The Assassin’s Creed (AC) IP has been one of Ubisoft’s blockbuster pillars. Assassin’s Creed Shadows, which launched on the gaming platform Steam on Thursday, received a ‘mostly positive’ rating based on the first 500 reviews on the platform. Among them, 79 per cent rated the game positively. But after the Star Wars Outlaws disaster, the French gaming giant needs a miracle.
Among the most helpful reviews on Steam voted by the community, a player—despite recommending the game—made their disappointment with “Ubisoft Connect” pretty clear. The feature, which is a free, multi-platform connecting system, seems to be mandatory for installing the game.
Players demanded Ubisoft to stop forcing them to install it. “Nobody wants this garbage clogging up their PC,” read a review. Another one complained about microtransactions—something that has divided the gaming community for quite some time.
The game, however, is doing much better on PlayStation, with users rating it close to 4.8 stars out of 5, in around 1,200 votes.
Back on Steam, most reviews had more good to say than bad. Some gamers said that Shadows was the AC game they enjoyed after other AC titles like Origins (2017) and Odyssey (2018).
The last couple of games, Assassin’s Creed Valhalla (2020) and Assassin’s Creed Mirage (2023), opened to lukewarm responses. But the true nail in the coffin for Ubisoft was a completely different game based on a popular movie IP—Star Wars Outlaws—released last year. It opened to critics and gamers slamming it, adding to the failure of Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora, another movie IP.
Naoe, featured in the key art for Assassin's Creed Shadows | Ubisoft/Steam
Despite Ubisoft making a good buck out of Valhalla (it was the first AC game to make more than $1 billion in revenue) despite the critical reception, major failures from other titles marred the developer’s reputation.
The French videogame giant spiralled, with its stock slumping by at least 40 per cent last year. Soon, activist investors circled the game developer, with its majority shareholder and founding family Guillemot musing a buyout deal with Tencent and other investors.
DEI kills art
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 24, 2024
Ahead of the release of Shadows, certain corners of social media, including billionaire Elon Musk, criticised the diverse set of main characters of the game, in the backdrop of Donald Trump striking down DEI initiatives in the United States.
Assassin’s Creed Shadows lets you play as Naoe, a stealthy female assassin, or as Yasuke, a heavily armoured African samurai based on the real-life “Afro-samurai”. The story is set in feudal Japan, with Ubisoft bringing more to its famed parkour and stealth movement system.
Yasuke, in a gameplay screenshot of Assassin's Creed Shadows | Ubisoft/Steam
The Assassin’s Creed franchise has mostly delivered financially for Ubisoft. Assassin’s Creed II (2009) and Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood (2010), featuring Ezio Auditore da Firenze and set during the Italian Renaissance, are widely regarded as the greatest single-player games during the time, even inspiring many others with their revolutionary controls and battle mechanics.
However, the recent mishaps with shelling out funds to license popular IPs seem to have backfired, even threatening the existence of the company.
Financially and otherwise, Ubisoft needs Assassin’s Creed Shadows to do well, and cross $1 billion in revenue to save face.
Last month, Ubisoft announced that its cost reduction plan would exceed €200 million by the fiscal 2024-2025 period. For the financial year, Ubisoft expects net bookings of around €1.9 billion, significantly lifted by fourth-quarter bookings following the release of Shadows.
However, in the last reported nine-month period, net bookings dropped almost 35 per cent to €944 million. With CEO Yves Guillemot stressing the prospective success of Assassin’s Creed Shadows to lift the yearly figures in the last outlook announcement, the success of this game becomes more important for the publisher.
On the PlayStation store, Shadows Deluxe Edition is priced at ₹6,999 and the Standard Edition at ₹5,599—available on the PS5. On Steam store, the Digital Deluxe Edition is now at ₹6,299, while the Standard version is at ₹4,899 on the platform.
