Ubisoft near bankruptcy?
Reading through the article Ubisoft Bankruptcy in 2025 published on tech4gamers.com outlines how Ubisoft’s struggle might be coming to a head in 2025.
As someone who worked in the company for nearly 6 years (I left in 2021), this is not a surprise. Just over 2 years ago, as the big correction of the industry was hitting Ubisoft with layoffs and changes, I actually remember saying to one of my colleagues at the time: “I’m not sure Ubisoft will survive this correction”. Here we are today.
Why did Ubisoft end up this close to bankruptcy?
I think it’s a combination of 5 factors that I see leading to the current state of Ubisoft and subsequent issues it’s facing:
Lack of Agility
I borrow my words from my former direct manager and director at Ubisoft who describe the company as “an aircraft carrier”. It takes a long time for such a big entity to change direction, to adjust course, and to plot a course in a new, different direction.
This I witnessed not just when it comes to workforce topics, but also in terms of games and brands. When the market changes, Ubisoft was (presumably still is) unable to adjust to it as a result. By the time a change is acknowledge as a reality internally, it will take years for it to be implemented with any tangible results that will be in front of players. It takes 3+ years for a substantial player facing change based on the market direction to be implemented. This is simply too long.
Ubisoft misses the market on a regular basis. An example I experienced first hand was Hyperscape, Ubisoft’s attempt at an entry into the Battle Royal genre. The premise and concept of the game was not a bad idea, and it was in a playable and near ready state very quickly. However, internal political conflicts, and constant self-doubting leading to sometimes baseless re-adjusting, resulted in Apex grabbing the market gap that Ubisoft was hoping to fill. Missing the market and resulting in a write off.
Brand Fatigue
While players were tired of the yearly return of Assassins Creed already, Ubisoft took their ‘brand’ to a whole new level of fatigue. The Ubisoft brand itself is one of open world games, with a main storyline and a handful of side activities repeated over and over again; think climbing radio towers in Far Cry, or clearing out checkpoints. The same recipe of building open world games, squeezing out ever more play time, ended up being their winning formula but in different packages. Assassin’s Creed, Far Cry, Watchdogs, etc. all come with all too similar Ubisoft hallmarks that ultimately were nowhere near different enough to attract new audiences, but only ended up serving the existing already shrinking ones. Ultimately, the various brands, no longer had their own USP, only the Ubisoft one.
Lack of Innovation
Very much linked to the above bullet point, after the year of Rainbow Six Siege, For Honor, The Division 1, and a little dabble in VR, Ubisoft ended up repackaging and releasing the same thing in different shares and colours. It was the same concept, the same formula over and over again.
When the player knows exactly what to get from an Ubisoft game, making a purchase decision for something that might just already exist in their library is a harder and harder sell. Especially when we consider how the player has become much more critical, cautious and informed about games and purchase decisions.
Too many cooks
Politics was one of my personal biggest issues I faced on a regular basis while working at Ubisoft. The politics between business units, between regions, between studios, between who you report to, was ever present. It made for some complicated meetings where words are chosen carefully, and leading to no actions taken, or decisions being made. Stalling, and delaying was a common tactic to maintain political balance.
A left over from the days of physical copies (these were the first office closures), and incredibly amount of studios around the world, each with their own overhead, and increasing fragmentation of what Ubisoft is and does, resulted in a reality where one studio operating incredibly well with great ideas and staff, while others were a political minefield filled with anxiety and “head down, don’t become a target” atmosphere.
Skull and Bones is a victim of politics that ultimately resulted in poor decisions, rejecting data driven reality, and steering in a different direction every year. Until eventually it had to be released, no matter what.
I remember jokingly talking about it in a sense of “You had one job: take Assassins Creed Black Flag (the most successful assassins creed of all time), rip out the Assassin’s Creed part, and make it a pirate game.” While I will not share the first concepts and iterations of what they wanted the game to be (trust me, it was a lot worse), resulting in directional changes at least once a year. It ended up as a stitched together soulless game, and subsequently resulted in the commercial failure it ends up being.
Dismantling the player focused teams
This was a big contributing factor of my leaving at the time. A new direction was forced through despite all the warnings and concerns by a newly hired director (his tenure was a total of 2 years) resulting in a focus on views and impressions. The entire concept of truly understanding the player, and the player behavioural dynamics was stripped and removed. It used to be one of Ubisoft’s competitive advantage to really understand where a player’s frustrations originates from, and what can be done to prevent, change and improve it.
Rainbow Six Siege is the best example of what Ubisoft used to do: really listen to the player. A year of what I like to call “troubled child hood”, first server issues, followed by cheater and hacker heaven, before the parabolical rise that resulted in Rainbow Six Siege turning into the brand that paid Ubisoft’s bills for years.
The Division’s Elite task force is a similar example, of how listening to the player and community, ultimately leads to greater success for the brand and benefit of all players.
This almost superpower of really understanding the underlying behavioural dynamics and dedication to listening to the player to make the experience a better one for everyone. Was lost and ended up resulting in going into the market more blindly than necessary. Leading to hitting every pothole along the way, eroding player trust.
In summary: all of the above people were aware of at the time while I was there. But only as the player behaviour changed drastically, leading to our current state where games are not doing all that well recently (obviously with a few exceptions), did the current status quo no longer hold up at Ubisoft. Ubisoft’s inability to adjust in a timely manner, no longer understanding and knowing the underlying player behaviours and dynamics, result in trying to navigating in the dark.
Ubisoft’s game brands all hold value, and I doubt we’ll see the end of it all. But as I said to my colleague 2.5 years ago, I’m not sure Ubisoft will be able to survive this industry correction. Certainly not while the above issues hamper positive player experiences.
One more thought
I was unsure if I should put this in writing, but I cannot bite my lip on this topic. Both the original article linked above, as well as another one I found writing on the subject, politicise the entire situation and connecting Ubisoft’s predicament singularly to “DEI”. I cannot stress enough how factually false this is.
Firstly, a few years ago Ubisoft was under fire because it didn’t have enough representation in their games. The famous quote of “women are harder to animate” you might recall. The community actually asked for the inclusion of these topics for years. It’s a good example where a requested change/addition took Ubisoft years to implement.
The particular reference this article uses to make it’s point is a concerns/complaint about the historical inaccuracy of the involved characters, not the fact that these topics are present. It’s a frustrating example of misleading information to make a political point.
Secondly, the brands where diversity was a more prevalent topic (Assassins Creed or Watchdogs come to mind), have a large LGBTQ+ fan base. In reality we saw a lot of positive reinforcement from our core community about the inclusion of these topics.
Thirdly, the negativity over these topics that some like to draw on, did not see any impact on sales figures, and if it did deter some of the bigoted, homophobes out there, then it was in such small numbers that it was negligible. As a culture builder for community and brands, I personally also have to admit, I am not sad to see such individuals choosing not be part of the community.
If you happen to be someone who does follow the now strong waves of hate and backwards moving social progress, then you will have to stop playing video games right now. All of them! Because as long as you play our games, you pay our salaries, and we are an industry with a proportionally higher representation in LGBTQ+. We still have ways to go on the ethnicity and gender side, but I know for a fact the industry is plenty queer (including transgender people). By playing video games (any of them), you support us, all of us, and pay our livelihoods.
Lastly, I’d like to appeal to the ones that want to make this a political matter. It is not. It is a company that is struggling to keep up in an ever faster moving and changing market.
It is sad, because no matter what opinion you might hold on Ubisoft, the fact of the matter is that it is one of the western world’s giants, and they have brought joy, excitement, and fun to millions of people with their games and communities around them.
So, can we please leave the polarising hostile politicisation out of it, and instead hope that we learn from this and make the industry better for all, players and employees alike, in the long run.
