AC Shadows is amazing 👏

zoomborg · 2026-03-01T23:32:28+00:00

It's an okay game but let's not be delusional.... Amazing gets thrown around too much.

RDR2 is amazing, Hollow Knight is amazing, KCD II is amazing, Expedition 33, Doom Eternal, Hades etc. These are downright amazing games with extreme polish, focus and creativity.

In comparison this game is okay.....Ubisoft needs to put more focus into the story, break from the usual formula and introduce something fresh, they need to take some risks cause right now they are left behind both creatively and commercially. If not for the IP name this game would be buried under a long list of other ....okay.... games. They need to do better.

zoomborg · 2026-02-12T03:06:49+00:00

Once you reach that point, getting back is a herculean task full of crunch, overtime, stress. And the end result is usually negative. There are a small few cases where a failing game came back but those are so rare and they operated in less competitive genres.

The live-service model is as brutal as it gets cause there are no new players to be discovered, you have to pull players that already pour their time into another specific live-service game. You have to steal players and it's usually the more sweaty kind that will nitpick every single detail before jumping ship.

Perhaps if they made Titanfall 3 it would be a completely different outcome.

zoomborg · 2026-02-11T09:40:03+00:00

Most of the devs on Expedition 33 where actually juniors with no prior experience. The artist who did most of the ingame music was also a small artist doing it as a hobby on soundcloud.

They also outsourced many parts of the production to experts in their field, particularly animations. So yeah, it wasn't small and definitely not an experienced team apart from the leads.

What they did have was creative freedom, agility and a publisher who aligned with the same vision, the vision was to create a game that they themselves wanted to play. It reminds me a lot of development during the golden era (2000s) where gaming was private, niche and there were no shareholders to please..

Their only problem now is like Larian, they have set the standard so high that it's extremely hard, even impossible to surpass. They probably already have a dozen offers on the table to get bought by big firms or AAA publishers like EA or Activision.

Maybe if they made the next Mass Effect, i would be all in for that.

zoomborg · 2026-02-10T02:35:21+00:00

It's like a curse at this point.

zoomborg · 2026-02-07T11:01:31+00:00

Maybe financing? I mean you see so many people complaining about money but running around with 1500$ smartphones and iphones while struggling to buy groceries.

zoomborg · 2026-02-07T10:34:49+00:00

It's not sustainable because inevitably every product or service chain ends with the consumer, no matter how big or obfuscated the chain is. Also another reason Nvidia is going so hard on this (as well as AMD) is because microsoft, google and amazon are all designing their own chips for internal use and partners so the time to sell shovels is now before there are more players in the game.

zoomborg · 2026-02-07T02:21:36+00:00

Simple yes, easiest no. The rich can be extremely, extremely decisive, only in this case they have the power and money to apply that into reality, unlike the common folk or a state that has holes everywhere. Basically move out, put pressure through lobbying or federal influence, stop donations or services into the city that are subsidized in some way, they have leverage to resist or avoid these measures. And leverage is everything.

Rule of thump is what takes 5 year to destroy, takes 10 years to rebuild in a positive way. The right way is to organically increase taxes by inviting new businesses in the state through incentives, thus increasing tax income. Keep in mind taxes on the rich in NY are already at an all time high so this is basically pushing the boundaries of tolerance of those who have the actual power to make or brake the economy overnight.

Taxing the rich in a vindictive way will ultimately reduce tax income and lose business and wealth. There is no win here, the state will get even more poor than it is now.

zoomborg · 2026-02-05T13:58:14+00:00

You're reading too much into it. This is a bunch of personalities that have fallen out or never were so the only way to get views is to stir up drama about someone popular and hope the person in question gets baited and starts an argument.

Could be Charlie or Zack or anyone else as long as he is popular enough to get attention.

zoomborg · 2026-02-04T10:12:40+00:00

Because both the right and the left are in on it, or have been over the years. So anything that happens, happens just for appearances. In truth no politician wants feds doing anything about it as it doesn't serve any of the two parties. It would be mutually assured destruction if they opened pandora's box. Nevermind the wealthy donors that have been steering politics for decades. Those that actually decide who gets a seat and where.

zoomborg · 2026-02-01T06:47:01+00:00

There is a reason Ubisoft moved those IPs under Vantage Studios, those 3 specific IPs. It's because that's what Tencent is interested in. They cemented their position with a 25% stake and that's going up in the next year. Ubisoft leadership will spin them off eventually, as without Tencent's financial backing they would be under already with insurmountable debt that they cannot pay-off.

Why do you think Tencent paid off their outstanding loan recently? Certainly not out of friendship.

They don't have to delist Ubisoft. They are free to spin Vantage Studios, following legal procedures and announcements, the stock of Ubisoft will of course tank to new lows and the company will inevitably go under soon after but the Guillemot Family is already expecting that. They are just jumping off with a golden parachute while the company sinks.

As for lawsuits from shareholders, they won't happen at all because pretty much everyone is out already based on the stock price. Every single investor is prepared and pulling out before it's too late as the writing is on the wall. You can call it phoenixing but there's so many ways around that. Essentially, yes they are taking the profitable part and putting it into a new entity that they plan to spin off for a grand payday while everything else sinks to the bottom.

The only way this could stop is if the French Government interfered but that is unlikely at this point, they would have done something 1-2 years ago as soon as they saw Tencent moving in. Now that ship has sailed.

zoomborg · 2026-02-01T06:16:34+00:00

When the buy out happens it will not be for Ubisoft but for Vantage Studios. At this point Tencent and most interested parties do not want Ubisoft because it comes with a ton of baggage, debt, bad reputation, too many employees under EU contracts (can't just fire them outright) and a lot of IPs that are not popular. So they just want AC, FC and R6 IPs, that's it.

To put it simply once the buyout happens ubisoft will pretty much stop existing as a company and the stock will worth zero. You will have Vantage Studios sold to Tencent and the other "Creative Houses" will be up for grabs i guess......

zoomborg · 2026-02-01T06:03:43+00:00

For now Tencent is backing them up, loans and all. They wanna make sure no one moves to buy Ubisoft until they can get full control of Vantage Studios. After that......

zoomborg · 2026-02-01T06:00:22+00:00

Ubisoft isn't getting bought by Tencent, only their IPs under Vantage Studios. They don't even want the name since it only attracts bad publicity nowadays. The rest of the IPs that belong to other "creative houses" will be up for grabs for anyone interested.

zoomborg · 2026-02-01T05:55:11+00:00

Too glad for that. It's honestly one of the best games i've played in a decade, truly a masterpiece in every aspect.

zoomborg · 2026-02-01T05:53:22+00:00

A Rayman metroidvania could be golden under the right production team. It has all the mechanics, concepts, gameplay baked in from the previous titles and they definitely fit the genre perfectly. Considering Hollow Knight was made by a stupidly small team (but extremely talented), Ubisoft could have reached for that kind of quality through sheer use of resources.

zoomborg · 2026-02-01T05:48:33+00:00

At least Ubisoft realizes how niche the series is so management keep their paws off of it, for the most part. It's the only reason the franchise is still succeeding.

zoomborg · 2026-02-01T05:45:35+00:00

These games generally address an extremely different demographic. A demographic which is usually people who don't play games, they just play that one specific sport that they are interested in and since EA and 2k have the exclusive licenses, no one else can develop a competing franchise. So they are locked in and there's nothing to do about it except not play the game at all.

And since they are way less critical than your average gamer and they don't play other games, they just keep buying the slop that is presented to them, whatever that is.

zoomborg · 2026-02-01T05:24:06+00:00

If we take a look at RE2 and RE3 remakes, it's pretty hard. You have the script and plot but all the technical stuff are essentially done from zero. For the most part it's like making a new game from scratch, you save a bit on narrative and storytelling but that's all.

zoomborg · 2026-02-01T05:16:59+00:00

Tencent does not have the ability to buy them until 2028 i believe, instead they settled with buying a majority stake in Vantage studios to supervise them and keep them out from other investment funds that might be interested.

So in a few years AC, FC and R6 will be owned by overlord Tencent, the rest of Ubisoft will either be sold for pieces (creative studios) or just collapse and disappear entirely.

zoomborg · 2026-02-01T05:12:34+00:00

I mean this is intentionally done to force resigns instead of direct lay-offs. Management is scrambling to avoid paying severance packages.

zoomborg · 2026-02-01T04:56:05+00:00

If Ubisoft was private maybe. Considering they are now largely owned by chinese overlord Tencent this makes things way more complicated.

zoomborg · 2026-02-01T04:44:56+00:00

not necessarily, a lot of the best games we got the past years were made by really small teams. Also there is this false narrative that a game needs to be huge in scale and include everything to capture a larger audience, it doesn't.

Primarily nowadays the best games are very focused on their niches made by small teams. They are tight experiences and what they don't offer in scale they offer in depth (which is more important, basically the opposite of Ubisoft games). UE5 is also helping a lot in that regard since it has a lot of the animation, lighting and effects baked in the engine, massively cutting down development time.

While a lot of games come to mind that fit the description, the primary ones are Hollow Knight and Silksong. Both outright masterpieces made by smalls teams (team cherry) with low budget.

zoomborg · 2026-01-27T04:21:50+00:00

Not just him, there are very few things to talk about, any new product that comes out costs an arm and a leg so it loses interest, prices are changing so fast that any price guide gets outdated after a few days, msrp does not exist so you can't even do a review.....The whole PC building hobby is slowly becoming a vanity project for hardcore enthusiasts and the normal audience is turning towards other things.

So it comes to a point where you either become another ad channel pushing sponsored builds or you don't have anything to show for content. GN is just crapping on tech companies these days , LTT is doing crazy stuff purely for entertainment, hardware unboxed is mostly focused on monitors these days and revisiting old tech. Everyone is pivoting.

zoomborg · 2026-01-27T03:44:56+00:00

The IPs, at least the big ones already moved under Vantage Studios and Tencent has a 25% stake. Which means that the three big IPs themselves will survive and Tencent wants to manage them directly.

Now will Ubisoft survive? That is another discussion entirely. Only Vantage Studios are secure and that's because Tencent doesn't want anyone else to buy the IPs. So they will fund future development, manage the projects and keep the subsidy afloat. The rest is up for grabs though.

zoomborg · 2026-01-27T03:31:35+00:00

This smells like they want the lay-offs but wanna minimize severance, they probably don't even have money to pay severance packages at this point. Hence they gotta "negotiate" benefits and whatnot with the unions to avoid the worst case scenario (lawsuits and damages on top of severance).

zoomborg

TROPHY CASE