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this post was submitted on 23 Oct 2024
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That sucks. The game itself was great and its Steam numbers are Concord-bad.
I'd put a lot more weight on "Ubisoft games suck because of all the MTX and games as a service stuff" if people hadn't ghosted the legitimately great zero-MTX traditional mid-sized game.
i have a theory about some games not being popular/successful because of the lack of word of mouth and anti-Piracy measures being the reason, maybe someone already made a study on this
Not to my knowledge, but I bet not being on Steam had more to do with it than Denuvo, by far. There is no indication that DRM software discourages sales, to my knowledge. If it does, at worst it breaks even.
I will buy the DRM-free option every time, but every piece of data out there suggests that "I will never play a game with Denuvo" people vastly overestimate how much of a practical impact that stance has.
Me, I'm just weirded out that people are so mad about some solutions they know but not about Steam DRM or any other solution that isn't known widely by name. You know, since I'm sharing all my unpopular gaming hot takes here.
If Denuvo has no negative impact on sales, what's the need for their recent PR campaign to "rehabilitate their image"? https://feddit.nl/post/22918778
Well, brand and image are relevant, in more ways than direct sales impact (something that "voting with your wallet" often ignores).
But mostly, and this is important, it's worth remembering that Denuvo's clients aren't the people who buy their games, they are the people who sell the games. That's who Denuvo is selling to. And Denuvo, which is a very big, if not the only, name in town for effective DRM on PC, would like to keep being that.
All else being equal, if Denuvo generates negativity in forums and a similar no-name competitor doesn't a client (that's a publisher, not a buyer of the game), may choose to go with the newcomer just to remove the noise, or to prevent an impact on sales they can't verify.
But also, I imagine people working at Denuvo are kind of over being the random boogeyman of gaming du jour while other DRM providers are actively praised or ignored. I'd consider speaking up, too.
I probably wouldn't because there's very little to be gained from that, as this conversation proves, but... you know, I'd consider it.
EDIT: Oh, hey, I hadn't noticed, but the guy actually responds to this explicitly. Pretty much along these lines, actually:
Steam DRM doesn't have quite the same history of maliciousness towards end users that Denuvo does
Ah, the vibes.
I mean, there are worse areas to run based on gut checks. Ultimately you buy whatever brands make you feel warm and cozy. But just so we're clear, Steam is the granddaddy of both PC DRM and digital distribution with no ownership.
I get thinking their implementation is better, but I don't know that I get "well, this one I actively root for, that one I consider a boycott-worthy deal breaker".
As a company pushes people away it gets harder to pull them back, so that doesnt take away from their complaints. Also, I'm not sure that the same crowd who plays other ubisoft titles is the crowd that's interested in a 2d platformer.
The launch price is what killed it. In a genre dominated by AA games, games need to use AA pricetags.
It's 40 bucks. 50 with the DLC. That's the same price as Bloodstained, and that sold millions.
Also, the Steam re-release launched with a 40% discount. Nobody played it on Steam for that price, either.
This thread is full of hypotheses and retrospective rationalizations that don't quite check out.
On PC it requires Ubi's launcher and Denuvo. That's enough to make me completely uninterested.
Right. So you didn't make a difference here, since that's also true of all the Ubi games that did better than this, then.
But this doesn't have any of the other crap people are blaming for Ubi doing poorly. So you'd expect if the outrage was making a dent whatsoever their one game that is relatively clean of that stuff would have done better, not worse, than the other stuff they are putting out.
But nope, the opposite is true.
So hey, not saying you're lying, but I think the collective at least looked at the nice, small 2D metroidvania with no MTX and went "nah", but they were much more willing to give the GaaS-y stuff a try.
Although if I WAS saying you're not being all the way honest, I may guess that you just weren't on board for this anyway and now are performatively feigning outrage for something else after the fact to pretend other people's motivations are aligned with your opinions. But I'm not. So we're good.
The irony of you constantly telling people they don't actually know why they do not pay Ubisoft...
My dude... We're TELLING YOU why we aren't buying it. You're just too dumb and stubborn to accept the truth. Obstinance makes you pathetic, not correct.
There’s still some truth to his statement.
If someone says one thing and does another…people tend to trust the action, not the words. If sales numbers indicate one thing, it doesn’t matter what people say on social media.
Right.
So, one, I'm pretty sure in most cases that's not why, for the same reasons we all shared memes of people "boycotting Call of Duty" while appearing online playing Call of Duty.
But even taking everyone at their word, I'm saying the group as a whole is not working by those parameters. Directly, demonstrably in apples to apples comparisons they didn't buy the Ubisoft game that doesn't do the stuff people claim to be mad about and bought other Ubisoft games in larger numbers.
The thing with obstinance is that it's hard to make reality change its mind. Remarkably stubborn, reality.
You really don't understand that the people who throw money at Ubi's standard crap and people who 2d Metroidvania games are mostly different people with different values? The CoD/Fifa/Assassin Creed crowd clearly don't give a fuck about shitty, intrusive launchers and kernel level anti-cheat.
Meanwhile, lovers of Metroidvania games looked at Prince of Persia and it's competition (games like Nine Sols) and chose one that didn't install malware on their computer.
I get that you want that to be true, but there is really no indication that this is the case. There are a lot of elements in Ubisoft's recent issues, but there is no good suggestion that any of that train of thought lines up with what we're seeing here.
More to the point, even if it was, all that suggests for Ubi as a course of action is to keep doing what they're doing. I mean, maybe launch on Steam day one, but... yeah, if you monetize the big games better and the fans of the small games won't cut you a break for making them... just don't make them.
My point stands either way.
No, boycotts are not a corporate death knell. No one is saying that. LITERALLY no one is saying their personal decision or reasoning is the cause of this news.
EVERYONE ks pkinting at shitty things Ubisoft does, says, it caused them to not bjy it and likely is impacting others' decisions... then you come along going, "NUHUH NUHUH, Ubisoft isn't losing money because YOU didn't buy it!"
My dude... we FUCKING KNOW THAT!! We're saying UBISOFT shot themselves in the foot with shitty behavior. This article is literally about the effects of people not buying en masse, and you're saying that the NEWS WE ARE READING is not possible...
Just stop. Just stop. Boycotts most often do not work, but THIS IS NOT A BOYCOTT!! This is people explaining why they stopped giving Ubisoft money. Holy fuck, you are good at doubling down on a bad idea.
No, you're not following me.
The point here isn't whether this game did poorly. It did. Cool.
The point here is that it did WORSE than other Ubisoft games.
Specifically, worse than Ubisoft games that include all the shitty behavior. More of the shitty behavior, in fact.
So the performance of the game is not correlated to the shitty behavior. Well, maybe more shitty behavior gets you better sales, that would fit, but I'm not going to jump to that.
You'd think if Ubisoft's shitty behavior is scaring people off this game would have done better than Mirage and Mirage better than Outcasts, but that's the opposite of what happened.
People that play games like this PoP don't generally buy the other games Ubisoft sells. And the people that do play recent Ubisoft games are not going to play this.
That is why things like the anti cheat (for a single player game) turn people off.
This doesn't have anticheat, it has DRM software, though.
But hey, if there is no overlap, then how come this did so much worse than other similarly well liked metroidvanias, right? That's been my point here. People keep pointing out that it's not comparable to other Ubi titles. I disagree, because PoP is PoP, but let's roll with that. It also underperformed compared to other games in the same genre with similar review scores.
So what happened there? Either the Ubi woes are behind this, and then it doesn't make sense because this did worse than other more Ubisofty Ubisoft games, or they are not because different demos, and that doesn't make sense because this did much worse than similar games not from Ubisoft.
I think as far as this tells us anything is that the stink of negativity is not very fact-based when it comes to the core gaming community. That and Ubisoft may not have more money to make by going to middle sized, pure and simple high quality experiences like Rayman or this. Which sucks. Those are the best games they've made in recent years, as far as I'm concerned.
Dude, multiple people have told you why. I spelled it out as well.
Unless you're a dev you've chosen a very strange hill to die on.
I don't and have never worked at Ubisoft, Mr McCarthy.
Multiple people have explained a hypothesis that doesn't fit the information we have. Them being multiple people doesn't make it true.
You being one person that refuses to accept things does not make everyone else wrong.
No, that'd be the info we have on how Ubi games performed on both Epic and Steam. I have very little to do with it, I'm just pointing at it.
Why do you even bother to comment a hundred times in here if you're not going to read anything anyone is saying to you?
What's the point? Are you really that bored?
If I responded to it, I read it in full.
Also, yes, obviously.
They're competing against games like Hollow Knight which offer 40+ hours of content for less money.
Hollow Knight is from 2017, I don't think it was out there draining business form this seven years later. Bloodstained is more recent, and that cost the same as PoP. Also the Ori games, which are priced the same.
Plus this launched half off on Steam and nobody bought it despite being cheaper than Bloodstained and Ori.
So... I mean, it could have been that, but it pretty clearly wasn't that.
There was also a little too much game. Instead of putting in every platforming challenge that they could think of for a given set of mechanics, it would have been paced much better if they just picked their two or three best. I'll bet it doesn't help that it requires the Ubisoft launcher on Steam either.
Could have said that of Ori and Hollow Knight and people seem to have showed up for those. I don't think this is any worse than they are, FWIW. In any case to even notice that kind of nuance you have to play it. If that was the conversation we're having they'd be making a sequel.
The fact that it initially launched on Epic certainly didn't help its Steam numbers, but it also did much worse than Outlaws and other Ubisoft exclusives there, so the "it's the MTX/GaaS" argument doesn't hold.
Casual gamer here. I'd heard of Concord. Never knew another Prince of Persia game even existed.
Xalavier Nelson Jr talked about this a few times over on Remap Radio.
Strange Scaffold (and many other indie studios) are literally doing what people are asking for. They are making "complete" games with no early access period and no DLC with shockingly high production values for the budget. And people are ignoring them until there is a massive sale AND still going full culture war over the stupidest of shit*. Which means it is increasingly difficult for them to secure any kind of funding even though they have an incredibly solid track record for both development and sales.
And... that is the sad reality. It has been true for decades at this point but it feels increasingly more true now. Games can't just release "done" because people will forget they exist by the time they are willing to buy them. Look at your steam wishlist and (please don't actually) tell me if you even remember what all of those are. Instead, people see that Caves of Qud is finally going to hit 1.0 or that Pathfinder 2 has a new DLC or that Fortnite has fucking Goku and that simultaneously reminds them that game exists AND has "new content" so that they can feel justified in being a "patient gamer".
I can't speak to this PoP. I know that it is a games media darling and is INCREDIBLY well done but I also tend to not want to give ubi money until yves is gone due to his role in enabling and protecting sexual misconduct which continues to this day. But it is a solid reminder of why so many major publishers refuse to do anything that is not a major franchise (and apparently Prince of Persia no longer is) or has high enough production values that it bypasses the "I'll wait for a sale" mindset.
So... Yeah, as consumers it is not our job or responsibility to protect the people trying to sell us shit. But, if you can afford it, consider buying fewer games overall but prioritizing newer ones that actively do things you think are awesome. From a selfish standpoint, you are more likely to actually play it rather than one of the five games you got for a dollar in a fanatical bundle. But it also REALLY helps those studios to be able to report solid first quarter (or even day one) sales and many games are already launching in the 20-30 USD range anyway.
Like, I don't know if "really well done metroidvania" is a particularly solid reason. But there is a reason all of us squad tactics sickos went crazy buying nu-xcom and the like back in the day. Because we had gone from such a lack of games that even frigging UFO: Afterlight was worth playing (it isn't. But Aftermath or whatever the first one in that series is is the best SG-1 game ever made) to suddenly having options. And, a decade later, we have enough options that... paradox fucking murdered HBS because they weren't pulling projected nu-xcom numbers.
*: Paraphrasing since it has been the better part of a year, but Xalavier was joking that he caught so much hell for basically parroting Swen's stance that Larian's BG3 was atypical and can't be reproduced. Yet people ignored all his VERY leftist takes on economics and social justice. Although, I assume that has shifted if he is still on twitter.
I don't know the guy, but all of that sounds reasonable to me.
BG3 can be replicated, if you have a massive dormant IP that is part of a furiously resurgent franchise and have several hundred million dollars to burn in a years-long development cycle by a studio that has already done pretty much the exact same thing without a license successfully twice.
I wouldn't model my business on aligning that set of circumstances, but I sure am glad Larian did.
To be clear, there's a bunch of other AAA stuff that is also doing quite well with pretty clean, finished games. But for midsize stuff like PoP... woof, yeah, it's so hard to break through.
And you're right, it's a miserable set of incentives that if you launch broken you kinda have a built-in marketing hit because suddenly you're doing live support and adding features. No Man's Sky was a fun one for that. Cyberpunk. But those games did great at launch, so they had the built-in base to keep growing while they fixed the game. PoP launched pretty clean, was small and nobody cared, so it's no wonder Ubi has decided it can make those super talented devs do stuff on the next massive AssCreed or whatever is left of Beyond Good and Evil 2 or The Division or whatever.
I can think of several other variables that may be necessary for success that aren't being tested in that statement. Like, is it a setting that resonates with people? Yes, I want more Max Payne, but not so much with vampires in it. Then when you find a game that gets acclaim and the audience is there for it, this is a good time to sequel that game, because now there's brand recognition on the game people like, and they'll be more willing to spend full price on a game where they're confident in what they're getting.
I just refuse to support Ubisoft. I don’t like their practices, or most of their games. I don’t feel I’m missing much by skipping whatever they make. Hopefully they go out of business and a better company can pick up their IPs and make good games, for a decent price, without crazy micro-transactions, 30 different special packs, and a required secondary launcher
Okay, but there was none of that here (except perhaps the launcher), and there was no suggestion in the results that anybody wants to encourage that. So that's definitely not the lesson being learned here.
Also, and I will keep repeating this forever, companies don't make games, people make games.
Also, also, good luck with that. Don't look now, but that's not how major companies going out of business and fire-selling their IPs tends to go.
Look, I'm not sure why it's Ubisoft's turn in the hot seat after EA and Activision, but none of that is a productive outlook or leads to a better outcome, as this one really good, really wholesome game bombing hard goes to show.
Denuvo is a deal-breaker for me.
Ubisoft is in the hotseat because they let their suits have too much power over the games they produce.
I am a fan of the prince of persia series and based on the reviews I'd seen I was really interested in this title. But their absolute refusal to participate in the steam ecosystem and insistence on pushing their launcher means that I, as someone who values my own time, am not going to bother with their nonsense.
They don't understand their customers anymore. Not well enough to shift the direction of their company's initiatives. They deserve to fail even when they do manage to produce fun and interesting games because they are bad at the business aspects of being a game publisher/developer.
Well, they're back on Steam, this game included, so there's that shift. Does that count or nah?
They are making progress by not delaying all of their releases on steam but man that launcher is a nuiscance.
I was too hostile to the company in my last message, honestly I used to enjoy their games. And in general I enjoy the types of games they produce. I'm a sucker for open world stuff but I stopped buying their games when they started trying to emulate the EA strategy of remaking the same game every year and inflating dlc.
I'll happily welcome them back into my library when they drop the launcher component and lean in to steams networking features for easy coop and such.
Just the other day my buddy and I were looking for a coop open world action game with decent combat, he stumbled onto ghost recon wildlands or maybe it was the sequel but either way once we saw it was ubisoft we moved on to look for other title and ended up choosing an entirely different genre despite that being what we were looking for
Yeah, I fully agree that they've stuck to a template far too closely for far too long. That's part of why I'm frustrated that this one went as poorly as it did, since it very much isn't that.
I think the hostility to any non-Steam platform is unwarranted, although annoyance is annoyance. That said, the Ubi launcher on Steam right now is just a pop-up, I don't think it makes you log in each time if you have everything linked.
Eh, they deserve a little hostility.
Last time I fired up a game I owned on steam that required the ubi launcher was a few years ago now and it was really bad then. Like to the point of it automatically creating a new account for me and forcibly linking it to my steam profile despite it not being the account I already had with ubisoft from a registration I had created on an Xbox console previously. It permanently divided my library between multiple ubisoft logins and made accessing the right one really annoying. Their support wouldn't let me refund or even migrate the title to the correct account and they made it an even further inconvenience by not letting me unlink my steam profile from my (wrong) ubisoft profile without writing in a physical letter for some stupid reason. Something to do with purchase history not overlapping with the steam profile or honestly I don't even remember anymore but it was more than enough to no longer want to do business with them.
If it's improved to the point that it's just a pop-up I'd be willing to consider them again. I really don't want to support ubisoft themselves but I'd love to support Prince of Persia games. If any other studio owned the IP I would have bought it on release day
Yeah, so I just checked, it brings up a Ubisoft Connect windows and then boots. It has less of a launcher than, say, Baldur's Gate 3.
I don't know if it makes you log in the first time or it creates a new thing for you by default, but I can tell you I had more account and launcher trouble running Warframe on a new PC this week than I did playing any recent Ubisoft game.
BTW, you can link up your Steam account to Warframe now and not have to log in each time and man, that only took a decade. Still didn't piss people off as much as Ubisoft being on Epic, though.