While the gaming industry as a whole isn’t in the best place right now, Ubisoft is easily in one of the worst positions currently. While many companies have faced layoffs or have had to do layoffs over the last two years, here we have a situation where the company could be completely bought out, and many are wondering what its future is. Heck, some are wondering is the publisher has a future at all. When you look at the lack of overall success in key areas over the last few years, you can see why some people are thinking the “end is nigh” for the current version of the company. However, one of its directors is taking a more aggressive approach toward that line of thinking.
As shown on Twitter but Grummz, Steve Chassard, the Monetization Director for Ubisoft, noted in a long post that he had apparently been seeing “non-decent humans” remarking nothing but hate at the company and wishing for it to die. While he does admit that the posts he claimed to have seen on both Twitter and LinkedIn were the “vocal minority,” he also claimed that he was “ashamed” to be a part of the community as a part of it. Then, he targeted gamers and even some within the industry for saying such things about the publisher.
This is a complicated issue, so we’ll be tactful in discussing it. First, it’s NEVER right for a person or group of people, regardless of position or occupation, to wish for a company’s death. Dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of people could lose their jobs if a single company goes under, and we’ve seen that in the gaming industry quite a bit recently. So, on that metric, Chassard is right. However, that’s where the line is drawn.
Because as Grummz accurately says, the idea that gamers are “non-decent people” because they blast games they don’t like is ludicrous and tone-deaf. As is the notion that companies like Ubisoft don’t make games that “cater to you the fan.” Except, that IS what companies do most of the time. In fact, one could argue that because Ubisoft hasn’t done better to cater to fans and instead kept making its “standard kind of title that it’s done for years,” is why things are failing there.
Plus, it doesn’t help that key titles were billed as the “next big thing” on every level and then turned out to be incredibly average or downright boring at launch. It’s okay to be sad about people saying bad things about you, but gaslighting does no one any good.
