Larian director of publishing Michael Douse, never one to be shy about speaking his mind, has spoken his mind about Ubisoft’s decision to disband the Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown development team, saying it’s the result of a “broken strategy” that prioritizes subscriptions over sales.

Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown is quite good. PC Gamer’s Mollie Taylor felt it was dragged down by a very slow start, calling it “a slow burn to a fault” in an overall positive review, and it holds an enviable 86 aggregate score on Metacritic. Despite that, Ubisoft recently confirmed that the development team has been scattered to the four winds to work on “other projects that will benefit from their expertise.”

This, Douse feels, is at least partially the outcome of Ubisoft’s focus on subscriptions over conventional game sales—the whole “feeling comfortable with not owning your game” thing espoused by Ubisoft director of subscriptions Philippe Tremblay earlier this year—and the decision to stop releasing games on Steam, which is far and away the biggest digital storefront for PC gaming.

  • MeatsOfRage@lemmy.world
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    7 months ago

    I mean given the massive industry layoffs over the past few years developers are already pretty used to not having jobs.

    I hate how developers are the ones attributed to game industry problems. Decisions like this almost never fall on the developers shoulders, specifically the ownership quote was from their subscription service director. You know… the guy whose job depends on you not wanting to own games.

    • kautau@lemmy.world
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      7 months ago

      Agreed, I’m always saddened by quotes like “well the devs should have” when it’s almost certainly “the execs should have.” Unless a studio is owned by its devs, or they make up some of its leadership, which are few and far between, the devs don’t have the say on the shitty things that happen to the product they’re working on, and often when the devs have more say you end up with like Kingdom Come Deliverance from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warhorse_Studios. One of my favorite games, was supported by the studio for long after it came out, and now they’re working on a promising sequel

      • bitjunkie@lemmy.world
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        7 months ago

        The studios owned by the devs almost uniformly don’t put out complete gacha cash grab bullshit

  • Randelung@lemmy.world
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    7 months ago

    That’s every publisher’s wet dream. AI’s almost ready, right?

    god I wanna see them fail so badly.

  • pyre@lemmy.world
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    7 months ago

    lol ubisoft publishes a good game once in a blue moon and when they do they disband the team that does it. seriously these motherfuckers need to be jailed.

  • Kecessa@sh.itjust.works
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    7 months ago

    Gamers be like “We don’t mind not owning our games as long as we don’t own them through the monopoly that we like, ok?”

      • v0rld@lemmy.world
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        7 months ago

        Sure that’s reasonable at the moment. And while it seems Gaben would never sell out, he is going to die at some point. What’s going to happen to steam / valve after that?

        • GHiLA@sh.itjust.works
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          7 months ago

          Lets fight the battles we’ve got, man.

          The inner-circle at Valve might be tighter than we assume. The next three or four in line might be just as aligned with Gabe. There’s a chance they aren’t, but Gabe made it this far with the people he’s working with, I’d say he probably picks people he trusts.

  • catch22@programming.dev
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    7 months ago

    This is to bad, I really enjoyed this game one of the better platformers to come out in a long time.

  • Yerbouti@sh.itjust.works
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    7 months ago

    Flash news: you dont own your steam games and you’re use to it. This “Ubisoft is the bad guy” but we all lick steam and others capitalist business’s ass is getting ridiculous. Steam has 78 employees lol. Dont buy ubi’s games and stop crying.