Ubisoft has been in a serious downward spiral lately, and to call it “struggling” would be putting it mildly. The company has alienated much of its core audience by obsessively pushing DEI (diversity, equity, inclusion) mandates and pushing games like Assassin’s Creed Shadows, which has been universally loathed for its historical revisionism.
The upcoming release sparked outrage in Japan, not only for its inaccuracies but also for the offensive design of official memorabilia, which was pulled after a massive backlash. At this point, the only people who seem to defend Ubisoft are political activists on social media.
In a desperate move, Ubisoft stealth-released Assassin’s Creed Mirage on Steam with a 50% discount, hoping to attract attention. But for a company on the verge of collapse, even that hasn’t stirred much interest, proving how far they’ve fallen.
Their obsession with catering to Western political agendas has led to a fixation on diversity initiatives, forcing racially inclusive characters and LGBTQ representation into games at the expense of authenticity, quality and storytelling.
Star Wars Outlaws, one of Ubisoft’s biggest titles in years featured a deliberately disfigured, overly masculine supposed “female” protagonist of ethnic background, based on an actress who is far more attractive in real life.
The result? An open-world third-person game based on one of the world’s most beloved franchises has flopped, plagued by the outrage surrounding Assassin’s Creed Shadows. Despite its massive marketing budget, Star Wars Outlaws barely sold a million copies in its first month, undercutting already low expectations by millions.
Ubisoft’s focus on pushing political agendas has dug them into a hole they can’t climb out of.
Assassin’s Creed Shadows had the potential to be a huge hit. Fans have been craving a game set in Japan for over a decade, with its rich history of shinobi and samurai, a perfect setting for the franchise. But Ubisoft, now a shell of its former self, is too fixated on meeting BlackRock’s ESG criteria and pushing DEI inclusivity at the cost of historical accuracy and consumer enjoyment.
Instead of giving fans the game they wanted, Ubisoft decided to center Assassin’s Creed Shadows around Yasuke, a relatively obscure figure whose historical significance is murky at best. For the first time, Ubisoft has built a game around a real historical character, and it just so happens to be a Black man in 1600s Japan, which sent fans into a fury.
The Yasuke revisionism has only added fuel to the fire, with gamers discovering that much of the narrative surrounding Yasuke as a full-fledged samurai warrior was pushed by Jewish-English author Thomas Lockley, who even went so far as to rewrite Wikipedia entries to support his claims.
In reality, Yasuke was likely a retainer of Oda Nobunaga, far from the grandiose warrior Ubisoft is portraying. This historical manipulation has not gone down well with the gaming community, and it feels like Ubisoft is more interested in rewriting history to meet diversity quotas than respecting the rich culture and history of Japan.
As if that weren’t enough, gaming journalists immediately jumped in to accuse gamers of racism, claiming that Assassin’s Creed has never been about strict historical accuracy, despite the franchise’s general commitment to at least matching the geography and tone of the settings.
Things got even more bizarre when The New York Times backed Ubisoft by interviewing a transgender, half-Japanese consultant who claimed that the backlash was entirely a Western phenomenon, with the Japanese audience supposedly being totally fine with it.
This consultant also just so happened to have been previously employed by Sweet Baby Inc., a company with a notorious history of artificially pushing racial and sexual inclusivity and producing commercial flops, also having worked with Ubisoft during its time at Sweet Baby Inc, so no conflict of interest there, right?
Adding to the chaos, Ubisoft pulled out of the Tokyo Game Show just days before it was set to take place. The last straw came with the discovery of a highly offensive figure tied to Assassin’s Creed Shadows, featuring Yasuke and the female protagonist, posed in front of a half-destroyed torii gate.
The backlash forced Ubisoft to pull the figure and rework it, but the damage had already been done.
Since the announcement of Assassin’s Creed Shadows, fans have voiced their disgust, leading to disastrous sales for subsequent releases, like Star Wars Outlaws. The game flopped, despite being a major title with a massive marketing budget, as it too was marred by controversy and poor design choices fixated on inclusivity.
Earlier this year, Ubisoft released Skull and Bones, touted as the world’s first “AAAA” game, and after nearly a decade of development, it was dead on arrival. The game silently debuted on Steam with a 60% discount and barely managed to pull in 400 players.
A humiliating number for a project that had so much time and money thrown at it. To make matters worse, Ubisoft has now stealth-released Assassin’s Creed Mirage on Steam with little fanfare, and, predictably, it’s being largely ignored.
Ubisoft has dug themselves into an early grave. They’ve bet everything on Assassin’s Creed Shadows, and if it flops as hard as their other recent releases, it could very well be the final nail in the coffin for a company that’s alienated its core audience in favor of political agendas and performative diversity.
Assassin’s Creed Mirage may have received positive reviews at launch, but it’s hard to ignore Ubisoft’s tactics with its PC audience. The implementation of DENUVO anti-tamper DRM coinciding with VMProtect, as part of a day-one update left paying customers dealing with performance issues, a classic bait-and-switch move.
Despite the Steam release and a hefty 50% discount, the game’s performance has been underwhelming. Mirage peaked at only 7,870 players, a huge drop from Assassin’s Creed Valhalla and a far cry from the numbers Odyssey and Origins pulled in, signaling a sharp decline in interest for Ubisoft’s flagship franchise.
With Assassin’s Creed Mirage’s Steam release, DENUVO is still embedded in the game, meaning that paying customers are stuck with the performance hits that come with it. Ubisoft’s ongoing controversies, from their racist depiction of feudal Japan to the discovery of a mentorship program that discriminates against men have further tainted the company’s reception.
Even with a significant 50% discount on the largest PC platform, Mirage only managed to peak at 7,870 players, about half of what Assassin’s Creed Valhalla achieved and a mere fraction of Origins and Odyssey’s numbers, which peaked at 41,551 and 62,069 players, respectively.
This sharp decline highlights the growing disinterest in Ubisoft’s flagship series on Steam, as gamers appear to be voting with their wallets against what they perceive as woke indoctrination infiltrating their escapism. Mirage‘s performance, even at a steep discount, reflects a broader dissatisfaction with Ubisoft’s recent direction.
The underwhelming performance of Assassin’s Creed Valhalla on Steam can be somewhat excused, as it didn’t launch on the platform until two years after its initial release. However, this doesn’t change the fact that Ubisoft is facing a sharp decline in interest.
In contrast, Assassin’s Creed Mirage launched on Steam just a year after its initial release, but even with a steep 50% discount, it performed poorly. The game saw a 49.8% decline in peak concurrent players compared to Valhalla, a clear indicator of Ubisoft’s waning relevance in the eyes of consumers.
As Ubisoft continues to struggle, the impending release of Assassin’s Creed Shadows represents a make-or-break moment for the company. If Shadows underperforms as Mirage shows it will, Ubisoft could be looking at a new owner as gamers have become disillusioned by the company’s focus on sociopolitical elements instead of delivering the experiences that made the franchise popular in the first place.
As of now, Assassin’s Creed Mirage has a player count of just 2,904, lower than Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, which was the first game in the series to introduce in-game microtransactions for what is predominantly a single-player experience.
Since Odyssey, Ubisoft significantly altered the gameplay loop to slow down progression, nudging players toward purchasing in-game EXP boosters to speed things up. Unfortunately, Ubisoft has doubled down on this model with later releases like Valhalla and Mirage, expanding their focus on microtransactions with cosmetic/weapon packs in the latter.
This business model, where core gameplay is artificially stretched to push players toward purchases has clearly not resonated well with many, contributing to a noticeable decline in interest across the Assassin’s Creed franchise prior to the announcement of Shadows.
With Mirage’s dismal player numbers on Steam, it’s becoming increasingly clear that Ubisoft has lost its relevance in the gaming world. Years of pushing aggressive monetization practices and fixating on diversity and inclusivity over creating authentic, compelling games have alienated their core fan base.
Mirage feels like just another stumble in Ubisoft’s ongoing decline, as players continue to express disdain and hostility toward the company’s direction.
With Assassin’s Creed Shadows on the horizon, and a day-one Steam launch planned, Ubisoft’s future is teetering on the edge. If Shadows underperforms as Mirage’s Steam numbers predict, it will likely mark the death of the company and I for one will be busting open the champagne when it happens.
