Links - 16th April 2025 (1 - Get Woke, Go Broke: Assassin's Creed Shadows)

8 hours in, Suicide Squad doesn't seem like the disaster some were waiting for | PC Gamer (Morgan Park)
Uh oh, I played 7 hours of Concord this weekend and immediately want back in | PC Gamer (Morgan Park)
I played 6 hours of Assassin's Creed Shadows, and folks, I think this one was worth the wait | PC Gamer (Morgan Park) Stuttering Craig (Official) on X - "Here it is. All 2 HOURS or Assassin's Creed Shadows credits. I just want to repeat that the credits are over TWO HOURS."
Grummz on X - "AAA team bloat is unreal."
BasedNerds.net on X - "It’s 2 hours long because they have to mention all the they/them XI/xem. These count as double" Perma Banned | Facebook - "-be Ubisoft
-request a Vtuber to do a sponsored Assassin’s Creed Shadows stream, she agrees.
-Vtuber streams it, as agreed
-not long after, Vtuber gets banned on Twitch
-it was a complaint from Ubisoft that got her banned, because she “streamed it at the wrong time”
-turns out it was a Ubisoft mistake and they MISREAD the time, but they still blamed her for it anyway.
Ubisoft, this is getting ridiculous. You sponsored someone…and now you got them BANNED for meeting their sponsorship obligations? All because someone in your staff can’t read the time properly. This is absolutely BAFFLING. Yeah, never accept a Ubisoft sponsorship…unless you want roll a gacha with a chance of getting your channel banned." Assassin’s Creed Shadows isn’t the hit Ubisoft “desperately needs,” analyst says - "Many speculated that Assassin’s Creed Shadows would be one of the best selling games in the entire series thanks to its intense marketing, novel dual protagonist approach, and long-requested feudal Japan setting. With Ubisoft announcing that it’s reached two million players already, that speculation appears to have been well-founded. Despite some really encouraging sales and engagement numbers, both officially revealed and reported, a top analyst now claims that its strong performance may not be strong enough, saying that Shadows isn’t “the smash hit Ubisoft desperately needs.”... MIDiA Research’s Rhys Elliott says that “the numbers do NOT reflect [the] smash hit Ubisoft desperately needs” and predicts that “given the scope and development time of Assassin’s Creed Shadows, the title has almost certainly not broken-even yet.” While launching on Steam straight away was certainly a boon for the game, Elliot compares Shadows’ numbers on the platform to the port of Ghost of Tsushima, which treads on similar ground to the new Assassin’s Creed. Despite it being a port of a then-four-year-old game, Ghost of Tsushima sold roughly twice as many copies on Steam at launch than Shadows, according to data pulled from Alinea Analytics.  Assassin’s Creed Shadows’ Steam sales also pale in comparison to some of 2025’s true mega hits so far. Three days after launch, Shadows has apparently sold 310,000 copies. In a similar time frame, Split Fiction shifted 882,500 units on Steam, and the gargantuan Monster Hunter Wilds sold almost ten times better than Shadows with 3.7 million units, according to Alinea’s data." Media Touts Assassin's Creed Shadows as a Success — It's Not - "Even Japan’s National Diet weighed in, with Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba slamming the game, stating, “Defacing a shrine is out of the question—it is an insult to the nation itself,” a scathing rebuke of Ubisoft’s cultural missteps...   The game is being hyped by a slew of questionable media “journalists” as a “return to form” for the franchise. Sounds promising, until you notice the phrase popping up everywhere—The Gamer, Hip Hop Wired, The Escapist, and Windows Central all parroting it like schoolkids copying off the same cheat sheet. This suspiciously uniform praise, often tied to the game’s supposed nod to classics like Assassin’s Creed II stealth focus, reeks of coordinated spin rather than genuine insight. Alas, expecting honesty from gaming journalists in 2025 is like expecting a toddler to file your taxes—gamers are far too savvy to swallow this tripe. They can smell a stinking pile painted as chocolate pudding from a mile away...   Fans rightfully asked: what does an American hip-hop track have to do with Yasuke, a Mozambique-born African figure with zero ties to modern U.S. culture?   That got yanked after backlash, but what they didn’t fix is far worse: the atrocious dialogue and abysmal voice acting. The cringe here outstrips even Mass Effect: Andromeda’s infamous “my face is tired” line—a 2017 flop so wooden it’s still mocked as a benchmark for bad writing. In Shadows, every line feels like it’s trying to win a Razzie, delivered with the enthusiasm of a bored DMV clerk.  It’s not just the dialogue, though—the game’s actions are pure nonsense, egregiously disrespectful, and straight out of a fanfiction writer’s fever dream.  Take Hattori Hanzo, Japan’s legendary ninja master—often dubbed the “godfather of ninja” for his strategic genius and leadership of the Iga clan in the 16th century. In Shadows, he’s reduced to a groveling servant after Naoe, armed with Mary Sue superpowers, beats him into submission and claims him as her lackey. Then there’s Oichi, sister to Oda Nobunaga and revered as a tragic maternal figure in Japanese history, known as the “mother of Japan” for her role in uniting warring clans through her children.  Here, she’s inexplicably thrust into a steamy, romantic fling with Yasuke—a plot twist so absurd it feels like a cheap script designed to trash Japan’s cultural legacy. These aren’t bold creative choices; they’re denigrating, juvenile fantasies that scream ignorance louder than Ubisoft’s PR team screams “innovation.”   It gets even worse. Rumors swirled that Ubisoft employees were furious when players in Assassin’s Creed Odyssey overwhelmingly picked male Alexios over female Kassandra—despite the team anointing Kassandra as the canon protagonist, a choice cemented in the novelization and DLC.  The same grumbling echoed with Valhalla, where male Eivor outshone the female version in player preference, even though Ubisoft pushed female Eivor as the “historical” default in marketing and lore tie-ins... this obsession with sidelining male characters feels like a bad joke taken to grotesque extremes. Every male counterpart, even the historical Oda Nobunaga—a towering warlord who unified Japan through ruthless brilliance—is relegated to cartoonishly evil, mind-numbingly stupid, or saddled with unlikable traits so absurd it’s as if the writing team forgot how to craft a decent male character.   The few “good” ones? They’re conveniently killed off or sacrifice themselves for self-inflicted blunders, leaving players rolling their eyes at the predictability... The writing here isn’t just bad—it’s a masterclass in lazy pandering, suffocating under Ubisoft’s toxic positivity and relentless diversity-box-checking. Every character devolves into an offensive stereotype unless they come from a certain privileged lineage, flattened by an obsession with “representation” that sacrifices depth for cheap optics.  Yasuke’s arc reeks of performative virtue, less a tribute to history and more a checkbox ticked by execs who think slapping a modern lens on a 16th-century figure equals depth. Meanwhile, the dialogue stumbles like a drunk toddler, every line a cringe-inducing cliche that screams “we care more about optics than storytelling.”... As of this writing on March 25, 2025, the Steam player numbers for Assassin’s Creed Shadows are dismal—peaking at a measly 64,825 concurrent players before flattening out like a day-old soda. Here’s the kicker: they couldn’t even top Dragon Age: The Veilguard’s Steam peak of 89,304.  Investors should be sweating bullets—Shadows isn’t even cracking 100k on Steam, a platform where middling indie titles sometimes flex bigger numbers.   But hold up, you might say—didn’t Ubisoft just trumpet that “Assassin’s Creed Shadows has reached over 2 million players across all platforms in just three days,” as CFO Frédérick Duguet boasted on March 23? Sounds like a slam dunk, right? Except keen eyes will spot the glaring omission: the word “sales.”... Insider projections paint a grim picture: the numbers are a flop. Leaked forecasts shared with investors have been slashed not once, not twice, but three times since pre-launch, per industry whispers on X. That explains the instant 10% stock plunge on March 20—shares tanking from €11.32 to €10.19 overnight, per Yahoo Finance—a neon sign of market panic.  In high-stakes launches like this, controlling investors don’t mess around. They demand real-time updates... Japanese politicians are sharpening their katanas over Ubisoft’s butchery of their heritage, with Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba’s March 21 jab, “This is not a game; it’s an assault on our soul,” still ringing loud. Local players aren’t just skipping this slop; they’re treating it like radioactive sushi, leaving it to rot on the shelf. Investors are bailing faster than rats in a flood, and I’d bet my last euro we’ll see seismic shifts in the coming days—tectonic moves that’ll reshape Ubisoft forever, and I’d wager my left sock it won’t be pretty." Meme - "Assassin's Creed Shadows Review: A Feudal Return to Form..."
"'Assassin's Creed Shadows' Review: A Return to Classic Form..."
Assassin's Creed Shadows is an Exciting Return to Form [Review]
Assassin's Creed Shadows may truly be a return to form f..."
The PR reps need to come up with a new line for the reviewers to use Grummz on X - "Final numbers are in. Assassin's Creed Shadows did 27.5% worse than Dragon Age Veilguard on PC. The final weekend numbers shows AC peaked 2 hours ago at 64,825. It never broke into the top 20 played games on Steam."a> LearningTheLaw on X - "In Assassin's Creed Shadows, they can't help but make the female protagonist canonically lesbian and Yasuke the king of interracial romance by having him sleep with Nobunaga's sister. Everything will be slop and gay, and you will like it—or you'll get sued. – Ubisoft" Meme - "18 emperors are descendants of Oichi. Ubisoft also made unauthorised commercial use of Emperor Nintoku's mausoleum and set the scene for the theft, albeit in-game. Insulting the Emperor's family has the same meaning as insulting the country of Japan. #AssassinsCreed" Chise on X - ">be slave
>fight ONE battle and lose
>your legacy is being a humiliation
>fast forward to today
>get depicted sleeping with the daughter of the guy you were serving
>get depicted as the savior of Japan
Who writes this?" Grummz on X - "Yasuke is now in the Imperial Japanese bloodline. He bangs Oichi, Nobunaga's sister. 18 Emperors are descended from her. Tell me again that Ubisoft did very respectful research of Japan? 😂" LearningTheLaw on X - "Breaking: Yasuke actually has a gay romance in AC Shadows with a character named Ibuki, who identifies as non-binary (they/them). After some flirting, they kiss each other. Bro, it looks like he's high as f***. It’s over lmao"
Kangmin Lee | 이강민 on X - ">non-binary and they/them pronouns in feudal Japan
>black man goes around having gay romances and sex with Oda Nobunga's sister
AC Shadows wasn't made to be a video game. It's a humiliation ritual for Japan and a weird erotic fantasy for liberal women." LearningTheLaw on X - "Yasuke in Assassin's Creed Shadows final boss fight features a battle accompanied by diverse African music, followed by terrible dialogue, and then it ends. This game has the most atrocious voice acting/script in the last 20 years. The budget was wasted on globohomo romance."
Kangmin Lee | 이강민 on X - "Ok who at Ubisoft thought it would be a good idea to have a guy chant "ching chong" over and over again during Yasuke's final boss fight?" Japanese Politician Calls On National Diet To Condemn Ubisoft And 'Assassin's Creed Shadows' Over In-Game Ability To Destroy Real-World Shinto Shrine: "Can We Really Excuse This Just Because It's A Game?" - "the politician can be seen posing the same question to Masayasu Sawada, the head priest of the nearby Yuzuruha Shrine and the head of the Hyogo Prefectural Shinto Political League.  “Fundamentally, I believe that Western societies, particularly Europeans, lack respect for other religions,” said Sawada. “Deep down, they may still hold subtle prejudices against non-Western cultures. This lack of respect for our spiritual traditions is now showing itself openly. Even if they claim it wasn’t intentional, the fact remains that they have depicted such acts of destruction. That alone is unacceptable.”" Grummz on X - "My local source confirms:  The Itate Hyozu Jinja shrine in Japan has filed a formal request to Ubisoft, asking them to remove the entire religious site from Assassin's Creed Shadows.  My source tells me the temple leaders are very upset at the use of their shrine and the ability to destroy the interior.  The temple joins a long list of Japan gaffes that have plagued the game, such as the unauthorized use of the Sekigahara Rifle Corp banner in the Art Book concept art.  Assassin's Creed Shadows loudly touted the sensitivity and research that went into the game, hiring several...shall we say...questionable historians to consult on the title. It has been an unmitigated disaster so far and Japan is not happy."
Rawle Nyanzi on X - "I have a theory about Assassin’s Creed Shadows. It’s not sourced by anything, it’s just a hunch.
The historical disrespect has nothing to do with Japanese audiences at all. Instead, the entire game was meant as an attack on American anime fans.
Anime fans in the US are perceived as right-wing. This is because since 2014, right-wing viewers flocked to anime to get away from the aggressive social messaging that a lot of American- and British-made popular culture was engaging in. They appreciated professional-grade entertainment that avoided the ideological strictness of Western creatives.  This provoked anger among left-leaning pop culture fans, as well as nearly all professional Western creatives of note (few of these are right-wing.) Their own products came to include a lot of anti-Right messages. You see small acts of sabotage such as bad translations of Japanese-made media, intended to spite this right-leaning crowd that they knew was watching. The entire Western video game industry was geared towards spite.  So when it came time for Ubisoft to make a game set in Japan, they had a golden opportunity to craft the biggest, most lavish middle finger to the right-leaning anime fandom that they could, since this fandom was also fascinated by Japan as a country.  But they were so enamored at sticking it to anime fans that they forgot Japan was not a fictional creation they can edit at will, but a real country with a real history.  Hence what you’re seeing now.
I would like to reiterate that this is a hunch and not proven fact. I’m just proposing what could have led to the creative decisions in Assassin’s Creed Shadows." Kangmin Lee | 이강민 on X - "FYI, watermelons
|>are never seen in the same season as cherry blossoms (summer vs spring)
|>didn't reach Japan until the Edo period, long after the Sengoku period
|But Ubisoft HAD to include watermelons for the legendary forgotten black samurai HAHAHAHAHAHA remarkable"