Ex-Ubisoft employee speaking out about the company.

[handymanshandle]

I like Ubisoft because it's French but if indeed this story is true perhaps the employees should work on getting the CEO replaced.

[Suika]

I was in a meeting personally with yves guillemot, who said that he doesn't care about PC gamers because, and i quote "90% are pirates anyway"

Somebody doesn't know how to run a business.

These kinds of statements make me wonder, how in the hell do people this stupid get into such a position of power? Can they not take the time and effort to actually study, or higher somebody to study these sort of things to make sure you don't come across as uneducated and foolish (the perfect way to represent Ubi)?

If Valve manages to hit riches from PC gaming without having to call out or blame piracy for any losses, I'm sure others can too. Or Valve is the only sane mind in an insane world of business.

[Dietrichw]

That's where sales come in. Seeing as Ubi pulled their stuff from Steam, though, I don't think a Ubi sale is going to happen any time soon.

unless they get really desperate to cover production costs and try to use low prices to help the amount of units sold. For example Duke Nukem Forever flopped hard and they dropped the price and frequently put it on sale to sell enough units to cover production costs (it wasn't bad for a $10 game when I played it)

[ThreePinkApples]

Yes, and employee speaking what seems to be the truth. I wonder why Ubisoft still have developers left if all this is true, they get treated really poorly

[Humbug]

I'd say it is definitely more of a pricing problem, I don't want to go out and spend $60+ on a game that I may play pretty much every day, or that I may never play again.

Disagree.

 

Before the rise of Steam and other digital distribution platforms buying original games was much harder. Piracy and cracks over the Internet was simply more convenient.

Now I can buy almost any game I want, anytime, often even if it was released 20 years ago. Nobody is competing for shelf space anymore or other distribution problems, nobody is worrying about scratched discs, lost discs and CD keys. You don't have to worry if you live in a country with less PC gamers. Publishers don't have to worry whether it's profitable to target countries with less PC gamers, or what numbers to ship. Just sell it on the Internet and everybody who wants it can buy it from anywhere in the world. Doesn't matter if i'm the only person in my country who wants it.

 

Pricing is a factor too, no sane person will deny that.

But the reason Gabe made these comments is because he has watched first hand as PC gaming went from being "written off" in the early to mid 2000s to experiencing a big resurgence thanks to Steam and other digital distribution platforms converting the pirates into legitimate customer. That resurgence continues today...

[Dietrichw]

Somebody doesn't know how to run a business.

These kinds of statements make me wonder, how in the hell do people this stupid get into such a position of power? Can they not take the time and effort to actually study, or higher somebody to study these sort of things to make sure you don't come across as uneducated and foolish (the perfect way to represent Ubi)?

If Valve manages to hit riches from PC gaming without having to call out or blame piracy for any losses, I'm sure others can too. Or Valve is the only sane mind in an insane world of business.

CEOs can be very mismatched for the companies that they run. Example, Steve Jobs was replaced by the CEO of Pepsi John Sculley. Sculley was "advised" to limit Jobs until he got removed by the board of directors. The CEO of a soda company didn't know shit about running a tech company and almost made Apple go out of business. This is pretty common 

[TheKDub]

Disagree.

 

Before the rise of Steam and other digital distribution platforms buying original games was much harder. Piracy and cracks over the Internet was simply more convenient.

Now I can buy almost any game I want, anytime, often even if it was released 20 years ago. Nobody is competing for shelf space anymore or other distribution problems, nobody is worrying about scratched discs, lost discs and CD keys. You don't have to worry if you live in a country with less PC gamers. Publishers don't have to worry whether it's profitable to target countries with less PC gamers, or what numbers to ship. Just sell it on the Internet and everybody who wants it can buy it from anywhere in the world. Doesn't matter if i'm the only person in my country who wants it.

 

Pricing is a factor too, no sane person will deny that.

But the reason Gabe made these comments is because he has watched first hand as PC gaming went from being "written off" in the early to mid 2000s to experiencing a big resurgence thanks to Steam and other digital distribution platforms converting the pirates into legitimate customer.

 

I will agree that in the past getting video games was not as easy as it was today, though my original statement was targeted at this point in time where we have all these different digital distribution services.

 

Piracy will still continue to happen for who knows how long, there will always be people who want a game or some software that turn to piracy, whether it be because it is not worth the price or because they don't have the money for it, or because they don't want to spend their money that could be spent on other things on that software/game. *cough cough* winrar *cough cough*

[E-Ro]

First of all, fuck Ubisoft.

 

Second, the way to fix this problem is pretty simple. Stop buying their games. Complain all you want but if your still giving them your money you have zero right to complain. The last ubi game I bought was far cry 3, I wont be buying any more of their shitty ports ever. Not even that over-hyped division bs. 

[Snickerzz]

Working 70 hours and only getting paid for 37? Fuck off ubi

[Dietrichw]

I will agree that in the past getting video games was not as easy as it was today, though my original statement was targeted at this point in time where we have all these different digital distribution services.

 

Piracy will still continue to happen for who knows how long, there will always be people who want a game or some software that turn to piracy, whether it be because it is not worth the price or because they don't have the money for it, or because they don't want to spend their money that could be spent on other things on that software/game. *cough cough* winrar *cough cough*

yea, there will always be some people who can't afford the game and turn to piracy and the few people that think it is okay and pirate even though they have the money. I have been in the first example when I was younger, broke, and stupid (but I did end up buying the games that were good when I wasn't as broke and stupid)

[Majinferno]

This is pretty sad. To literally have a dev team beg for a deadline extension is ridiculous.

[Dietrichw]

Working 70 hours and only getting paid for 37? Fuck off ubi

I'm pretty sure that is against Labor laws in the US, CAN, and EU

[Sharkyx1]

Another anonymous ubisoft Dev sending out news

If he's never planning to work in games again he should prove that he worked at ubisoft

The QA team that Got sacked deserved it. They let tons of bugs through. And the devs are incompetent in that they couldn't delivery what they were paid to.

And as a final, Yves is right, you should never sacrifice the console versions for the PC build, because the console versions will always be the more profitable ones.

[Trik'Stari]

Wow, Ubisoft needs to royally fuck off. Someone needs to make some changes in whoever is in charge of that company.

 

Excuse me sir but Ubisoft holes need to be at least 2 Sasha grey assholes wide to even be considered a "Ubi-hole"

.....that's a measurement that's not even possible to comprehend...

 

I'm pretty sure that is against Labor laws in the US, CAN, and EU

 

To my knowledge it is. The only way that can happen is if you are a salary employee with no overtime.

[Briggsy]

The Consumerist should allow companies here in Canada to be nominated for the golden poo award, EA is starting to clean up their act, and Ubisoft are doing everything they can to deserve a nomination.

[rashdanml]

That's where sales come in. Seeing as Ubi pulled their stuff from Steam, though, I don't think a Ubi sale is going to happen any time soon.

Look again. 

 

Stop harping on about something that only lasted for 13 hours. 

[bob345]

only paid for 37 hours and nothing above? How the hell is that even remotely legal if they are working 50+ hours a week?!

[Shahnewaz]

There isn't any proof yet that the post was actually made by an ex-Ubisoft employee.

 

 

So don't take his/her words fully yet.

[Briggsy]

only paid for 37 hours and nothing above? How the hell is that even remotely legal if they are working 50+ hours a week?!

 

possibly a contract salary that states a minimum amount of hours worked. the minimum hours are still kept track of for salaries, at least in canada to claim unemployment in the event you are laid off. although in this case the employee quit, so they wouldn't be getting unemployment anyway.

[Lord Baal]

Excuse me sir but Ubisoft holes need to be at least 2 Sasha grey assholes wide to even be considered a "Ubi-hole"

I've not laughed so hard in at least a year. 

[SteveGrabowski]

Another anonymous ubisoft Dev sending out news

If he's never planning to work in games again he should prove that he worked at ubisoft

The QA team that Got sacked deserved it. They let tons of bugs through. And the devs are incompetent in that they couldn't delivery what they were paid to.

And as a final, Yves is right, you should never sacrifice the console versions for the PC build, because the console versions will always be the more profitable ones.

 

Dude, I worked QA for a few months for a large publisher because I needed a job I could get that week and a ton of hours. We had all kinds of crazy shit we found that didn't get patched due to making a release deadline. I mean complete game-breakers that weren't fixed because the certification teams at Microsoft/Sony/Nintendo/etc didn't find them and thus didn't fail the build. It's not QA's fault when the publisher decides it doesn't care how broken the game is. And everyone at almost every QA job gets laid off at the end of the project, at least according to the people I worked with who floated between every other major publisher in the Los Angeles area. The way they paid OT was shady as fuck though. Three different times I got paid for 40 hour weeks when I worked 70-95 hour weeks, and didn't get my other hours worth of pay for a couple of weeks (but I eventually got it each time). The HR woman was such a cunt acting like I was unreasonable for wanting to be paid on time.

[Techhog]

THE CORE HAS BEEN REACHED! I REPEAT, EARTH'S CORE HAS BEEN REACHED!

 

Also, if half of my work went unpaid, I'd do a shitty job too.

[Nickston]

Look again. 

 

Stop harping on about something that only lasted for 13 hours. 

 

It's not the first time they did this, mind you.

 

Also, there are far worse things that happened that lasted 13 hours. We can't simply 'stop harping on about ' those things, either. Ubisoft is just pushing their crapware towards the consumer before it's finished, cashgrabbing and sticking fingers up arses where they want to get their rights. The pull was certainly there to get people to buy using uPlay.

[Sharkyx1]

~Snip~

I am aware that that has happened before, but i think the dev process for Unity was flawed top to bottom, The QA guys probably got screwed and couldn't do the job they'd like to because the dev team was late to deadlines, because the big wigs wanted more than they could deliver, and in the end we get a product full of glitches that runs at 20 FPS on both consoles and is only slightly better on PC.

[JcGross]

"We were struggling under normal load, AAA games are HARD to develop. where we worked 50-70 hour weeks, (anything above 37 is unpaid)"

 

And you have so little integrity that you did it anyways... Congrats... I'm not joking. If the execs had ANY confidence in the dev team they would listen to them. If they don't listen to you than your word doesn't count for shit. That's when you leave a company. But the truth is that they can't code for shit. I just installed Splinter Cell Conviction again and it still has major frame dips at some points for random reasons.

 

"I was in a meeting personally with yves guillemot, who said that he doesn't care about PC gamers because, and i quote "90% are pirates anyway"

 

So that's what I get for having left the pirate life. After years of being clean to get stigmatized as a Pirate. Well fuck you Ubisoft.

And by the way, did it ever occur to you that your games get pirated because you do shitty ports anyway?