Ubisoft Wants Steam to Hide Player Counts?
Ubisoft is trying to save face over its most recent failure, Star Wars Outlaws; in doing so, it’s confirming that the game is a failure. Star Wars Outlaws has gotten bad press since before its release, as the trailer promised another game tailored to “modern audiences,” with a female protagonist who looked like a gender-swapped Han Solo. As the game got closer to its debut, the signs pointed to a dud, with Ubisoft launching what it called its “biggest marketing campaign ever” to promote Outlaws, flying online reviewers out to California, giving them merchandise, sending them to Disneyland on VIP tours, fixing them up with merchandise, even booking them on whale watching tours. But it doesn’t seem to have paid off because even the positive Star Wars Outlaws reviews showed the awful gameplay and design, with all sorts of bugs like idiotic AI, landscapes disappearing, the lead character being swept entirely across the screen, and so on.
This weekend, Star Wars Outlaws debuted on Steam, and predictably, it was a debacle. According to SteamDB, the game topped out at 2,492 peak online players, which is not nearly what Outlaws needed to be successful. Remember Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League, the massive embarrassment that cost Warner Bros. $200 million and exposed Sweet Baby Inc. and the entire DEI consulting racket? That game reached 13,459 peak concurrent players, over five times what Star Wars Outlaws has. This is a disaster for Ubisoft, confirmation that Star Wars Outlaws is a bomb, and it casts an even bigger light on Assassin’s Creed Shadows, the next big release from Ubisoft that they were banking on to save them from financial ruin. Ubisoft is in a lot of trouble, and if things don’t change drastically, it could be looking at major changes at best, and a closure at worst.
IGN on Star Wars Outlaws final preview:
-Journalist: ‘I’m having a blast with Star Wars’ fighting mechanics!’
-Video: Game Completely broken beyond belief and NPCs wondering, ‘What the hell am I doing here?’ pic.twitter.com/BiYZSA0iSh
— LearningTheLaw (@Mangalawyer) July 30, 2024
What’s Ubisoft’s response to this bad news? Is it a pledge to focus on customer satisfaction? Are they determined to stop releasing games that aren’t yet complete? Will they relegate their agenda to social media posts where it belongs and make games fun, with the gamers first in their minds? Of course not; their first thought is to bully another company into hiding their losses from the public. Fandom Pulse (via SmashJT) learned from a “Ubisoft insider” that the company is trying to get Steam to stop revealing the player count for games, applying pressure to the company (what kind of pressure is not specified) to get its way. This sort of thing has become common in recent years, with online companies circling the wagons to help their corporate buddies. YouTube has stopped displaying the number of dislikes on a video, for example; Rotten Tomatoes began requiring users to prove their bought a ticket to see a movie before they reviewed it to have their review counted as part of the aggregate. Now, Ubisoft would (allegedly) like Steam to start doing its part to help obfuscate bad news.
What’s really funny is that the mere suggestion that Ubisoft is pushing for Steam to drop its audience analytics suggests that Ubisoft has something to hide. If Star Wars Outlaws were a runaway hit that was taking the gaming world by storm, Ubisoft would want everyone to know its Steam numbers. But just like obnoxious X posters who disable replies or studios who shut down the comments section of their YouTube videos, Ubisfot apparently wants to get outsiders to make their awful games look good. And while it’s too late to save Star Wars Outlaws, they’re probably setting the stage for the next game that gets bad word of mouth ahead of its release – Assassin’s Creed Shadows, for example. If they can stop the public from confirming that nobody likes one of their games, maybe they can convince a few more people to buy it. It’ll be tough; word travels fast nowadays. But I almost don’t blame them for trying.
Let us know what you think of Ubisoft allegedly trying to get Steam to hide the player count for games in the comments!
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