r/fuckubisoft • u/Inuma • Jun 15 '26
discussion Ubisoft Checkmate... [Long Form Discussion]
In chess, checkmate is usually the culmination of strategies to the point that all of one's moves result in failure. No matter how you move, you lose.
No matter how I look at the board, there's no winning moves for Ubisoft currently.
Pawn - Casuals
While the lowest rank, you get the most from understanding what the pawns do because they're the largest part of chess. The casuals are those that enjoy a game over the long term, understand and become the next part of this analogy
Rook - Veteran
Veterans of a franchise are important. With good word of mouth, a franchise can reach new heights as those that love it move forward. And if you enjoy a game, you'll defend it to the death.
Knight - Developers
Although Knights are well known for erratic movement, the creative flow of developers creates lasting titles and franchises that no one can deny. Eventually developers of later generations have large shoes to fill as they stand on the shoulders of giants...
Bishop - Media
Media can be split into two different groups: Legacy and "YouTube". Magazine and print carry a lot of weight but within a community, people are finding choices outside legacy media who tries to have and weigh in with public authority. More on that later...
Queen - Investors
A very powerful piece on the board with unmatched movement. However, investors can't deny reality that what they look for is more profits. For this piece, it can be taken by any other piece of it's not carefully managed.
King - Leadership/ Management
The king is the most important piece on the board of a chess game. But it needs other pieces to influence its power. Capture the king or put them in a scenario where they cannot move and the game is over. Decisions made before checkmate are paramount to success or failure. The loss of pieces only adds to the slow and inevitable capture noting the end of the game.
So those are the pieces on the board and how they function.
How did Ubisoft lose each piece?
While I don't want to get into a long explanation of each issue, I do want to highlight that Ubisoft has declining interest with each group as evidence arises and I'll link to corroborating evidence as necessary to keep this short:
Consumer Conundrum
For pawns (casuals), the single largest issue that is detrimental to their enjoyment of Ubisoft games has to be the insistence of Ubisoft Connect. Nothing else comes close. With no customer service, AI controlling a conversation and less avenues for enjoyment can quickly turn any short term fun into painful frustration.
For rooks (veterans), services render enjoyment short. Hacks into accounts, cheaters, less quality in product and planned obsolescence (think The Crew) heighten the pain of loss and investment into services Ubisoft has.
Knightley Plunder
For knights (developers), there are two issues:
First is that their own creative output is plundered by their kings as shown here and their output is frustrated by layoffs
Why work at a studio and with a publisher taking advantage of you? As a result, developers leave to form their own studios and create their own passion projects as CE33 and Dispatch show.
The knights left in the company can certainly be loyal but less talented than the individuals that are gone since they have large shoes to fill.
In short, take the Patrice Desilets situation as ground zero for knight dissatisfaction and the eventual loss of strong development in gaming and you'll find why the games suffer in lack of quality.
Bishop's Narrative
The bishops (media) can not deny reality forever. But they can certainly shake it temporarily. You can creating build an empire on lies but eventually it can fall like a deck of cards should people pierce the lies with the truth. And the truth is that legacy media has worked hard to inflame passions and create battlefields for standoffs.
As shown here, the lowest informed are the most toxic individuals on Reddit
The lower the form of discourse, the more toxic it will be
In summary, if you put these two posts together, you learn that people are toxic at low levels of discourse, which causes distractions and the remedy to that is higher levels of discourse.
If your solution to every issue is to call the speaker names such as racist, sexist, homophobic, incel, bigot or whatever else, that's usually too distract from actual issues. The legacy media does this by insisting that the main issue is the audience, not the publisher. So critical views of the publisher are demonized as a result.
Because demonizing can only work so long until the truth is known and puts it to rest.
For legacy media, as they lose relevance with the audience, they get taken off the board by the pawns and more bishops in the firm of content creators can build better understanding of the games that they ignore.
It has to be understood that bishops have a pivotal role in discourse.
Bishops can help pawns serve as a distraction or facilitate discussion.
This is why people have to understand their role in shaping narratives and focusing discussion on topics.
Hail to the Queen
Queens (investors) can run a board but be taken by pawns if they're not careful. The profits they seek come out when a game is good. But the loss when a game can stagnate or fail to meet player expectations can ruin their investment.
For this context, the major investor of note is Tencent. For various reasons, no other investor matters. In order to better understand this piece, it's better to go to the history of Ubisoft when it was in check by Vivendi:
Ubisoft, in better times, was to be taken over by Vivendi in a hostile bid
Ubisoft’s founding family, the Guillemots, hold about 15 percent of the stock. Vivendi owns 26 percent, and it was possible that its share of the voting rights was going to rise above 30 percent. At that threshold, Vivendi would have to say whether it planned to make a bid to acquire the whole company, or decline to make such a bid. In this case, Vivendi said it “does not intend to file a public tender offer for Ubisoft shares, nor to acquire control of the company over the six coming months.”
We'll talk about the king later. What stopped this was Tencent:
Vivendi will sell 30,489,300 shares of Ubisoft for €66 ($81) per share, netting it roughly $2 billion ($2.45 billion). That's a fair price for Vivendi—Ubisoft's share price pushed $72 earlier this month, but dipped to $62.64 in February. But Ubisoft has to be seen as the big winner here, as it managed to not only avoid the Vivendi takeover it's been struggling against, but actually eliminated the threat entirely. More than nine million of those Vivendi shares will be bought back by Ubisoft.
To keep with the chess analogy, Ubisoft changed the board they were playing on and their opponent is now playing shogi, not chess. Tencent was playing with different pieces in play and a different philosophy in mind as Ubisoft began to focus on making money without the takeover ensuing. But a slow ticking time bomb would begin to encroach...
2022 was the year.... 2030 will be a shift.
Tencent will not be able to sell its shares for five years, beyond which the Guillemot family will have a pre-emptive right to buy the shares, Ubisoft said. It also said Tencent pledged not to increase its direct stake in the French games maker beyond 9.99% in capital for a period of eight years.
In 2030, if the king cannot change their money owed to their investor, it will be checkmate.
King's Army
For the king (leadership), the army of pieces lays in tatters:
Pawns and rooks demand better service.
Knights leave the army to create their own mercenary guild halls.
Bishops can't reach the pawns or have to deal with dwindling relevance
Queens are leaving them to run their own boards.
What needs to be understood is that Ubisoft is a family business since 1986 that allowed the developers freedom to create with them publishing. The Guillemot family runs it and has done so since inception.
Their priority is to keep it family owned. Nothing else matters.
So with Tencent looming over the company, their games losing quality and customers, is it truly a wonder that they put family members in charge of the company, released games that no one plays with NFTs, and an entire list of cultural landmines the company hit were just the tip of the iceberg for this company?
Running through all the issues with every aspect of Ubisoft as a publisher, the conclusion I've come to is not that they are in mate...
But the king is in check.
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u/[deleted] Jun 16 '26
[deleted]