Ubisoft is REELING heading into the first weekend, post-Assassin's Creed shadows launch, and its stock has taken a brutal hit following. After months (if not years) of marketing hype and controversy, the reality is setting in: this wasn’t the comeback Ubisoft was hoping for... at all.
The stock's dropped over 7% in a single day, with the week-long slump pushing the total loss closer to upwards of 10%—a staggering decline to put it nicely... one that signals investors are losing faith fast.
Despite the cheery tone plastered across the official Assassin’s Creed X account, claiming everything’s just hunky dory, the real story happening here is told through hard data. The developers and PR teams are celebrating “over 1 million players” and touting the game as the # 1 seller on Steam—but these EXTYREMELY carefully framed talking points are more smoke and mirrors than genuine success.
It feels like an entire team of lawyers went through the posts with a fine tooth comb. Ubisoft doesn’t mention how many of those players are from free bundles, Game Pass, or promotional deals. I also found it comical how they say "it's not even 4pm here in Canada" as if Canada has only one timezone for the entire country... But that's neither here nor there... but funny enough to give a mention lol...
“Players” doesn’t mean “sales,” and Steam’s top-seller list ranks by revenue, not by units sold. So saying "Players" here is ultimately meaningless in the grand scheme. A scheme investors cleary saw right through all of it... Because no major competitors launched on Steam that week, topping the chart was more of a 'default' kind of victory than a meaningful win. Hypnotic put it best in his response to the Official Assassin's Creed UK account, and has since completely ratioed them. YIKES...
Worse yet, SteamDB numbers tell a much darker side of the Afro-Samurai tale. For a title that reportedly cost hundreds of millions of dollars to develop, the concurrent player counts are underwhelming, to say the least... especially when compared to other major AAA releases. The steep price tag and bloated development timeline were supposed to lead to a blockbuster. Instead, Ubisoft now finds itself in an over 2-hour long post game credits role, while simultaneously publicly pretending all is well ...while the real numbers scream otherwise.
I’ve talked before about how Ubisoft is shifting gears behind the scenes—positioning itself as a video game entity, not just a developer, and building deeper partnerships with mega-corpos like Tencent. The vision was clear: a more global, DEI-centric Ubisoft that could serve as a bridge for other companies pushing the same agenda. But Assassin’s Creed Shadows may have just blown up that entire plan wide open... before it could even had even begun.
Many fans and content creators were already skeptical heading in after seeing trailers of a game filled to the brim with DEI-approved characters, self-inserts, and the historical rewriting of Yasuke’s role in feudal Japan. Much of which rubbed a lot of folks the wrong way. What was once a grounded franchise rooted in stealth and immersive world-building has turned into yet another checkbox-heavy narrative experiment that one main protaganist has literally NOTHING at all to do with being stealthy. And now, with stock crashing and fan trust eroding even more, Ubisoft is staring down a future they can no longer ignore. But in the meantime, sure, keep giving money to sponsor Hasan on the way down. It lines up perfectly with the ideologies being pushed from corporate anyways...
But in all seriousness... Change has to happen. And FAST.
This week’s financial fallout proves Ubisoft can’t possibly continue on this path any further. The numbers don’t lie, and the excuses won’t hold. The only question now is: will Ubisoft course-correct before it’s too late?
As usual... I'm not going to hold my breath.
~Smash
I'm curious, while Yasuke is obviously a Cultural Marxist concoction, how much of a Feminist Girlboss is Naoe? I would be shocked if she wasn't, but too many of those supposedly against woke ideology have a major blindspot where THAT narrative is concerned.
I mean, Kingdom Come Deliverance II's main male character gets Raped in the game and has to apologize for it. Yet almost no one remarks on that. If the Sexes were reversed, the screams of outrage would be gargantuan.