 to 10 minutes between two crashes.

Ubisoft you are RUINED our gaming sessions. We no longer try to play together. It's all gone because you're fucking morons putting out bugged, half finished POS games in the market. You've fucked it all.

I have a special place in Hell for you Ubisoft.

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