The monetization director should never say anything ever and should be beaten with a stick if he tries, but the standpoint the article is writing from is clear:
the unveiling of Assassin’s Creed Shadows, which quickly gained controversy for numerous allegations that Ubisoft was mispresenting Japanese heritage through unpopular artistic design choices.
“unpopular artistic design choice”, hm? What does that mean?
Neither the author’s writing nor the quote from the director actually name it specifically, but we can infer that it’s probably talking about Yasuke, which means that unfortunately this ghoul director is probably completely right and this author is no better than a concern troll.
He’s prob talking about people being racist about the new assassins creed protagonist being black? If so I totally agree with him.
This coming from the company that made the artistic decision to play hip-hop music when the black protag starts a fight.
Ubisoft has a person who’s job title is “Monetization Director”. Who’s being non-decent now?
LMFAOOOO
Parasite upset hosts are fighting back
I get that you should cultivate the audience you want to play your game, but Ubisoft can’t win for losing. This should have gone through 20 publicists. I expect that mong Hero Hei to leap on this shit.
Ubisoft needs a complete management overhaul.
Make a good fucking game. That’s your job. Get out of the creatives’ way and quit insisting that garbage microtransactions be inserted into everything.
It isn’t hard. Gaming companies were able to do it for decades. It’s the rent-seeking executives who are fucking up the gaming industry the same way they’re fucking up everything else.
Well that guy is the monetization director, so his job is literally to insert micro transactions into everything.
Maybe don’t piss off your customers?
Customers? They don’t have those anymore
He’s very clearly talking about celebrating people losing their jobs, and does so without saying anything super crazy.
Full quote
I rarely post on social media, but today I am sad. Ashamed and sad.
The gaming industry is rough at the moment, we all know it.
But seeing how “gamers” react on social medias, wishing ill-fate to companies and people alike is sad. (And not only towards Ubisoft)
Even though it is always the vocal minority that express themselves on social media, I was hurt, hurt and ashamed to be a part of this community.
What is even more revolting, is coming on Linkedin and seeing the same comments from people within the industry.
On top of exposing yourself as a clearly non-decent human being, you are affecting thousands of employees that are already impacted by all the hate despite doing their best to deliver incredible experiences.
How can you wish a company to fail simply because they do not cater to you or that the product does not please you is beyond me.
We are all on the same boat, please please please, stop spreading hate, we should all uplift each other instead of bringing each other down.
The man is mad that people don’t like how he monetizes Ubisoft games and game mechanics. He is upset at the messages he gets when he upsets a game to inject a micro transaction. He is part of the wave of business professionals that don’t see game players as people - we are just cash waiting to be harvested from idle wallets. This is what quid-pro-quo looks like; he is seeing what we look like to him and he doesn’t like it. He wants to be a person with a name and friends and credibility that allows mistakes to be made in good faith. We want to have fun, sometimes with friends and other times alone, in a game world where we can be a person with a name, friends, and have the ability to explore. We both want the same thing.
So why is he treating people like cattle instead of people who are trying to have fun with the system they have been given? Fuck this narcissistic piece of executive hypocrisy. He doesn’t deserve peace until he exits the industry or finds a way to be actually useful.
People don’t hate these companies because they “don’t cater to them”. They love or loved the games, but these companies then turn around and try to screw their own fans out of every cent, nugget of personal data, and free time, that they have. There is no anger like the anger of a true fan.
To get that pissed, you had to have cared quite a lot to begin with.
The rest, are simply indifferent.
That, is why people are upset enough to experience schadenfreude when their stocks and releases fail. Because that is an event that SHOULD be proving to these companies that if they keep pushing the bullshit, they soon won’t be catering to anyone anymore. Hence it’s something that gives fans hope that they will pull their shit together and get back to doing right by their own franchises and talent.
And we are not all in the same boat. Some of us just want good games.
Even when companies like Ubi make good games, they come with a shitload of strings like “but the monetisation is unethical” or “the devs were forced to crunch” or “the company leadership did nothing about a festering company culture of criminal mysogyny”.
Simply by operating as ruthlessly as they do, these companies are slowly convincing the world they are “non-decent” institutions. Such institutions need massive restructuring, when the don’t deserve complete disassembly.
And angering your fans is a process that only goes one way. Every fan you piss off enough to make them swear to never again give you a chance, is one you probably wont ever have as a customer again.
Yeah, some will be malicious enough to cheer at the individuals getting screwed over when megacorps eat shit. But every sane person is cheering because there is now a large pool of talent looking to do something good with their skill, out from under the thumb of managers demanding every mechanic be optimized for monetization, rather than gameplay.
This person isn’t wrong to be disgusted with people who cheer at jobs being lost, but he is also MASSIVELY out of touch with how his own company is operating, and how it is coming to be viewed by the world as a result.
Ubisoft as a company deserved to fail though. It sure sucks for the poor bastards working there but something tells me the tune would be a lot different if this was just another round of layoffs.
I don’t disagree with that. But he’s almost definitely responding to all the vitriol directed at employees losing their jobs as a result of bad decisions passed way down the chain to them, and this article is trying to make it some gotcha hit piece.
I do think being in charge of monetization at a company that does so in the way almost any AAA studio does is an inherently unethical job and will have a hard time feeling sorry for him personally, since he’s willing to do that job, but people are also being miserable assholes to everyone else who just is trying to work on a game for a stable employer. And all he’s actually saying is “maybe don’t be an asshole to people”.
People hate Ubisoft so much that they’re just not reading the article or your full comments and are downvoting you anyway. What a time to be alive
lol the inflammatory bullshit title already decided it.
My habit of collapsing long sections so it’s less annoying to scroll probably doesn’t help either, but whatever.
Coming from their director of monetization, all I hear is “waaah waaah booo waaah”
All this nickel and diming is super profitable and it shows. Just because it makes them fuckloads of money doesn’t mean we should applaud it, because it awful for the customers.
Sounds sorta like victim-shaming…
What does this even mean? What victims? Clearly you don’t mean the victims of harassment campaigns.
No matter what he meant, he sounds like he’s trying to paint the people with legitimate gripes about the way he handles the company as the harrassers when he is a huge driver of the problem.
It’s like Republicans complaining about the quality of current public schooling and blaming ‘woke’ policies when they’ve been the ones cutting school funding for decades, and they know it. It’s feigned concern.
So what you’re saying is you’re victim blaming the people the director here is expressing sympathy for?
There is a huge harassment campaign based around flagrant racism, and there are probably some racists who are more excited to attack ubisoft because it’s a shitty company in general, but that’s just icing on the cake when the main content is racism and someone who doesn’t have a horse in that race isn’t going to be involved in the same way.
Did this guy watch Mythic Quest or something…?
This is shit that Brad would say…
…wait it goes deeper… doesn’t Ubisoft have some type of partnership with AppleTV for this show too…?
It’s produced by Ubisoft Studios
Ohhh that makes sense
