Ubisoft's Financial Struggles and Future Prospects

Oh, what a terrible thing it would be to be a Ubisoft employee and wake up this beautiful Monday morning. A severe case of the Mondays of astronomical proportions as Ubisoft is experiencing fallout with its own investors as their Star Wars Outlaws game is failing financially and their company's stocks are tanking. We're going to go through it today. By first looking at Ubisoft stock prices on Yahoo Finance, I pulled it up. You guys have to see how their company has done during the entirety of their existence. In 2014 September, they were at 13 euros or close to around that number. And since then, almost 10 years later, exactly, they are now at the same price as their stocks have tanked. to which investors are blaming that on the quarterly revenue. But many people know that Star Wars Outlaws has a lot to do with this as well as the... I don't think it's just Star Wars Outlaws. I totally disagree. I think that there's been a general decline in quality of Ubisoft games in the last five years. And I think that's reflected in the data. So when you see a graph like this, it's not like there's one point on this graph that caused it to happen. It's like the... prince of persia games not being very good the assassin's creed games like fall hollow was very popular but it's certainly not assassin's creed in the same way right and uh i want splinter cell yeah splinter cell is like not really even a thing anymore as far as i know so there's a lot of games that have come out skull and bones is another one that game i guarantee you lost money so this has been a pattern of behavior and it's it makes sense that investors are getting fed up with it i mean if i was an investor i'd be fucking furious assassin's creed shadows controversy it seems that this company cannot catch a break no matter what they do and this is the problem right is that like you see the assassin's creed like and and i i showed this before like if you look at the actual combat and gameplay from assassin's creed like the very very small snippets that they've showed you It looks pretty bad. Like, if you look at the combat from Assassin's Creed, the game was very, very bad. Like, the gameplay and, like, the actual combat itself was awful. A couple of days ago, it seems, when they had these investors meetings, when they were having these conversations on how to proceed with their games and their company, they took a nosedive. And one explanation provided by a user shows that it may be because the investors let it happen. As you can see here, on the 5th of September, the price was up to $14.70 and then it just dipped. all the way down to $13.45. Now, of course, as usual, people love to buy into the dip, and then they were able to recover it about a quarter of the way, but we know how these things go. Even when it recovers, it will eventually take another nosedive if the trend is to be trusted. And the reason I say that is because it's happened before. A couple of days ago, it took a nosedive, and then people tried to help it recover but failed, and then it happened again prior with a nosedive. Well, it's people that are buying the dip, hoping that it's going to go back up. but it just keeps going lower. It's like you think you hit rock bottom and they just manage to keep on digging. Like if the next showcase for Assassin's Creed doesn't go absolutely crazy, I could see it take another massive drop. dive and then people tried to help it recover but failed and that is a trend that you see repeat itself over and over and it has gotten progressively worse ever since the release of the star wars people that are losing money yeah let's take a look at this post from dr circantoto i don't want to beat this to death but ubisoft stock in paris is currently dropping another nine percent market cap is down to 1.7 billion euros or us 1.9 billion dollars and yes ubisoft is seriously going through it now of course this is a quote tweet from a previous tweet he made investors seem very disappointed about star wars outlaws sales numbers and let ubisoft stock crash so this might actually explain the game just looked awful I mean, really, like, it just looked awful. And I think that's the real reason why it happened. I mean, like, losing 80% in four years is insane. It's unreal. Looked like DEI. It looked like the exact type of game that was made for people that like to be offended. And it was, like, made for Twitter, where it's like, you can't kill the animals, but you can pet them. Like, all the characters are, like, super bland, and you can only steal from police officers. It's just such an obnoxious representation. You can't rob anyone? Yeah, exactly. It's like, you can be an outlaw, but you can only do good things, basically. why ubisoft took such a huge hit at least financially from within its own investor modern safe shares lost over 10 combined in the last two days so the company just slipped to under 2 billion in market cap in paris ubisoft is almost at a 10 gear imagine if you know that ubisoft was having meetings about this yeah we're having meetings about how to proceed with both their games and with their business and now investors it was just stupid right it was stupid they should have Like, I don't know what the idea is. Like, if you look at a Star Wars, like, if you go look at any Star Wars convention, and you look at who's there, it's a bunch of guys. Like, you can't make a female-centric Star Wars story, and then expect the same male audience to buy that game at the same ratio that they're going to buy the other ones at. Like, it's so crazy to me that such an obvious reality that any normal person can see that's evident and right in front of them. is somehow like unimaginable by a multi-billion dollar company well not multi anymore as we can see but by a billion dollar company unless she's hot yeah unless the character is really hot that's true it's a bunch of guys with lightsabers yeah exactly like what do you what do you mean like of course girls like star wars there's plenty of girls like star wars but there's way more guys And if you look at guys that are like, who's playing a lot of PC games? Guys. Like you're looking action combat shooting games. Guys are playing those fucking games. Writing open letters to this company, not only asking for structural and strategic changes, but they're now asking for prices to be lowered, staff to be fired, and for the removal of the CEO himself. And you guys. Good. Good. That's what needs to happen. That's exactly. what needs to happen yeah get rid of the people that don't know what the fuck they're doing they're wasting your investment money and then replace them with people that know what they're doing i used to work at ubisoft uh this year the rest of the game uh 2014 the corpo suits took over maybe i don't know yeah maybe that's the case I have to see this story for yourself so that you understand how bad this is for Ubisoft. This is from TechRaptor. Activist Ubisoft investor calls for strategic and structural change. And I've also seen this story on the Wall Street Journal, although I did not provide that story today. A lot of people have linked it to me already. A company that serves as a significant minority shareholder. These guys have a lot of money in this company. In Ubisoft has called for major structural and strategic change at the studio and has expressed deep dissatisfaction with Ubisoft's current direction. So they are not happy with what Ubisoft is doing as well as millions of gamers out there. But hey, let's not listen to them. Their opinions don't matter. In an open letter to Ubisoft's board of directors, which CC's CEO Yves Guillermo and stakeholder Tencent investment company AJ Investments criticizes Ubisoft's current performance and strategic direction. It's very obvious that there's something that's wrong. Skull & Bones was a massive failure. All you have to do is look at the game. I mean, it was a massive failure, even if you look at just like especially the design of the game. The game looked like shit. Hardly anybody is playing it, and it probably costs over a hundred million dollars to make. So you have Skull and Bones, Star Wars Outlaws, and seemingly Assassin's Creed, all three of these games be total fucking dog shit, or at least presumed to be dog shit? That's a pattern. i mean that that's it yeah and and yeah you've got it tank jobs exactly yeah not a finish that's a that's a fucking pattern right there you've got to see you all know aj investments is a hedge fund in slovakia so these guys are all about investments they invest into anything and in fact raptor here says that they are an activist investment company aj investment says ubisoft's recent quarterly results which saw upcoming releases the division resurgence and rainbow six mobile pushed back beyond march next year have heightened its concerns about management's ability to deliver results for shareholders so they don't trust Ubisoft to be able to deliver anymore, and now they're calling them out for that. They set out four proposals to increase the value of Ubisoft for all stakeholders. They include allowing Ubisoft to go private, selling the company, changing current management, and ousting Galeamo as CEO. They're like, get rid of this guy! Bro, they just want to flip the board over. God damn. They have a Rainbow Six wheelchair operator? I think that's also another really big problem. And I do think that like, it's definitely ideology first and gameplay second with these guys. And I think what they're trying to do is they're trying to use the game to like push some sort of like agenda. Like, why would you ever want to have a person in a wheelchair? Like in what universe in a Rainbow Six situation would you ever want to have a person in a wheelchair? Like, it's just, it's such a, it's such a ridiculous concept that, like, when you take a step back and you just think about it for more than a few seconds, you'd realize this is the stupidest, dumbest fucking thing I've ever heard. It's so outrageous. Yeah, stairs are in the game. Yeah, how the fuck does that work? Right, only if he's a hacker? Well, even then, it still just doesn't make sense. And so it's about some sort of a message. Yeah, it's weird, man. And I think anybody can see this. ruining everything and he's making us all go broke the dei initiative apparently is not working or at least whatever strategic play ubisoft has had in the works for some time it's just i don't think that it's as simple as saying because of dei ubisoft bad i think that like if you actually get down to the nuts and bolts of the gameplay in these games the gameplay is bad like the dna of the game is bad Yeah, you can say, oh, well, you know, it's a female lead character, so people aren't that interested. Sure. Yeah, true. Maybe that is why. But if you actually look at the gameplay itself, it's also garbage. has not been doing them any favors especially in the money market as for its reasoning aj investors say that ubisoft is being mismanaged and that shareholders are currently hostages of galemo family members and tinson who take advantage of them so not only are they saying that the ceo should be ousted because of his mismanagement of the company but they are also saying that they're hostages to him and his family who have control of the majority of the company so they're saying his whole family needs to be gone this is incredible guys The company goes on to say that it cannot understand Ubisoft's management strategy and that the studio seems more focused on pleasing investors rather than providing an exceptional experience for its fans. And this is something that I think that's true. And that's what happens with any publicly publicly made company is that the company tries to like like think really, really big picture and develop some sort of like crazy big new game. And they start trying to like, oh, who's our target audience? Well, this game is made for everyone. Okay. Yeah, sure. Okay. So nobody's going to like it then. Got it. Understood. So yeah, customers are always right. Exactly. And so I think that in the process of trying to like manage and like make as much money as possible for like the investors, they've done the opposite because they're not providing a good experience. Like a good experience provides money to the investors. Money to the investors does not necessarily provide a good experience. gamers have been saying for the longest time for months maybe even years when it comes to ubisoft specifically that this company has no idea how to handle its video games it has no idea how to handle its fans and it has no idea especially how to handle criticism and criticism is one of the biggest things that they have had to endure aj investors claim that many of the studio's ips including rayman watchdogs and splinter cell are being underutilized and i agree with that when is the last time we had a splinter cell game That's right. A year before Ubisoft stock prices started to go up. Yeah, I can't even think of that. Splinter Cell has not seen a title in over a decade, ever since the last one that came out in 2013. But there are other games that Ubisoft is neglecting in order to push games like Star Wars Outlaws and Assassin's Creed Shadows. Games that are riddled in controversy of different natures, different types, and are being scolded. Well, I think the problem is that a lot of the developers think that their view on the situation... is more accurate than the public's view on the situation and so because they can categorize the people that don't like assassin's creed shadows for example as like oh well they just don't like it because they're racist or something like that that doesn't make them like it and so the problem is that these people are coping and they're saying well you know they shouldn't think like this they shouldn't be they shouldn't like this is terrible they shouldn't be able to say this but that doesn't actually change people's minds So it ends up happening. Yeah, everybody else is wrong. Yeah, if you say everybody else is wrong for long enough, well, then you're not going to have anybody that's paying attention to your content. So it's that simple. Yeah, so it's yeah, I think that's what's really happening is that they're not actually listening to what the customers want. And nobody at the company is holding them accountable to that. Because doing that would be empowering a voice of a group of people that they consider to be bad. So it's basically like we have this problem. We know this problem exists. But if you speak on the problem, now you're the enemy. And I think that's what's happened. Like, that's exactly what I think has happened. Some want to be renegade in the rest of the group. They're looking for a headline and own less than 1%. Well, I think that there's a lot of investors. Like, I mean, does it really take a lot of brainpower to assume that a graph going down like this would warrant people being concerned? I think that obviously they're concerned. Yeah, of course. Let's not notice the elephant in the room. Yeah, exactly. And I think that's the real problem. And they're not taking that feedback and providing a product that the customers want because they think that their view on the product is more important than the product itself. Or actually, it's more important than the customer's view on the product. And if they have a product that is like a moral superior, that then customers are like obligated or something to buy it. vilified by gamers everywhere and now the stock prices are dropping investors are panicking and requests like these are being made the company does however say that prince of persia the lost crown was merely okay yeah i guess it was okay i'm never played it i have played the other prince of purges because i actually love the original games but that nobody talks about the game anymore which is also true i don't see anybody talking about it that's probably because it's a single player game everyone's finished guys not every game needs to be headline news every day of the week which i also retarded argument fucking stupid retarded argument i that's not true at all uh people are talking about elden ring all the time now still people are talking about balder's gate all the time now still People always are going to be talking about the game. Do you want to know the real reason why Prince of Persia The Lost Crown didn't succeed? There's two reasons. Number one, it wasn't on Steam. Number two, it was too expensive. And also there is a number three where side score and Metroidvania style games are not viewed as AAA products in the consumer's eyes. So I played this game and I thought the game was actually quite good. I thought the game played very well. It was enjoyable. I liked it a lot. But the reality is that it was $60 on release. And the other games inside of this market are just simply way more than that. Or sorry, way less than that. Like look at Blasphemous 2. Look at Hollow Knight. Like all of these games, like if you go to market with a game like this and your game is of this way higher price, well then you're really not going to sell anything. It's not AAA. Yeah, but people expect that level of quality. If you're asking people to spend $60, they're going to be looking for a AAA experience. And I have no problem paying $60 for a Metroidvania game, but it's very clear that other people did. And I don't know if I mentioned this earlier, but it was not on Steam. So like you had to download an entire new program, like Epic Games, like you're massively nerfing your product by putting it on some other platform like this. I don't want to download it from some other platform. Like there are a lot of games that I just don't even play if they're not on Steam. And it's not that the Epic Games launcher is like really that bad, but it's that it's worse. The Epic Games Launcher is 100% worse than Steam. And by the way, that's bad. It's bad. We, like, it's in everybody here's best interest for the Epic Games Launcher to be as good as Steam. Because that way we have a competitive marketplace where obviously competition will breed excellence and it will improve the products that we have. So it's very problematic that Epic can't get their shit together. The game was $40, I just looked it up. Oh, um... It was $40. I think that you could have been right, but they had an early access for $60. I could have been a little bit wrong on that, but even $40 for a side-scorer game like this is just not what people are looking to do. You can't even send messages to people on your Epic friends list? Yeah. Epic won't have reviews on purpose, so it's automatically a worse platform? Yeah, people just aren't... Like, Steam is a platform that puts its users first. Epic is a platform that puts developers first. So big surprise, you have a lot of developers that like Epic and a lot of customers that like Steam. But the problem is that people forgot who actually controls the market. The real people that control the market are not the developers, it's the players. The players have always had all the control. The customer always has all the power. So agree with and they have provided the letter with these requested changes that I'm going to read through just a little bit so that you can have receipts to share with all of your buddies. But further on into the letter, AJ Investors proposes several ways by which Ubisoft could improve its performance and its standing with shareholders. They include taking the company private for a fair price as well as laying off staff, a procedure AJ Investors rather callously referred to as. optimizing staff levels so they're like trying to be super friendly when they say fire all these people they're making things worse other recommendations include refocusing on core ips and another call for changes in management this letter comes after industry analyst circ and toto which is the guy i just referred to pointed out last week that investors seem very disappointed about the sales of star wars outlaws with shares dipping 10 in just two days so i think there is validity to the claim that anybody could have said this was going to be bad like and that's the problem is that they clearly have a direction with making these games and It's like with Outlaws especially, it was astonishing to me that people, like after playing the game myself, I was really shocked that anybody thought it was good. Like even like just the combat, like the melee, the cinematics, like everything about it was bad. How did you let this happen? let's just just let this thing die it's crazy yeah because ubisoft isn't listening during earnings calls and because gamers have lost complete faith in the company as a whole toto followed this up with another post today noting that stocks had fallen another nine percent in paris so these stories do coincide and i didn't actually know that until i read this paragraph right here but we're still gonna move on to the letter so great job circuit toto great job on that reporting there and we're gonna take a look at this letter that i have pulled up for you all to see so nine nine 2024 so this was as of today maybe even just a few hours ago to the board of directors and members of committees ubisoft entertainment and they did indeed cc mr yves guillermo ceo and chairman of ubisoft entertainment and they cc'd tencent holdings so everyone is going to be reading this letter the ceo gets to read the letter in which they ask for him to be fired so he's probably it makes sense right i mean like if you the thing is the stock lost like you 80 or 90% of its value. How do you lose 80 or 90% of your value and then try to stick around? Bro, you fucked up. Get out of here. What are you thinking? Like, that's crazy. Probably saw it coming. How dare they write such nonsense and then send it to me. The nerve. The gall. Dear members of the board, dear fellow shareholders, as a significant minority shareholder in Ubisoft Entertainment, via AJ Investments and our partners, we are writing to express our deep dissatisfaction with the current performance and strategic direction of the company. The recent quarterly results, which included the postponement of key games like Rainbow Six Siege and The Division into the 2025 lineup. and a lowered revenue outlook for the Q2 2024 have heightened our concerns about the management's ability to deliver value to shareholders over the long term. Share price of Ubisoft had decreased by more than 40% over the last year, which is horrible for a video game. Well, that's 40% after another 40%, right? It's not like this 40% was the first one. Woke investors, it's not really about woke investors. I actually think that it's something that is systematic with the company. I think that they're probably making too many games and they're spread too thin because they're releasing so many games and so many of their games have quality issues or some sort of quality control problem. I think that's what's really going on. It's woke and please. Well, I think that there's definitely like that definitely does matter. It does because it's going to give people a bad impression of the game if they look at a comment section. And the comment section is saying the game looks bad. That's a huge, huge issue. Like, basically, it seems like the public has rejected both Star Wars Outlaws and Star Wars Assassin's, or sorry, the Assassin's Creed Shadows. Like, a lot of people in the public have pretty much rejected this. Like, very, very, very negative. It's like Ubisoft even, it's gotten so bad that Ubisoft even put out a statement about Assassin's Creed Shadows. Tonally, it's too woke and gameplay mechanics do zero innovation. They just repeat the same formulas. Yeah. Company as big as Ubisoft compared to rise of its competitors and indexes. And there have been a lot of companies as of recently that have taken to the skies with their revenue on their video games that they have made. Black Myth Wukong. Hello. They say this letter consists of following points. Take Ubisoft private. or allow it to sell it to strategic investor ubisoft valuation why we believe ubisoft is great undervalued company and should be worth between 40 to 45 euros it's not worth 40 to 45 euros there's no way they've done so much damage to their reputation and also i think that if you have a company that makes bad games consistently the odds are the reason for that is because the people that work at the company are bad at their job And I don't think that it's an issue. Like, yeah, you're right that management always takes accountability for issues. But if you want me to be honest, I think that a lot of the people that are probably working there are incompetent. And they don't know how to make a good game. It's obvious that they don't. So, yeah, I mean, it's not a one-guy problem. Yeah. Share our concerns about the future of the company and our proposals. So they say take... I think, like, look at Blizzard, for example, right? like blizzard has such a massive disadvantage now because of how much controversy and how many negative uh like games they brought out and how much negative press they've had so now they're they're fighting an uphill battle with every single release that they do And I don't think people understand or take into account, because it's very hard to quantify, the amount of value that consumer satisfaction and people liking you has. They can't just cut it? Yeah, well, what I'm saying is, like, basically every single game, your end consumer audience has an overall negative opinion of your games. And you can see this with any Ubisoft trailer. People are very, very negative with these games. And... guess what it causes them to lose a lot of fucking money because the the strongest form of advertising is word of mouth and the next best thing to word of mouth is seeing what other consumers are saying and so you look at the reviews the games aren't on steam you're just never seeing anything good about ubisoft that's what it really comes down to at the end of the day you never read anything good about ubisoft anymore private process by pe firms or galemo family plus tenson at fair price allow sale process as we are in discussion with investors to fight against galemo family with so-called proxy fight an extraordinary shareholder meeting change of the current management so they say start hiring process of new ceo who will optimize the cost and studio structure for more agile and competitive company as ubisoft should be i want to say that number three is probably the most brutal request in this entire list because that's also the most accurate and probably the most effective one there's a reason there's a reason why yeah absolutely so yeah word of mouth is king it is no a hundred fucking percent this is the case should fire bobby the crew no what i'm saying is like i think that elon firing 80 of twitter's staff and then the website maintaining basically its functionality I think that really showed a lot of other people in tech. We don't need all these people. We don't need to do this. It's wild. Yeah, exactly. And so I think that a lot of companies, like, I don't know if you guys work at a company like this or have worked at a company like this, but I feel like things in the same way, it's like gravity, right? Like something that's really big just tends to like bring in more things that are really big. And I think that what's happened with Ubisoft is that They've just continued to like grow and grow and grow. And at this point, there's too much redundancy. There's probably a bunch of people that are on the staff that have jobs that don't really add a lot of value to the product. Large companies move slow. Yeah. the ceo that he should be removed and then sending it to him that's just so insulting but kind of hilarious but it also says to the rest of the company that they think the ceo is not optimizing the cost and studio structure they're saying that he's doing nothing with the company that he's not doing anything to improve it and that he needs to be gone now this is the guy that said that star wars outlaws was going to be an incredibly successful video game and that their marketing campaign for it was going to be astronomically and beautifully executed. But it appears that after all was said and done, it was nothing. Man, that's crazy. Why would you say that? I mean, it's just is there issues for weeks? Yeah, exactly. Like, wow. Nice millennial words? Off by a decade and a half. Yeah. thing but a fizzle in the wind we will use the french minority law to collect enough shareholders to start proxy fight and initiate sale process of ubisoft to increase shareholder value for all shareholders so they're saying we're going to take this to the next level ag investments are going to try and start a battle of the shareholders if you will so that they wield enough power in order to sell ubisoft as a company so they're going to try and force sell the company in an attempt to put ubisoft i don't think they're gonna do that but i think that the leadership does need to be replaced yeah they're probably not gonna force to sale or have the company go private but i think leadership will get replaced no matter what at this point and i think that if assassin's creed is like badly received and people don't like it i could easily see What we know is Ubisoft now to change dramatically. I don't know exactly what that means, whether that means the company would get split up, bought by somebody else. I don't think it's going to crash and they're going to just delete the company. I don't think that's what's going to happen. But one more failure like this, and I can't really see them recovering from it. Yeah. I just, I can't. I mean, there's just been too many failures in a row. And I just, yeah. They're done? Yeah, I mean, how do you do that? Last chance? Well, like, whenever we, like, make jokes about it's Blizzard's last chance, it's really funny, right? But the truth is that if you look at Blizzard stock, so, value research, let me see if I can find it, share price, if it has any information about this. So this is whenever, obviously, the company was sold. But if you look at over... Oh, fuck, it might be hard for me to see. Yeah, if you look at the actual revenue of Blizzard, it went up massively. So Blizzard is actually an example of like, Blizzard has gotten a lot of negative press, but that negative press never actually amounted to a negative impact on the business. Bobby brought in the money. There's a reason why this dude could have been on Epstein Island. He could have been, you know, threatening to have his assistant killed with like a recorded conversation. And none of that mattered. And the reason why is because of this graph right here. Ubisoft does not have that. That's the difference between something like Blizzard and Ubisoft. Is Blizzard has a very bad reputation and they're making money despite that. Ubisoft has a very bad reputation and they're not. CEO in their places. So Ubisoft valuation, we believe that Ubisoft is a great company developing, distributing, and selling video games. Ubisoft has long-standing history with providing great experience for players all around the world. Their IPs, such as Assassin's Creed, Far Cry, Tom Clancy's, Just Dance, Crew, Rayman, and others are extraordinary and can attract millions of players over time. However. We believe that Ubisoft at current valuation is deeply undervalued and should be worth between 40 to 45 euro per share. But I think that this is the cream. No, it's not. I bet that a lot of the people that made the games that made Ubisoft really successful, like Black Flag and like all the old Assassin's Creed games, Prince of Persia, stuff like that from like the 2000s. Those people probably don't work there anymore. Like a company isn't really anything. right a company is people and so if you change the people it's fundamentally not the same company even if it has the same name so ubisoft that used to be worth 45 to 50 dollars per share whatever they're calling it 40 50 44 40 to 45 uh that company doesn't exist anymore of the crop right here this is the best part of this open letter to ubisoft it says that ubisoft at current state is mismanaged and shareholders are hostage of galemo family members and tencent who take advantage of them management is focused on pleasing investors with beating quarterly results and not focusing on long-term strategy to provide exceptional experience for the gamers i think that this is incredibly ironic coming from a hedge fund company like aj investments they're even saying that ubisoft is prioritizing quarterly results over the satisfaction of gamers so they're like hey you guys are supposed to be gamer pleasers you guys aren't pleasing anybody though you're just far too busy getting money it's just so funny that it's coming well the funny thing is that it's the opposite right it's like they're they're trying to squeeze it so hard that They're actually hurting it, right? Like now it's like they're trying so hard to make money that they're causing themselves to lose money. These people who are a hedge fund, even they see that Ubisoft is doing something horribly wrong and they're calling it out now. And AJ Investments is no small company. They are... pretty big now they do have a minority shareholder value but it is significant as stated so even though the majority shareholders probably have a ton more these people still have enough of a claim to the company that they can say things like this and have an impact and it really is having an impact well i mean like you've got to be fucking crazy if you think that anybody else who's an investor isn't thinking the same thing like if you had a stock and it went down 80 or 90 in like eight years Of course you would want to have a reason for that. Absolutely. Like, you really think that this isn't something the other guys aren't thinking? Of course they are. That's their fucking money. Which is concerning. But this goes far beyond just trying to remove a CEO or his family or trying to gain control of a company. These people go as far as accusing. this family of amassing control to sabotage future partnerships and to enrich themselves with shares that they buy at a really low value in order to maintain the control that they've had for so long and this information is coming out really fast it says right here that we believe that galamo family and tencent are discounting potential value of ubisoft in order to buy more shares at lower valuation and eventually take full control of the company at heavily discounted valuation we value the great work that has been done by the galamos over the decade in the ubisoft but now is time to move on and restart the business with new shareholder approach and new management ceo they do go on by talking about february 1st 2023 when the galamo entities acquired more than 4 million shares of ubisoft with the money from tencent in our view recent delays of certain titles there are creating uncertainty amongst investors is beneficial for galabo intense it doesn't matter like it's always better to delay a game like i know a lot of people think that's bad but it's totally okay if you delay a game this legit happened with long john silvers recently yeah of course order to acquire more shares at even discounted valuation as ubisoft is currently trading close to 15 euro per share lowest point since 2015 giving ubisoft valuation less than 2 billion euros so these guys up at tencent this family galama who apparently branched into other things as well these four brothers are trying to attain full control of this company so that they don't have to do anything with it so that they don't have to make any beneficial partnerships with any other companies that want to invest in it Funny enough, one of those companies that they mention is actually Blackstone, which I'll point to in just a second. But they assume that because of Tencent and Activision Blizzard, that they may use this as a tactic to get minority shareholders under the stress. The Glamour family and Tencent owns more than 25% of shares, 29.63%. I mean, even if they don't, I don't really see this being a solvable issue with what their products are. Like, it doesn't matter who really owns the company. At the end of the day, like, if you're delivering a product and people don't like the product, that's it. That's the issue, right? It doesn't matter if you're delaying it. Like, Suicide Squad got delayed, and it was still garbage. There are other games, like Black Myth Wukong got delayed, I think, twice. Elden Ring got delayed twice, but it was still really good. It still sold very well. None of that matters if the games are good. That is the bottom line because that's what the company is about. I think that a lot of times people get involved in like the process of the company or things like that. But what really matters more than anything is the actual value that the company is giving the end user. And that's why Steam is so popular. It's because Steam focuses entirely on the user experience and what the user is getting out of it. good product sale voting rights of you that's the bottom line shows below so what aj investments plans to do is to take the remaining 70 percent of the shareholders of the company the minority shareholders based on their talks with other shareholders they believe that they will have enough voting power to challenge the glamours and take the company from them completely so that they can transform it which brings us to an incredibly interesting portion of the argument that they are presenting here they say that because of the management and governance that ubisoft has been failing horribly the control exercise in september 2022 by tencent and the galamo family has effectively blocked potential acquisitions and partnerships that could have been beneficial for the company and its shareholders and that's because the galamos have been buying the dip repeatedly more recently in 2022 private equity firms such as i don't even know why they would try to do that like it doesn't even make sense concerning the direction of the company Yeah, it's silly. Just make good games, exactly, yeah. in the company the glamo family intensive will buy at a very low price and then amass even more control over the company so eventually they will have full control and aj investments picked up on this they caught them in the act of trying to do this and now they're trying to stop them this is crazy dude but look at what's been happening to the company over the last 10 years look at what's been happening to star wars outlaws and assassin's creed shadows look what has been happening as these people keep pushing dei for example everything that they do everything the galamos do with this company they fail and before people start saying well i i don't think that again i i think dei is a component to it but i don't think that it's even the main component i think that if the game played well that you can always find examples of games that have the same type of dei but it's a certain type of attitude and writing and design that comes together to make like the perfect combination of a very unfun and unenjoyable game you but at least they said no to blackstone that doesn't mean that these people are any better look yeah it's like it's entirely like all the way down they may not be partnered with blackstone but they're certainly pushing what blackstone wants 100 this pattern of blocking potential acquisitions has prevented much needed restructuring and revitalization that will benefit all the stakeholders of ubisoft and aj investments has recognized this malicious now they want to take the company from the galima they must think that things are really bad at ubisoft we must not be seeing the entire big picture with this company and how in bad straits they truly are and we are going to find out over the next few days how bad this really is because i'm sure that people are going to start picking you're not going to find out until assassin's creed shadows comes out as i said if that game comes out and it's not successful i could easily see it like cutting the stock in half again Because it's just at that point, you just have so many fuck-ups in a row. I don't see how you can recover from that. part this open letter which actually has a ton of information that spans from them describing the drops in stock prices over the last few years amongst other things operational efficiency etc etc and this letter goes all the way down it says that we encourage all the minority shareholders to contact us and support our initiative and then they provide the email sincerely girage koopa aj investments and of course So these guys are going to town on Ubisoft. They're ready to take over and they've provided sufficient evidence to try and convince these shareholders to take their side and to buy this company. Ubisoft is in the middle of a war between itself and the people who invest in it. And the people in charge have been gatekeeping this company from having any kind of beneficial partnerships. And to be honest with you, that really does make a lot of sense when you think about how poorly their stock. prices have been doing lately and they just keep going down. Even after Star Wars Outlaws was released, this company's prices have been going down. It has not made a recovery and there's a good chance that-Of course it's not going to make a recovery. Why would it make a recovery? Like there's no reason for people to like randomly get faith in the company again. It doesn't even make sense. Of course not. Yeah. There's no reason for that. Ubisoft must go down so many good franchises. Yeah. Yeah. The company might- not actually recover at all and if you really take a look at everything that the galemos have done for this company they did good for a minute i don't know how long they've been a part of this i assume since almost the beginning but really the company's price has gone down to below the point that it was at before september 2014 ubisoft is in trouble and aj investments is like hey guys you see how badly this company is doing let's take over let's change this company from the inside out now if they take over and then they give it to blackstone i really don't think that anything is going to change but regardless of which side you take in this investment war one thing is for certain ubisoft is in dire straits they are doing terribly and gamers are crazy to me because like i see people that i think they like the i think like it's crazy how ideology can cause people to completely neglect reality And I'm seeing people all the time talking about how Ubisoft is actually doing really well. And like how, like, it's actually not bad that you can release multiple games that are massive failures in a row. But no, this is absolutely not like, Ubisoft isn't Ubisoft anymore. Exactly, yeah. Like, you can't keep doing that, man. Who? There's a lot of people on Twitter that are talking about like, oh, Star Wars Outlaws actually did really well, etc. And even because like they can't lie on their investor reports, right? It's like legally against the law. And so they had to say that they expected lower sales. And I think that was the beginning of the end. Twitter never have been the majority. No, they're not. Seeing it happen in real time. And that is all I've got for you guys in this video today. I hope you all enjoyed it. If you haven't had the chance to like it and share it with your friends, that would be awesome. And hey. If you're feeling ultra spicy, consider subscribing to my channel so that you're always up to date on what kind of thing I've got going on. I look forward to seeing you all in the next one. Later. Meow, meow. Okay. Well, just a minute. I'll talk about this for a few minutes. I think a lot of this video definitely seemed like just a straight up investor dispute, right? Like it wasn't just entirely about the games and the products. It was about who's owning the company. and how control in the company is being exercised. And I think that's also, like, that's very different than, let's say, I don't know, like, the game being bad for, like, one specific reason. I think it's something that's, like, let me turn this down a little bit so I can talk. Yeah, Raymond will save Ubisoft? I don't think so. And interesting to get a view of this angle. Well, like, you have to assume, like, if you are a big company, and you lose 80% of your fucking stock value, you bet your fucking ass that somebody's head has to roll. I would be shocked if at the end of, like, after these releases, you don't see a massive change-up, or big layoffs, or something like that. Because you just can't have failure after failure like this. A minus 80% is crazy. And again, like, you can compare this. People always compare it with, like, Activision Blizzard. Very, very, very bad comparison. Activision Blizzard was maximizing profit. Bobby brought home the bacon, and this Guillermo guy, or whoever the fuck it is, isn't. He's not. Assassin's Creed will succeed. Here's what I think. I think Assassin's Creed will be a... Probably it will be a successful game, but it will be the lowest version of success that you could potentially have. And I think that also... And this is another comparison I want to show you guys. So this is something that's actually observable of Path of Exile. And so if you look at, for example, a lot of the leagues like Lake of Calandra was a league that was received a lot worse than Sanctum. Sanctum was perceived much better than Lake of Calandra. But Lake of Calandra had a higher player base. And then if you look at the Crucible League, which was perceived very well. And again, look at the high peak there. Well, that's because of how well the Sanctum League did. And so what happens is that a lot of game purchases have a ripple effect that if the last purchase was good, then the next purchase will be better. And if the last purchase was bad, the next purchase will be worse. And I think that's what's happening here is you're seeing that delayed effect go into go into Assassin's Creed. And you're seeing that with Star Wars Outlaws even. So because consumers, they buy one game, they don't like it. Well, then they don't buy the next one. You're severely underestimating the popularity of Assassin's Creed. Every Assassin's Creed game has had their stocks go up. Here's the problem, though, is that let's say the Assassin's Creed game has their stocks go up, but the proportion is lower than any other game, like any other previous Assassin's Creed game. Wouldn't that really make you worry? I'll link you guys to video, by the way. Give it a like. I think that he brought up some good points here, even though the majority of this does seem to be a shareholder, a shareholder dispute. And also Assassin's Creed is going to be following like a massive budget. So like, yeah, they've got to make the most money off of Assassin's Creed because that's where they're spending the most money. So I think that's what's going to happen with a lot of cases. This reminds me so much of Bungie and their future move with Destiny 2. We just saw the stocks. Yeah, exactly. And so if Assassin's Creed is going to be successful, the truth is like Valhalla was a very successful game. And if you look at the response from Assassin's Creed Valhalla, if you go back and you look at, for example, like the launch video or the announcement video for that game, you'll see almost everybody who was positive about that game. People liked Assassin's Creed Valhalla. People were excited for it. I don't see that same excitement with Assassin's Creed Shadows. I just don't. And I think that's a huge fucking problem. So yeah, Assassin's Creed will probably do much better than Star Wars Outlaws, but... It's like if you know that your biggest hitter still isn't a home run, even if it gets you to first or second base, I'd want to change teams. And that's the point that I'm making. Is that even if Assassin's Creed does do well, it doing well does not mean that they're out of the woods. Going full throttle, either ideology or milking money. Valhalla was liked after the fact. It had bad reception before launch. I don't know. I remember seeing a lot of people be very positive about Assassin's Creed Valhalla. I was excited until they gained push over. And I don't think you guys understand this. Like, I don't think that you understand how bad this really is. I'm gonna remind you. And this is the best showcase by the way. This is as good as it gets. Sound. Who do you think you are? For the people? I am justice. Uh-huh. Sekiro from Wish. Wu-Wang was better than this. Like, look at, for example, watch this at 0.25. Wait a second. Sorry. Watch the way the animations work. Barely even hit him. Get ready. It's jank as fuck, yeah. What was that? You see that animation? Garbage. And here's the worst part. Is that this is the best part of the video. Watch this. This is the biggest joke I've ever seen. Get ready. Get ready. Here we go. Man. So bad. I want to go back. And I really like showing things in super slow motion. So you can really see how bad the quality of it is. Because like again, nah, this is so bad. Yeah. The trees don't cut at the right place. Some of them do. Some of them don't. Compare the old Assassin's Creed games. Talk about the AI. It's a joke. Yeah, look at them. They're not even doing anything. The screen randomly turns gray. It's hitting them. It doesn't even make sense. Is this from 1990? It looks like it's from 2009. And it's like just the combat in this is just awful. I don't know if they've shown any other gameplay. Like the stealth gameplay, I will tell you this. I think the stealth gameplay in this game is fine, but it's also like, is this really... So I think about, I compare this experience with my experience in Sekiro, going up to fight the Miriki counter guy. This is kind of the same type of general environment, right? Where you go back in time. Is it better than not? No, it's not. the ghost of tashima see i haven't played ghost of tashima see look at that oh what and look by the way look at this we're gonna go back to 0.25 she's invisible You can see he's looking directly at her. Can't see shit. You could easily see somebody like this. She literally walks up to him without him activating. Direct line of sight. Anybody could have seen that. She's crouching so she's invisible? Yeah, I know. I played Star Wars Outlaws. I know that. That's pretty bad. Yeah. Sound? Uh, there's no reason. I don't want to watch this sound. It's the same as something like this. Wow. Wow. Metal Gear had better AI 20 years ago? Yep. And so let me see if I can show some more combat. Is that, that's really what I like to show. There's a cinematic for that? Yeah, why is there even a cinematic for something like that? It doesn't even make sense. And like, this is kind of fine. What was that? I don't know. Sound is important, it makes it even worse. They put hip-hop in feudal Japan. Well, this is different. I'll play the sound just so you guys can hear it. he's coming i need to hide and all these like mini load screens like this right it's like because this really is just a mini load screen it's like starfield you know like whenever you sit down in the ship that's so weird actually i i don't think yeah load screen is not the right word to use i guess just cinematics let me see if i can show some more of this Samurai with mace? That was cool. Yeah, to be fair, that was good. Oh, here we go. Yeah, so anyway, I just, like, I can't see anybody looking at this game and seeing what the responses are. And, like, if I look at this, who are you? I am good guy. Bravo, incredible writing. There's no way they gave Yasuke hip-hop music, bro. The fact that they put hip-hop music as Yasuke's battle music, even though he was not African-American, should tell you everything you need to know about Ubisoft. Yeah, I think that's basically... I'm seeing if there's any actual comments on the gameplay. Remember, never pre-order Ubisoft games. Wow. Oh my fucking god. I don't even know what to say. Redditors? Yeah, I guess so. Ranzu of Tenchu Z? I don't know really what that is. That's a stupid point to bring up the music? I don't think so. I think it just goes to show that they're kind of... What do you call it? It's like... I feel like it's patronizing in a way, right? The Japanese comments? People are so sensitive nowadays? Well, I think that like... And this is the point that I'm making, is that... A game that has, like, for example, Baldur's Gate 3 has a lot of things that people would perceive as DEI. But because the game is authentic and it's a good game, people don't care about it and it doesn't matter to them. Like, Elden Ring has things, like, they use body types instead of male and female. And so you could see that as being woke. It is woke. It's stupid. There's male and female and that's it. Those are the two characters you can make. Everybody knows it, but we have to pretend like it's not. Like, what are we doing? I think it's stupid. Yeah, so, but that doesn't really matter if the game is good. I think the problem is that Ubisoft games on the surface look like woke DEI trash. And when you dig deeper, you find that it's actually, that's only the tip of the iceberg. And I think that's what's happened, is that that's not even the beginning of the problem. What do you mean I'm a body type 2 orc hunter? We get permed on Reddit for saying that. I don't know. I mean, like, I'm just saying, like, this is clearly, like, it's so obvious that the body type 1 and 2 are male and female, right? Every normal person knows this. Why is it that this, why is it the body type 2 or B is always having its chest covered? It's because it's women and men. That's the reason. And why is there always only two body types and there's not more than two? Like it's just, it's such a, I feel like that difference is probably the biggest indicator of just stupidity. Just straight fucking stupidity. Because it's so obvious, but nobody can say it. Because of the sliders, oh, it's done right. Mental gymnastics otherwise, yeah, it's massive mental gymnastics. Why do you care though, only semantics? Because they changed it. Because they care. If they cared enough to change it, then I should be able to care enough to change it back. Yeah, no, I mean, like, that's fine. And it's that simple. Why do they care? Yeah, I mean, yeah, you're not going to trivialize that. That's not how it works. Is that a stupid argument? Why do you care? Yeah, a lot of people say that, but it's obvious that they're the ones that care because they're the ones that are changing it. The world is shit because we didn't care enough? Well, I think that's starting to change. Can you use that same argument to condone slavery? Yeah, of course. There should be 16 body types, ranging from my 600-pound life to anorexia. To be fair, Elden Ring does give you a lot of variation, but that's generally the way that I see it. Yeah, I can see this game absolutely having a negative impact on Ubisoft. Nothing about this looks good.

In 2014 September, they were at 13 euros or close to around that number. And since then, almost 10 years later, exactly, they are now at the same price as their stocks have tanked. to which investors are blaming that on the quarterly revenue.

But many people know that Star Wars Outlaws has a lot to do with this as well as the... I don't think it's just Star Wars Outlaws. I totally disagree.

I think that there's been a general decline in quality of Ubisoft games in the last five years. And I think that's reflected in the data. So when you see a graph like this, it's not like there's one point on this graph that caused it to happen. It's like the... prince of persia games not being very good the assassin's creed games like fall hollow was very popular but it's certainly not assassin's creed in the same way right and uh i want splinter cell yeah splinter cell is like not really even a thing anymore as far as i know so there's a lot of games that have come out skull and bones is another one that game i guarantee you lost money so this has been a pattern of behavior and it's it makes sense that investors are getting fed up with it i mean if i was an investor i'd be fucking furious assassin's creed shadows controversy it seems that this company cannot catch a break no matter what they do and this is the problem right is that like you see the assassin's creed like and and i i showed this before like if you look at the actual combat and gameplay from assassin's creed like the very very small snippets that they've showed you It looks pretty bad.

Like, if you look at the combat from Assassin's Creed, the game was very, very bad. Like, the gameplay and, like, the actual combat itself was awful. A couple of days ago, it seems, when they had these investors meetings, when they were having these conversations on how to proceed with their games and their company, they took a nosedive.

And one explanation provided by a user shows that it may be because the investors let it happen. As you can see here, on the 5th of September, the price was up to $14.70 and then it just dipped. all the way down to $13.45.

Now, of course, as usual, people love to buy into the dip, and then they were able to recover it about a quarter of the way, but we know how these things go. Even when it recovers, it will eventually take another nosedive if the trend is to be trusted. And the reason I say that is because it's happened before.

A couple of days ago, it took a nosedive, and then people tried to help it recover but failed, and then it happened again prior with a nosedive. Well, it's people that are buying the dip, hoping that it's going to go back up. but it just keeps going lower. It's like you think you hit rock bottom and they just manage to keep on digging. Like if the next showcase for Assassin's Creed doesn't go absolutely crazy, I could see it take another massive drop.

dive and then people tried to help it recover but failed and that is a trend that you see repeat itself over and over and it has gotten progressively worse ever since the release of the star wars people that are losing money yeah let's take a look at this post from dr circantoto i don't want to beat this to death but ubisoft stock in paris is currently dropping another nine percent market cap is down to 1.7 billion euros or us 1.9 billion dollars and yes ubisoft is seriously going through it now of course this is a quote tweet from a previous tweet he made investors seem very disappointed about star wars outlaws sales numbers and let ubisoft stock crash so this might actually explain the game just looked awful I mean, really, like, it just looked awful. And I think that's the real reason why it happened. I mean, like, losing 80% in four years is insane.

It's unreal. Looked like DEI. It looked like the exact type of game that was made for people that like to be offended.

And it was, like, made for Twitter, where it's like, you can't kill the animals, but you can pet them. Like, all the characters are, like, super bland, and you can only steal from police officers. It's just such an obnoxious representation. You can't rob anyone?

Yeah, exactly. It's like, you can be an outlaw, but you can only do good things, basically. why ubisoft took such a huge hit at least financially from within its own investor modern safe shares lost over 10 combined in the last two days so the company just slipped to under 2 billion in market cap in paris ubisoft is almost at a 10 gear imagine if you know that ubisoft was having meetings about this yeah we're having meetings about how to proceed with both their games and with their business and now investors it was just stupid right it was stupid they should have Like, I don't know what the idea is. Like, if you look at a Star Wars, like, if you go look at any Star Wars convention, and you look at who's there, it's a bunch of guys.

Like, you can't make a female-centric Star Wars story, and then expect the same male audience to buy that game at the same ratio that they're going to buy the other ones at. Like, it's so crazy to me that such an obvious reality that any normal person can see that's evident and right in front of them. is somehow like unimaginable by a multi-billion dollar company well not multi anymore as we can see but by a billion dollar company unless she's hot yeah unless the character is really hot that's true it's a bunch of guys with lightsabers yeah exactly like what do you what do you mean like of course girls like star wars there's plenty of girls like star wars but there's way more guys And if you look at guys that are like, who's playing a lot of PC games?

Guys. Like you're looking action combat shooting games. Guys are playing those fucking games. Writing open letters to this company, not only asking for structural and strategic changes, but they're now asking for prices to be lowered, staff to be fired, and for the removal of the CEO himself. And you guys.

Good. Good. That's what needs to happen.

That's exactly. what needs to happen yeah get rid of the people that don't know what the fuck they're doing they're wasting your investment money and then replace them with people that know what they're doing i used to work at ubisoft uh this year the rest of the game uh 2014 the corpo suits took over maybe i don't know yeah maybe that's the case I have to see this story for yourself so that you understand how bad this is for Ubisoft. This is from TechRaptor. Activist Ubisoft investor calls for strategic and structural change. And I've also seen this story on the Wall Street Journal, although I did not provide that story today.

A lot of people have linked it to me already. A company that serves as a significant minority shareholder. These guys have a lot of money in this company.

In Ubisoft has called for major structural and strategic change at the studio and has expressed deep dissatisfaction with Ubisoft's current direction. So they are not happy with what Ubisoft is doing as well as millions of gamers out there. But hey, let's not listen to them.

Their opinions don't matter. In an open letter to Ubisoft's board of directors, which CC's CEO Yves Guillermo and stakeholder Tencent investment company AJ Investments criticizes Ubisoft's current performance and strategic direction. It's very obvious that there's something that's wrong.

Skull & Bones was a massive failure. All you have to do is look at the game. I mean, it was a massive failure, even if you look at just like especially the design of the game.

The game looked like shit. Hardly anybody is playing it, and it probably costs over a hundred million dollars to make. So you have Skull and Bones, Star Wars Outlaws, and seemingly Assassin's Creed, all three of these games be total fucking dog shit, or at least presumed to be dog shit?

That's a pattern. i mean that that's it yeah and and yeah you've got it tank jobs exactly yeah not a finish that's a that's a fucking pattern right there you've got to see you all know aj investments is a hedge fund in slovakia so these guys are all about investments they invest into anything and in fact raptor here says that they are an activist investment company aj investment says ubisoft's recent quarterly results which saw upcoming releases the division resurgence and rainbow six mobile pushed back beyond march next year have heightened its concerns about management's ability to deliver results for shareholders so they don't trust Ubisoft to be able to deliver anymore, and now they're calling them out for that. They set out four proposals to increase the value of Ubisoft for all stakeholders. They include allowing Ubisoft to go private, selling the company, changing current management, and ousting Galeamo as CEO. They're like, get rid of this guy!

Bro, they just want to flip the board over. God damn. They have a Rainbow Six wheelchair operator? I think that's also another really big problem. And I do think that like, it's definitely ideology first and gameplay second with these guys.

And I think what they're trying to do is they're trying to use the game to like push some sort of like agenda. Like, why would you ever want to have a person in a wheelchair? Like in what universe in a Rainbow Six situation would you ever want to have a person in a wheelchair? Like, it's just, it's such a, it's such a ridiculous concept that, like, when you take a step back and you just think about it for more than a few seconds, you'd realize this is the stupidest, dumbest fucking thing I've ever heard.

It's so outrageous. Yeah, stairs are in the game. Yeah, how the fuck does that work? Right, only if he's a hacker?

Well, even then, it still just doesn't make sense. And so it's about some sort of a message. Yeah, it's weird, man.

And I think anybody can see this. ruining everything and he's making us all go broke the dei initiative apparently is not working or at least whatever strategic play ubisoft has had in the works for some time it's just i don't think that it's as simple as saying because of dei ubisoft bad i think that like if you actually get down to the nuts and bolts of the gameplay in these games the gameplay is bad like the dna of the game is bad Yeah, you can say, oh, well, you know, it's a female lead character, so people aren't that interested. Sure. Yeah, true. Maybe that is why.

But if you actually look at the gameplay itself, it's also garbage. has not been doing them any favors especially in the money market as for its reasoning aj investors say that ubisoft is being mismanaged and that shareholders are currently hostages of galemo family members and tinson who take advantage of them so not only are they saying that the ceo should be ousted because of his mismanagement of the company but they are also saying that they're hostages to him and his family who have control of the majority of the company so they're saying his whole family needs to be gone this is incredible guys The company goes on to say that it cannot understand Ubisoft's management strategy and that the studio seems more focused on pleasing investors rather than providing an exceptional experience for its fans. And this is something that I think that's true. And that's what happens with any publicly publicly made company is that the company tries to like like think really, really big picture and develop some sort of like crazy big new game. And they start trying to like, oh, who's our target audience?

Well, this game is made for everyone. Okay. Yeah, sure. Okay.

So nobody's going to like it then. Got it. Understood. So yeah, customers are always right.

Exactly. And so I think that in the process of trying to like manage and like make as much money as possible for like the investors, they've done the opposite because they're not providing a good experience. Like a good experience provides money to the investors. Money to the investors does not necessarily provide a good experience. gamers have been saying for the longest time for months maybe even years when it comes to ubisoft specifically that this company has no idea how to handle its video games it has no idea how to handle its fans and it has no idea especially how to handle criticism and criticism is one of the biggest things that they have had to endure aj investors claim that many of the studio's ips including rayman watchdogs and splinter cell are being underutilized and i agree with that when is the last time we had a splinter cell game That's right.

A year before Ubisoft stock prices started to go up. Yeah, I can't even think of that. Splinter Cell has not seen a title in over a decade, ever since the last one that came out in 2013. But there are other games that Ubisoft is neglecting in order to push games like Star Wars Outlaws and Assassin's Creed Shadows. Games that are riddled in controversy of different natures, different types, and are being scolded.

Well, I think the problem is that a lot of the developers think that their view on the situation... is more accurate than the public's view on the situation and so because they can categorize the people that don't like assassin's creed shadows for example as like oh well they just don't like it because they're racist or something like that that doesn't make them like it and so the problem is that these people are coping and they're saying well you know they shouldn't think like this they shouldn't be they shouldn't like this is terrible they shouldn't be able to say this but that doesn't actually change people's minds So it ends up happening. Yeah, everybody else is wrong. Yeah, if you say everybody else is wrong for long enough, well, then you're not going to have anybody that's paying attention to your content. So it's that simple.

Yeah, so it's yeah, I think that's what's really happening is that they're not actually listening to what the customers want. And nobody at the company is holding them accountable to that. Because doing that would be empowering a voice of a group of people that they consider to be bad. So it's basically like we have this problem. We know this problem exists.

But if you speak on the problem, now you're the enemy. And I think that's what's happened. Like, that's exactly what I think has happened. Some want to be renegade in the rest of the group. They're looking for a headline and own less than 1%.

Well, I think that there's a lot of investors. Like, I mean, does it really take a lot of brainpower to assume that a graph going down like this would warrant people being concerned? I think that obviously they're concerned. Yeah, of course.

Let's not notice the elephant in the room. Yeah, exactly. And I think that's the real problem. And they're not taking that feedback and providing a product that the customers want because they think that their view on the product is more important than the product itself. Or actually, it's more important than the customer's view on the product.

And if they have a product that is like a moral superior, that then customers are like obligated or something to buy it. vilified by gamers everywhere and now the stock prices are dropping investors are panicking and requests like these are being made the company does however say that prince of persia the lost crown was merely okay yeah i guess it was okay i'm never played it i have played the other prince of purges because i actually love the original games but that nobody talks about the game anymore which is also true i don't see anybody talking about it that's probably because it's a single player game everyone's finished guys not every game needs to be headline news every day of the week which i also retarded argument fucking stupid retarded argument i that's not true at all uh people are talking about elden ring all the time now still people are talking about balder's gate all the time now still People always are going to be talking about the game. Do you want to know the real reason why Prince of Persia The Lost Crown didn't succeed?

There's two reasons. Number one, it wasn't on Steam. Number two, it was too expensive.

And also there is a number three where side score and Metroidvania style games are not viewed as AAA products in the consumer's eyes. So I played this game and I thought the game was actually quite good. I thought the game played very well. It was enjoyable. I liked it a lot.

But the reality is that it was $60 on release. And the other games inside of this market are just simply way more than that. Or sorry, way less than that.

Like look at Blasphemous 2. Look at Hollow Knight. Like all of these games, like if you go to market with a game like this and your game is of this way higher price, well then you're really not going to sell anything. It's not AAA. Yeah, but people expect that level of quality. If you're asking people to spend $60, they're going to be looking for a AAA experience.

And I have no problem paying $60 for a Metroidvania game, but it's very clear that other people did. And I don't know if I mentioned this earlier, but it was not on Steam. So like you had to download an entire new program, like Epic Games, like you're massively nerfing your product by putting it on some other platform like this.

I don't want to download it from some other platform. Like there are a lot of games that I just don't even play if they're not on Steam. And it's not that the Epic Games launcher is like really that bad, but it's that it's worse. The Epic Games Launcher is 100% worse than Steam.

And by the way, that's bad. It's bad. We, like, it's in everybody here's best interest for the Epic Games Launcher to be as good as Steam.

Because that way we have a competitive marketplace where obviously competition will breed excellence and it will improve the products that we have. So it's very problematic that Epic can't get their shit together. The game was $40, I just looked it up. Oh, um...

It was $40. I think that you could have been right, but they had an early access for $60. I could have been a little bit wrong on that, but even $40 for a side-scorer game like this is just not what people are looking to do.

You can't even send messages to people on your Epic friends list? Yeah. Epic won't have reviews on purpose, so it's automatically a worse platform? Yeah, people just aren't... Like, Steam is a platform that puts its users first.

Epic is a platform that puts developers first. So big surprise, you have a lot of developers that like Epic and a lot of customers that like Steam. But the problem is that people forgot who actually controls the market.

The real people that control the market are not the developers, it's the players. The players have always had all the control. The customer always has all the power. So agree with and they have provided the letter with these requested changes that I'm going to read through just a little bit so that you can have receipts to share with all of your buddies. But further on into the letter, AJ Investors proposes several ways by which Ubisoft could improve its performance and its standing with shareholders.

They include taking the company private for a fair price as well as laying off staff, a procedure AJ Investors rather callously referred to as. optimizing staff levels so they're like trying to be super friendly when they say fire all these people they're making things worse other recommendations include refocusing on core ips and another call for changes in management this letter comes after industry analyst circ and toto which is the guy i just referred to pointed out last week that investors seem very disappointed about the sales of star wars outlaws with shares dipping 10 in just two days so i think there is validity to the claim that anybody could have said this was going to be bad like and that's the problem is that they clearly have a direction with making these games and It's like with Outlaws especially, it was astonishing to me that people, like after playing the game myself, I was really shocked that anybody thought it was good. Like even like just the combat, like the melee, the cinematics, like everything about it was bad.

How did you let this happen? let's just just let this thing die it's crazy yeah because ubisoft isn't listening during earnings calls and because gamers have lost complete faith in the company as a whole toto followed this up with another post today noting that stocks had fallen another nine percent in paris so these stories do coincide and i didn't actually know that until i read this paragraph right here but we're still gonna move on to the letter so great job circuit toto great job on that reporting there and we're gonna take a look at this letter that i have pulled up for you all to see so nine nine 2024 so this was as of today maybe even just a few hours ago to the board of directors and members of committees ubisoft entertainment and they did indeed cc mr yves guillermo ceo and chairman of ubisoft entertainment and they cc'd tencent holdings so everyone is going to be reading this letter the ceo gets to read the letter in which they ask for him to be fired so he's probably it makes sense right i mean like if you the thing is the stock lost like you 80 or 90% of its value. How do you lose 80 or 90% of your value and then try to stick around? Bro, you fucked up.

Get out of here. What are you thinking? Like, that's crazy.

Probably saw it coming. How dare they write such nonsense and then send it to me. The nerve. The gall. Dear members of the board, dear fellow shareholders, as a significant minority shareholder in Ubisoft Entertainment, via AJ Investments and our partners, we are writing to express our deep dissatisfaction with the current performance and strategic direction of the company.

The recent quarterly results, which included the postponement of key games like Rainbow Six Siege and The Division into the 2025 lineup. and a lowered revenue outlook for the Q2 2024 have heightened our concerns about the management's ability to deliver value to shareholders over the long term. Share price of Ubisoft had decreased by more than 40% over the last year, which is horrible for a video game. Well, that's 40% after another 40%, right? It's not like this 40% was the first one.

Woke investors, it's not really about woke investors. I actually think that it's something that is systematic with the company. I think that they're probably making too many games and they're spread too thin because they're releasing so many games and so many of their games have quality issues or some sort of quality control problem. I think that's what's really going on.

It's woke and please. Well, I think that there's definitely like that definitely does matter. It does because it's going to give people a bad impression of the game if they look at a comment section.

And the comment section is saying the game looks bad. That's a huge, huge issue. Like, basically, it seems like the public has rejected both Star Wars Outlaws and Star Wars Assassin's, or sorry, the Assassin's Creed Shadows.

Like, a lot of people in the public have pretty much rejected this. Like, very, very, very negative. It's like Ubisoft even, it's gotten so bad that Ubisoft even put out a statement about Assassin's Creed Shadows. Tonally, it's too woke and gameplay mechanics do zero innovation. They just repeat the same formulas.

Yeah. Company as big as Ubisoft compared to rise of its competitors and indexes. And there have been a lot of companies as of recently that have taken to the skies with their revenue on their video games that they have made. Black Myth Wukong. Hello.

They say this letter consists of following points. Take Ubisoft private. or allow it to sell it to strategic investor ubisoft valuation why we believe ubisoft is great undervalued company and should be worth between 40 to 45 euros it's not worth 40 to 45 euros there's no way they've done so much damage to their reputation and also i think that if you have a company that makes bad games consistently the odds are the reason for that is because the people that work at the company are bad at their job And I don't think that it's an issue. Like, yeah, you're right that management always takes accountability for issues.

But if you want me to be honest, I think that a lot of the people that are probably working there are incompetent. And they don't know how to make a good game. It's obvious that they don't.

So, yeah, I mean, it's not a one-guy problem. Yeah. Share our concerns about the future of the company and our proposals. So they say take... I think, like, look at Blizzard, for example, right?

like blizzard has such a massive disadvantage now because of how much controversy and how many negative uh like games they brought out and how much negative press they've had so now they're they're fighting an uphill battle with every single release that they do And I don't think people understand or take into account, because it's very hard to quantify, the amount of value that consumer satisfaction and people liking you has. They can't just cut it? Yeah, well, what I'm saying is, like, basically every single game, your end consumer audience has an overall negative opinion of your games.

And you can see this with any Ubisoft trailer. People are very, very negative with these games. And... guess what it causes them to lose a lot of fucking money because the the strongest form of advertising is word of mouth and the next best thing to word of mouth is seeing what other consumers are saying and so you look at the reviews the games aren't on steam you're just never seeing anything good about ubisoft that's what it really comes down to at the end of the day you never read anything good about ubisoft anymore private process by pe firms or galemo family plus tenson at fair price allow sale process as we are in discussion with investors to fight against galemo family with so-called proxy fight an extraordinary shareholder meeting change of the current management so they say start hiring process of new ceo who will optimize the cost and studio structure for more agile and competitive company as ubisoft should be i want to say that number three is probably the most brutal request in this entire list because that's also the most accurate and probably the most effective one there's a reason there's a reason why yeah absolutely so yeah word of mouth is king it is no a hundred fucking percent this is the case should fire bobby the crew no what i'm saying is like i think that elon firing 80 of twitter's staff and then the website maintaining basically its functionality I think that really showed a lot of other people in tech. We don't need all these people.

We don't need to do this. It's wild. Yeah, exactly.

And so I think that a lot of companies, like, I don't know if you guys work at a company like this or have worked at a company like this, but I feel like things in the same way, it's like gravity, right? Like something that's really big just tends to like bring in more things that are really big. And I think that what's happened with Ubisoft is that They've just continued to like grow and grow and grow. And at this point, there's too much redundancy. There's probably a bunch of people that are on the staff that have jobs that don't really add a lot of value to the product.

Large companies move slow. Yeah. the ceo that he should be removed and then sending it to him that's just so insulting but kind of hilarious but it also says to the rest of the company that they think the ceo is not optimizing the cost and studio structure they're saying that he's doing nothing with the company that he's not doing anything to improve it and that he needs to be gone now this is the guy that said that star wars outlaws was going to be an incredibly successful video game and that their marketing campaign for it was going to be astronomically and beautifully executed. But it appears that after all was said and done, it was nothing.

Man, that's crazy. Why would you say that? I mean, it's just is there issues for weeks?

Yeah, exactly. Like, wow. Nice millennial words?

Off by a decade and a half. Yeah. thing but a fizzle in the wind we will use the french minority law to collect enough shareholders to start proxy fight and initiate sale process of ubisoft to increase shareholder value for all shareholders so they're saying we're going to take this to the next level ag investments are going to try and start a battle of the shareholders if you will so that they wield enough power in order to sell ubisoft as a company so they're going to try and force sell the company in an attempt to put ubisoft i don't think they're gonna do that but i think that the leadership does need to be replaced yeah they're probably not gonna force to sale or have the company go private but i think leadership will get replaced no matter what at this point and i think that if assassin's creed is like badly received and people don't like it i could easily see What we know is Ubisoft now to change dramatically. I don't know exactly what that means, whether that means the company would get split up, bought by somebody else.

I don't think it's going to crash and they're going to just delete the company. I don't think that's what's going to happen. But one more failure like this, and I can't really see them recovering from it.

Yeah. I just, I can't. I mean, there's just been too many failures in a row.

And I just, yeah. They're done? Yeah, I mean, how do you do that? Last chance?

Well, like, whenever we, like, make jokes about it's Blizzard's last chance, it's really funny, right? But the truth is that if you look at Blizzard stock, so, value research, let me see if I can find it, share price, if it has any information about this. So this is whenever, obviously, the company was sold. But if you look at over...

Oh, fuck, it might be hard for me to see. Yeah, if you look at the actual revenue of Blizzard, it went up massively. So Blizzard is actually an example of like, Blizzard has gotten a lot of negative press, but that negative press never actually amounted to a negative impact on the business.

Bobby brought in the money. There's a reason why this dude could have been on Epstein Island. He could have been, you know, threatening to have his assistant killed with like a recorded conversation. And none of that mattered. And the reason why is because of this graph right here.

Ubisoft does not have that. That's the difference between something like Blizzard and Ubisoft. Is Blizzard has a very bad reputation and they're making money despite that.

Ubisoft has a very bad reputation and they're not. CEO in their places. So Ubisoft valuation, we believe that Ubisoft is a great company developing, distributing, and selling video games. Ubisoft has long-standing history with providing great experience for players all around the world.

Their IPs, such as Assassin's Creed, Far Cry, Tom Clancy's, Just Dance, Crew, Rayman, and others are extraordinary and can attract millions of players over time. However. We believe that Ubisoft at current valuation is deeply undervalued and should be worth between 40 to 45 euro per share.

But I think that this is the cream. No, it's not. I bet that a lot of the people that made the games that made Ubisoft really successful, like Black Flag and like all the old Assassin's Creed games, Prince of Persia, stuff like that from like the 2000s.

Those people probably don't work there anymore. Like a company isn't really anything. right a company is people and so if you change the people it's fundamentally not the same company even if it has the same name so ubisoft that used to be worth 45 to 50 dollars per share whatever they're calling it 40 50 44 40 to 45 uh that company doesn't exist anymore of the crop right here this is the best part of this open letter to ubisoft it says that ubisoft at current state is mismanaged and shareholders are hostage of galemo family members and tencent who take advantage of them management is focused on pleasing investors with beating quarterly results and not focusing on long-term strategy to provide exceptional experience for the gamers i think that this is incredibly ironic coming from a hedge fund company like aj investments they're even saying that ubisoft is prioritizing quarterly results over the satisfaction of gamers so they're like hey you guys are supposed to be gamer pleasers you guys aren't pleasing anybody though you're just far too busy getting money it's just so funny that it's coming well the funny thing is that it's the opposite right it's like they're they're trying to squeeze it so hard that They're actually hurting it, right? Like now it's like they're trying so hard to make money that they're causing themselves to lose money. These people who are a hedge fund, even they see that Ubisoft is doing something horribly wrong and they're calling it out now.

And AJ Investments is no small company. They are... pretty big now they do have a minority shareholder value but it is significant as stated so even though the majority shareholders probably have a ton more these people still have enough of a claim to the company that they can say things like this and have an impact and it really is having an impact well i mean like you've got to be fucking crazy if you think that anybody else who's an investor isn't thinking the same thing like if you had a stock and it went down 80 or 90 in like eight years Of course you would want to have a reason for that. Absolutely.

Like, you really think that this isn't something the other guys aren't thinking? Of course they are. That's their fucking money.

Which is concerning. But this goes far beyond just trying to remove a CEO or his family or trying to gain control of a company. These people go as far as accusing. this family of amassing control to sabotage future partnerships and to enrich themselves with shares that they buy at a really low value in order to maintain the control that they've had for so long and this information is coming out really fast it says right here that we believe that galamo family and tencent are discounting potential value of ubisoft in order to buy more shares at lower valuation and eventually take full control of the company at heavily discounted valuation we value the great work that has been done by the galamos over the decade in the ubisoft but now is time to move on and restart the business with new shareholder approach and new management ceo they do go on by talking about february 1st 2023 when the galamo entities acquired more than 4 million shares of ubisoft with the money from tencent in our view recent delays of certain titles there are creating uncertainty amongst investors is beneficial for galabo intense it doesn't matter like it's always better to delay a game like i know a lot of people think that's bad but it's totally okay if you delay a game this legit happened with long john silvers recently yeah of course order to acquire more shares at even discounted valuation as ubisoft is currently trading close to 15 euro per share lowest point since 2015 giving ubisoft valuation less than 2 billion euros so these guys up at tencent this family galama who apparently branched into other things as well these four brothers are trying to attain full control of this company so that they don't have to do anything with it so that they don't have to make any beneficial partnerships with any other companies that want to invest in it Funny enough, one of those companies that they mention is actually Blackstone, which I'll point to in just a second. But they assume that because of Tencent and Activision Blizzard, that they may use this as a tactic to get minority shareholders under the stress.

The Glamour family and Tencent owns more than 25% of shares, 29.63%. I mean, even if they don't, I don't really see this being a solvable issue with what their products are. Like, it doesn't matter who really owns the company.

At the end of the day, like, if you're delivering a product and people don't like the product, that's it. That's the issue, right? It doesn't matter if you're delaying it.

Like, Suicide Squad got delayed, and it was still garbage. There are other games, like Black Myth Wukong got delayed, I think, twice. Elden Ring got delayed twice, but it was still really good. It still sold very well.

None of that matters if the games are good. That is the bottom line because that's what the company is about. I think that a lot of times people get involved in like the process of the company or things like that. But what really matters more than anything is the actual value that the company is giving the end user. And that's why Steam is so popular.

It's because Steam focuses entirely on the user experience and what the user is getting out of it. good product sale voting rights of you that's the bottom line shows below so what aj investments plans to do is to take the remaining 70 percent of the shareholders of the company the minority shareholders based on their talks with other shareholders they believe that they will have enough voting power to challenge the glamours and take the company from them completely so that they can transform it which brings us to an incredibly interesting portion of the argument that they are presenting here they say that because of the management and governance that ubisoft has been failing horribly the control exercise in september 2022 by tencent and the galamo family has effectively blocked potential acquisitions and partnerships that could have been beneficial for the company and its shareholders and that's because the galamos have been buying the dip repeatedly more recently in 2022 private equity firms such as i don't even know why they would try to do that like it doesn't even make sense concerning the direction of the company Yeah, it's silly. Just make good games, exactly, yeah. in the company the glamo family intensive will buy at a very low price and then amass even more control over the company so eventually they will have full control and aj investments picked up on this they caught them in the act of trying to do this and now they're trying to stop them this is crazy dude but look at what's been happening to the company over the last 10 years look at what's been happening to star wars outlaws and assassin's creed shadows look what has been happening as these people keep pushing dei for example everything that they do everything the galamos do with this company they fail and before people start saying well i i don't think that again i i think dei is a component to it but i don't think that it's even the main component i think that if the game played well that you can always find examples of games that have the same type of dei but it's a certain type of attitude and writing and design that comes together to make like the perfect combination of a very unfun and unenjoyable game you but at least they said no to blackstone that doesn't mean that these people are any better look yeah it's like it's entirely like all the way down they may not be partnered with blackstone but they're certainly pushing what blackstone wants 100 this pattern of blocking potential acquisitions has prevented much needed restructuring and revitalization that will benefit all the stakeholders of ubisoft and aj investments has recognized this malicious now they want to take the company from the galima they must think that things are really bad at ubisoft we must not be seeing the entire big picture with this company and how in bad straits they truly are and we are going to find out over the next few days how bad this really is because i'm sure that people are going to start picking you're not going to find out until assassin's creed shadows comes out as i said if that game comes out and it's not successful i could easily see it like cutting the stock in half again Because it's just at that point, you just have so many fuck-ups in a row. I don't see how you can recover from that.

part this open letter which actually has a ton of information that spans from them describing the drops in stock prices over the last few years amongst other things operational efficiency etc etc and this letter goes all the way down it says that we encourage all the minority shareholders to contact us and support our initiative and then they provide the email sincerely girage koopa aj investments and of course So these guys are going to town on Ubisoft. They're ready to take over and they've provided sufficient evidence to try and convince these shareholders to take their side and to buy this company. Ubisoft is in the middle of a war between itself and the people who invest in it. And the people in charge have been gatekeeping this company from having any kind of beneficial partnerships. And to be honest with you, that really does make a lot of sense when you think about how poorly their stock.

prices have been doing lately and they just keep going down. Even after Star Wars Outlaws was released, this company's prices have been going down. It has not made a recovery and there's a good chance that-Of course it's not going to make a recovery.

Why would it make a recovery? Like there's no reason for people to like randomly get faith in the company again. It doesn't even make sense.

Of course not. Yeah. There's no reason for that. Ubisoft must go down so many good franchises.

Yeah. Yeah. The company might- not actually recover at all and if you really take a look at everything that the galemos have done for this company they did good for a minute i don't know how long they've been a part of this i assume since almost the beginning but really the company's price has gone down to below the point that it was at before september 2014 ubisoft is in trouble and aj investments is like hey guys you see how badly this company is doing let's take over let's change this company from the inside out now if they take over and then they give it to blackstone i really don't think that anything is going to change but regardless of which side you take in this investment war one thing is for certain ubisoft is in dire straits they are doing terribly and gamers are crazy to me because like i see people that i think they like the i think like it's crazy how ideology can cause people to completely neglect reality And I'm seeing people all the time talking about how Ubisoft is actually doing really well. And like how, like, it's actually not bad that you can release multiple games that are massive failures in a row.

But no, this is absolutely not like, Ubisoft isn't Ubisoft anymore. Exactly, yeah. Like, you can't keep doing that, man. Who? There's a lot of people on Twitter that are talking about like, oh, Star Wars Outlaws actually did really well, etc.

And even because like they can't lie on their investor reports, right? It's like legally against the law. And so they had to say that they expected lower sales.

And I think that was the beginning of the end. Twitter never have been the majority. No, they're not. Seeing it happen in real time. And that is all I've got for you guys in this video today.

I hope you all enjoyed it. If you haven't had the chance to like it and share it with your friends, that would be awesome. And hey.

If you're feeling ultra spicy, consider subscribing to my channel so that you're always up to date on what kind of thing I've got going on. I look forward to seeing you all in the next one. Later.

Meow, meow. Okay. Well, just a minute. I'll talk about this for a few minutes.

I think a lot of this video definitely seemed like just a straight up investor dispute, right? Like it wasn't just entirely about the games and the products. It was about who's owning the company.

and how control in the company is being exercised. And I think that's also, like, that's very different than, let's say, I don't know, like, the game being bad for, like, one specific reason. I think it's something that's, like, let me turn this down a little bit so I can talk.

Yeah, Raymond will save Ubisoft? I don't think so. And interesting to get a view of this angle. Well, like, you have to assume, like, if you are a big company, and you lose 80% of your fucking stock value, you bet your fucking ass that somebody's head has to roll. I would be shocked if at the end of, like, after these releases, you don't see a massive change-up, or big layoffs, or something like that.

Because you just can't have failure after failure like this. A minus 80% is crazy. And again, like, you can compare this.

People always compare it with, like, Activision Blizzard. Very, very, very bad comparison. Activision Blizzard was maximizing profit.

Bobby brought home the bacon, and this Guillermo guy, or whoever the fuck it is, isn't. He's not. Assassin's Creed will succeed.

Here's what I think. I think Assassin's Creed will be a... Probably it will be a successful game, but it will be the lowest version of success that you could potentially have. And I think that also...

And this is another comparison I want to show you guys. So this is something that's actually observable of Path of Exile. And so if you look at, for example, a lot of the leagues like Lake of Calandra was a league that was received a lot worse than Sanctum.

Sanctum was perceived much better than Lake of Calandra. But Lake of Calandra had a higher player base. And then if you look at the Crucible League, which was perceived very well.

And again, look at the high peak there. Well, that's because of how well the Sanctum League did. And so what happens is that a lot of game purchases have a ripple effect that if the last purchase was good, then the next purchase will be better. And if the last purchase was bad, the next purchase will be worse. And I think that's what's happening here is you're seeing that delayed effect go into go into Assassin's Creed.

And you're seeing that with Star Wars Outlaws even. So because consumers, they buy one game, they don't like it. Well, then they don't buy the next one.

You're severely underestimating the popularity of Assassin's Creed. Every Assassin's Creed game has had their stocks go up. Here's the problem, though, is that let's say the Assassin's Creed game has their stocks go up, but the proportion is lower than any other game, like any other previous Assassin's Creed game.

Wouldn't that really make you worry? I'll link you guys to video, by the way. Give it a like. I think that he brought up some good points here, even though the majority of this does seem to be a shareholder, a shareholder dispute. And also Assassin's Creed is going to be following like a massive budget.

So like, yeah, they've got to make the most money off of Assassin's Creed because that's where they're spending the most money. So I think that's what's going to happen with a lot of cases. This reminds me so much of Bungie and their future move with Destiny 2. We just saw the stocks. Yeah, exactly. And so if Assassin's Creed is going to be successful, the truth is like Valhalla was a very successful game.

And if you look at the response from Assassin's Creed Valhalla, if you go back and you look at, for example, like the launch video or the announcement video for that game, you'll see almost everybody who was positive about that game. People liked Assassin's Creed Valhalla. People were excited for it.

I don't see that same excitement with Assassin's Creed Shadows. I just don't. And I think that's a huge fucking problem. So yeah, Assassin's Creed will probably do much better than Star Wars Outlaws, but... It's like if you know that your biggest hitter still isn't a home run, even if it gets you to first or second base, I'd want to change teams.

And that's the point that I'm making. Is that even if Assassin's Creed does do well, it doing well does not mean that they're out of the woods. Going full throttle, either ideology or milking money.

Valhalla was liked after the fact. It had bad reception before launch. I don't know. I remember seeing a lot of people be very positive about Assassin's Creed Valhalla. I was excited until they gained push over.

And I don't think you guys understand this. Like, I don't think that you understand how bad this really is. I'm gonna remind you. And this is the best showcase by the way. This is as good as it gets.

Sound. Who do you think you are? For the people? I am justice.

Uh-huh. Sekiro from Wish. Wu-Wang was better than this. Like, look at, for example, watch this at 0.25. Wait a second.

Sorry. Watch the way the animations work. Barely even hit him. Get ready. It's jank as fuck, yeah.

What was that? You see that animation? Garbage.

And here's the worst part. Is that this is the best part of the video. Watch this. This is the biggest joke I've ever seen.

Get ready. Get ready. Here we go.

Man. So bad. I want to go back.

And I really like showing things in super slow motion. So you can really see how bad the quality of it is. Because like again, nah, this is so bad. Yeah. The trees don't cut at the right place.

Some of them do. Some of them don't. Compare the old Assassin's Creed games.

Talk about the AI. It's a joke. Yeah, look at them. They're not even doing anything.

The screen randomly turns gray. It's hitting them. It doesn't even make sense.

Is this from 1990? It looks like it's from 2009. And it's like just the combat in this is just awful. I don't know if they've shown any other gameplay. Like the stealth gameplay, I will tell you this.

I think the stealth gameplay in this game is fine, but it's also like, is this really... So I think about, I compare this experience with my experience in Sekiro, going up to fight the Miriki counter guy. This is kind of the same type of general environment, right?

Where you go back in time. Is it better than not? No, it's not.

the ghost of tashima see i haven't played ghost of tashima see look at that oh what and look by the way look at this we're gonna go back to 0.25 she's invisible You can see he's looking directly at her. Can't see shit. You could easily see somebody like this. She literally walks up to him without him activating.

Direct line of sight. Anybody could have seen that. She's crouching so she's invisible?

Yeah, I know. I played Star Wars Outlaws. I know that. That's pretty bad. Yeah.

Sound? Uh, there's no reason. I don't want to watch this sound. It's the same as something like this. Wow.

Wow. Metal Gear had better AI 20 years ago? Yep.

And so let me see if I can show some more combat. Is that, that's really what I like to show. There's a cinematic for that?

Yeah, why is there even a cinematic for something like that? It doesn't even make sense. And like, this is kind of fine.

What was that? I don't know. Sound is important, it makes it even worse. They put hip-hop in feudal Japan. Well, this is different.

I'll play the sound just so you guys can hear it. he's coming i need to hide and all these like mini load screens like this right it's like because this really is just a mini load screen it's like starfield you know like whenever you sit down in the ship that's so weird actually i i don't think yeah load screen is not the right word to use i guess just cinematics let me see if i can show some more of this Samurai with mace? That was cool.

Yeah, to be fair, that was good. Oh, here we go. Yeah, so anyway, I just, like, I can't see anybody looking at this game and seeing what the responses are.

And, like, if I look at this, who are you? I am good guy. Bravo, incredible writing. There's no way they gave Yasuke hip-hop music, bro.

The fact that they put hip-hop music as Yasuke's battle music, even though he was not African-American, should tell you everything you need to know about Ubisoft. Yeah, I think that's basically... I'm seeing if there's any actual comments on the gameplay. Remember, never pre-order Ubisoft games. Wow.

Oh my fucking god. I don't even know what to say. Redditors?

Yeah, I guess so. Ranzu of Tenchu Z? I don't know really what that is.

That's a stupid point to bring up the music? I don't think so. I think it just goes to show that they're kind of... What do you call it? It's like...

I feel like it's patronizing in a way, right? The Japanese comments? People are so sensitive nowadays? Well, I think that like... And this is the point that I'm making, is that...

A game that has, like, for example, Baldur's Gate 3 has a lot of things that people would perceive as DEI. But because the game is authentic and it's a good game, people don't care about it and it doesn't matter to them. Like, Elden Ring has things, like, they use body types instead of male and female.

And so you could see that as being woke. It is woke. It's stupid.

There's male and female and that's it. Those are the two characters you can make. Everybody knows it, but we have to pretend like it's not. Like, what are we doing?

I think it's stupid. Yeah, so, but that doesn't really matter if the game is good. I think the problem is that Ubisoft games on the surface look like woke DEI trash.

And when you dig deeper, you find that it's actually, that's only the tip of the iceberg. And I think that's what's happened, is that that's not even the beginning of the problem. What do you mean I'm a body type 2 orc hunter?

We get permed on Reddit for saying that. I don't know. I mean, like, I'm just saying, like, this is clearly, like, it's so obvious that the body type 1 and 2 are male and female, right? Every normal person knows this.

Why is it that this, why is it the body type 2 or B is always having its chest covered? It's because it's women and men. That's the reason. And why is there always only two body types and there's not more than two?

Like it's just, it's such a, I feel like that difference is probably the biggest indicator of just stupidity. Just straight fucking stupidity. Because it's so obvious, but nobody can say it.

Because of the sliders, oh, it's done right. Mental gymnastics otherwise, yeah, it's massive mental gymnastics. Why do you care though, only semantics? Because they changed it. Because they care.

If they cared enough to change it, then I should be able to care enough to change it back. Yeah, no, I mean, like, that's fine. And it's that simple.

Why do they care? Yeah, I mean, yeah, you're not going to trivialize that. That's not how it works.

Is that a stupid argument? Why do you care? Yeah, a lot of people say that, but it's obvious that they're the ones that care because they're the ones that are changing it.

The world is shit because we didn't care enough? Well, I think that's starting to change. Can you use that same argument to condone slavery? Yeah, of course.

There should be 16 body types, ranging from my 600-pound life to anorexia. To be fair, Elden Ring does give you a lot of variation, but that's generally the way that I see it. Yeah, I can see this game absolutely having a negative impact on Ubisoft. Nothing about this looks good.

Transcript for:Ubisoft's Financial Struggles and Future Prospects

Transcript for:
Ubisoft's Financial Struggles and Future Prospects