AAA game industry today: "Pay us $70 to play our game. Now pay us $10 more to not have to play it."

It's called "Skull & Bones" because the game is barely a skeleton of what Black Flag was.

Ubisoft talking about using AI to write NPC dialogue shows how much they value both artists and players. They see you as nothing more than a mindless content consumer, one so uninterested in quality that you can be sold randomized gibberish pumped out endlessly by a machine.

It's called Quadruple-A because it makes you want to shout "AAAA!"

Fun fact: Quadruple A is a term in baseball used to describe someone who was really great at the college level, but crashed and burned hard when they got into the pros. I remember coming across this fact online when reading a review for a bad game that called it a quadruple-A experience.

You could say that Ubisoft's unyielding dedication to live service games and microtransactions has become something of a "sunken" cost fallacy

To be fair: the AAAA moniker is technically accurate. The phrase we associate with big budget titles and superior quality actually originated as a business term describing budget size, and if there's one thing that Skull and Bones has shown us, it's that if you want to build a build a money bonfire, it's gonna take a LOT of cash.

The ship is sinking. It's keeping itself above water, but sooner or later, its stamina bar will run out. And yes, apparently, ships have stamina bars. According to ubisoft.

Pirate games more fun than skull and bones: 1. Sea of thieves 2. Actually pirating black flag on a PS3 emulator 3. Becoming a pirate irl

You tell them Cookie Monster

The crew may be bailing water, but the captain is helping by drilling another hole to let the water out.

The funniest thing is, a mere 8 days before the release of Skull and Bones, a Live Service game, made by a then nearly unknown company, Helldivers 2, was released, and that one exploded simply by... being a good game.

“It’s hard to sink a ship this big” Pretty sure that’s what they said about the Titanic and the Bismarck

Arlo talking down on AAA gaming is becoming one of my favorite genres

Skull & Bones was a good idea when the scope of the game was on par with For Honor. A small game specifically for fans of the naval combat. The problem is that they took this niche concept and decided it would be a AAAA super blockbuster that everyone in the world wanted to play.

I interviewed with Ubisoft about 3 years ago to work on the Splinter Cell remake. They gave me a vibe that once the game would be finished that they were going to lay people off. During the interview, I said, don't hire me if you plan on laying me off in one years time. I couldn't get a straight answer from them, so I pretty much knew the deal. I have friends who still work there, and they've told me terrible things about Ubisoft. They try so hard with their whole DEI BS, but its just a front for their toxic culture.

We all knew skull and bones was going to be a disaster. All it took was the knowledge that they were being my forced to finish it by the Singapore government

When Ubisoft sinks you can be sure that the people keeping it afloat right now are going to be drowning on the lower decks while the ones who set the bad course will be taking the safety boat that just so happens to be loaded with the remaining treasure.

I thought the people of these comments should know UKpostsr Ross Scott (Accursed Farms) the creator of some of the oldest Machinima on the platform has put together a campaign to make governments create laws against Live service games, using the termination of The Crew and Ubisoft as the major focal point but his scope includes all companies that do this. If you would like to get involved there are 3 videos on his channel that cover what you can do depending on what country you live in, the more people get involved the more likely it is to see action.

I really fuckin hate to see it because there are soooo many talented enviromental designers in ubisoft. Its seriously the one thing they always nail 100%

Insert overused “if buying isn’t owning then piracy isn’t stealing”

"I used to genuinely think they were a cool company, I didn't really know anything about them." Cut. Print. Beautiful.

I'm new to the channel and I have to say, the conceit of a blue monster pretending to be a man operating a blue monster is just beautiful.

Even the Titanic didn't sink as fast as Skull & Bones.

"I'm not a fan of evil people. It's just...not my thing" Bless you Arlo.

You either die a hero or live long enough to become a Triple-A Game company.

Being french, I think the end of Ubisoft is great news. While we do have smaller cool companies making nice games, Ubisoft is sucking a lot of local talents, and waste their potential. If/when Ubisoft falls appart, a ton of devs will join/build new companies and produce nice stuff.

They crippled Black Flag recently too. It's unplayable past a certain point without a mod to fix the once online part of the game and if you use that mod, your newly attached Ubisoft Connect account will get banned and without the ability log-in, the game simply won't launch making it online only... despite the online portion being no longer supported... Basically, I'm not shocked and I just hope Steam/modders can undo their evil nonsense.

The Ubisoft that made Rayman 2, Prince of Persia: Sands of Time, and Assassin's Creed 2 is long gone and I just have to accept that. Sigh.

To add to the analogy. Ubisoft is not only run by a captain who is sinking his ship for treasure while hurting his crew. The treasure he finds at the end is "The friends we made along the way." While all the crew lays beaten and dead with the captian unharmed and confused and underwhelmed at their prize.

A large portion of big western devs are sinking ships. Bioware, Bethesda, Sony, Ubisoft, Blizzard - the list goes on~ Meanwhile overseas devs such as Cdprojekt Red, Owlcat, Larian Studios, Atlus and Squeenix are cleaning up.

Skull and Bones' development is reflected in the game. They started going strong(literally just remake Black Flag for next gen), made some bad moves due to poor choices early on(the quest marker was in the wrong spot) then ran out of steam and had to slog for way too long to reach their destination(they ran out of stamina). Then once it was all said and done, they realized that they had spent a ton of money for a pile of poop, just like we did buying the game.

Honestly kind of an insult to sinking ships

"They said we couldn't do it, they said we shouldn't do it, they begged us NOT to do it, but we did it anyway!" - Ubisoft probably

"Some people are having fun..." There's no accounting for taste...

I think we all used to like gaming companies at some point, it's until a specific CEO takes over and takes the direction of the company in terms of "How can I make the most money off of this?" rather than "How can I make this game the best?"

The Singaporean government deserves a round of applause for managing to force Ubisoft to reap what they sew

Honestly, a pirate game is an idea that writes itself. Spiritual successor to black flag. Customizable player character captain, give em a backstory if you wanna be spicy. Customizable lead ship. Baldur's Gate 3 style of npc crew and crew management. Maybe give it a supernatural potc style undercurrent/subplot as a differentiating 'upgrade' to black flag. Boom done. If it needs multi-player, set that in a secret sea beyond the coral reef or something so you're not trying to make your main ocean both a plot AND a crowded wifi arena.

I love that instead of a drawn avatar you use a puppet. Its adorable

Helldivers 2 is the new standard for the live service model, but I'm betting good money the suits will not adopt it any time soon. "Make player centric games and take the time to make them good? Are you insane? Why would we delay profit for tomorrow when dumb fans will buy any rush job we put out today?" -CEO of a game studio, probably.

22:20 'companies don't want a lot of money... companies want ALL THE MONEY' Arlo just encapsulated corporate greed at its core

It's crazy how Kingdom Hearts III is like 10% pirate simulator, and that's the most fun part of the game, and Ubisoft makes an entire pirate simulator that's a flaming disaster. How do you get shown up by a fraction of another game that isn't even the same genre?!

I like to think of the rising trend of "1 year later" game reviews as the true day one reviews because actual day one games feel like beta tests for the sole purpose of bringing in money to fund their sinking ship until they can potentially release a hopefully finished product a year later (other wise known as the "no mans sky effect")

*Man... I missed games like Oblivion... (even if he started with the Horse DLC stuff)* You paid around $10, and get tons of quests, npcs, elements, classes, races, dungeons, loots, spells creation, and all that... While here, you pay 7x more, to just.... travel in an ship...

My friend worked at Ubisoft. When he said that he had a friend who loved Starlink in a meeting one of his bosses laughed and said "you found the entire audience who is enthusiastic about Starlink!"

There’s a part of me that wants Ubisoft Milan (or whichever division does the Mario Rabbids game) just breaks off from Ubisoft taking the Rayman Rabbids IP with them to save them from Ubisoft’s clutches 😭

Just stumbled onto this channel and gotta say, love your writing and the muppet theme.

15:42 I will NEVER unhear the foghorn association with Skull and Bones. Thank you, Arlo!

Sly Cooper 3 walked so that Black Flag could run. Meanwhile, Skull n Bones is trying to fly, but is looking to have as much lift as a lemming.

*This is important:* I'm surprised you didn't talk about *The Crew.* Ubisoft is not simply stopping support, not simply delisting the game from stores, but Ubisoft is *intentionally breaking the game.* Meaning that *every single person who purchased this game will not be allowed to play it anymore because Ubisoft simply decided this to be the case.*

I love that the video game monster watches Stephanie Sterling. Yall are awesome.

30 minute videos of Arlo roasting corpo gaming companies are amongst my favorite kind of Arlo videos.

Ubisoft has also destroyed Just Dance. They turned it into a live service, stripped out many functions, made so many features behind their Just Dance+ subscription, a service that has less than half the songs in their previous Unlimited service. They deleted customized playlists. They put the previously free kids mode behind a paywall. They turned a party game into a single player game by only allowing one player's scores to be retained. They removed the World Dancefloor multiplayer mode. They stopped porting over songs from Unlimited into JD+. They made new season maps available only to JD+ despite saying they will add free content all year long. Most people I know that play Just Dance are sticking with 2022+Unlimited, but Ubisoft will turn off Unlimited soon. I know most gaming sites and channels blow Just Dance off, but it is probably Ubisoft's biggest cash cow and now they are chasing that game's loyal players away. The developers say most changes came from the execs. They said they know the current live service game is majorly lacking but they can't do anything about it. It seems like Ubisoft execs are determined to destroy all of their successful franchises.

It's amazing, given the time it's taken to make Skull & Bones, that another company didn't look at the reveal, see the fan outcry, make the game people were asking for themselves, and release it BEFORE Skull & Bones.

I can't even imagine how soul-crushing it must've been to be a game dev working on Skull & Bones.

They'll never learn, once the ubisoft ship sinks they will just pretend they're a submarine now and continue downwards into the cold depths of the ocean

Anyone remember Ubisoft's NFT attempt? They were only two companies to really jump in on that craze, along with Squeenix

Absolutely love this trend of content of Arlo not pulling punches on exposing this screwed up industry. Keep it coming, good stuff.

I remember watching the release during E3 and was so excited by it. I signed up for the beta as soon as the trailer finished. And then, after all this time, this is what they came up with. Heartbreak cant even begin to describe how it feels

I squealed aloud when you mentioned Beyond Good And Evil, I played that game and became obsessed with it back when I rented it for the GameCube, and that alone should date how long I've wanted some answers for the after-credits cliffhanger. I lost faith when the style changed to hyper realistic. The game had a strong aestetic that contributed to its overall tone. Also making Jade's uncle super gross, eating flies and shit, like... yes he's a pig man but he was never like *that.* He had enough shame to swear Jade to secrecy about how the jet boots are fueled, I can barely imagine the guy hawking a lougie. This is my first video of yours but I'm subbed now. 😊

Vaas: Did I ever tell you what the definition of insanity is? Insanity is doing the exact... same fucking thing... over and over again expecting... shit to change...

Ubisoft shot themselves in the Foot after they blatantly said Gamers should feel comfortable not owning the Games they paid for, so...

Someone said, these companies aren't big because they are good, they are big because they are big

S&B should have been a standalone expansion in the same vein as Blood Dragon, which was Ubi's very successful experiment from the same year as BF. Keep the engine, keep the core mechanics, just paint over the existing game with a new map and some extra ships/upgrades then give it a basic campaign. At most expand the overworld to have a better market/faction/bounty system in lieu of a premade campaign... then sell it for $30 - $40.

Fromsoftware's ship: sailing over the waves through the power of slow, steady, well done work, pioneering and exploring new lands with extreme success and bravery Pokémon Company: A tiny boat full of holes with a rope tied to Nintendo's mother ship. Capcom's: full of fans rowing with the power of friendship

I'm reminded of an old Doctor Who quote. "Everything has its time and everything dies" (2005).

Every time Ubisoft releases a game now, the only thing that runs through my head is, "And the crowd has gone mild"

ubisoft makes the highest budget shovelware ive ever seen

Every time I've heard Ubisoft refer to the idea of a "AAAA Game," all I can think is Spinal Tap. "....This one goes to 11."

Love the metroid prime music in the background. Automatically a great video!

I’ll never forget when we forgot to buy something in town, so the summoner (pathfinder 1st Ed) teleported us back to the tavern we stayed at a week before. And then back to out camp site as he then knew the location. We where pretty high level, approaching the last book for rise of the runelords.

The saddest part about beyond good and evil 2 taking the vaporware crown duke nukem forever is that at least duke nukem had the excuses of going through thr hands of multiple different developers.

This video was hilarious and insightful but let's not sleep on how impressive Arlo's puppeteering is. Between the AAAA moment and the cell phone bit at the end I thought it was as professional as the Muppets. Super impressive work. I don't know what training Arlo has with puppets but I so wish I could do that!

7:33 I don't think I've ever seen Arlo be so unapologetically blunt before. 😂

Glad I found you , I subscribed!!!! Thank you for the content and time

I bailed on Ubisoft years ago. Truth be known, it is very challenging to find a AAA game you really want to play, enjoy playing - that does not get yeeted. In the side bar videos to this one, there's a video asking, "Is 2024 the Year the Game Industry Collapses?". You know, it just might be for these AAA producers.

I have never seen Arlo go in so ruthlessly on a company before and I am absolutely here for it

*Salt 2: Shores of Gold* is a better pirate game than Skull & Bones. (I recommend it, right along Sea of Thieves.) It's a small little indie title and a single player game. That's how badly _Ooooofplzsoft_ failed with a decade of development from multiple studios and 120 million+ budget burned. Here from AngryJoe's review of S&B btw. this video was in the recommended. Great video, definitely subbed.

Red Steel is now a cult classic. One of those games that got hate when released, but now are seen as great titles. Try playing it again.

Just gotta say, your puppetry is just so good in this video. The frustration motions feel so damn genuine.

The company sure is a Farcry from what it once was.

Ubisoft really turned into Abstergo Interactive Entertainment

“I used to like Ubisoft” That aged like milk. Welcome to the club bro! Personally I’m almost at 15 years not buying an Ubisoft game. And it feels great. Not having to have the amazing hype and to be disappointed afterwards. Not having my intelligence offended by the cookie cutter design. It just feels fresh and redemptive.

As someone who played the original beta and then the new ones I can say that my interest in S&B sank so fast there were no survivors. It was like my interest was HMS HOOD and Ubisoft delivered a direct hit to my magazine.

I wish games went back to the old PS2/GC/XBOX era mindset, just make a good game under a reasonable budget and ship it out, they don't need to be AAAA games or live services, just good games that people want to buy

Hey Arlo, I'm a new viewer and I love your vids! I noticed that the captions are missing some lines spoken - is it based on an older version of the script? I was a part-time captioner and a rule that was really hammered in is that captions should follow everything being said in the final cut. Many Deaf people and others that rely on captions are missing some of the flavor and character that you bring! It may not seem like a big deal but it greatly enhances the experience for those who need it.

This reminds me of the Bismark.... Great video, thanks for your work Edit: that "Ugh" at the end. I feel ya, bro.

My prediction for the future of Ubisoft CEO: "It's just...good business..." VP: "Abandon ship! All hands, abandon ship!"

The great thing is gaming culture doesn’t need the gaming industry. Because entry to the market is lower than ever. Even if the infrastructure of the old guard completely evaporates, games can and will still be made

"Have I ever told you the definition of insanity?" Ubisoft in a nutshell

"Ubisoft is a sinking ship" Y'all have been saying that for over 20 years.

Arlo: I used to like Ubisoft. **paper mario music fades in**

What will happen first? (a) Arlo gets curtains for the weird window. (b) The Switch 2 is released.

Sweet Baby Inc. is working with them on the new Assassin's Creed game...

Fun fact about Prince of Persia: The lost Crown. One optional boss in the game turns invincible due to a bug and unbeatable until you reload your savefile if the boss jumps to the left. It's also has some other fun minor bugs like climbing away from walls and at one point you can get out of bounds.

And the funny thing is, Rare produced Sea of Thieves. Practically, announced at the same time, and released far sooner.

Actual subtitles THANK YOU!!!

If you go to the center of the map in Skull and Bones on the third day of the third week of April a sea monster rises out of the ocean and if it sees its own shadow on the surface that means three more years without a good pirate game

"You can never count on something good to be good forever." Very true, and seems more true than ever past few years.

The ship began to sink when they sidelined Rayman for an endless barrage of Assassin's Creeds...