Controversial Gaming slop compendium

[Owl Ki]

You know, looking at the past couple of years or really just the past 10 months, it has been quite noticeable the amount of news about garbage games coming out that fall flat about an inch from the starting line. We got Star Wars Outlaws, Concord, For spoken, Unknown 9, Dustborn, Skull and Bones just to name a few. What is particularly noticeable is how a number of these games are supposed to be Triple A experiences from supposedly great studios but turn out to be utter garbage anyway.

Now nothing gets me laughing more than a spectacular failure that makes a multimillion company clutch its bank account in agonising pain. Concord is the biggest bust of them all. A game with a 400 million dollar budget that took 8 years to develop just to be shat out in in late August and taken offline in the first week of September. This game was online for like two weeks and performed so piss poorly in sales that Sony decided to refund everyone who bought this piece of dross and permanently dismantle Firewalk Studios.

The videos about it sure were hilarious though. They got more traction than the friggin game.

Spoiler

5 minute video.

Spoiler

3 minute video

Failure isn't just a great teacher. It's also a fantastic source of entertainment and so I made this thread so I can hear all the recent gossip about the failures of the gaming industry in one spot.

What, you think I was gonna make a thread for each game? Sony decided that Concord didn't even deserve a server, so I'm certainly not giving it its own thread.

Tags (I assume some y'all play games):
@Elder Lee Hung @TheKnightOfTheSea @God Buggy @Sentinel @SakazOuki @Monster Zoro's Tesla Supplier @NikaInParis @ Idk @GivenUp

 

[ShiShiShi]

Indie games are pretty good

 

[TheKnightOfTheSea]

a lot of modern Ubisoft games are a good example of this.

 

[Owl Ki]

a lot of modern Ubisoft games are a good example of this.

I swear Ubisoft is only one bad game away from bankruptcy and that game will be Assassin's Creed: Shadows. The shareholders are already breaking a sweat.

https://www.irishexaminer.com/business/companies/arid-41483791.html

Imagine wasting over 10 years on a game that was originally meant to be an AC: Black Flag expansion only to reveal that the game isn't even 1/10 tenth of Black Flag but demanding 70 quid for it anyway.

Spoiler

7 minute video.

Absolute clowns.

Then we got Star Wars Outlaws, a stealth game with garbage stealth, lobotomised AI and basically one gun.

Spoiler

7 minute video.

But hey, Ubisoft is a French company and the French taking phat Ls in the decade of our lord 2020 A.D. is as expected, natural and inevitable as the sun rising. First the worst Olympics ever in recorded human history and now the only famous French gaming company going down the chute that flows into the Seine River that nearly killed entire swimming teams. That's just a regular day in Frankostan.

And to anyone that might charitably think that these might be Ubisoft only Ls and not just French Ls in general, I present what a different French gaming company spat out this year.

Spoiler

France has fallen. Tis time to go.

 

[Poorsalino Cooker]

Its like watching a trashy amusement park and its carny scams go up in flames.

• On one hand, when you were a kid this park was really cool and you loved to go on all the rides. It was grand.
• But on the other hand as the years passed, the park started turning into crap.
• Many of the blokes who made it great retired, died off or became corrupt. Their replacements were even worse.
• The rides start breaking down and there's even a few fatalities but nothing can be done about it since the amusement park attracts crowds of braindead orbiters who just go there because its the cool thing to do.
• Meanwhile, you and a few others realise that the park's really gone to hell and its going to collapse into a disaster any day now, so for your own health you stop going.
• The park eventually starts losing attention and its promoters begin calling you evil for not wanting to invest in their hazardous 'new' rides.
• Then one day, without warning, as the park looks almost abandoned, the whole thing just collapses and goes up in flames because they didn't bother to improve or listen to criticisms, only listening to nitwits who didn't know anything about running a theme park and clapping seals who never criticise them.

And you just watch as the whole thing goes up in smoke. Its last few days before the collapse were spent losing money and barely getting any visitors. Its a bittersweet feeling watching a part of your past you once had so much fun in be reduced to molten slag, but on the other hand, its pleasing to see that this corrupted incarnation of something you once enjoyed is finally put out of its misery and the assholes who ran it into the ground now lose their jobs or go to jail for insurance fraud.

Golly I'm all mental.

 

[Owl Ki]

Sony has got its own national anthem now.

Spoiler

 

[Elder Lee Hung]

Filler

 

[Owl Ki]

So Ubisoft is apparently racing towards bankruptcy.

Their credit rating has reached abysmal levels as reported in December 2024

Spoiler: Link.

https://thatparkplace.com/ubisoft-bankruptcy/#:~:text=Ubisoft is not doing well,in 2025 if nothing changes.

Long story short, Ubisoft has dropped to a CCC rating which indicates imminent bankruptcy unless drastic measures occur. CCC is supposedly only two steps above a CC rating which translates to certain default.

2024 has been a disastrous year for Ubisoft. Star Wars: Outlaws flopped hard while Skull and Bones was a titanic loss of money, time and overall investment. Meanwhile XDefiant is starting to be shut down with it being planned to permanently pack up next June. The company's shares have dropped 75% in value over the past 5 years.

Just to be a cherry atop a turd crumble, their last release of 2024 was an NFT game launched two years after the NFT market crashed.

Spoiler: Lmao gameplay.

1 minute video.

The funniest thing is, Ubisoft tried selling an NFT range during the NFT craze and only sold 15 of them and they still didn't learn their lesson.

Spoiler: History of recent Ubisoft incompetence.

20 minute video.

Which now brings us to January 2025, a month where Ubisoft declares that they are hiring new "advisors" to help "extract the best value for stakeholders".

Spoiler: Link.

https://thatparkplace.com/ubisoft-prepping-for-bankruptcy/

Aye, these sassenachs are preparing for the end. Probably why XDefiant is scheduled for a June shutdown cause the company isn't going to exist past that.

Ubisoft is so broken that it isn't even worth purchasing the company itself due to its colossal debt. It is financially more viable and less risky to wait for it to go bankrupt and buy the IPs at auction.

Assassin's Creed: Shadows is Ubisoft's last hope, which is saying something because the game has been ruthlessly mocked already and delayed at least twice now. It is likely going to be the last Ubisoft game.

In a gigabrain Ubisoft move, just to really make sure the game about Japan is going to really resonate with the culture it is seeking to portray, Ubisoft has chosen March 20th 2025 to be the new release date.

March 20th is also going to be the 30th anniversary of the Tokyo subway sarin gas attack, the worst modern terrorist attack ever to befall Japan.

Spoiler: Link.

https://thatparkplace.com/assassins-creed-shadows-release-date-controversy/

Bit of a tone deaf date to pick a release date for a game representing a culture that already hates Ubisoft.

Well at this rate, the next two big headlines from Ubisoft this year will be the inevitable shit show release of AC: Shadows followed by Ubisoft's decaying bankrupt corpse being torn apart by various IP scavengers.

Sayanora Ubisoft. It couldn't have happened to a more incompetent company.

 

[Elder Lee Hung]

So Ubisoft is apparently racing towards bankruptcy.

Their credit rating had reached abysmal levels as reported in December 2024

Spoiler: Link.

https://thatparkplace.com/ubisoft-bankruptcy/#:~:text=Ubisoft is not doing well,in 2025 if nothing changes.

Long story short, Ubisoft has dropped to a CCC rating which indicates imminent bankruptcy unless drastic measures occur. CCC is supposedly only two steps above a CC rating which translates to certain default.

2024 has been a disastrous year for Ubisoft. Star Wars: Outlaws flopped hard while Skull and Bones was a titanic loss of money, time and overall investment. Meanwhile XDefiant is starting to be shut down with it being planned to permanently pack up next June. The company's shares have dropped 75% in value over the past 5 years.

Just to be a cherry atop a turd crumble, their last release of 2024 was an NFT game released two years after the NFT market crashed.

Spoiler: Lmao gameplay.

1 minute video.

The funniest thing is, Ubisoft tried selling an NFT range during the NFT craze and only sold 15 of them and they still didn't learn their lesson.

Spoiler: History of recent Ubisoft incompetence.

20 minute video.

Which now brings us to January 2025, a month where Ubisoft declares that they are hiring new "advisors" to help "extract the best value for stakeholders".

Spoiler

https://thatparkplace.com/ubisoft-prepping-for-bankruptcy/

Aye, these sassenachs are preparing for the end. Probably why XDefiant is scheduled for a June shutdown cause the company isn't going to exist past that.

The company is so broken that it isn't even worth purchasing the company itself due to its colossal debt. It is financially more viable and less risky to wait for it to go bankrupt and buy the IPs at auction.

Assassin's Creed: Shadows is Ubisoft's last hope, which is saying something because the game has been ruthlessly mocked already and delayed at least twice now. It is likely going to be the last Ubisoft game.

In a gigabrain Ubisoft move, just to really make sure the game about Japan is going to really resonate with the culture it is seeking to portray, Ubisoft has chosen March 20th 2025 to be the new release date.

March 20th is also going to be the 30th anniversary of the Tokyo subway sarin gas attack, the worst modern terrorist attack ever to befall Japan.

Spoiler: Link.

https://thatparkplace.com/assassins-creed-shadows-release-date-controversy/

Bit of a tone deaf date to pick a release date for a game representing a culture that already hates Ubisoft.

Well at this rate, the next two big headlines from Ubisoft this year will be the inevitable shit show release of AC: Shadows followed by Ubisoft's decaying bankrupt corpse being torn apart by various IP scavengers.

Sayanora Ubisoft. It couldn't have happened to a more incompetent company.

You know, people are going to be quick to cite “DEI” here but that’s just a lazy copout.

The truth is that Ubisoft stopped being a studio that had any sort of creative or artistic vision a looooooong time ago. The DEI stuff is just a symptom of the larger problem with Ubisoft: They are a soulless, lifeless corporation creating by the book games that appeal to the least common denominator of gamer.

I was a fan of assassin’s creed for a long time, in fact fun fact I was in the top 100 richest players on Black Flag on Xbox Live, and I ranked number 1 in the world on Xbone for Red Coat Kills in AC3 (although nobody played AC3, I didn’t even 100% the game to get this status, it was a complete accident)

And we all watched Assassin’s Creed toil aimlessly in the forsaken lands of trying to appeal to as many idiots as possible instead of perfecting its own unique formula. This is because Ubisoft never had any idea what the fuck they were doing with Assassin’s Creed other than they wanted the games to sell as many units as possible. So they consistently turned assassin’s creed into a revenue generating asset rather than an actual piece of art.

And every Ubisoft franchise is the same. None of these games exist to pursue any kind of artistic vision, they are simply soulless revenue generators. It’s not so much the faults of the developers as it is the fault of the soulless corporation calling all of the big shots.

Ubisoft really has been the polar opposite of Fromsoft in the last 14 years. While Fromsoft has been pursuing their own artistic visions without giving a shit if everyone is going to be able to enjoy their games or not, Ubisoft has gutted their own franchises chasing fleeting trends.

Miyazaki in interviews has openly said that he knows the FROM games aren’t for everyone, and are games that only a certain type of gamer will enjoy. FROM’s success under Miyazaki has only increased over time until recently with the colossally successful Elden Ring. Meanwhile Ubisoft, which spent twelve years trying to please everyone, is now facing imminent bankruptcy.

I hate to see the developer behind PoP the Sands of Time, one of my favorite games ever, facing this situation but those days are long fucking gone lmfao. The only heartbreaking aspect of this story is that there aren’t more AAA developers futilely grasping for life.

 

[kekaro]

So Ubisoft is apparently racing towards bankruptcy.

Damn finally some uplifting news

 

[Roo]

dont you love it when capitalism does its job and customers wisen up and stop buying from shit companies?

 

[RogerRogerd]

I think Borderlands 4 will put a nail in the coffin for the Borderlands franchise for good. Because HO LY SH IT. And this one will hurt the most because Borderlands 2 was quite literally my favorite game as a kid growing up. I have so many hours on that game between like 3 different consoles. These last few Borderlands games have been so ass... Borderlands 3 for me was super controversial. I mean it looked KINDA better, enemy and equipment variety was better but at the end of the day though... its the exact same game as Borderlands 2 (which is obviously 90% the same game as Borderlands). I played it for like 10 hours before I couldn't handle the stupid ass annoying little girl and constant unfunny jokes and pop cultures references.
The cast for BL3 were admittedly very cool and interesting and the gunplay got 15% more dynamic. But the story and the pacing of the missions just take you out of the immersion so fast its so hard to turn your brain off and just shoot to kill people and try to get better guns. (Which is what I did for BL2).
Now imagine the unfunny jokes without the gameplay and you get Tales from the Borderlands 2, which hard flopped of course. Tiny Tina was interesting but mid for the same reasons as BL3. Either way, these last few games have not made as much money as expected for 2K.
Borderlands 4 is going to kill the franchise for good and I swear upon it. The new cast all look like NPC's aside from the girl in the pink jacket because the colors are very bright. That's it. This was kind of an unwritten rule since BL2, but every Borderlands 2 game has had at least 1 main character be inhuman. Zer0 BL2, Claptrap Pre-Sequel, ProZD BL3, and even Tales from the Borderlands had Handsome Jack as a little hologram clone. Unless one of these dudes is like one of those shapeshifter aliens that tried to kill Padme, its gonna flop.

Now the new cast for BL4 all has NPC's. All of them. Every single one of them look like someone you would have in your space ship or base and you would talk to them and do their side quest. None of them give off the "player character" vibe. This is however based on the "new" Borderlands art style and character designs. A lot of the random NPCs and enemies have way more detail and trinkets and stupid articles of clothing. They also look all the exact same. Got their prosthetics from the same section in Walmart, they all have gloves and hinges on their knees. This bitch on the right has regular glasses for some reason. The dude on the left is highest offendor for looking straight up generic. I know Axton and Roland are generic characters but they are the "generic soldier" characters. This guy looks like you pulled him off of the street.

 

[Poorsalino Cooker]

I genuinely forgot the Borderlands franchise even existed until that movie adaptation with Jack Black and Jamie Lee Curtis came out some months ago and bombed horribly. A 33 million gross against a 120 mil budget? Talk about a shitshow.

I think Borderlands 4 will put a nail in the coffin for the Borderlands franchise for good. Because HO LY SH IT. And this one will hurt the most because Borderlands 2 was quite literally my favorite game as a kid growing up. I have so many hours on that game between like 3 different consoles. These last few Borderlands games have been so ass... Borderlands 3 for me was super controversial. I mean it looked KINDA better, enemy and equipment variety was better but at the end of the day though... its the exact same game as Borderlands 2 (which is obviously 90% the same game as Borderlands). I played it for like 10 hours before I couldn't handle the stupid ass annoying little girl and constant unfunny jokes and pop cultures references.
The cast for BL3 were admittedly very cool and interesting and the gunplay got 15% more dynamic. But the story and the pacing of the missions just take you out of the immersion so fast its so hard to turn your brain off and just shoot to kill people and try to get better guns. (Which is what I did for BL2).
Now imagine the unfunny jokes without the gameplay and you get Tales from the Borderlands 2, which hard flopped of course. Tiny Tina was interesting but mid for the same reasons as BL3. Either way, these last few games have not made as much money as expected for 2K.
Borderlands 4 is going to kill the franchise for good and I swear upon it. The new cast all look like NPC's aside from the girl in the pink jacket because the colors are very bright. That's it. This was kind of an unwritten rule since BL2, but every Borderlands 2 game has had at least 1 main character be inhuman. Zer0 BL2, Claptrap Pre-Sequel, ProZD BL3, and even Tales from the Borderlands had Handsome Jack as a little hologram clone. Unless one of these dudes is like one of those shapeshifter aliens that tried to kill Padme, its gonna flop.

Now the new cast for BL4 all has NPC's. All of them. Every single one of them look like someone you would have in your space ship or base and you would talk to them and do their side quest. None of them give off the "player character" vibe. This is however based on the "new" Borderlands art style and character designs. A lot of the random NPCs and enemies have way more detail and trinkets and stupid articles of clothing. They also look all the exact same. Got their prosthetics from the same section in Walmart, they all have gloves and hinges on their knees. This bitch on the right has regular glasses for some reason. The dude on the left is highest offendor for looking straight up generic. I know Axton and Roland are generic characters but they are the "generic soldier" characters. This guy looks like you pulled him off of the street.

How the mighty have fallen.