Following the recent news that analysts have significantly lowered sales projections for Ubisoft’s latest AAA title, Star Wars: Outlaws, from 8 million to 5 million units, the company’s stock has taken a considerable hit.
The underwhelming reviews and lack of genuine excitement surrounding the game have contributed to growing investor concerns that Ubisoft is on a downward trajectory.
Star Wars: Outlaws, a anticipated open-world game based on one of the world’s most notorious franchises, was expected to be a major win for the company. However, it appears the game has fallen short of expectations, further exacerbating Ubisoft’s struggles.
Ubisoft shares have dropped 11% this week, now sitting at €15.54, marking their lowest point since 2015. This sharp decline contributes to an overall 33% decrease in stock value since the start of the year, reflecting growing issues within a company heavily focused on ESG and DEI initiatives.
The market’s negative reaction stems from the poor reception of Star Wars: Outlaws last week. According to Midcap Partners analyst Charles-Louis Planade, the game’s release failed to generate the player interest Ubisoft had anticipated, compounding the disappointment from the underwhelming reception of the free-to-play title XDefiant.
The release of Star Wars: Outlaws was one of two major events for Ubisoft this year. The company is also preparing to launch Assassin’s Creed Shadows on November 15, projecting sales of around 13.5 million copies, aiming to surpass the 13 million units sold by its best-selling title, Assassin’s Creed Valhalla.
However, the game has already faced significant backlash from gamers due to its controversial revisionism of Japanese history, particularly its fictionalized Samurai depiction of a supposed historical figure, with the game featuring a Black protagonist by the name of Yasuke.
Given the intense criticism over what gamers see as racist appropriation, it’s extremely doubtful that Assassin’s Creed Shadows will achieve the success Ubisoft hopes for, despite gaming journalists defending it.
Despite generally positive reviews from biased gaming journalists, Star Wars: Outlaws received a “generally unfavorable” user score of 5.2 out of 10 on Metacritic, based on 648 user reviews as of September 2. Now, just a week after its official release, the game has amassed 1,275 reviews, maintaining its low user rating.
A recent leaked Ubisoft memo revealed the company’s commitment to woke ideology, stating that “representation is part of their DNA.” This stance has been evident in recent releases, such as Beyond Good & Evil 20th Anniversary Edition, which includes a virtue-signaling disclaimer against racial stereotypes, and their push for diverse but poorly received character designs in games like Star Wars: Outlaws.
The game’s protagonist, criticized for looking like a last-minute gender swap, and Ubisoft’s promotion of the “Black Samurai” false narrative in Assassin’s Creed Shadows, have further fueled backlash from players who quite obviously refuse to buy their games.
Ubisoft is grappling with four consecutive years of negative cash flow due to underperformance, and Star Wars: Outlaws had the highest marketing budget of any of their games. The company had pinned high hopes on this release, aiming to capitalize on the enduring popularity of the Star Wars franchise to aid in its financial recovery.
However, the game launched as yet another bland and uninspired Far Cry reskin, much like Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora before it.
In July, Ubisoft Chief Financial Officer Frédéric Duguet expressed optimism that Star Wars: Outlaws would drive a significant increase in net bookings for the July-September quarter. That optimism now appears misplaced, as J.P. Morgan analyst Daniel Kerven has reduced their sales expectations for the game from 7.5 million to 5.5 million units, reflecting its disappointing reception.
Ubisoft continues to struggle with its large-scale releases, with the self-proclaimed “AAAA” title Skull and Bones floundering at launch. The game eventually landed on Steam at a steep 60% discount, attracting only a few hundred players. Ubisoft’s recent offerings have been widely criticized as bland, uninspired, and regressive, especially when compared to their own games from a decade ago.
Star Wars: Outlaws in particular was met with backlash months before release due to its unpopular and widely criticized “female” protagonist, a result of Ubisoft’s attempts to cater to DEI and ESG initiatives fueled by BlackRock backed hedge funds.
In an effort to appeal to a “modern audience,” Ubisoft has ended up alienating many of its core consumers, contributing to disappointing sales. Beyond the misguided pandering, the games themselves have been of poor quality both in terms of story narratives but gameplay and optimization.
This decline is likely tied to the state of Ubisoft’s Western development studios, which are now filled with diversity hires and underqualified progressive female liberal employees, like so many others in America and surrounding nations, detracting from the overall talent and creativity needed to produce high-quality AAA titles.
The company recently laid off 45 employees, bringing the total number of layoffs to nearly 2,000 in less than two years. Ubisoft’s big-budget releases have been severely underperforming, compounded by their decision to bypass Valve’s Steam store for PC gamers, who largely refuse to use alternative platforms like the Epic Games Store or Ubisoft Connect.
Ubisoft’s shares have plummeted 78% over the past five years, as gaming as a whole becomes increasingly unprofitable as sales of AAA games continue to decline.
The skyrocketing costs of game development, coupled with longer production times thanks to unskilled workforces have resulted in titles launching unfinished, unpolished, and lacking creativity.
Ubisoft’s relentless focus on diversity and inclusivity agendas has played a significant role in its downfall, with Assassin’s Creed Shadows serving as a prime example of how DEI and ESG initiatives can harm the industry.
The game’s controversial elements sparked a petition in Japan, calling for its ban, which garnered over 100,000 signatures. This, combined with the company’s increasingly subpar offerings designed by liberal feminists for liberal feminists, has alienated its core audience.
The senior writer for Assassin’s Creed Shadows even claimed there are “more than enough” games featuring White male protagonists, further asserting that “cis White men” hold “privilege” in the industry, while Ubisoft proclaimed during an interview with Famitsu that they were specifically looking for a non-Japanese protagonist in their game set during Feudal Japan.
The so-called “modern audience” Ubisoft seeks to cater to continues to disappoint, with queer-centric woke content failing to attract the support they hoped for, as seen with Sony’s $200 million flop Concord, which was shut down just two weeks after launch.
With Ubisoft’s upcoming pipeline of inclusive titles likely to meet the same fate, the company’s future seems increasingly uncertain, raising the possibility of a total collapse in the coming years.
