Ars Technica:
"As someone who’s written about games for nearly 20 years, I spend a lot of time thinking about the relationship between the press and the larger games industry. But I’ve been doing even more thinking in the wake of a blockbuster article on Kotaku alleging that the site has been effectively blacklisted by two major publishers for more than a year."
In a very intriguing and interesting move, 16 Ubisoft titles can now be purchased on the Xbox PC Store. Of course, this is a first as Ubisoft PC titles have never been purchasable on the Xbox PC Store previously.
Ubisoft announced its financial results for the fiscal year 2024-2025, and they're not good, but Assassin's Creed Shadows is doing well.
Three companies keep showing their true faces and telling us who they are but for some weird reason we refuse to believe them. Even when everything they show just makes their greediness even stands out more
Keep messing with the consumers and keep being greedy. Keep telling your consumers to get comfortable now owning your games and we will. You only have few IP's that gamers care about anyways so
"soon enough tencent will buy you out. They already own 49%. Keep deleting games from gamers libraries and getting sued over it instead of making offline play possible for the crew" it's sad that I believe in 10 cents more than UBI because atleast tencent knows how to run a proper business
These executives can taking millions and bonuses and stock options yet they fire those actually making the games without thinking twice. Gaming has become so greedy that their own greed will be their downfall. Companies like Capcom have realized making good quality games and treat gamers with respect
AC series started with a soul but now it's just a soulless empty option world with icons filling the game map. They make their own games so grindy so that they can see the XP boosters to even the odds. As a gamer in my 40's all I want to know is when did gaming just stop being about Fun and all about greed. Double XP weekends selling cosmetics and dances. I use to be a big sports game guy when I was in my 20's the other day I wanted to play NBA 2k and after doing some deep research I realized the best NBA game was 2k17 and NBA 2k25 at $9.79 I couldn't pull the trigger on that 2k25 for how egregious the micro transactions were. So much of the fun is behind a pay wall
True words, buddy.
Q: "So how many units did Shadows sell?"
Ubisoft: "Well, look, we ... it's been a busy week."
For over a decade, the price of video games remained steady. We paid $50, then $60 for full, content-rich experiences. Developers found creative ways to deliver incredible games without charging more. From the PS2 era through the PS4/Xbox One, pricing consistency gave players a sense of value and trust.
But then came the jump to $70 during the PS5 and Xbox Series X launches—justified by "rising development costs." And now, barely four years later, we’re seeing $80 price tags becoming more common for standard editions. At this pace, by the time the next generation of consoles launches around 2027, $90 games could be the norm. And with a behemoth like GTA 6 on the horizon, a $99.99 base price wouldn’t be shocking at all.
Yet we’ve also seen proof that this kind of pricing isn’t necessary for success. Look at the recent launches of Expedition 33 and The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered. Both released at $49.99 and have been met with strong sales and positive reception. These games show that there’s still plenty of room for high-quality, mid-budget (AA) titles that offer great value—and gamers are more than willing to support them at fair prices.
But here’s the problem: the big publishers don’t care. If we as consumers keep paying for deluxe editions, early access, and overpriced base games, they’ll keep pushing the limits. They’re not going to back down unless we speak with our wallets—because that’s the only language they listen to. If they see record sales, they’ll take it as validation.
It’s frustrating when these same companies report record-breaking revenue and profits—yet still complain about tariffs, still find excuses to raise prices, and still hand out bigger bonuses to their CEOs. If they’re doing so well financially, why are they passing more of the burden onto players?
It’s because gaming has become the second biggest entertainment market in the world. And with that comes attention from hedge funds, investors, and boardrooms focused on short-term profit, not long-term player trust. To them, your passion is just a revenue stream. They care about quarterly numbers, not the health of the industry or the joy of the experience.
And unless we—as players—take a stand, the greed won’t stop. The monetization will grow, the price hikes will continue, and the soul of gaming will keep slipping away. The choice is ours. We can either keep paying more for less, or we can push back. One purchase—or one refusal to purchase—at a time
"And unless we—as players—take a stand, the greed won’t stop."
And that's the tough part about it.
Look at those annual figures showing billions and billions of money being spent on the most ridiculous add-ons, DLCs, pre-release accesses, even pre-orders, digital deluxe crap, etc.
I mean - we've stood together at times. I don't say it didn't happen before.
But within all of our communities there's so much passive aggressive defensiveness.
Look at the debates regarding physical vs digital.
Publishers can't keep a straight face reading our discussions in which many people abandon physical.
Playing straight into the cards of publishers out there.
Like I said gamers are the biggest issue with gaming. We may united on a issue but as soon as our favorite gaming franchise gets a release we will support it. If there any doubt Mario kart will be one of the best selling games on switch 2?
Things we use to unlock by simply playing a game has not be sold to us as extra content
I think people arebgetting tired of the formula. We see it in sales. People just want fun again.
Even the $130 ultimate editions of UBI games are only a bit less grindy and they still beg people to buy helix coins throughout the whole experience.
It's a travesty what 2K did to NBA 2K.
It really is because NBA 2K is simply unplayable without spending money and you can't even respec for a new my player you are required to spend again
When you don't disclose units sold... and your stock goes down... how is this doing well?
"According to the company, Assassin’s Creed Shadows achieved the second-highest Day 1 sales revenue in franchise history, following Assassin’s Creed Valhalla. It actually had the best Day 1 performance of Ubisoft’s history on the PlayStation Store."
Ubishit burned so many bridges with fans, releasing filler dreck that was purposefully designed to push you towards micro-trash-actions. It didn't have to be this way, they could have respected us players more, instead of making players waste countless hours of their life just to see stupid "experience points and resources numbers go up" and attempt to profit off us in such a disrespectful way. I stopped supporting them a long time ago. Keep burning bridges, and keep burning your company from within.
Any game (be it Ubisoft or any other company) with an unnecessary shoe-horned in experience points system, endless resources collection, and a micro-trash-action store that sells you boosters that alleviate the grind.
They do it on purpose to nudge players towards spending more money, and its something I refuse to support. Nearly all modern Ubisoft games have experience points and skill trees these days, not because it makes the games better, but because it can potentially make them more money by exhausting people into giving in and buying boosters.
Assassin's Creed, Ghost Recon and more series are offenders of this game design blight.
I see. And I agree. I dont like these trends either. Although I dont remember AC having paid upgrades (given that my last one was black flag)
IGN : One former Bethesda developer has cautioned that loading screens will probably always be a part of its games because of the way they're designed. Here's why.
Thanks for the insightful information!
Now I wanna see if all those that were complaining about loading screens on Starfield will give a hard pass on both upcoming Bethesda RPGs like TESVI and Fallout 5.
If you can´t stand load screens, stay away from those games. Period!
I don't think you understand the difference between them though and what makes Starfield and TES / Fallout different when it comes to loading screens.
When you're playing TES or Fallout, if you are doing a mission you have the choice to walk to your objective where on your travels you will run into many different encounters getting completely sidetracked, it's fun as it feels like you are exploring the world more. However with Starfield you don't get that choice because you can't walk to a new planet, the loading screen is more mandatory, even the Outer Worlds fell into this issue, so when you are constantly going to space, travelling from planet to planet there's a lot more loading screens involved where it slowly becomes more tedious in comparison.
What Bethesda needs to do is work on reducing the loading screens and fitting more within it. For example when you enter a town in TES it should load the entire town, houses, castles, sewers etc included, same goes for Fallout, take the Vegas Strip in Fallout New Vegas, it was chopped up into multiple segments where going back and forth doing missions become a chore nearer the end.
if they scaled down the "1000" planets to 10, 4 main hub. 6 unexplored, but actually filled with tings to do and explore, the thing Bethesda used to be good at. People like Obscure thin we shit on Bethesda just to shit on it. No we want better games.
It's a design choice they've chosen. RDR2 kind of proves the whole 'loading interiors' or 'having different events go on' isn't what's stopping it.
RDR2 didn't have you walk into a massive structure like a Starfield base/facility though, right? I'm sure log cabins are a lot easier to handle
That won't affect the need to load content. That's just static designs with a few interactibles. And did we forget RDR2 has towns you don't load into with multiple buildings, dynamic events, and ties to the world as a whole. You load areas to manage the specific scripting and the number of elements that need tracking constantly in that area. Bethesda designs it so you can leave a trail of cheese wheels from town to town, RDR2 designs it so the world interactions are randomized by a few factors and come to you.
Like I said, it's a design choice.
Ok but you can still have more seamless "loading screens" starfield has no excuse for how much its gameplay flow sucks. You're basically saying it will always suck because we don't want to spend the effort on improving that aspect. Hell every open world survival game has object permanence, from valheim to the forest, and that doesn't have tons of loading screens
I haven't played oblivion as yet but does it have loading screens? No one is talking about it.
Fun fact, the remastered version of days gone still has loading screens. It is not the instant load like you see on PS5 and series titles but you will have to wait a bit to load into certain sections. I am not sure why they didn't polish them out and no one is talking about it.
Oblivion has loading screens but it’s nowhere near the wait times it used to be (from what I remember) so the whole experience feels a lot better.
Agreed about Days Gone remastered, it definitely feels like it’s mostly a visual & feel (dualsense) remaster without much focus on optimization (I expected no loading times & in some cases I encountered the same kinds of bugs & audio issues that were on PS4).
Still love the game though & I hope the remaster will help pave the way for DG2.
That's not something you can do without remaking the whole game from scratch. It's a remaster, not a Remake. They aren't changing the core code and methods, only updating graphics and using more modern plug-ins for similar graphical enhancements.
To do what you're describing, they would have to do something like what Square did for FFVII Remake. And that was such a huge undertaking that they couldn't do it all at once.
Kotaku wants to reap the physical swag and press appearance benefits of being game journalists, but the second their integrity as the press comes under fire and they're told to abide by some kind of code or journalistic rules, they're suddenly "bloggers." They want all of the privilege of journalism without any of the actual accountability of reporting accurately for the benefit of the gaming community. They just want clicks and money.
Until they can quit being hypocrites, why in the world should the gaming community trust them? Spoiler alert: they shouldn't.
The problem is with the term "games journalist." Most sites offer little to zero "journalism" and instead repeat press releases or offer opinions/editorials on games. Kotaku consistently offers actual journalism which provides news and stories that are independent of the company's official messaging.
In no other industry or beat do reporters have such a cozy and close relationship with those people they cover without being called out on it. But in games, they need to become buddy-buddy in order to get that early access, which their careers are based on.
I walked away from a paid Ars Technica subscription because I was so sick of hearing them spin the same GamerGate lies over and over. They were complicit with Kotaku in the matter, so anything they might have to say regarding the independence and integrity of gaming journalism is worthless.
"a blockbuster article"
Lol. Try "desperate." As much as Kotaku thinks that it is entitled to free games or preview access to upcoming games, game devs/publishers also have the right to pick which game sites to have such entitlement. Obviously Kotaku have pushed a couple of buttons a bit too far and this is the path that the devs chose to take.
Sure is a lot of articles on this popping up.