Decline meh Ubisoft (Ubi fuckery general thread)

[kalganoat]

If they fuck up Assassins creed origins again with another shitty story then I will for pray for a Vivendi take over

通过我的 Redmi Note 3 上的 Tapatalk发言

 

[Astral Rag]

Degradation of Ubisoft Services

We are currently experiencing degradation on all Ubisoft Services.

Players may have trouble connecting to the Ubisoft websites, the account management website, Uplay PC and online features of games.

We apologise for the inconvenience and thank you for your patience while this issue is being investigated.

Please keep an eye on our support website. We will remove this message once the issue is resolved.


https://support.ubi.com/en-GB/News/000026152/Degradation-of-Ubisoft-Services

 

[Gerrard]

Spoiler

https://archive.is/W48Xu
Oh look, another guy working at Ubishit is a piece of shit.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

Oh great, another out-of-work game developer with shit for brains.

And I swear that his profile photo looks shopped to make him even MORE douchey in appearance.

 

[Astral Rag]

Spoiler

https://archive.is/W48Xu
Oh look, another guy working at Ubishit is a piece of shit.

The Last Night looks pretty cool.

 

[Lahey]

The decline of Ubishit was subsidized.

Rewind to 2009: The Canadian economy was still reeling from the economic crisis that had rocked the globe. The Government of Ontario, seeking to diversify its investments after the recent financial and manufacturing bailouts, looked towards tech.

https://www.thestar.com/news/ontario/2009/07/07/ubisoft_to_open_toronto_studio.html

Spoiler

A major video-game company that made $111.5 million in global profits last year on popular titles such as Assassin's Creed is getting a $263 million grant from the Ontario government to open a new studio in Toronto and create 800 jobs over a 10-year period. The deal was announced yesterday after a three-year courtship of Ubisoft, which is based in France and employs 2,200 in Montreal.

But Ontario taxpayers won't get a share of the company's profits from games developed at the new Toronto studio to open later this year, Premier Dalton McGuinty said. "Do we get a piece of the action? No, no," the Premier said. "What we're talking about here is an investment in jobs and in strengthening the industry as a whole. "To begin to demand an equity stake in private-sector enterprises is a step too far," added McGuinty, who said that the equity stakes Ontario has taken in General Motors and Chrysler as a result of hefty government bailouts were something that "just kind of happened" in negotiations to save the troubled automakers. Ubisoft will invest another $500 million in its Toronto operation, where it will draw on resources in the local film industry for production of video games.

It's a fast-growing field that has already outpaced the movie box office tallies in the United States, for example, according to NPD Group, as the biggest players are in the 40-plus age group with healthy disposable incomes. As traditional manufacturing industries such as automobiles decline, Ontario has been targeting the fast-growing world of digital media, which includes computer graphic imaging for the genre of animated movies.

Ubisoft becomes the province's first major video-game company.

McGuinty called digital media "a new kind of manufacturing" that is worthy of support to build a more diversified, knowledge-based economy. "This is an anchor investment ... it will catapult us a great distance forward," the Premier said. He noted the investment will help keep graduates of local community college computer animation and similar programs from leaving the area, which is already the third-largest digital media hub in North America. "Rather than the brain drain ... the opening of Ubisoft Toronto is all about a brain gain," said Yannis Mallet, chief executive of the company's Montreal and Toronto operations.

Ubisoft has operations in 28 countries, including 20 studios, and sells its products in 55 nations.

"It's a competitive world out there." McGuinty said. "We were determined to land a video-game publisher-developer of Ubisoft's stature."

The company, which also has small studios in Quebec City and Vancouver, will have to open its books to the province on a quarterly basis to make sure it is creating the jobs promised before receiving the $263 million in chunks over the 10-year period.

In the year prior to this announcement Ubishit had opened a slew of new studios in San Francisco, Brazil, Singapore, Ukraine, and China. In the years since they've opened studios in Halifax, the Philippines, the UAE, Serbia, Berlin, Switzerland and two others in the company's home France. They've also acquired several studios over the years, most of which were shuttered soon after.

During these years of expansion Ubishit started pumping out its perennial garbage and launched Uplay, earning the stellar reputation it has now amongst gamers.

Six years after the subsidy, the Globe and Mail offers a retrospective: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/rep...to-create-jobs-boost-economy/article27613036/

Spoiler

Back in 2009, Ontario’s Liberal government was ready to do almost anything to lure the burgeoning video game industry to the province. The manufacturing sector was reeling from the recession. The auto industry was facing an existential threat. Every month, it seemed, brought fresh waves of layoffs. Former premier Dalton McGuinty wanted to spawn a “new kind of manufacturing,” and to build a new economy. And he saw the answer in Ubisoft SA, the French maker of popular video games such as Assassin’s Creed, Watch Dogs and the Tom Clancy series. The province offered Ubisoft $264-million in subsidies over 10 years. In return, the company promised to invest $500-million of its own money to open a new gaming studio in Toronto, creating roughly 800 jobs. It remains the single largest business grant Ontario has made in the past decade, with an eye-popping price tag of $330,000 per job.

“To build a high wage and high standard of living, you need talent,” Mr. McGuinty said at the time. “By investing in Ubisoft, we’re building Ontario’s economy now and for the future.”

Lofty goals, to be sure. But we now know – thanks to a report this week by Ontario Auditor-General Bonnie Lysyk – that the province’s largesse came with only the thinnest of strings attached. And officials broke numerous rules of its Next Generation of Jobs Fund to steer money to Ubisoft, a profitable $2-billion global company. Ms. Lysyk’ report makes for disturbing reading. Ontario has doled out $1.4-billion in corporate welfare to Ubisoft and other companies over the past decade but has no idea whether the money is actually creating long-term jobs or helping the economy. What’s more, the province spent 80 per cent of that money with no public application process or criteria, and instead picked the companies that would receive the payouts behind closed doors. So badly did Ontario want Ubisoft that it waved the formal application process and sidestepped rules that limit the government’s share of project costs to 15 per cent. The government is paying 35 per cent of whatever Ubisoft spends, consisting mainly of furnishing and operating its Toronto studio. Officials ignored a third-party expert who recommended against the grant because Ubisoft’s project contained “no technological innovation” – the main goal of the Next Generation fund.

Ubisoft was not required to meet specific job-creation targets, or any other project milestones for that matter. Officials from the Ministry of Economic Development, Employment and Infrastructure never bothered to track whether its money has done anything to achieve the stated goal of fostering a digital media cluster in the province. So far, Ubisoft has created 322 jobs, invested $106-million and pocketed $42-million in provincial funds. The more it invests, the more cash it will get. Ontario’s gaming sector remains a speck in the global gaming industry, and it’s still well behind much larger Canadian clusters in Montreal and Vancouver.

About two months after that article was written Trudeau went to visit Ubishit Montreal, a studio best known in the past week for siring SJW devs who leak diarrhea onto twitter. Plenty of gaming sites reported on this visit in a shamelessly PR-friendly way, blissfully ignorant of the business history that prompted the meeting. Viral videos of the recently-elected Trudeau wearing a VR headset placated the hard-hitting reporters of games journalism.

Fast forward to current year and Ubishit is the tip of the ideological spear in the culture war consuming games. Whether they are manufacturing controversy with IGN editors over Far Cry, funding "diversity conferences" (http://business.financialpost.com/t...voice-to-marginalized-members-of-the-industry), or merely ruining every franchise they own with their signature brand of heavy-handed pandering, Ubishit seems content to weaponize its popamole at every opportunity.

 

[karoliner]

Everything is subsidized in Canada, is a communsit shithole. Anyway this sounds really illegal.

 

[anus_pounder]

Ubisoft dude has the right idea. That's one game I won't be pre-ordering, it seems. It's Ubi and their employees' right to do as they wish.

 

[Ash]

The decline of Ubishit was subsidized.

Rewind to 2009: The Canadian economy was still reeling from the economic crisis that had rocked the globe. The Government of Ontario, seeking to diversify its investments after the recent financial and manufacturing bailouts, looked towards tech.

https://www.thestar.com/news/ontario/2009/07/07/ubisoft_to_open_toronto_studio.html

Spoiler

A major video-game company that made $111.5 million in global profits last year on popular titles such as Assassin's Creed is getting a $263 million grant from the Ontario government to open a new studio in Toronto and create 800 jobs over a 10-year period. The deal was announced yesterday after a three-year courtship of Ubisoft, which is based in France and employs 2,200 in Montreal.

But Ontario taxpayers won't get a share of the company's profits from games developed at the new Toronto studio to open later this year, Premier Dalton McGuinty said. "Do we get a piece of the action? No, no," the Premier said. "What we're talking about here is an investment in jobs and in strengthening the industry as a whole. "To begin to demand an equity stake in private-sector enterprises is a step too far," added McGuinty, who said that the equity stakes Ontario has taken in General Motors and Chrysler as a result of hefty government bailouts were something that "just kind of happened" in negotiations to save the troubled automakers. Ubisoft will invest another $500 million in its Toronto operation, where it will draw on resources in the local film industry for production of video games.

It's a fast-growing field that has already outpaced the movie box office tallies in the United States, for example, according to NPD Group, as the biggest players are in the 40-plus age group with healthy disposable incomes. As traditional manufacturing industries such as automobiles decline, Ontario has been targeting the fast-growing world of digital media, which includes computer graphic imaging for the genre of animated movies.

Ubisoft becomes the province's first major video-game company.

McGuinty called digital media "a new kind of manufacturing" that is worthy of support to build a more diversified, knowledge-based economy. "This is an anchor investment ... it will catapult us a great distance forward," the Premier said. He noted the investment will help keep graduates of local community college computer animation and similar programs from leaving the area, which is already the third-largest digital media hub in North America. "Rather than the brain drain ... the opening of Ubisoft Toronto is all about a brain gain," said Yannis Mallet, chief executive of the company's Montreal and Toronto operations.

Ubisoft has operations in 28 countries, including 20 studios, and sells its products in 55 nations.

"It's a competitive world out there." McGuinty said. "We were determined to land a video-game publisher-developer of Ubisoft's stature."

The company, which also has small studios in Quebec City and Vancouver, will have to open its books to the province on a quarterly basis to make sure it is creating the jobs promised before receiving the $263 million in chunks over the 10-year period.

In the year prior to this announcement Ubishit had opened a slew of new studios in San Francisco, Brazil, Singapore, Ukraine, and China. In the years since they've opened studios in Halifax, the Philippines, the UAE, Serbia, Berlin, Switzerland and two others in the company's home France. They've also acquired several studios over the years, most of which were shuttered soon after.

During these years of expansion Ubishit started pumping out its perennial garbage and launched Uplay, earning the stellar reputation it has now amongst gamers.

Six years after the subsidy, the Globe and Mail offers a retrospective: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/rep...to-create-jobs-boost-economy/article27613036/

Spoiler

Back in 2009, Ontario’s Liberal government was ready to do almost anything to lure the burgeoning video game industry to the province. The manufacturing sector was reeling from the recession. The auto industry was facing an existential threat. Every month, it seemed, brought fresh waves of layoffs. Former premier Dalton McGuinty wanted to spawn a “new kind of manufacturing,” and to build a new economy. And he saw the answer in Ubisoft SA, the French maker of popular video games such as Assassin’s Creed, Watch Dogs and the Tom Clancy series. The province offered Ubisoft $264-million in subsidies over 10 years. In return, the company promised to invest $500-million of its own money to open a new gaming studio in Toronto, creating roughly 800 jobs. It remains the single largest business grant Ontario has made in the past decade, with an eye-popping price tag of $330,000 per job.

“To build a high wage and high standard of living, you need talent,” Mr. McGuinty said at the time. “By investing in Ubisoft, we’re building Ontario’s economy now and for the future.”

Lofty goals, to be sure. But we now know – thanks to a report this week by Ontario Auditor-General Bonnie Lysyk – that the province’s largesse came with only the thinnest of strings attached. And officials broke numerous rules of its Next Generation of Jobs Fund to steer money to Ubisoft, a profitable $2-billion global company. Ms. Lysyk’ report makes for disturbing reading. Ontario has doled out $1.4-billion in corporate welfare to Ubisoft and other companies over the past decade but has no idea whether the money is actually creating long-term jobs or helping the economy. What’s more, the province spent 80 per cent of that money with no public application process or criteria, and instead picked the companies that would receive the payouts behind closed doors. So badly did Ontario want Ubisoft that it waved the formal application process and sidestepped rules that limit the government’s share of project costs to 15 per cent. The government is paying 35 per cent of whatever Ubisoft spends, consisting mainly of furnishing and operating its Toronto studio. Officials ignored a third-party expert who recommended against the grant because Ubisoft’s project contained “no technological innovation” – the main goal of the Next Generation fund.

Ubisoft was not required to meet specific job-creation targets, or any other project milestones for that matter. Officials from the Ministry of Economic Development, Employment and Infrastructure never bothered to track whether its money has done anything to achieve the stated goal of fostering a digital media cluster in the province. So far, Ubisoft has created 322 jobs, invested $106-million and pocketed $42-million in provincial funds. The more it invests, the more cash it will get. Ontario’s gaming sector remains a speck in the global gaming industry, and it’s still well behind much larger Canadian clusters in Montreal and Vancouver.

About two months after that article was written Trudeau went to visit Ubishit Montreal, a studio best known in the past week for siring SJW devs who leak diarrhea onto twitter. Plenty of gaming sites reported on this visit in a shamelessly PR-friendly way, blissfully ignorant of the business history that prompted the meeting. Viral videos of the recently-elected Trudeau wearing a VR headset placated the hard-hitting reporters of games journalism.

Fast forward to current year and Ubishit is the tip of the ideological spear in the culture war consuming games. Whether they are manufacturing controversy with IGN editors over Far Cry, funding "diversity conferences" (http://business.financialpost.com/t...voice-to-marginalized-members-of-the-industry), or merely ruining every franchise they own with their signature brand of heavy-handed pandering, Ubishit seems content to weaponize its popamole at every opportunity.

It's posts like these you won't find anywhere except the codex. Especially not with the totally justified brand of hate/disdain.

The Last Night looks cool

Visually it looks incredible, but it's a rather large red flag for gameplay for numerous reasons. We'll see though.

 

[Varvarg]

Steep was free to grab during it's release day IIRC.

The worst part of Ubisoft is that they once in a while make something good and then try to copy this thing hoping it will sell again. I mean we have Call of Duty but it is bizzare thing on it's own, something I can't explain. Ubisoft should take notes from Rockstar and invest their money and time to make solid title not another Far Cry/Assassin's Creed in different skin. But AAA devellopers think GTA V was success because it took place in LA, so we got Battlefield: Hardline, Need for Speed, Watch Dogs 2 and many other games in Cali. Also HUD is now quadrangular.

they are stuck in focus group hell. The trendy flowchart goons are in control. It's not about games anymore, but numbers. Making a new IP might make their shareholders lose money. Can't have that.

Clearly the downfall of western civilization

 

[Astral Rag]

Copy pasta from the anno 2070 thread because I'm very butth.. for posterity:

So I reinstalled Anno 2070 today, this happens when I attempt to launch it from Steam:

Manually downloading and running the uDontplay installer results in:

What a piece of garbage and to think the game used to run perfectly fine on this very computer anno 2011.

Of course the joke's on me for actually buying a modern ubisoft game.


Nie fucking wieder.

 

[Gerrard]

"Error opening file for writing" doesn't look like an issue with the installer. Did you upgrade from a different version of Windows?

 

[Astral Rag]

Yes I did but I'm not sure why that should matter. I've already installed a gazillion programs on this PC and so far Ubi's DRM Platform is the only one that gave me grief. I really can't be bothered to troubleshoot this crap. I'm pretty sure the Extended Demo will work just fine.

 

[Gerrard]

Yes I did but I'm not sure why that should matter.

Because it can fuck up access permissions.

That being said, it works fine on my PC. :vivelafrance:

 

[Thane Solus]

Copy pasta from the anno 2070 thread because I'm very butth.. for posterity:

So I reinstalled Anno 2070 today, this happens when I attempt to launch it from Steam:

Manually downloading and running the uDontplay installer results in:

What a piece of garbage and to think the game used to run perfectly fine on this very computer anno 2011.

Of course the joke's on me for actually buying a modern ubisoft game.


Nie fucking wieder.

You deserve every second of it:

1)Buying a fucking Ubisoft game
2)Using Windows 10

 

[Turjan]

Still works fine here, though I have never changed the installation since 2013. Anyway, this double launcher business is annoying as fuck. That's why I don't buy their games anymore if it's on Steam. I guess that's what they wanted, but I don't buy anything at their place, either.

 

[Rahdulan]

Copy pasta from the anno 2070 thread because I'm very butth.. for posterity:

So I reinstalled Anno 2070 today, this happens when I attempt to launch it from Steam:

Manually downloading and running the uDontplay installer results in:

/cut

What a piece of garbage and to think the game used to run perfectly fine on this very computer anno 2011.

Of course the joke's on me for actually buying a modern ubisoft game.


Nie fucking wieder.

Oh boy, Anno 2070 fun with uPlay and DRM. Seriously, my experience downloading and installing the damn thing was the equivalent of manually finding an cracked executable AutoPatcher that actually worked because game would shit itself when it tried to verify the DLC. In their divine wisdom Ubisoft made it so owning a complete version of the gate didn't automatically download everything included but rather requires the game to check integrity after each DLC download and download them separately.

Then again we're also talking about uPlay here where I can't access the store from the client due to host shenanigans or something.

 

[toro]

Ubi has become a running joke.

Ubisoft made a fascinating announcement this week. They revealed that the latest Assassin’s Creed [official site] is to add a “Discovery Tour” mode, removing all the combat and challenges from the game, to let players just freely experience their in-depth recreation of Ancient Egypt

What is a game without any challenge what-so-ever!?

Edit: Was there a thread for this already?

 

[pippin]

This thing is nothing new, and to be fair, most AC games have been praised for the "sightseeing".

 

[Astral Rag]

Assassins Creed Origin DRM Hammers Gamers’ CPUs


Assassin's Creed Origins gamers are reporting massive CPU utilization. While the game is said to be quite resource-hungry already, game cracker Voksi informs TorrentFreak that anti-piracy efforts are to blame. With Denuvo in trouble, Ubisoft has called in reinforcements which are reportedly dragging down all but the most powerful machines. "It's anti-consumer and a disgusting move," he says.

There’s a war taking place on the Internet. On one side: gaming companies, publishers, and anti-piracy outfits. On the other: people who varying reasons want to play and/or test games for free.

While these groups are free to battle it out in a manner of their choosing, innocent victims are getting caught up in the crossfire. People who pay for their games without question should be considered part of the solution, not the problem, but whether they like it or not, they’re becoming collateral damage in an increasingly desperate conflict.

For the past several days, some players of the recently-released Assassin’s Creed Origins have emerged as what appear to be examples of this phenomenon.

“What is the normal CPU usage for this game?” a user asked on Steam forums. “I randomly get between 60% to 90% and I’m wondering if this is too high or not.”

The individual reported running an i7 processor, which is no slouch. However, for those running a CPU with less oomph, matters are even worse. Another gamer, running an i5, reported a 100% load on all four cores of his processor, even when lower graphics settings were selected in an effort to free up resources.

“It really doesn’t seem to matter what kind of GPU you are using,” another complained. “The performance issues most people here are complaining about are tied to CPU getting maxed out 100 percent at all times. This results in FPS [frames per second] drops and stutter. As far as I know there is no workaround.”

So what could be causing these problems? Badly configured machines? Terrible coding on the part of the game maker?

According to Voksi, whose ‘Revolt’ team cracked Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus before its commercial release last week, it’s none of these. The entire problem is directly connected to desperate anti-piracy measures.

As widely reported (1,2), the infamous Denuvo anti-piracy technology has been taking a beating lately. Cracking groups are dismantling it in a matter of days, sometimes just hours, making the protection almost pointless. For Assassin’s Creed Origins, however, Ubisoft decided to double up, Voksi says.

“Basically, Ubisoft have implemented VMProtect on top of Denuvo, tanking the game’s performance by 30-40%, demanding that people have a more expensive CPU to play the game properly, only because of the DRM. It’s anti-consumer and a disgusting move,” he told TorrentFreak.

Voksi says he knows all of this because he got an opportunity to review the code after obtaining the binaries for the game. Here’s how it works.

While Denuvo sits underneath doing its thing, it’s clearly vulnerable to piracy, given recent advances in anti-anti-piracy technology. So, in a belt-and-braces approach, Ubisoft opted to deploy another technology – VMProtect – on top.

VMProtect is software that protects other software against reverse engineering and cracking. Although the technicalities are different, its aims appear to be somewhat similar to Denuvo, in that both seek to protect underlying systems from being subverted.

“VMProtect protects code by executing it on a virtual machine with non-standard architecture that makes it extremely difficult to analyze and crack the software. Besides that, VMProtect generates and verifies serial numbers, limits free upgrades and much more,” the company’s marketing reads.

VMProtect and Denuvo didn’t appear to be getting on all that well earlier this year but they later settled their differences. Now their systems are working together, to try and solve the anti-piracy puzzle.

“It seems that Ubisoft decided that Denuvo is not enough to stop pirates in the crucial first days [after release] anymore, so they have implemented an iteration of VMProtect over it,” Voksi explains.

“This is great if you are looking to save your game from those pirates, because this layer of VMProtect will make Denuvo a lot more harder to trace and keygen than without it. But if you are a legit customer, well, it’s not that great for you since this combo could tank your performance by a lot, especially if you are using a low-mid range CPU. That’s why we are seeing 100% CPU usage on 4 core CPUs right now for example.”

The situation is reportedly so bad that some users are getting the dreaded BSOD (blue screen of death) due to their machines overheating after just an hour or two’s play. It remains unclear whether these crashes are indeed due to the VMProtect/Denuvo combination but the perception is that these anti-piracy measures are at the root of users’ CPU utilization problems.

While gaming companies can’t be blamed for wanting to protect their products, there’s no sense in punishing legitimate consumers with an inferior experience. The great irony, of course, is that when Assassin’s Creed gets cracked (if that indeed happens anytime soon), pirates will be the only ones playing it without the hindrance of two lots of anti-piracy tech battling over resources.

The big question now, however, is whether the anti-piracy wall will stand firm. If it does, it raises the bizarre proposition that future gamers might need to buy better hardware in order to accommodate anti-piracy technology.

And people worry about bitcoin mining……?

 

[Callisto]

Watch Dogs ( base game ) is free on Uplay .

 

[WhiteGuts]

What is free where ?

 

[Thane Solus]

What is free where ?

AIDS is free on Uplay!

 

[Turjan]

Watch Dogs ( base game ) is free on Uplay .

I see this here:

Plus a "Preload" button.

Let's see whether they got inventive with their offerings.

 

[Modron]

Plus a "Preload" button.

Let's see whether they got inventive with their offerings.

Yeah giving away a game one day before you can play it seems kind of silly but hey free is free.