Asmongold Reacts to: Ubisoft Plans To 'Break Up', Investors Are Furious
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by @BellularNews https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZATCS1DPa7Y
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00:00I also think that there's a lot of copium with this game. I do not think that its success is
00:04good enough to justify the theoretical amount of money that was spent on it and the other projects
00:11that this was meant to make up for. A lot is going down right now for Ubisoft. I'll start
00:15with the obvious thing that you know that Assassin's Creed Shadows has just had its
00:18review embargo lift. Yep. But that's not really the main story here and by the end of this video
00:23we'll even be discussing the very real chance of Ubisoft quite literally splitting. That might
00:30sound crazy to you. I think that they're gonna have to do it. I think they're gonna have to
00:34split the company or do something crazy. Too many L's. It's um actually a well substantiated thing
00:41that we're able to talk about. Your D&D knowledge is perfect. According to this shareholder letter
00:45Assassin's Creed Shadows should save the company financially but here's the thing. See this is
00:50what I was saying. It was like what I said. I'll repeat it. I apologize because like the third day
00:54I've used this analogy so if you've heard it before I'm sorry. You ever played Dungeons and
00:59Dragons and you need to roll a 19 or a 20 in order to just hit a monster? I think that that's what
01:04Ubisoft did with Assassin's Creed Shadows. They needed to roll a 19 or a 20 and they rolled an
01:1011 or a 12. Rolling an 11 or 12 is better than average and you know technically you did get
01:16lucky but it wasn't enough. That is not some boastful letter sent to the shareholders from
01:25Ubisoft. Oh no. It is an emission rating letter sent from shareholders to Ubisoft and they are
01:31not happy. It's alleging secret talks. It announces a protest. It threatens. Yeah AJ
01:36investors are prepared to sue the company for misleading investors. Holy shit. Jesus.
01:42Lawsuits. That's bad. And it all cuts through to a very personal angle. Yeah. The CEO and founder
01:48Yves Guillemot has been fanning off hostile takeovers for a lot of his recent career and
01:53it's happening to him again because now he has got shareholders trying to take him out and that
01:59gives anyone who could help him out of his current situation quite a lot of leverage. I gotta tell
02:06you if you're the CEO and the graph looks like it does I think you gotta go. I do. Like I mean
02:21I feel like there has to be accountability for that right? I mean you can't lose 80%
02:26value of the company and then it's like oh well this is this is normal.
02:37And also another issue is that the products simply were not selling well.
02:43It's not a matter of like the stock being overvalued or some sort of market manipulation.
02:48The fact is that a lot of their recent games haven't been high quality games.
02:52I think that's really important to keep in mind.
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04:29plan. So give my link a click today to kick us off. Here's the letter. It's from A.J. Investments
04:34who bought a minority share in Ubisoft last year. If you know what a activist investor is. Well
04:38they're basically one of those. They jump into a company. They try to do some form of skullduggery
04:44to yank up the share price and then they eat themselves away with a lovely payday. Now when
04:49their letter says that shadows can save the company financially. It's not wrong. The finances
04:56of Ubisoft do need saving as do the Gilmos whose position this letter very much seeks to undermine.
05:03So let me lay out the stakes for you so you understand the gravity of today's story.
05:07Ubisoft's post pandemic release schedule just well fell off a cliff right. Every game they've
05:12released basically in the last five years has been dog shit. Minus like maybe two.
05:19That's really bad. That's really bad. And then when they did ship games quite often they missed
05:27on quality and they undersold leakers actually report half a dozen canceled projects. And of
05:33course please the market Ubisoft launched into all of the fun trends the NFTs the A.I. all. Yes.
05:39Ubisoft recently actually made a new NFT game harassment and abuse. If you can believe that
05:44harassment and abuse if you can believe that purge of senior leadership and then the year 2024
05:50happened. 2024 was as we all know pretty much a shit show for the company. The thing that should
05:55have really brought in the sales. Assassin's Creed Shadows was obviously delayed. They knew that
05:59shadows needed to be a better quality. It seemed that Avatar Frontiers of Pandora didn't really do
06:03that well. And while Prince of Persia lost. This is fucking stupid. It's a stupid fucking game.
06:07Why do you even think you'd make an avatar game? Like who the fuck thought this was a good idea?
06:10Who wanted to play this? Nobody want to play this fucking bullshit. Like what's this fairy shit?
06:13What are you doing with this fairy ass bullshit? What? Why? Why? Who asked? Who wanted this? Nobody
06:19asked. Nobody wanted this. What are you thinking? The Persia Lost Town is a really good video game.
06:25It was just a two nation. It basically did not move. It was overpriced. While all this is going
06:29on. We've got the investors rebelling demanding the removal of the founding Gilmo family. But
06:34of course, unfortunately for those investors, the Gilmos had spent the last decade making
06:39their position, their control over the company, almost unimpeachable deal with Tencent. And so
06:46shadows was delayed. And now we're at the time where it is about to come out. And now it basically,
06:51I think this game got delayed like two or three times too. It wasn't even just once.
06:55Shadows flops. It's proof that Ubisoft does need to be gutted into that leadership.
06:59Say the Gilmos really are the problem, at least to the investors. If the game succeeds in a way,
07:05it'll almost be proof that management should have just made a lot of decisions a lot sooner.
07:10And basically for AJ investments with their ladder, no matter what happens with shadows,
07:14they'll get to basically say, yeah, we told you so now don't be confused here.
07:21Okay. This is not a good graph. It's not, this is a bad graph.
07:33This is a very, very, very bad graph. Just because you release one game that does well.
07:41As I said, you needed to roll a 19. You rolled an 11. Great. Amazing. Awesome. But it doesn't
07:51matter because it doesn't counterbalance everything else that was bad by the tip.
07:56Yeah, I guess so.
07:57Jay investments are not out to make a better game for you. They are parroting very obvious
08:03criticisms of Ubisoft. Many of which I'd say we could probably agree with, but as an example,
08:09they're also off over the delay to shadows. I think we all know that that delay was a good
08:13thing. And as you'll soon find out in this video, they're trying to rile everybody up
08:18to generate headlines, to put more pressure on the Gilmos, which will of course make their
08:23position far professional complainers. They're trying to do the whole rebelling. Absolutely.
08:27We'll get into that, but for now let's examine the spiciest claims of their letter. Ubisoft
08:32have been secretly meeting Microsoft, electronic arts, Tencent, and more. That is the claim that
08:38is made by the shareholder letter. And it's far from the only bit of pressure that AJ investments
08:44are seeking to mount up here. They actually plan a protest. They're playing assassins creed IRL
08:48with the company. They plan a lawsuit against Ubisoft's management as well. That's a lot of
08:54wrongfully withheld information and hurt shareholders. Now sparking this was the
09:00assassins creed shadow, like dual delay. And then the financial forecast changes that were caused
09:05by that as a vice to say, yeah, revenue projections went down massively. Then it gets a bit juicy
09:11because they say that this depressed stock price would allow the big players to buy up Ubisoft on
09:17the cheap. Now, of course, if those were big players who were, that's true, but like, that's
09:21what happens whenever the game does badly. I mean, I think that's normal. They were doing research.
09:25Yeah, that's totally normal. Aiding with Ubisoft management, that would be great. It would be
09:31fulfilling management's personal goals at the expense of the portfolios of smaller shareholders.
09:38Yeah, sure. Perhaps shareholders like AJ investments, it's quite spicy. And per the
09:42letter, Ubisoft often hid things from their investors. Why are people happy about this?
09:46I think the people are happy about this is because they view Ubisoft as a representative
09:50of everything that's wrong with video games nowadays. Slop open world checklist design,
09:58daily quests in a single player game, pay to win in a single player game. And it's also like you
10:04have to like deluxe editions that are over a hundred dollars. Like Ubisoft is definitely like,
10:10if you can think of the Exodia right of bad video game companies, you have the head sexual
10:18harassment allegations, the arm, the right arm, you have microtransactions, the left arm, you have
10:25woke video game design, the left leg, you have, oh, geez, let's see, open world time wasting
10:33mechanisms. And the right leg, you've got fucking Mike. I don't know. Did I say microtransactions?
10:38I could think of five other ones, too. But, you know, a million NFTs, shitty combat shops. Yes,
10:46by our powers combined, Captain Planet. Exactly. Yes. So why people don't like this game? I think
10:51it makes a lot of sense. Yeah. Why they don't like the company makes a lot of sense. And it's also,
10:55yeah, you have your own shitty launcher. So people will celebrate the failures of something
11:01that represents what they think is bad. That's it. That's the main reason why they're happy.
11:08Is it something that they don't like taking an L as well? That's understandable.
11:12Allegedly, Ubisoft hit a deal with Savvy Games. Savvy Games, if you're not aware,
11:17are Saudi Arabia's state funded gaming company. They make a lot of investments.
11:21Here's what I think. I think that they're going to these investors because they're fucking desperate.
11:28I think they know they're cooked. And so, yes, you're going to Saudi Arabia, you're going to
11:34China, Tencent, because you need somebody to bail you out because you know that you're fucked.
11:43That's the real reason. So apparently there's a deal with them to make DLC for Assassin's Creed
11:47Mirage, but I think a lot more relevant to today, quote, discussions between Microsoft,
11:52Electronic Arts and others that are interested in acquiring IPs for Ubisoft. And if true,
11:58that is a perfect wedge issue for AJ Investments. Yeah. And they know this letter says that they
12:04will hold a protest in Paris this May and that if things don't improve, they'll actually sue.
12:10Wow. And look, when you examine all of this, it's hard to not see a lot of it as just the final
12:16nail in the coffin for Ubisoft. They've had nothing but bad news. You know, even their own
12:21shareholders are turning against them, but it's not all of their shareholders. It's a group of
12:26them, a group that is led by AJ Investments. And it's not hard to just because you have some
12:31investment activist group complaining that doesn't really fucking matter. What really matters is the
12:38quality of the games and how many people are buying them. That's the bottom line. That's the
12:43lifeblood of your business. And if that's not happening, you're fucked. That's it. That that
12:51is that is the beginning and the end of this conversation. Hey, Saudi Arabia, want to cash
12:57us out after almost going bankrupt for being woke? Yeah, that's basically what they're saying. And
13:01you know what? If I was Saudi Arabia, I would say, yes, please let us cash you out. We'll make the
13:07new Assassin's Creed. We can set it in, you know, like Middle Ages and like, you know, medieval
13:13ages like Arabia. And the game is going to have a, you know, dark, edgy male protagonist. And
13:21it's going to sell 10 million fucking copies. Prince of Persia. Yeah. Yeah. Wow. Where was that?
13:28Is that? Ah, geez, I forgot. Yeah. So you just go right back to what you were doing. And you do it
13:34again. Yeah, that's the first game. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. So of course, they're going to be
13:43down for that. You're describing the first game. I know that. That's my whole point. Do it again.
13:48People buy Call of Duty every year. They'd buy this too.
13:53Actually doing here. And that's really because they've played their cards like openly for everyone
14:00to see. It's bloody obvious. And well, they're not the sort that we should trust. Even if sometimes
14:07they'll say words that we agree with. Let me explain why. Reading AJ's letter, the one thing
14:12that will strike you is that it's dramatic, right? Ubisoft are keeping secrets. Shareholders are going
14:18to protest. Lawsuits are coming. That is all a mode of spicy stuff. And it is spicy. It's kind
14:24of fun to talk about. But here's the thing with that. We've been watching this story since it
14:29began and it began last year. Yeah. What this letter is, because if you only see a little
14:33fragment here or there, you won't have a real full picture of the story. What this is, is just
14:37another play in a war game that's been going on for a while. The first letter actually came last
14:42year from AJ Investments. I watched this whenever, I remember covering this when it happened.
14:47And this open letter blamed Ubisoft management for everything wrong with the company. And in
14:51fairness, a hell of a lot of blame does rest with them. But why was this new open letter released to
14:59IGN first? That's no slight, of course, to IGN's news department. All they're doing is they're
15:05trying to position themselves in a way that will pressure the company publicly in order to change
15:10what they're doing and change their leadership so they can probably get more stock and control
15:13of the company. That's the reason why it's obvious. Now, sometimes you can be doing that
15:18for a good reason, but that's exactly what's being what's being done. But the whole letter,
15:23I mean, it's a shareholder letter. It's corporate talk. Why are you giving that to the world's most
15:28read gaming site for gamers instead of, say, the trade press? They want me to react to it.
15:36That's the reason why. They just want, yeah, they want an Aspen Gold react video, obviously.
15:41I mean, if the intent is to actually get shareholders and investors to protest with them,
15:46that does seem kind of counterintuitive. You would not go to IGN if that was your goal.
15:51What you would go to IGN for is to get public eyeballs on the situation. Eyeballs that are,
15:56of course, part of gaming brains who generally are pretty frustrated with Ubisoft, but not
16:03really people who will be thinking about who AJ Investments are, who might think,
16:07oh, look at that. Even the shareholders are turning against them. Damn, those shareholders
16:11are our bros. Oh no. Like, look, the headlines. I mean, we just got to laugh at Ubisoft. It gets
16:17the headlines trending. Here's the thing. Investment firms generally don't care too
16:22much about the detail of why gamers are mad. They just want to harness you and further their own
16:28game and their game. I think that's fine, by the way. I don't I don't need you to care about
16:34my feelings. Just make a good game and that's it. We don't need to be best friends. We don't
16:41need to be in a relationship. We just need to. Yeah. All I want is for them to make the game
16:48good. That's it. Just make good games. Use them. Yeah. We use them and they use us. And this is
16:55a perfectly great relationship. Let's not rock the boat. That's right. To put more and more
17:02pressure on Ubisoft. So if Muse sparks because of their open letter sent to IGN, which it absolutely
17:08has, then that does further their pressure on Ubisoft to capitulate to their demands.
17:14They don't actually need to do a protest or a lawsuit to accomplish that. Yeah. Just need to
17:20harness public relations against Ubisoft. That's right. Now, what about the meat of their letter?
17:25Right. That Ubisoft are meeting other companies. That's a lot of secret and spooky stuff. Well,
17:31it is newsworthy, right? Yeah. OK. Them talking to talking to these companies like EA. That is
17:36newsworthy. But it's also exactly what Ubisoft promised they would do, which was to, again,
17:43quote Ubisoft, which is smart. That's what they should be doing, obviously. Right. Yeah, of course.
17:48Strategic and capitalistic options. And to kind of cut through business speak, that basically just
17:52means layoffs, closures and possible sale options. And so far we've seen layoffs. I think they might
17:59have to sell off some of their IPs or split the company or do something really big because I just
18:04can't see how like how you can have such a big company lose 80 percent of your value and then
18:09release kind of a mid game or like slightly above mid game. And then suddenly now everybody is
18:15supposed to be OK with it. I just don't see that happen, man. Yeah, I don't. They have 13000
18:23employees. Well, the problem and I think this is also another big issue that Ubisoft has had
18:28is that they've tried to release too many games. It's like. Stop doing that. You're making too
18:37many games. You can't release a new triple A game every single year and maintain a high level of
18:43quality, says you. Yes, exactly, says me. Yes, no. Yes, there's too many mid games. It is better to
18:51focus entirely on making one really, really good game than make a bunch of different games,
18:58diminish the brand value and then hope that one of them pops off through some sort of like viral
19:04Internet marketing campaign. It's just not what's going to happen. Yeah, it's like you can't just.
19:12Well, if we sell one game and we get $10, we can sell five games and we get $50 and we sell
19:1810 games and we get $100. Oh, my God, let's make 20 games. We'll make $200. You can't do that. Like
19:24you're going to hit market saturation at a certain point. And I think that they have. And it's also
19:30the amount of bandwidth that the leadership has, because fundamentally, leadership is still is now
19:36being spread across so many different things. You can't do that like it's not how things work.
19:44In closures, they're set up to fail. Possible sale options is, well, not really surprising
19:50because they literally said they would do that. And when you actually read Ubisoft statement,
19:54they say that when there is a transaction, the market will be told. And you may then think,
19:58why would why would you be secret about that? Why would you not announce talks? Well,
20:03insider trading or a deal falls through. Yeah, I can really hurt you as a company.
20:08Just ask the embracer group. Yeah, they don't want to talk about this before it's settled,
20:12because if they do, then you're going to have a lot of market speculation one way or another,
20:16and it could make the company look bad if it doesn't happen or it could make the company
20:20look bad if it does happen. So they want to save that until it's actually a defined entity.
20:25I think that makes perfect sense. Well, that went for them. So given the risk,
20:31why would investors want Ubisoft to talk specifically these investors, AJ Investments?
20:37That's pretty obvious. Rumors of a deal will shoot the price up. This quite literally happened
20:44for short term investors. That is the business model. And you don't even need to take it from me.
20:48We can just read AJ's own website. Quote, AJ Investments take advantage of events and take
20:55such steps that will help correct and optimize the running of companies. Basically, they capitalize
21:01on a problem. They force any solution that raises a short term stock price, and then they profit.
21:06Yeah, of course. They don't so much care about the long term when they say, save the company.
21:11As an example, they only started their position in Ubisoft a few weeks before they published their
21:18first open letter. Prior to that, they were actually long term shareholders of Activision.
21:23It does seem like it's very obvious, advantageous. I mean, they're not necessarily good actors,
21:29but at the same time, you can agree with people that are bad actors,
21:33but you can still acknowledge, yeah, they are bad actors too.
21:37Which obviously worked out fairly well for them in the end. But in this case, right, their letter,
21:42their pressure did kind of work. Ubisoft studio closures on layoffs in the last few months
21:48happened at least in part because of that pressure. And now the stock price is somewhat
21:53rising up again, but not just because of this letter. In fact, it's because Ubisoft might
21:59actually be close to a deal. What if I told you we might actually have Ubisoft too? I'm not shitting
22:04you. I think that it's going to happen. I do. Yeah, I think it's going to happen. Just too many
22:16L's. The best thing that Ubisoft could do is take half of the company. Okay. Let me think about how
22:24this would work. So what are the big Ubisoft IPs? Give me like the top three biggest Ubisoft IPs.
22:31Okay. Assassin's Creed. Okay. Sell Assassin's Creed to either Saudi Arabia or to China.
22:41Sell Prince of Persia to Saudi Arabia. Sell Far Cry to probably also China.
22:51Sell Splinter Cell to, I don't know, probably also China. Rainbow Six Siege, sell that to China. Okay.
23:01A lot of these would go to China. Persia is not in Arabia. I know, but it's the same type of vibe,
23:06right? Like, I mean, I think I'm not saying it's the exact same thing. My point is that I think
23:10they could make a really good fucking version of it. It'd be good. That's it. A new company created
23:16by Ubisoft that will include quote, some of Ubisoft's IP like Assassin's Creed. That is
23:21apparently something that could actually exist. That is looking for minority investors. That's
23:26what they need to do. This is according to Bloomberg's reporting. What it would essentially
23:30be is a lifeboat to save the company and maybe save management as well. Now, apparently offers
23:35are being made to Tencent as well as various investment funds and preliminary bidding is
23:41actually being sought this very month. Now, obviously, right, this is all stuff that's not
23:46settled yet. It is open to change, but it does in fact align with Bloomberg's previous reporting.
23:51Bloomberg back in January claimed that Tencent and Ubisoft were in talks to establish quote,
23:56a new venture where the Gilmos would be backed by Tencent. Of course, the Gilmos are already backed
24:02by Tencent. A whole bunch of the Gilmos control over Ubisoft is actually via a company that's
24:06called like, I think it's Gilmo Brothers Limited or whatever, where basically the Gilmo Brothers
24:11Company is like a joint venture or whatever with Tencent. It's crazy how many roach things that
24:19people do in like business in order to like obfuscate who owns what. Like, and it becomes
24:27immediately evident that the reason why this is is because the people that are inventing these
24:32roach solutions are the ones that are paying the government to add in little holes so the
24:38roaches can go in and out of the halls. That's it. I hate that. Yes. So it's a complete it's
24:45a roach economy. Zero accountability. I don't know about zero accountability, but it's just
24:52harder to see what what is what. So suffice to say, the boys at Tencent have got a decent
24:58leverage on the company. I mean, if you want me to be totally honest, I do not want to deal
25:02with video game development. I don't I don't want to manage video games at all. I would manage like
25:08I'm not passionate about making video games. I am passionate about maybe media, but not making I
25:16just I just not like it's just not something like it's weird, right? Because I play video
25:22games. I've always played video games my whole life. I'm one of those weird people, maybe that
25:26I never thought, oh, I'm going to grow up. I'm going to make video games. I always wanted to
25:30grow up and just collect money from the government and play video games. Mission accomplished, by the
25:36way. But other than that, yeah, that was it. That's not weird. Yeah, it's insanely difficult
25:42to make video games. Yeah, but it's insanely difficult to do a lot of things and kids still
25:45want to do that. Yeah, that was it. For the Gilmos, I think it's fair to say. Anyway, what's
25:51maybe more curious here is that Bloomberg are reporting that Ubisoft may, and this is a quote,
25:56seek evaluation for the yet to be formed IP unit that is higher than the size of the main
26:02companies. So let that sink in. A unit of Ubisoft being worth more than Ubisoft. How can that make
26:09sense? Well, honestly, it's actually extremely simple efficiency. If you take one unit of
26:15Ubisoft and take it away, that's true. I mean, apparently they have 13,000 employees and this
26:20goes back to what I was saying earlier. It's like if you have a game and the credits for this game
26:27are two hours long. Dare I say it? You might have a little bit too many people working on the game.
26:40Maybe it's just a little bit too much, but then you look, you know, it's a little bit bloated.
26:45Yeah, just like, wow. Like, and keep in mind the Concord credits were like an hour or an
26:53hour and a half and everybody was joking about that, about how bad it was. Ubisoft said,
26:59hole up, I can do that better. And they did. Good Ubisoft and you sort of two hour credits,
27:05lots of bits of Ubisoft are actually of a negative value. Yeah, of course it actually
27:10makes a lot of sense that this sniped away thing, this, uh, you know, scalped away thing.
27:14Well, this looks like, this is like the Chinese or like the third world version of Valorant that
27:24like you buy guns with real money that do more damage. Like it's only on mobile and it's called
27:31like firefight warriors. Really? Like, like this, this looks awful.
27:41Actually have a higher valuation, right? For bullet. Yeah. Shooter shooters. Yeah. Developer
27:47headcount, but actually an intellectual property, a bit of a smaller, more focused company that
27:52cares about a few IPs is likely going to be seen as a better investment. And honestly,
27:56I think it's pretty obvious why, when you take a look at the games industry. So if this is to
28:00happen and there is, yeah, the IPs have a lot of intrinsic value, but the company structure
28:05clearly does not. Like I've said this before, that like my dream is that Nintendo will have
28:12from software and make a legend of Zelda game. Like I'm not like tears of the kingdom breath
28:18of the wild. It's like, Oh, this is nice, I guess. But I want twilight princess. I want
28:25Ocarina of time. I want Majora's mask. I want link to the past. I want that
28:28plus elven ring. That's what I want. OBP. Yeah. And so the IP has a lot of value.
28:37Have you played them? No, I haven't. I'm talking about the style.
28:42You know, good reporting from Bloomberg that it is something that's being investigated.
28:46How would it happen? Well, broadly there's two ways that could go down. Number one,
28:49the new company would just hold the IP with really no developers. So it would control the
28:54IP for minimal cost. It would then license that IP back to the original Ubisoft entity,
28:59which would then be doing the development. The new IP holding entity would have lower fixed costs,
29:04less risk, and its investors would have more control, which gives them a real good incentive
29:09to buy in. It's basically saying, Hey, do you want a slice of Assassin's Creed and the crew?
29:15And you know, all these big, good things and not any of that other junk that could be pretty good.
29:19It's actually crazy that they're doing this, that they're basically saying like we give up
29:23on making the games. We're just going to own the IPs and register and run the IPs instead.
29:29Like this is basically admitting defeat. For them. There is of course another way. You just
29:35do a split in terms of development and intellectual property. You could perhaps
29:39imagine one side taking the smaller yet beloved properties like Rayman, Trackmania, and Anno.
29:44Somebody says the problem is when the layoffs hit, they're laying off seniors and good people.
29:48When Ubisoft layoffs happen, the people who ruined Assassin's Creed will stay at the company.
29:52You bring up a really great point. And I think what you're saying is true. And that's why I always
29:57say, like, if you really want to see change happen, look at C-suite accountability. If you do that,
30:05things change instantaneously. We should not fire any people ever. I don't, I don't think that's
30:13what he's saying. I just think that he's saying that it's, it's disappointing that in a case where
30:19the reality is in a lot of these, these like, uh, you know, these companies, like, yeah,
30:25you're going to have bad people all the way down for sure. But like, really the heads that should
30:30roll are the decision makers. That's why they get paid a bunch of money. They get paid like
30:36millions of dollars in stock options because of that accountability.
30:40One side taking the smaller yet beloved properties like Rayman, Trackmania, and Anno,
30:45and maybe the other side taking the big AAAs, your Rainbows, Assassin's Creed, the crew,
30:49all that stuff. I don't want to make it like political, right? But it's like, you saw this
30:54with Joe Biden. It's like how many border crossings were last year versus this year in
30:59February? It was one. It was like 35,000. It changed to one. At the end of the day,
31:05leadership does matter and having leadership that puts a priority on certain things, that will
31:11change the direction of the company. It absolutely will. And I think that leadership bears the most
31:16responsibility and also the fault. That's it. It's all the difference. Yes. All the difference.
31:23It was like 70K plus. Yeah. Imagine being that one guy on stoppable. He got away with it.
31:31Imagine being that one guy on stoppable. He got away. In theory, both sides of the business could
31:37here be more efficient and be more focused. Now, there is a problem that efficiency is a fine idea
31:43on paper. And the other side of this is, yes, there are all of these rational arguments,
31:47but you could perhaps also say this would work per the goals of the Gilmo family,
31:53who would be using something like this to basically retain control of Ubisoft and solve
31:58their current predicament. Well, yeah, of course. I mean, you're licensing out the IP.
32:03You fire like 90% of the employees and all you're doing is running a skeleton operation where you're
32:11just basically selling the thing that you already had to people to do it better than you can.
32:15I mean, I feel like if I were them, that's a huge W for me. Yeah, that's a massive fucking W.
32:23Of course, the problem there, the thing with efficiency is that it's fine
32:26on paper, not necessarily reality. Here's the rub for today. Assassin's Creed saving the company
32:31does not mean better games for you. Okay. How many games does Ubisoft make that are more efficient
32:37for investors on release than just putting your money on the stock market, right? Like in the S
32:43and P 500. Well, the answer basically is most of Ubisoft games aren't really worth it. Ubisoft
32:50games are really good if you want to take $100 and turn it into $20. If you have $100 and you
32:57want to turn that into 10, maybe $20, Ubisoft is a really good place for you to start. But,
33:04you know, for people that want to make money, probably not.
33:09So just throwing your money in the stock market. Does the game cost 80 bucks?
33:12Yeah, that's the reason.
33:13Siege is worth it. Brawlhalla is worth it. Some of their other sort of live service-y sleeper
33:17hits are probably worth it as well. But just about everything else, those are risks. They're
33:22taking up resources.
33:24Well, it's also like these other games like Brawlhalla and these are very small games.
33:30Like, it's nice to have a good game that has a small audience that's well-designed and people
33:36enjoy it. But the problem is that that isn't necessarily going to justify 13,000 employees.
33:46The fact is that if you have a company of over 10,000 people and you make video games,
33:50you need to be making the Lord of the Rings of video games. That's it.
33:57You'll be going to making fair money on guaranteed profitable games.
34:01Blizzard used to do it.
34:02So efficient for Ubisoft to produce. Prince of Persia, The Lost Crown, right? Under pure
34:08market theory, that game was a bad investment. It was a waste of time. None of this is about
34:14the quality of the games that are being made. A.J. Investments may say-
34:17Well, it's about, the thing is that I agree half with what Belier is saying and not with the other
34:22half, is that the quality of the game, I think also has to deal with the delivery method of the
34:28game. Like, for example, taking the character and then giving him that like, you know, super
34:33generic Killmonger haircut, and then making the narrative of the story that's just like
34:39paneling and it's not actually animations, and also selling it at such a high price in a
34:44metroidvania genre where the average price is $20, you went into a market, you didn't advertise the
34:50game very well, you're selling it way above market cost, and you're making it in a way that's not
34:57really resonating with the audience, you're fucking up. Like, that's really just, it's a
35:04marketing department L, right? Whoever decided the production and distribution for this game
35:09should be fucking fired, because they totally messed it up. The game was fine, but if you
35:14design it this way and you make a game this way, you need to have and you need to fit inside of
35:19the market expectations, and that's not what they did. Fucking up on like multiple points, exactly.
35:24And so you see a lot of games, like I think Assassin's Creed Shadows is kind of the same
35:28thing, is that if they had never used this like argument to authority of like Yasuke, he's real,
35:34he's a real samurai racist, like if they never used that type of messaging, I'm not saying they
35:40said that directly, but they clearly implied it, and they clearly went in that direction.
35:45If they had never done that, they would have never had this problem. It would have never happened.
35:50And so the problem is that at the very highest level, decisions are being made that are stupid.
36:00Stupid decisions are being made, and because of that, the games suffer. That's what it comes
36:06down to. That's what really matters. And like, if I look at like Assassin's Creed, for example,
36:13the combat is very one-dimensional, it's bad, but like everything in the game generally works.
36:19It looks good, etc. Right? What that tells me is that the people that are working on the game at
36:26a baseline, those people know what they're doing, and they're good at their job. To an extent,
36:33right? At least to enough extent, because they're following directions. But the people that are
36:37deciding the big picture ideas for the game, they're the ones that are totally wrong. They're
36:43the ones that are making bad decisions constantly. And that's the big problem. I wouldn't even call
36:50it bad, it's just mid. Yeah, the combat, I would say for an action combat game, I think it's below
36:55mid. But I mean, that's my opinion. The combat department needs to be changed. Yeah, but like
37:02what I'm saying is that like, I think that a lot of Ubisoft's, and I'll give you the best example
37:08and the best frame of reference for this, then I want to continue the video. It's almost over.
37:12Is that the guy, the CEO of the company was like confused, the reason why his video games aren't
37:21selling very well, but they review so well. Well, why are these games reviewing so well,
37:26but they're not selling well? Well, it's because they're not reviewing well. You're listening to
37:31a handful of retards that are, you know, journalists about these video games, and not your actual
37:38customers. I think that just by itself is the biggest self-report you can possibly have.
37:45How do you self-report that hard, that you're focusing off of that?
37:52They want that, they may say that and try to harness your anger to put on more pressure,
37:56but at the end of the day, we know that they were pissed about the delays to Assassin's Creed
38:01Shadows. And whether you want that game to succeed or not, game companies delaying their game so
38:07that they can have more polished releases is almost universally a good thing for the customer.
38:12It is. So if Ubisoft were forced to sell off half their intellectual property to the highest bidder,
38:16while throwing pink slips at thousands of developers and doing all of these short-term
38:19things and, you know, pursuing getting that stock price up ASAP, but not necessarily at
38:25long-term value, long-term quality, will that be good for the games? I would not necessarily think
38:31so, especially since this is the type of the investor who is anti-delay, even though the
38:36likes of Star Wars Outlaws clearly tell us those delays are off. I'm gonna be honest, it can't get
38:41worse. Fuck it, send it to China. Maybe they can do something right with it. They didn't fuck up
38:49Wukong. Seems like they're not fucking up a number of other games. I mean, you might as well.
38:56It can get worse. Not really though, right?
38:59...to need it. So regardless of how well Assassin's Creed Shadow sells, expect them to do more things,
39:05to drum up more headlines, to try and get a bit more leverage, a bit more control,
39:10and turn that pressure into something that they can profit off. Meanwhile though, on the Gilmo front,
39:15well, they might be trying to restructure Ubisoft, doing something with Tencent and potential other
39:20suitors to get around this problem. Will that be good for the actual games? I don't necessarily
39:26think so. I think that anything that involves a leadership change will be a net positive.
39:32If you want to use another D&D analogy, I think that their leadership is a five. It's, by the way,
39:39this is not a six-sided dice. It's a 20-sided dice. D&D dice. Do you re-roll a five? Yeah, you do.
39:49You re-roll a five. I think that, yeah, they should re-roll it.
39:57So at least it basically means, who knows if Assassin's Creed Shadows is going to be
40:01some amazing banger or terrible failure, whatever it is. At least what I can say,
40:07with a good degree of surety, is that it does make for a pretty damn good episode of corporate drama.
40:14We could at least enjoy that. Okay, I'll see you when there's a new update to this story.
40:19I think this is so funny. Once we know how the game launch is actually shaken out.
40:23Till then though, do you want more drama? Corporate drama? Well, I'll link it to you guys.
40:27This is a good video from Belior. I pretty much agree with everything that he said,
40:31except for like maybe a couple of things. I think that Ubisoft, here's what's really fucked up.
40:37The gameplay in a lot of these Ubisoft games, aside from like the stealth gameplay,
40:42like the Prince of Persia combat on a fundamental level, like the Lost Crown,
40:46and the Assassin's Creed combat feels relatively good. Like it's not bad combat, but the big
40:53problem is that the leadership and the way that the games are delivered and the way they're marketed
40:58and like big picture design decisions are bad. And when you think about that, I'm looking at it
41:05from the perspective of like, if I'm just a grunt and like my job is to just program things to look
41:11good and to feel good to play, I'm doing my job. And I think it sucks that if they do this
41:19restructuring, that all of those people that do good work, all of those people are going to probably
41:24be let go, or at least the majority of them. Yeah, it sucks. Combat's way too rigid. I mean,
41:32I think it's okay, right? It's not, it's not amazing, but like, it's okay.
41:36Yeah, once you get a gaunt, you realize how bad the, once you get, oh, if I play,
41:40as soon as I play Ghost of Tsushima, yeah, I mean, maybe you're right. I mean, that's the thing.
41:44There's a very good chance that if I play the game and like, I see these other games are like,
41:49way fucking better than, you know, sure, that maybe could happen. But I do think that in a
41:55general sense, the big problem of what happened is that I think a lot of Western game studios have
42:04totally lost their focus and they don't understand at all about like what, what should or shouldn't
42:12happen in the game anymore and what should or shouldn't be in the game anymore at all.
42:17And I think that's really the big weakness that a lot of these, these development studios have
42:22is that they don't have a focus in a way that is meaningful and that matters. Western games
42:29Western games are just DEI instead of a good game. Yeah. I unironically like, and I know this might
42:34get me in trouble, but I unironically think that the over fixation on DEI representation,
42:41and I think hiring based off of that too, because like, here's the way I see it.
42:47Like I view diversity as something that usually naturally occurs whenever you engage in an
42:52international market, like, you know, or, or a widespread market. Like if you have a company
42:58that lives, that's only in Japan, you're going to have only really Japanese people. They're going to
43:01play that game, right. But, or work at that company. But if you're talking about like an
43:06international thing and think about it with streaming, right. For example, like if you pull
43:10up, like, let me go back. I'll pull up a Twitch tracker. So let's just look at, we'll look at
43:16channels here. So Kai, all of these people, me, Keso, Kedrel, like Loud Koringa, Jengsi, Hassan,
43:25like this, I think he's this Japanese guy. If you look at all these people, there is a tremendous
43:30amount of diversity here. It is completely multicultural. It is multiracial. It is all guys.
43:40But other than that, it's all different people. Right. And that's the thing. And so my point is
43:47no women. Well, yeah, because it's a male dominated platform. Like that's really the reason why.
43:52And so if you look at this, like there's tons of different people, tons of different races of
43:56people. So I look at diversity as something that if you provide an even playing field,
44:01diversity will happen naturally. But when you're hiring based off of diversity and you're hiring
44:06based off of diversity based goals, what's going to end up happening is you're going to end up
44:12hiring people that are not the best fit. Because that's the reason that's like, if, if this was
44:18happening naturally and you were hiring people that were the best fit, you wouldn't need these
44:23goals in the first place in order to keep things on these rails. So the only reason why you have
44:28these goals is so you can artificially add these people into the ecosystem while at the same time,
44:34not taking the person that you would have naturally taken that would have been maybe a
44:37better fit for the company, maybe a better employee or something like that. And so merit
44:42needs to be the only focus that you have. And I think that when you have a merit based and this
44:47is the point that I was making is when you have a merit based system like Twitch, nobody, nobody
44:53gets a career given to them on Twitch. People decide like there are people that get hosted
44:58every single day, and they don't get any viewers, etc. You have a massively diverse group of people,
45:05whenever you open things up to anybody can do this. And if you look at, for example,
45:10like the guys that work at x like a Twitter, you're going to see the exact same thing.
45:15It's subjective. No, it's not. I think the truth is that it's the same with the Olympics. Like you
45:21see people all over around the world that are successful in the Olympics. Like I am not a
45:26diversity disliker. I am a forced diversity disliker, because I think that it's counterproductive.
45:32I think diversity happens naturally. Like if you just look at and again, you just look at like
45:36pictures of me and like videos of me whenever I was in high school or like, you know, I don't
45:40really have a few from middle school, right? Like our college, you'll see that like I have tons of
45:44friends that are of all different nationalities, all different races, religions, everything, right?
45:49Because it's just normal. Like, like, like growing up online. That was the default. That was what was
45:56normal. And like having a racially homogenous group is what wasn't. And so easy public school.
46:03Exactly. What happens if it's just a normal black woman, though, then it's called randomly
46:08for no reason. Well, that's stupid.
46:11Like, so what? Like, I mean, do I have to play defense for somebody who I don't even agree with?
46:15I don't think that's true. I think that's dumb. So, yeah, it's like, yes, obviously. And just
46:23real quick. I do agree with you that the amount of calls for everything is DEI nowadays.
46:30It is exhausting. I think that you're right. But the truth is that that is a very, very
46:37small group of annoying people. And the fact is also like, I'll say this as well. A lot of the
46:42guys that are doing that are joking around. They are. They're joking around like most of
46:48the people in my chat are like, oh, yeah, you know, it's like, OK, it's a black person, DEI
46:52or a girl. It's DEI. It's a joke. Now, I'm not saying that it's a great joke or it's you know,
46:57this is the pinnacle of comedy or anything, but they're not doing it in a serious manner.
47:02At least a lot of them aren't. Now, some of them definitely are, though.
47:06That being said, the point that I was trying to get at here is that I think that when you
47:11have Western game studios and this is especially true with American game studios because European
47:16game studios somehow are less affected by this rot. You have American game studios,
47:24particularly American game studios, that have a hyper fixation around creating video games
47:30that act as a metaphor or a reinforcement mechanism of their worldview. This is a very
47:38reductive way to make a video game. And it's also something that a lot of people don't agree with.
47:44And the problem isn't even that they're doing it. The problem is that they're doing it and
47:48nobody agrees with what they're doing. The fact is that a lot of these ideologies are not very
47:54popular. They're not. They're not that great. And it's not that popular to hear about like,
48:00you know, the non-binary thing with what was it? Dragon Age of the Valeguard. That is simply not a
48:08well-understood thing that average people can relate to.
48:12And that's the point that I think a lot of people don't understand.