Investors in the publisher had a long list of grievances
There’s no definition where Ubisoft can be woke, given all the sex crimes. Three of their former executives were just found guilty of “sexual and psychological harassment.”
Very telling that the shareholders are less concerned about that.
Yup, completely agree!
Ultimately the far-right loves to bring up examples of well-known flops and box office bombs and then perform mental gymnastics to blame “wokeness” or “DEI” for their failure. Though in most cases, their failure can easily explained due to different factors.
As an example: Sony’s infamous flop “Concord”, a game which attempted to do some representation in the character design (in itself a bad imitation of what “Apex Legends” had done previously), but “Concord” was terrible from start to finish and overall just another live-service game nobody asked for.
Or take Bioware’s “Dragon Age: Veilguard”: The far-right loves to insist that it was “wokeness” that killed the game - something that is in itself already a preposterous claim due to Bioware’s solid track record of being an inclusive and queer-friendly company. But “DA:V” was doomed right from the start: As Bioware’s corporate overlord EA meddled with the production, firing people, restarting the game several times, turning it into a live-service game, then forcing Bioware to strip that out again and finally pushing a badly compromised “DA:V” out of the door after a fruitless 9 years of stop-and-go development.
I agree with you. However, I won’t even engage with whether this assassin’s creed game is “woke”.
Instead, I’m focusing on the fact that Ubisoft, among many other games publishers and development studios, have a serious and systemic problem with sexual harassment, assaults, and discrimination based on gender (these places are often referred to as “boys’ clubs”).
To be clear: Ubisoft is absolutely not the only game publisher wherein male employees are alleged to have sexually harassed and/or assaulted female employees. Rockstar is another example off the top of my head. Activision/Blizzard is a third.
There is something absolutely rotten in the gaming industry. Abusing women seems to be part of the way these companies operate, for some reason, and no matter what games they put out, no matter what messages those games do or don’t have, I would not want my money going to support the companies that do this.
I find it interesting, and concerning, that this shareholder is wringing their hands about some interpretation about the content of this video game, ignoring the fact that three executive level employees of the company they hold shares in have just this month been convicted of sexual and psychological harassment.
Oh without doubt: Ubisoft is a terrible company and I am glad that - at least - some of the perpetrators have ended up in court.
My comment was meant to provide examples of how the far-right employs “Go woke, go broke” and how they twist the stories of failed games to fit their deliberately misleading narratives. Unfortunately there are people who fall for those…
I totally agree with what you’re saying, the very very simplistic and juvenile “go woke go broke” narrative often overlooks actual things that cause products to fail in the market.
As an aside, I found the character designs in Concord, at least the ones I’ve seen, actually really cool personally. Reminded me a lot of a sort of Kim Jung Gi street/comic style, and wasn’t as cliche as all the rest.
“Concord”'s character designs were definitely the least of the game’s problems, but - of course - it was what the far-right latched onto. After all, they rarely ever engage with anything beyond the mere surface level.
has anyone who’s “gone woke” actually “gone broke”? I feel like idiots just love things that rhyme. Like the verbal equivalent of shinny things.
Nope, but when companies Go Fash, They Lose Cash (just ask Tesla)
It did hurt Bud Light pretty massively for a while there. They still haven’t recovered their market share.
That’s literally the only example I can come up with.
Well, when you have a product that basically defines the absence of uniqueness, is readily replaceable by multiple alternatives at the same price, and only popular because of historical use and habit, you’ve been constantly at risk of losing it all even if you didn’t see it
Most Bud light “alternatives” were just other Anheuser-Busch brands. Like busch lost just 1% of their sales that year, despite a 30% decrease in bud light. People are not very smart. (Of course 1% drop for shareholders causes a meltdown because line must always go up)
Shareholders can have brain rot, film at eleven.
Its insane how anyone with money can be a media critic, especially if they lack any media literacy and/or dont care about media whatsoever with the sole purpose being to promote their reactionary ideas
