Stop Releasing Broken and Downgraded Games
Here’s the basics: customers give you money and you give them a product according to the description you gave, which is supposed to be true. The easier way to get angry customers is to lie about your product’s quality. This is so basic it shouldn’t be discussed. Nevertheless, Ubisoft seems to be breaking this implicit rule consistently. Even though many Ubisoft games released in the last years have been pretty great (Rayman Legends, Child of Light, Valiant Hearts, Far Cry 4, etc.), the cases in which things weren’t as expected were really unforgivable.
Assassin’s Creed Unity will be a case to remember for many years to come. Why? It was supposed to be one of the most impressive next-gen (now current-gen) focused experiences and it turned out to be a huge failure. We’re talking low FPS rates, outrageous amounts of bugs, NPC spawning issues, and horrific visual glitches. You name a problem, and chances are that Assassin’s Creed: Unity had it. The reasons for this incredible letdown were not explained; which leads to the funny part: the game was actually delayed so it would have the best release possible. Fair is fair, and everybody knows no game is completely perfect at the time of release. Yet there’s a very large gap between requiring a few fixes to being completely broken.
In a much lesser category of unfriendly practices, Ubisoft has also been tricking players with fake demonstrations. In addition to the famous Far Cry 3 graphical refurbishing to a much less detailed version, there’s the much-talked-about Watchdogs visual downgrade. The reasons don’t really matter since the result is always the same: selling games that aren’t what Ubisoft promised.