Last week, Ubisoft opened up about its financial troubles (opens in new tab). (opens in new tab)Global publishers are tightening their purse strings in 2023 accordingly.
Ubisoft did what it was supposed to do on paper. Ubisoft followed every major game maker when our tastes zigzagged away from isolated one-off experiences and started betting big on live service games. Not only did it have the resources and diverse team to follow trends, it was already on its feet. One of his consistently well-performing games at Ubisoft is Rainbow Six Siege. This is an unexpected hit FPS from a long dormant series.
Today, Siege is known for its superior shootouts and impressive destruction skills, but when it launched in 2015, fans and critics declared the 5v5 tactical shooter doomed to failure. For longtime Rainbow Six fans, Siege was single an affront to a beloved series that put his players first. It was a buggy, poorly monetized mess for multiplayer FPS fans. The following year, Ubisoft ran a planned seasonal “Operations” update, fixing bugs and delivering new operators, guns, and maps at a comfortable pace. By late 2017, Siege had gone from a launch flop to a high-profile comeback his story, albeit still quite buggy.
Seven years later, Siege is still profitable for Ubisoft. It’s the closest thing the company has.”money printing (opens in new tab)It’s a service game, but it’s also not that big of a game compared to the top competition — it’s nowhere near as big as Apex Legends, and it’s nowhere near as big as Call of Duty: Warzone 2. That puts Ubisoft in a precarious place.
It makes sense for Ubisoft to want more games like Siege and look to proven genres like battle royale for inspiration, but so far it’s not working.
Why Ubisoft’s games keep failing
Ubisoft’s vast network of studios around the world gives you the flexibility to cast a wide network and check for issues. I’ve always praised this about Ubi, a major publisher that greenlit competitive roller derby games and pirate RPGs, and single-handedly trying to revive the extreme sports video game craze of the early 2000s. I can’t think of anything else.
Ubisoft didn’t develop Siege with the goal of making the next Fortnite or Rocket League.
Now that strength has become a weakness.it’s not enough anymore (opens in new tab) To put out a moderately successful big-budget game. Service Game In the game you have to outperform others already from day one. Otherwise, you risk being abandoned by players happy with similar games that came out five years ago. Ubisoft’s live-service gaming endeavors over the past six years read like a case study of too few and too late.
“Make your destiny”
- Division 2 (2019): Destiny but Tom Clancy. Fun, but too simple he won’t bore Destiny fans. The modern setting and Clancy aesthetic also resulted in really boring loot (yipee, another sweatshirt, and his super-rare AK-47).
- Skull and Bones (2023): A boat game with a lot of delays, I think it’s similar to Destiny, but with Assassin’s Creed’s naval battles. Coming soon.
- Ghost Recon Breakpoint (2019): Ubisoft wanted Ghost Recon to be as replayable and grindable as The Division, resulting in a sloppy blend of tactical shooter and bullet sponge RPG. It was so unpopular that Ubi took him a year to undo these changes in a series of updates, and he actually made Breakpoint so much better.
“Let’s make Apex Legends”
- Hyper Scape (2020-2022): A free-to-play battle royale FPS with dense city maps and character agnostic features. Apex Legends came out a year after him and (even more unfortunately) a few months after Call of Duty: Warzone. Faced with a declining player count, the developers have pivoted to Team Deathmatch. Closing in April 2022.
- Ghost Recon Frontlines (Cancelled): Another battle royale. The reaction to the 2021 announcement was so negative that Ubisoft canceled plans for playtesting and abruptly shut down the entire project.
“Let’s make Forza Horizon”
- The Crew 2 (2018-Present): An open-world racing game that seems perfectly fine, but unfortunately shares lanes with the popular Forza Horizon series.I don’t know anyone playing it but it’s still getting regular updates (opens in new tab).
- Riders Republic (2021): It’s basically an extreme sports smorgasbord with snowboards and BMX bikes in a huge open world like Forza Horizon. It was released a week before Forza Horizon 5.
“Let’s make a Call of Duty”
- XDefiant (202?): Ubisoft’s shot at traditional 6v6 Call of Duty multiplayer featuring Clancyverse factions. This was also a bad announcement. The internet went crazy for hours with the dreaded name and the cranky demeanor of its unveiling trailer (“Fast-Paced Shootout… Meets Punk Rock Mosh Pit”). It looks like playtesting is still going on, but Ubi has largely gone dark on XDefiant during this past year and a half of his life.
“Let’s make Rocket League”
- Roller Champions (2022): Ubisoft’s contribution to a pile of rare neglected sports games outside of Rocket League. When it finally came out, my colleague kept confusing it with his game of dodgeball, his Knockout City, another one of his forgotten bangers.
“Let’s make…Skylanders?”
- Starlink: Battle for Atlas (2019): A Toys-to-Life game coming years after Activision, Disney and Lego squeezed all life out of the genre. Everyone I know who has played this game likes it.
“Make a co-op Rainbow Six Siege”
- Rainbow Six Extraction (2022): After four years and two name changes, a misguided co-op Siege spin-off that bears little resemblance to the beloved Left 4 Dead-like Siege modes that inspired the game. It was released three months after him on Back 4 Blood.
Looking back, maybe it wasn’t all these updates that brought Rainbow Six Siege back from the dead. Maybe it worked because Siege is actually original.
‘Ubisoft Originals’ Should Actually Be Originals
Unlike the publisher’s latest multiplayer games, Ubisoft didn’t develop Siege with the goal of creating the next Fortnite or Rocket League. Back in 2014, Siege was an interesting FPS that journalists didn’t exactly know how to classify. It was like CS:GO, but that comparison crumbled as easily as Siege’s breakable walls. Some of the other games Ubisoft knew would work, like bomb modes and hero characters, but also things that would normally be difficult for a competitive shooter, like one-shot kills and walls that suddenly aren’t walls anymore. There were also many Siege was a strange, adventurous idea conceived during the shooter’s transition. The last era of Call of Duty has come to an end, CS:GO has exploded, Titanfall has been exciting, and battle royale has served no purpose.
The greatest advantage of Siege is that there is no “other” Siege.
The greatest advantage of Siege is that there is no “other” Siege. There are other round-based competitive shooters, but no true Siege alternative. If you ever get tired of CS:GO, Valorant is pretty much the same game. Give up on Apex Legends and Warzone 2 is there with open arms. New Escape From Tarkov clones are coming out every year. Even in Overwatch 2, the Paladins have worthy imitators. Siege is a little different. If you want to play his FPS with destructible environments, deadly close combat and complex character abilities, there is only one.
It also helps that Siege’s core fundamentals are good. Even in the game’s buggiest state (a bar that continues to rise as years of updates overwhelm its aging engine), Siege’s network of gadget interactions continues to grow, and a high skill cap makes it impossible for years to come. Things have remained interesting over the years.Sometimes new operators can go wrong (opens in new tab), but they often bring imaginative tools that deepen that meta. Recent favorites are Zero (codename for old grizzled Sam Fisher) and See what’s on the other side through walls It can be his sticky camera. No other competitive shooter has anything like it.
I think this is why I can’t seem to get excited about any of Ubi’s upcoming multiplayer features. Do you really think XDefiant will be his 6v6 arena FPS that puts traditional Call of Duty out of business?No, have you played Modern Warfare 2? (opens in new tab)? Shake. It’s hard to imagine that the next great battle royale will be his PvP spinoff of Ghost Recon Breakpoint. And after Rainbow Six Extraction’s disappointment, it’s easy to believe other spin-offs like The Division Heartland won’t happen as they’re the natural evolution of the series, but Ubisoft wants a game like Escape From Tarkov. and is already the third most expensive of them. – Person Shooter Bone from The Division 2.
Originality wasn’t an automatic win for Ubi, though. For Honor is second to none (although Chivalry 2 could be considered a distant cousin), Rainbow Six Extraction stands out surprisingly for a co-op zombie game, and is unmatched by Riders Republic. Leaning into the genre that millions are currently obsessed with is clearly worth it, but something new needs to be brought to them, and Siege really was the sweet spot. A very original shooter, no game has successfully replicated it, but many others have stolen the idea (Apex Legends and Valorant rosters would look very different without Siege). prize).
For me, it was a hardcore, tactical, and amazingly expressive competitive FPS. It’s still the most played game I’ve ever played, and the only game in danger of taking over, Hunt: Showdown feels inspired by it. is an original and quirky game that used to be great and I hope one day I can learn how to make it again.
