Ubisoft 'Assassin's Creed' Release Highlights Gaming Industry Embargo Problem (Op Ed)

[Guest]

When game houses forbid game reviewers from publishing anything until after a title has gone on sale, it prevents users from having the benefit of any objective evaluation of the games until after they've purchased them.

Ubisoft 'Assassin's Creed' Release Highlights Gaming Industry Embargo Problem (Op Ed) : Read more

 

[d_kuhn]

To be honest... I already associate an embargo'd game with a likely bad title - and if a game lacks decent pre-release reviews I don't buy it on day 1 no matter how much I want the game. No doubt on occasion it will keep me from having a game I want until a few days after release... but on a number of occasions already it's saved me from buying a bad game.

 

[balister]

To be honest... I already associate an embargo'd game with a likely bad title - and if a game lacks decent pre-release reviews I don't buy it on day 1 no matter how much I want the game. No doubt on occasion it will keep me from having a game I want until a few days after release... but on a number of occasions already it's saved me from buying a bad game.

Agree with you completely. If I don't have any pre-release information beyond trailers, I won't buy a game first day or pre-order. The only reason I pre-ordered Dragon Age Inquisition, Alien Isolation, and Witcher 3 was because of the pre-release information going out along with the trust I have for CDProjeck Red (BioWare has a chance to gain it back and the pre-release information from A:I made me want to play it).

 

[Hellbound]

I've stopped pre-ordering games because of launch day issues.. CoD:AW horrible SLi performance (same with CoD:Ghost - flickering), Assassins Creed bugs and texture problems... It seems like game developers in recent years are to in a hurry to release their games, and end up with launch day patches, or problems that make them unplayable.. And by the time these games are "fixed", people are already moving on to other games.

 

[5tormy]

And the graphics performance isn't limited to AMD cards, as I have a pretty good 760 SLI and 4770k overclocked setup with newest drivers and can't play it on low settings very well.
That being said, my friends PC with 770 SLI and 3770k can play it on low a whole lot better than I, but not medium.

 

[Barantos1]

I fell victim to my Advanced Warfare purchase. I am not even going to both to trust IGN or any other major reviewer anymore as it is clear that they are paid for their review. Seriously Advanced Warfare is the worst game I have played in a decade and yet it has amazing reviews by all of the major reviewers. Yet you read the player reviews on steam and youtube and it is the complete opposite. DON'T BELIEVE THE HYPE!

 

[skit75]

To be honest... I already associate an embargo'd game with a likely bad title - and if a game lacks decent pre-release reviews I don't buy it on day 1 no matter how much I want the game. No doubt on occasion it will keep me from having a game I want until a few days after release... but on a number of occasions already it's saved me from buying a bad game.

Agree with you completely. If I don't have any pre-release information beyond trailers, I won't buy a game first day or pre-order. The only reason I pre-ordered Dragon Age Inquisition, Alien Isolation, and Witcher 3 was because of the pre-release information going out along with the trust I have for CDProjeck Red (BioWare has a chance to gain it back and the pre-release information from A:I made me want to play it).

I think a lot of us already associate this type of behavior with a bad title. Publishers have already caught on to us and are now pushing out obscene minimum/recommended requirements to take advantage of the "1080p MOAR VRAM crowd" because if they say it requires 8GB.... it MUST BE GOOD! NOM NOM NOM

 

[neieus]

I've made it a point to wait for a few reviews to come out before before I buy any game these days and just about everything ubisoft does is questionable. I've completely stopped pr-ordering nearly all games because I've been burned to many times. It doesn't help that UbiSoft's games are so buggy...

 

[kaptu100]

I tend to think that the pre-order concept is the root of all this evil. Basically, if you've taken someones money the release date becomes non-negotiable. If the game isn't quite polished enough, tough. If they delayed release, there will be outrage and lots of cancelled orders which will be a PR mess. Perhaps that's also the reason why some games are heavily reliant on DLC that add content: Near the end of the projects' deadline the devs have no choice but to cut out content if they are behind schedule and shift it later when they've had more time. And also because it means more revenue, let us not forget.

 

[yumri]

@skit75 i think when the publishers make those requirements they make them with not 1080p in mind but 1440p and 4k in mind thus the insanely high amounts of VRAM required but in that if you have that amount of VRAM and that kind of GPU you probably will not hit any fps dips ... it is still a shadey way to do it as they should just have a minimum spec, recommeneded spec for playing it 1080p on medium then a optimial spec for playing it at 38402160 @ 100fps since that is the soft cap on the game engine Ubisoft is useing.

@neieus UbiSoft is just trying to push the hardware to its limits and thus made a better game engine for it ... but the game engine sucks even though it can support more AI scripts running at the same time and slightly higher graphics if the PC can support it ... well ppl have been saying that game devs are tailoring their games to the console specs and not PC specs but when they tailor games to workstation / sever class PC specs ppl flip out because of the 8+ threaded games with massive details that require high to highest current gen end parts to just run on high. Thus Ubisoft went to far in that direction and needs to make games that can run on mid end PCs on low or medium again while still keeping high, highest, Ultra and maxed out everything for the ppl who have the workstation / sever class computers for gaming rigs while gamers will have to adapt to that will be the new norm from Ubisoft it seems ... just hopefully they will make low and medium look awesome and high, highest and Ultra be worth the extra resources taken without making the ppl only able to play it at low or medium feel left out.
The main issue is that Ubisoft still needs to get all these bugs out of the game engine before useing it again as that is the major issue with AC: Unity not that its poorly coded for the game it is that the game engine is takeing the game code and implementing it in a very heavily taxing way and/or just leaveing out parts to try to not tax the system to much which makes it look like bugs and gliches.

@Foseph Jerschke well a $1500 gaming pc probably is a mid end gaming PC and not a high end in which the reveiwers of the game that have high end gaming PCs and used a mod / game hack to remove that soft cap of 30 fps have reported texture bugs above 100 fps and objects and NPCs just poping up when going to fast in the game. So i think that is why Ubisoft choose to have a soft cap but they should have done it better with a choice of what you want the cap to be 30, 60, or monitor refresh rate like in the newer console ports from EA.

@kaptu100 preodering is not the root of all this evil it is that they are allowed to patch it after the release date and restrict some content until you pay extra for it. in that saddly this isnt unique to Ubisoft but also well every other game devlopment studio that i know of that isnt a indie devloper but steam has standards for them i think but doesnt for the big companies.
The thing of once you taken someone's money the release date becomes non-negotiable is a simple way of thinking but wrong as companies not in gaming do that alot but they never get paid more than they already did even if it goes over budget and takes more time ... of course this would be enforced better IF the consoles did not allow for massive patches after release forceing them to get it all or most of all of the game fixed before the release of it for example the N64 games when played on the actual system not an emulator they would great and barely any bugs nor gliches in any of them and most of the gliches and bugs were not able to be easily repeated if they were even in the game to begin with fast forward to today you have day one patches that many times the game wont even boot up without because of tighter release times and less time or no time to test it while knowing that they can just fix it later if wanted by the consumers.

 

[dstarr3]

Review embargoes are obviously very shady, but Shadows of Mordor had an embargo on it, and that game is quite good. So, it doesn't always indicate a shit game coming down the pipeline. It just... usually does.

 

[ern88]

I learned my Lesson when I lined up and bought COD: MW3. Wait a few days for some feedback before going ass first into buying a game and pre ordering. I want Far Cry 4 to be great. But being a UbiSoft game. I will wait till I get feedback before giving a dastardly company my hard earned cash!!!!

 

[Bloob]

Embargoes are not necessarily bad, they ensure that each reviewer has ample time to review the game properly, but alarms should go off if is release-day, as that would indicate serious issues with the game that the publisher does not want to make public.

Also, it seems it's the UPlay integration (micotransactions) that's eating much of the performance, apparently just disconnecting the gaming machine from the internet is enough double your framerate.

 

[LordConrad]

All these Assassin's Creed Unity issues must be on the PC, I've been playing it on my PS4 and it looks and plays great.

 

[elcentral]

i always wait for 2-4 revues like Totalbiscuit, i got fooled hard by Colin Mcrae Dirt Showdown. how they moved from a 9,5/10 to a 1/10 is beyond me. nothing worked in the damn game. but thx to steam they got my money back alto in steam money, but i dont mind i can happily spend it on some better game.

 

[vsdagama]

I never pre-ordered any game. And luckely so...

Watch dogs almost convinced me to do so, but after seeing that dissapointment of sloppy console-port and after waiting years for GTA 5 on pc, I completely lost all trust in big developers and won't spend ANY money on a game that involves too much marketing-trickery and an abundance of DLC.

So for the last couple of years I haven't bought any big title, voting with the wallet.

 

[SvRommelvS]

Reviews of games pre-release does nothing when the issue is easily hidden in review copies. SimCity 2013 and Diablo III shipped unplayable due to server issues that were allegedly not apparent thanks to the golden servers being used by the few hundred copies in the wild when reviewers had the game in hand. Lifting embargoes does nothing for reviews bought and paid for, the oldest controversy in the medium yet one that has yet to be resolved.

Luckily, thanks to the consumer-content revolution afforded by Twitch, YouTube and other sites, a smart consumer can wait a week and quickly find out that the game they've waited patiently for, remembering that digital games are not a scarce resource requiring a preorder, features a floating pair of lips and eyeballs, sans face.

 

[SessouXFX]

There's enough bile and poison within the inter-webs to sink UBISofts boat. if you haven't learned from others about their dishonesty in advertising, I'd personally advise you to research UBISoft's failures with their releases. It will save you plenty of money for a better experience else where.

 

[ah]

Ubisoft Rush to release Assassin's Creed game every year, it's a no-brainer that the game has issues like these. Assassin's Creed is quite repetitive, therefore boring. I don't see why it has such a strong following.

 

[ddpruitt]

With triple A titles costing more than films to create, bad numbers could almost force a development house or publisher over the edge.

Maybe some of these publisher's need to fold. Seriously AC, MW, BF, GTA, and the vast majority of "AAA" games from these publisher's are regurgitated ****. My solution to this problem is simple. I support independents on Steam Greenlight, KickStarter, and elsewhere. Usually these games tend to be better creatively than the mainstream titles. Graphics aren't quite as cutting edge but they're still good. As a bonus most of these have console ports. I have yet to be disappointed since I can see what I'm getting, they get better as they're developed. and they have developers that actually listen to the users.

I'm constantly amazed at the people who'll complain about the quality of so-called "Triple A" titles and then go out and either pre-order another one or pay the full inflated price for one. These publisher's don't care about the reviews, opinions, or rants. There's only one thing they care about, money. I guarantee you if enough people stopped buying the games the publisher's would change their tunes, just look at Alien Isolation.

If you really want them to stop the nonsense embargo publisher's like they embargo reviews.

 

[junkeymonkey]

well as long as they want to have 3ed party clients like steam or any internet connection required to load or play a game its a no sale for me

why would I pay $60 for something I don't get?? lets face it all you do get is a 3ed party client on a disk for that money then you got to fully rely on the 3ed party to load -play - activate- or down load content ??? so what do you got with out them?? nothing but what amounts to a $60 blank dvd .. no thanks i'll keep my money and they can keep there game [opinion]

 

[d1ck3r]

I dont know if i'm lucky or what, but i don't have any issue at all with the game, just to mention that i don't bought it... it comes with a Nvidia Reward, but the game runs good, i'm playing with a 4790k and a R9 290x since day one without bugs or fps problems or at least until now...

 

[Jung]

Just wait a couple months to a year. The game will patched, reviewed, and discounted by then.

 

[surphninja]

I was under the impression that it was the marketing firms the publisher hires to promote the game who were responsible for this garbage. But then, I'm sure if the game publisher asked them not to do it this way, they wouldn't.

I'm not terribly concerned with the way games are promoted before hand by the companies themselves or traditional games media. People know better than to listen to them, know that they're in on the take, and people should know better than to pre-order by now.

What concerns me is the pressure being put on individuals who run youtube channels or blogs reviewing games. These people often don't know better than to open themselves up to a huge legal liability by agreeing to unreasonable terms that they could potentially unknowingly violate. These people don't have legal departments to protect them, and it would ruin their lives should these publishers or marketing firms choose to start suing these people for not respecting embargoes. I think the pressure being put on individuals like these is a completely unacceptable practice, and I will not support games that put these kind of embargoes on individuals. That's why I'll never purchase Shadows of Mordor (or at least a new copy).

 

[Christopher1]

And the graphics performance isn't limited to AMD cards, as I have a pretty good 760 SLI and 4770k overclocked setup with newest drivers and can't play it on low settings very well.
That being said, my friends PC with 770 SLI and 3770k can play it on low a whole lot better than I, but not medium.

This game was not properly made for PC and optimized for PC. Probably because they are trying to get everyone to buy on the consoles so that 5 years from now, when the next consoles come out, they can say "Hey, buy all your old games again, no backwards compatibility!"