Ubisoft Cancels 6 Games In Major Organisation Restructure

Cool. I'll be heavily investing into games from other companies then.

I was just thinking about finally picking up Shadows too, can't give money to that though

Don’t worry guys, Just Dance is safe!
What horrible mismanagement.

It's so easy to tell when a company is circling the drain.

Sands of Time revival getting axed is legit depressing.....

There goes the Sands of Time Remake. All that waiting just for Ubisoft to say "Nah. It's not gonna make us filthy rich. Can it!"

I remember when Ubisoft made great little games like Child of Light. The good old days.

Looks like Beyond Good & Evil 2 survived the culling? Whether that’s a good thing I suppose we’ll find out one day… maybe?

Ubisoft will primarily focus on open-world games and 'Games as a Service' titles, which it says will be supported by "targeted investments, deeper specialization, and cutting-edge technology, including accelerated investments behind player-facing Generative AI."

This is like when your toilet is horribly clogged, and you keep trying to flush it thinking it'll fix the problem, instead of using a plunger.

Ensh!ttification strikes again.

I can’t wait until someone buys them and all of these great IPs will get a chance of new games.

Ubisoft Five Houses

Announcing their impending irrelevance, good job!

Y'know, I never thought another gaming company would kick itself in the nards down to 'EA' tier for me, but I think Ubisoft just made it happen.

Aaaaaaaaand it's gone. That is what I was waiting for, mention of investment into generative AI.
Fire all your developers, replace them with AI agents, generate slope, hire slope janitors to brute force clean the mess, publish a spaghetti code nobody will buy after first review, do an ignorant post mortem blaming Sally from accounting for the failure, reset..

Let Ubisoft do Ubisoft, it seems that's what they're best at doing, personally I don't care (I do want a port of Rayman Origins for Switch/Switch 2 though).

The Sands of Time remake/remaster would have been their only chance to bounce back. Now to me it looks like Ubisoft will never recover. The company is on it's way out.

They'll likely be bought back by some chinese investment fund at a laughable cost in the near future. And this is how giants fall, people!

Won't someone think of the buggy whip makers??? What about the lamp lighters?

Wow. So this is legitimately terrible then.

Not only are there layoffs, they’ve basically admitted generative AI is replacing creative talent like it’s a positive.

Additionally forcing developers back into 5 in-office days (where crunch is more likely to occur) is also a deliberate move to not incentivise new hires and push existing staff that prefer the present (standard) WFH / office mix into leaving the company.

Scum.

I'm not seeing any mention of Rabbids at all. Did they just give up on that series? So far as I know, it was pretty prevalent back in the early 2010s. It even had a cartoon called Rabbids Invasion back in 2015-2018, which I actually watched some of (nowhere close to a masterpiece, but it did give me a few good laughs). Did pretty poor sales of Mario + Rabbids Sparks of Hope cause them to give up on it? That game is one of my most favorite games of all time, but I do admit it did sell pretty poorly.

Also sucks to hear about the Sands of Time Remake, I know a decent amount of people were looking forward to that one.

Ubisoft are famous for their neverending list of cancellations. Top tip Ubisoft, finish a game that you started and maybe you might make some money back.

They might as well bin Beyond Good and Evil at this point. Probably should have at least 5 years ago.

@Nep-Nep-Freak Rabbds are technically a spin off of Rayman franchise… So they probably fall underneath that.

Last game I'll likely ever purchase from Ubisoft was Prince of Persia: Lost Crown. Such an excellent game. I don't know what Ubi is doing, but all the buzzwords they threw around have completely lost me as a customer. Then again, Ubi has always been what happens when suits run the creative side.

"Player-facing AI" can be a brilliant use of AI. This article's author I think is overreacting. Examples of how this could be good for gamers and the industry:

• smarter/more reactive NPCs (that we can communicate with via mic)
• procedurally gen side quests (maybe the game notices you like to collect Korok seeds for example and creates missions for you based on that)
• enemies that "learn" how you attack so you can't just use the same tactics all the time, making the game more difficult/fun

Overall this could be a very good thing. The "AI is the devil" talk (I'm probably exaggerating, but you get the point) has got to stop.

Ubisoft continues to crumble. And the GenAI investment is yet another reason not to buy their games.

@MarioLinkSamus Thats not what generative AI means. Procedurally generated or NPC AI is entirely different. Generative AI takes from other existing sources to spit something out, and doesn't result in what you've suggested except potentially speaking to NPC's via microphone, which would have to use GenAI to pull responses from.
GenAI should never be part of the creative process for many reasons, because its scraping that data its using from someone else's work and mashing it together.

During the Wii U era, I used to think no company could make as many bafflingly tone-deaf decisions as Nintendo.

I owe them a huge apology.

I feel like this at least the third "restructuring" Ubisoft has done in less than a decade. I'm genuinely baffled how they've lasted to this point without completely going bankrupt. I know Assassin's Creed is a big deal, but I don't see how that alone can carry a business. Do people even still buy Just Dance every year? I never hear anyone talk about it.

It's equal parts hilarious and sad Ubisoft is investing all this money into generative AI when we're starting to see the first signs of that bubble bursting. Apparently, ChatGPT is struggling to keep itself afloat financially. It's only a matter of time before the rest of the industry follows suit. It doesn't matter how many billions you invest; you can't force the consumer to accept something they don't want.

That's not to say AI doesn't have its place; ChatGPT helped me set up a solid, long-term financial plan, so I'm very grateful it was able to dumb down the complicated world of stocks and IRA investments for me in a clear, concise way. If I'm able to retire with a large nest egg, it will be all thanks to AI.

But the commercialization of generative AI is something not a single soul wants outside of corporate execs who want to save money on paid labor. I've always said it will go the same way as NFT's, but it's unfortunate it's taking so much longer.

I don't understand why Ubisoft continues to chase trends that have already proven themselves to be a disaster. Concord flopped and costed Sony hundreds of millions they invested in live service games; didn't that raise a few eyebrows at Ubisoft and make them consider this was a sinking ship? No?

Honestly, it feels like they're trying to deliberately sink the company in some sort of money laundering scheme, because I can't fathom that any leadership would be this incompetent. It's like watching someone burn their house to collect the insurance money. Anyone with an IQ of 70 could understand why this is a bad idea.

Edit: I forgot to even talk about the low blow that is the Sands of Time cancelation. The Lost Prince was my first Prince of Persia game, and I really enjoyed it. Was so looking forward to this one, as I've heard nothing but great things. This doesn't bode well at all for my confidence Ubisoft will deliver on the new Rayman project they've been hyping up.

What a disaster.

@MarioLinkSamus AI is the devil.

Are they seriously so stupid that they canceled The Sand of Time?
My God, what a bunch of incompetents. They should understand once and for all that people are already bored with Assassin's Creed and want the return of Prince of Persia, Splinter Cell, and Rayman, and if possible, a sequel to Zombie or Street Racer—games from the days when they were a humble company, not the arrogant one they are today.
Or at least a Far Cry.

@Nick2054 I know Nintendo never really buys IPs, but I would love for them to get Rayman when Ubisoft falls.

Even with all these shenanigans, they still have the audacity to list Beyond Good & Evil 2 as a thing they're working on. Just...stop

@Pho It's a tool that when used to augment the creative process (not replace it!) can potentially benefit everyone. It should be used to aid your thinking, not think for you! AI in and of itself is not evil.

May as well go out of business UbiSoft, y'all are lacking in experience now and relying on AI that could easily turn on you like in the Terminator movies won't help you in the long run.

In other news, Ubisoft has only six months to live.

The sad thing is, Sands of Time was rumoured to be releasing the other day. 4 days later, it's cancelled altogether.

And they said we couldn't have everything we wanted...

@MarioLinkSamus well-reasoned points, but the ragebaited crowd here won't hear any of it.

@Pho I asked ChatGPT whether you were right, and it said you were. So, I agree!

@MarioLinkSamus The problem is how it's "creating" what it comes up with. All that data, art, etc. has to come from somewhere, and it's taking that from non consenting parties to generate what it comes up with. Even were it using data entirely from within the company, that's only the tip of the iceberg. Ultimately its not creating things of quality or care. Look to the latest debacle with Larian, their own higher ups who are forced to use Gen AI such as the lead writer has stated what its putting out is of poor quality. Its not augmenting them, its only something to get in the way of actual human creativity.

Finally the "Sands of time" remake, it was going nowhere (and I much rather have a totally new 3D Prince of Persia, but that's just me).

The sixth cancelled game...that must be Beyond good and evil 2, right?!

@Cakefish I love child of light and many other Ubisoft products, but we've all been dumbstruck by Ubisoft's decision making for well over 20 years. Believe it or not, the first sign they were run by idiots was when they recast the prince for Prince Of Persia: Warrior Within and got Godsmack to do the soundtrack. Now, that game was good, don't misunderstand me, but one of the OG sands of time's biggest assets was the Prince's voice actor. These decisions were so tone deaf that they got the original guy (Yuri Lowenthal) back for the third game. Godsmack also failed to return, thankfully.

@Pho, the way I see it is that all this "AI EVIL" stuff is overblown because even when someone who is a real person gets some writing utensils and begins writing a story or drawing a picture, it is probably pretty similar to what has already been done by someone else. If you really think about it, every new franchise, art, story, etc. borrows ideas from previous franchises, art, stories, etc., it's just unavoidable.

I bet that new Rayman game is also canceled.

GTFO, Ubisoft.

If this company went under I honestly wouldn't miss them. I just wish their IPs could be bought by more capable companies.

@Nep-Nep-Freak It doesn't matter if a person makes something similar or not totally original, as long as its not plagiarism. Its made by a human, not an AI. GenAI is always plagiarising from someone, and theres no actual human element to it. If you want to play GenAI created games be my guest, but I have no desire to touch them.

@Pho You could easily have generative AI models that are trained on in-world lore, and then more NPCs who say things that are far more interesting than the repeated NPC-speak we all know. It doesn't require a microphone; you could type in what you want to say to an NPC.

Ancient Greeks thought that using writing implements, rather than rote memorization, were a scourge on the intellect; Gen AI is a tool in its first few years of existence. There are (and will continue to be) better and worse ways of using it. It is not "always plagiarism" if it was trained on content that was created to train it with a specific voice. If I trained a Gen AI model on the journals I've kept for decades now, so I could converse with versions of my past self, is THAT plagiarism? Of course not. Stop jumping to conclusions; your argument is half-baked.

@Johnny_Arthur Yes, Johnny_Arthur Game Studios, I am certain that you have the pulse on exactly what games the public wants.

@Nep-Nep-Freak This is 100% correct.

Oh Ubisoft. What a freaking mess.

@Dr_Awkward Your knowledge of Gen AI is half baked, and plagiarism is literally only one aspect of why it shouldn't be used. And you'll have no way of knowing if that "in world lore" was trained on their own content. Even then, human written content will always be superior. This isn't some "new technology bad" Satanic Panic, theres myriad examples of how inept it is at simple tasks.

@Pho Wildly incorrect. If AI is "theft" then so is any inspiration and iteration. Very good video on the topic that debunks common arguments:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XegV-KnmxqU