LogInThe studio's "last chance at a comeback" has been postponed by another month.
For Ubisoft, the turn of the year hasn't brought much change, as the once-renowned developer continues going through by far the most tumultuous period in its history. The same issues that plagued the studio in 2024 – namely games flopping one after another, a declining stock price, and the looming possibility of a Tencent takeover – persist into 2025, with many now agreeing that Assassin's Creed Shadows represents Ubisoft's last chance at a comeback, and should the game fail, it would spell the end for the iconic developer.
Ubisoft
Apparently, the studio's higher-ups are well aware of what's at stake, as they recently postponed Assassin's Creed Shadows for the second time to give the development team enough time to deliver an "engaging Day-1 experience."
By moving the release date from February 14 to March 20, 2025, Ubisoft aims to "allow the team to better incorporate the player feedback gathered over the past three months and help create the best conditions for launch by continuing to engage closely with the increasingly positive Assassin's Creed community." As to what exactly this plan entails and which "player feedback" they want to incorporate, those questions remained unanswered.
"Since November, we've been thrilled to share our progress through Gameplay Overviews, and the overwhelming excitement has truly inspired us," said Ubisoft's Marc-Alexis Coté in a statement. "Each week has brought valuable feedback from our community. While we've already made remarkable strides, we believe a few additional weeks are needed to implement that feedback and ensure an even more ambitious and engaging day-one experience.:
While it could indeed be the case and Ubisoft truly needs an extra month to fix Shadows' reported bugs and cultural and historical inaccuracies, many online believe a different explanation is more likely: the company, already reeling from last year's setbacks, is trying to avoid competition as best they can.
Ever since the game was first delayed to February 2025, the gaming community has questioned why Ubisoft would deliberately choose a month overflowing with major game releases, including Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2, Civilization 7, Avowed, Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii, and Monster Hunter Wilds. While no studio, Ubisoft included, would ever openly admit to being afraid of their competitors for fear of being accused of "chickening out" and losing shareholders' trust, it's impossible to deny that many now believe this is exactly what happened, and the company simply wants their new Assassin's Creed title to compete with as few games as possible.
Ubisoft
Speaking about shareholders' trust, following the news of Shadows' delay, Ubisoft held an emergency conference call with investors, during which CEO Yves Guillemot and CFO Frederick Duguet demonstrated their expertise in delivering non-answers to questions from representatives of various firms, who, understandably, are quite concerned about Ubisoft's current state.
As reported by IGN, a representative from Morgan Stanley asked the executives about the "transformation strategic and capitalistic options" highlighted in the company's official statement, seeking clarification on what this vague phrasing actually means, to which Duguet responded as follows:
"The objective of this process is to unlock the best value potential of our assets to the benefit of our stakeholders and to foster the best conditions to create great games in the fast-evolving market. That's the overall objective, so that's why we mentioned that we appointed leading advisors. So we are currently actively exploring different options. And we can't say more. Of course, we won't comment on specific rumors we have seen in the market, but we are convinced there are several potential paths to generate value from Ubisoft assets and franchises. We will inform the market if and when a transaction materializes."
With Duguet's response being even vaguer than the phrase in the original question, the representative pressed further, asking "Whether there are any concrete courses of action or scenarios that are being considered, or is this more of an exploratory kind of process?" to which Duguet gave a laconic reply, saying they are "limited with what we can say today, but we've started a process with advisors," ultimately offering little reassurance.
Additionally, Guillemot and Duguet avoided questions about the Tencent acquisition, only stating that shareholders can expect "good progress" in the coming months, declined to specify how many AAA games Ubisoft will ship in the coming fiscal year, replying that we'll "know more by May," and sidestepped the question about the specific players' feedback that led to Assassin's Creed: Shadows second delay, repeating the line from the aforementioned statement about "the increasingly positive Assassin's Creed community" without actually addressing the question at all.
Considering Ubisoft's apparent disregard for the gaming community's wishes, evident in both their projects and statements about gamers feeling comfortable with not owning their games, as well as their reluctance to properly address the questions and concerns of their own investors, only one question remains – if not gamers or investors, whose interests is Ubisoft serving then?
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