Watch Dogs backlash started a policy change at Ubisoft, says company’s CEO Yves Guillemot

[patrickjp93]

I know nothing about this guy so won't comment on that, but someone being an "old college dropout" doesn't necessarily mean he doesn't know how to step up their game. As long as someone has good ideas and knows what he's doing it's all good.

The problem is the discipline of computer science is vast and complicated enough it takes a rare bird to be able to master it without a formal education in it. Trying to understand advanced parallel algorithms on your own without someone to explain the intuition behind them is typically a fool's errand. And that's the level of skill we are going to require to advance games in the coming years. Currently people complain about Intel's lack of performance gains and innovation, but the reality is Intel pushed parallel computing in the consumer markets far harder than AMD did, going so far as to create the OpenMP framework and release stewardship of it to a free commission such that anyone could implement it in any language. That framework has existed for more than a decade, and yet parallel coding is only just starting to emerge in games and consumer software. Most of consumer software uses one heavy central thread and a bunch of tiny asynchronous worker threads, something that looks much like a brain dead server in Java that anyone who took AP computer science in high school is capable of building. It's highly unbalanced and very simple. Balanced synchronous algorithms are more difficult, and balanced asynchronous implementations are tougher still. If it was so easy for these old dogs to learn new tricks, they should have learned a couple before now.

[patrickjp93]

Well I guess there are college dropouts and then there are college dropouts. Gabe Newell, Bill Gates, John Carmack etc are dropouts because they were driven to do something worthwhile in a different direction and made conscious career choices to leave.

Exactly, but how rare are these sorts of people? And how many of them really go into game development? I'm simply saying we haven't seen the results we need to from the development community, and based on the original code that was released for UE 4, I fear said community is a long way from getting up to speed.

[dragosudeki]

Well I guess there are college dropouts and then there are college dropouts. Gabe Newell, Bill Gates, John Carmack etc are dropouts because they were driven to do something worthwhile in a different direction and made conscious career choices to leave.

How many of them turn up into the gaming industry though? I'm pretty sure the gaming industry is probably the worst kind of software developing industry you can work at in terms of how much time/effort/work you have to put in, stability of job, and how much money you can earn. At least those are reasons why I think some developers don't actively pursue a game developing position.

[Trik'Stari]

Policy change: "We won't give PC gamers any hope of a good looking port, that way they can't call us out for being greedy mediocre assholes".

 

I've said it before, and I'll say it again. Consoles + greedy production companies = harmful to the industry.

[Humbug]

and based on the original code that was released for UE 4, I fear said community is a long way from getting up to speed.

What did you think of UE4 code in comparison to other engines you have looked at?

[That Norwegian Guy]

When Watch Dogs came out I had already boycotted Ubisoft for 9 years, (for buying and raping the Heroes of Might and Magic franchise, plus making mostly only garbage games except for Beyond Good & Evil) so I'm just happy they managed to fuck this one up enough that the average gamer realized what they were as well.

 

I'm sticking with my 5 years of perfect behaviour* before I forgive Ubisoft, and that's a long way away. CEO statements are (especially when it's from a repeatedly proven asshole) irrelevant.

 

*And that will only begin once uPlay is discontinued.

 

said the one that PC gamers are 95% pirates? yeah... right.

http://www.pcgamer.com/pc-gaming-has-around-a-93-95-per-cent-piracy-rate-claims-ubisoft-ceo/

 

 

He also said "optimization for PC is not important" - that guy is an absolute sewage spill.

[patrickjp93]

What did you think of UE4 code in comparison to other engines you have looked at?

Not as good as Frostbite, but better than Cryengine.

[patrickjp93]

What did you think of UE4 code in comparison to other engines you have looked at?

Not as good as Frostbite, but better than Cryengine. The community's put it in a far better place. I still disagree with how they balance their CPU physics engine, but I'm a sucker for OpenMP.

Wtf double partial posts?

[FunkyFeatures]

So, a simple text edit could make the graphics better and have no performance hit, yet they patch it so you no longer can enable it through editing either for the ones that work? Definitely all about the gamers ubishieeet

*Insert genius meme*

[Analog]

If I recall correctly yes they did. As a result pirates had the best experience since they had the nonupdated game. Since I'm pretty sure the update was automatic thanks to Uplay being the worst game distribution platform possible.

 

Yep, I downloaded the game, unlocked everything and played it to the end with very little to none problems whatsoever. Meanwhile the guys with legitimate copies were struggling with poor framerates, despite their lower graphical settings. 

[Dabombinable]

Yep, I downloaded the game, unlocked everything and played it to the end with very little to none problems whatsoever. Meanwhile the guys with legitimate copies were struggling with poor framerates, despite their lower graphical settings. 

Well done Ubisoft, well done:

[Rohith_Kumar_Sp]

Yep, I downloaded the game, unlocked everything and played it to the end with very little to none problems whatsoever. Meanwhile the guys with legitimate copies were struggling with poor framerates, despite their lower graphical settings. 

I did the same thing with Legit copy, i dont understand your point. 

[Trik'Stari]

So, a simple text edit could make the graphics better and have no performance hit, yet they patch it so you no longer can enable it through editing either for the ones that work? Definitely all about the gamers ubishieeet

*Insert genius meme*

^This

 

They didn't downgrade anything because of performance issues, when that can be taken care of with this little thing that we PC gamers call "the graphics settings page". They did it because they were likely paid to, so that the PC Version wouldn't look quite so much better than the console version.

 

Either that, or they're completely incompetent morons.

[Dabombinable]

^This

 

They didn't downgrade anything because of performance issues, when that can be taken care of with this little thing that we PC gamers call "the graphics settings page". They did it because they were likely paid to, so that the PC Version wouldn't look quite so much better than the console version.

 

Either that, or they're completely incompetent morons.

1 word sums up Ubisoft (aka the European EA): retarded.

[Doobeedoo]

Until I see something PC exclusive or a game launched same day or before than console I'll wait and see where this is going.