Assassin's Creed Shadows Is Learning From Star Wars Outlaw’s Biggest Flaws
For better and for worse, Ubisoft is changing how it does things.
With a little over a month until its original launch date, Assassin’s Creed Shadows’ publisher Ubisoft delay the upcoming entry set in Feudal Japan. And according to Ubisoft leadership, the delay is kicking off a shift in how the publisher is approaching the games business from here on out.
In a lengthy X post, Ubisoft Vice President and Executive Producer Marc-Alexis Côté explained that the company is pushing the game to a February 14, 2025. The delay is for the team to further “polish and refine the experience.”
“We understand this decision will come as disappointing, especially to those who’ve been waiting patiently for an Assassin’s Creed game inspired by Feudal Japan, but we sincerely believe this is in the best interest of the game,” Côté said.
In a separate letter to Ubisoft investors, Côté further explained the delay was put in place after seeing the tough but fair response to Star Wars: Outlaws’ technical problems and unpopular gameplay mechanics at launch.
“While [Assassin’s Creed Shadows] is feature complete, the learnings from the Star Wars Outlaws release led us to provide additional time to further polish the title,” he wrote in the update.
Ubisoft seemed to blame Outlaws’ underwhelming sales performance at launch partly on the technical issues. They reiterated that the team working on Outlaws, Massive Entertainment, are “currently fully mobilized to swiftly implement a series of updates to polish and improve the player experience” ahead of the holiday season.
In addition to the delay, Ubisoft is making big changes to some of the already announced features of Assassin’s Creed Shadows. For one, they’ll be ditching the plans for a season pass, and will instead dole out additional content as individual DLC expansions. Côté also said that the game will come to Steam day and date with the console release, which was not originally planned. The aforementioned Star Wars Outlaws, which is only available on Epic Games Store as of this writing, will debut on Steam November 21.
After the disappointing sales figures and technical issues of Star Wars Outlaws, Ubisoft is delaying Assassin’s Creed Shadows to give it another few months of polish.
Those who’ve pre-ordered Shadows expecting it this year will get a full refund. Those who pre-order the game ahead of the new release date will get the first DLC expansion for free as a bonus.
Both of these changes are welcome ones as they consider player preferences as opposed to what’s seemingly best for the company. While there’s no way to quantify how the absence of Star Wars Outlaws on Steam affected sales if at all, more options for players are a net positive. Paired with a decent sale, Outlaws can likely get a head start on recouping its losses with its Steam release.
Leaving behind the season pass model is also a solid move. Locking players into hours and hours of content they don’t know anything about yet is a pretty big ask, especially when the last few Assassin’s Creed games have been lengthy, massive epics even before DLC releases. Letting players commit to additional content piece meal seems more well suited for the series, and it’s nice to see them embrace this traditional model.
Unfortunately, it wasn’t all a home run. Both Côté and Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot again addressed the manufactured controversy regarding the creative decisions of Ubisoft’s development teams, pedaled mostly by racists and misogynists.
Instead of addressing the trolls on the internet frustrated by the existence of female protagonists Star Wars Outlaws, and the Black lead of Assassin’s Creed Shadows, the company’s leaders clarified that their games is for everyone.
“I want to reaffirm that we are an entertainment-first company, creating games for the broadest possible audience, and our goal is not to push any specific agenda,” Guillemot wrote to investors. “We remain committed to creating games for fans and players that everyone can enjoy.”
Ubisoft shouldn’t try appeasing the small group of bigots spreading the idea that games like Assassin’s Creed and Star Wars Outlaws aren’t for everyone, especially when these trolls leading the charge on harassing Ubisoft employees.
This is a totally fine statement to make as a business divorced from reality. But it reads as ignorant to not address the toxicity of the small group of vocal trolls who are pushing the narrative that Ubisoft games aren’t for everyone in the first place. The very group they’re hoping to pacify with this statement are the ones harassing Ubisoft developers and journalists (like myself) for associated with these games in any way besides outrage.
After Star Wars Outlaws creative director Julian Gerighty addressed the issue so succinctly last month, it's unfortunate that the rest of the company hasn’t followed suit. If they must address the issue of “polarized comments” about Ubisoft, failing to mention how toxic internet trolls counting on the company’s downfall have become yet another missed opportunity.
Hopefully, at some point before February, Ubisoft will wise up and properly address these bad faith actors and bigots instead of trying to coddle and reassure them.
