Links - 29th September 2025 (1 - Get Woke, Go Broke: Dragon Age: The Veilguard)

Grummz on X - "The WORST SCENE in DRAGON AGE VEILGUARD just dropped.  You can never apologize enough, and you have to do it in JUST the right way, Dragon Age lectures.  Dragon Age Veilguard lectures you on the right way to apologize for misgendering someone, and it is as cringe, long and painfully drawn as you would imagine.  No wait, it's worse."

Former 'Dragon Age' Lead Writer Warns Of "Anti-Fans" Wanting Games To Fail To Send Developers Lessons : r/KotakuInAction - "All of this " people wanted Bioware to fail, that's why Veilguard failed" is getting old. The game was eventually given for free and nobody wanted it. When people don't want your crap for free even, maybe it's time to stop blaming others, own up to the turd you produced and do better. But that would require devs who are actually real devs instead of morons living in a bubble that will lash out at anyone who criticize them.  Maybe you guys shouldn't work on video games if the only thing you can do is deflect blame."
"The people in charge need to find somebody else to blame, otherwise that would mean they have to change their plans or face some kind of repercussions. We all know that if they leave the company they will just infect some other place though."

Amazon Is Literally Giving Away Dragon Age: The Veilguard for Free — And Still Nobody’s Playing - "Between August 20 and September 2, 2025, Amazon Australia launched a promotion where anyone buying qualifying items — everything from routers to controllers — would receive a free copy of Dragon Age: The Veilguard. According to reports, more than 1,000 separate items triggered the freebie. Imagine buying a printer or a kitchen appliance and finding this “bonus” video game tossed into your order. Far from being a celebration, it comes across as a digital clearance bin. That’s not an exaggeration. Amazon’s own fine print described the promotion as an effort to unload inventory, a sign the warehouses are overflowing with unsold stock. For a Dragon Age title — once considered a guaranteed hit — that alone is humiliating... Veilguard didn’t even last a single fiscal year before being shoveled out for free.   Maybe the defenders will say, “But free exposure boosts player counts!” Except… it hasn’t.  According to SteamDB, Dragon Age: The Veilguard peaked at 89,418 concurrent players in November 2024. That number is respectable — until you consider it’s a flagship BioWare RPG with 10 years of hype. Today, the 24-hour peak barely scrapes 1,000 players, and live counts hover around 700-800 at any given time.  In other words: even when Dragon Age: The Veilguard is free, almost nobody wants to play it. The audience evaporated in less than a year, and no amount of bundling has revived interest...   What makes this especially damning is the franchise legacy. Dragon Age wasn’t just any RPG. For years, it stood shoulder-to-shoulder with The Witcher and Elder Scrolls as a benchmark for immersive dark fantasy storytelling. BioWare had the goodwill, the talent, and the fanbase."

Dragon Age maestro says EA always spoke about a hypothetical 'nerd cave' full of diehard RPG fans who would "always show up," so you "didn't have to try and appeal to them" - "BioWare veteran David Gaider explained that before he left BioWare, his tastes had become somewhat "old-fashioned" in EA's eyes. "I was very vocal on the Dragon Age team," he says. "I was always trying to push it to our traditional mechanics. And that wasn't very welcome in the EA sphere."  He says that EA considered those mechanics - the kind that shaped games like Dragon Age: Origins - to be "slow and cumbersome," rather than the "action-y and slick" presentation that the studio was being pushed toward. That meant that Gaider's views "were often not very welcome" despite his long tenure at the studio and work on many of its most famous RPGs."
Ditto for all the other IPs ruined by the left

Meme - *Unknown 9: Awakening, Skull and Bones, Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League, Dragon Age: The Veilguard, Concord, Star Wars: Outlaws*
"All these games flopped! 2024 was a horrible year for gaming."
"All these games flopped! 2024 was a great year for gaming!"

Meme - "This is so toxic and sad (from the director of Kingdom Come Deliverance dev)"
"Kingdom Come Deliverance released on 13 February 2018. 7,615 players right now. 10,926 24-hour peak. 96,069 all-time peak 6.8 years ago
"Dragon The Veilguard released on 31 October 2024. 4,635 players right now. 10,727 24-hour peak. 89,418 all-time peak last month"

Looks like the Dragon age: Veilguard sub is not taking Daniel Vávra's tweet well. : r/Asmongold - "Weird that he doesn't like the people who tried to boycott his game and called him a racist because he made an accurate depiction of his own countrys history"

Meme - "Game writers then: Hope is what makes us strong. It is why we are here. It is what we fight with when all else is lost.
Game writers now: Rook: But once I was able to be honest with myself, it was a relief to figure out I was trans"

Meme - *Unfinished Horse Drawing / Flaming Horse Rating*
Descending order of quality: *Dragon Age: Origins, Dragon Age II, Dragon Age: Inquisition, Dragon Age: The Veilguard*

Meme - "NON-BINARY FOR NON-BINARY BY NON-BINARY"
"90. IGN. Dragon Age: The Veilguard refreshes and reinvigorates this storied series with enjoyable action combat, a fantastic cast of companions, and moving character writing."
"Len @TilFolkvang she/they"
"And while we've been asked by the devs not to spoil specifically who I'm talking about here, as a non-binary person myself, Veilguard includes some of the most authentic representation of coming to terms with gender stuff and having to navigate your family's reaction to it I've seen yet in a game. It doesn't feel like an after school special or like I'm being pandered to. It's quite well-handled, and finding out that the writer for this character is non-binary themselves did not surprise me at all."
"HE SAYS, "IT DOESN'T FEEL LIKE I'M BEING PANDERED TO" BUT GETS HAPPY AND GIVES THE GAME A 9/10 KNOWING THAT ITS A NON-BINARY WHO WROTE THE CHARACTERS. THIS IS PANDERING 101"

Meme - "DRAGON AGE: VEILGUARD TELL YOU TO PRETEND TO CARE
"100 CGMagazine. BioWare took the time they needed to bring Dragon Age fans the perfect RPG experience. From style to story and everything in between, Dragon Age: The Veilguard is everything I wanted from this entry in the Dragon Age universe"
"Dayna Eileen. She/Her"
"Each companion also has their own story arc. BioWare has made a conscious effort to become more inclusive regarding race, gender and other social issues. A few of their stories this time around will have a great impact on specific audiences, and it is great to see a company jump into these issues head-on rather than just making pronouns or including skin colour. I am sure a wake of people will have nasty things to say, but seeing more people be able to see themselves in video games is only good in my books, even if I don't relate to the stories directly."
"THESE CHARACTERS AND STORIES WERE CLEARLY MADE TO PANDER TO A SPECIFIC AUDIENCE. YOU HAVE TO PRETEND AND VALIDATE THOSE WHO ARE PRETENDING TO BE ANOTHER GENDER."

Meme - "HE WANTS MORE PRONOUNS IN THE GAME"
"92. GamePro Germany. Dragon Age: The Veilguard is a fantastic action-rpg that, after a bumpy start, delivers the best story in the series."
"Otta makes Dice she/they *Pride flag* *watermelon*"
"Gendering in the German language edition. Gendered language is used in the German voice-over. We at GamePro generally see this as a positive decision, but the implementation is not always entirely successful. For non-binary people, the pronouns hen/hem (they) are used and an "-e" is added to the title, as in Stadthaltere. However, the game explains this procedure far too late, so it can be quite confusing at first when a character is addressed with pronouns that some may never have heard of. A quick note at the beginning about how the game implements gender-neutral pronouns would definitely have been helpful."
"SIMPLE SOLUTION TO THIS OVERWHEMLING DILEMMA IS TO SIMPLY ADD A MALE AND FEMALE ONLY OPTIONS"

Meme - "DRAGON AGE: VEILGUARD REINVENTS ROMANCE BECAUSE 'GeY'"
"100. Eurogamer. A fantasy role-playing game of astonishing spectacle. This is the best Dragon Age, and perhaps BioWare, has ever been."
"Bertie. Brighton, England (LGBT land)"
"In many ways it is a game about them, your companions. Through them The Veilguard speaks to our hearts, and it's how the game approaches complex topics from our own World - topics like gender identity, neurodiversity, personal trauma, and parenthood - and each is handled gently and unobtrusively, and with maturity and care. Romance is of course part of the game, but I'm pleased by how restrained it is here, and how it refocuses relationships on the emotional side committing to to Taash, butino one was giving anything away easily."
"HE IGNORES OTHER GAME'S ROMANCE OPTION AS SIMPLY ABOUT 'BANGING SOMEONE: GAMES LIKE MASS EFFECT, THE WITCHER 1-3 AND THE PERSONA SERIES FEATURED THE EMOTIONAL SIDE AS WELL. THERE ONLY SIN, IT WASN'T 'GeY ENOUGH."

Dragon Age: The Veilguard Director Corrine Busche Reportedly Leaves BioWare - "According to her LinkedIn page, Busche had been at EA since December 2006, working on a myriad of games, including the Tiger Woods Golf franchise, The Sims, and Dragon Age. After 18 years, her departure is likely to come as a major surprise.  Dragon Age: The Veilguard proved, arguably, the most divisive in series history. Origins and Inquisition both scored in the mid-80s on Metacritic, while Veilguard struggled with an 82. It also only managed a 79 on Opencritic and a 4/5 from us here at TheGamer. Certain creative choices, an unpopular art style, and a shallow narrative were some of the more contentious issues. These all led to The Veilguard having a smaller launch in Europe than Dragon's Dogma 2...   Busche's departure isn't the first high-profile one since the launch of Dragon Age: The Veilguard. Last month, it was confirmed that the writer for characters such as Josephine and Emmrich, Sylvia Feketekuty, had left the studio after 15 years."

Grummz on X - "We're winning. DAV has fallen.  Dragon Age Veilguard has failed to recover it's costs. It has failed and no, holiday sales won't save it.  Bioware is so angry that Dragon Age Veilguard sales numbers have leaked, that they are launching an internal investigation to find the leakers.  Here's what we know from @EndymionYT , @SmashJT , @RealHypnotic1  and others:
- Concurrent players have dropped off the charts just 2 weeks in, sitting at a peak of 34,068 vs their launch weekend high of 89,418. A 62% drop before the month even closes.
- Returns are rumored to be 30,000 copies, and the game is being traded in at Gamestop so fast that used copies of the game are flooded and being discounted with a trade-in value of only $14 cash. By comparison, Stellar Blade, a much smaller IP and many months older than DAV is $16.10 cash, which shows you just how bad DAV's value has dropped. Fun fact: Star Wars Outlaws is even worse, at just $11.90 cash. Stellar Blade wins again.
- Total sales for DAV have only JUST crested 1 million copies in 2 weeks. Budget is rumored to be at 250-300M for the game, making it fall well short of breaking even. If you take most games sales profit at around 70-80% of list price (after store markups and digital platform fees), a 300M budget would need around 6-7 million copies sold. (this is where I differ from most other's estimates who say 4-5M).
Dragon Age Veilguard has failed. They will see a tiny surge in sales in Holidays but not much. Total copies will barely reach 2M by next year (unless they start just giving it away - expect heavy discounts and bundles to make this number seem bigger than it is). Gamers have rejected the heavy handed woke, preachy politics for one, and DA fans have rejected the new graphics and action oriented gameplay, which feel very alien to the franchise. You can do diversity right, without preachy HR lectures disguised as a story, and you can do it very very wrong, like DAV. We're winning. Everybody fights, everybody builds, nobody quits!
Sources: Gamestop website, Steam DB, insider leak videos from Smash and Endymion and Hypnotic retail data and my own industry experience publishing, operating and developing AAA games."

Dragon Age: The Veilguard Bombs on PlayStation Plus, BioWare Can't Even Give This Game Away - "Four months after launch of Veilguard, Electronic Arts gave the game away for free on PlayStation Plus, hoping to reignite interest in a title that had already been rejected by most of the gaming community.  The outcome? Absolute disaster.   Despite being handed out at no cost to millions of subscribers, The Veilguard couldn’t even crack the top 10 most-played PlayStation games in March. According to True Trophies, which tracks over 3.4 million active PlayStation Network accounts, the game barely reached 15th place in player engagement. For context, it was outperformed by The Cowabunga Collection, a retro collection of decades-old Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles games—a humbling reality for what was supposed to be a major release from one of EA’s premier RPG studios.   This isn’t just a poor showing. It’s complete rejection. If players aren’t even willing to download a game when it’s literally free, that speaks volumes about how much of the audience has turned its back on the franchise.   From the very start, The Veilguard was on shaky ground. Hyped as a major return for the Dragon Age franchise, the game instead became one of the most disappointing releases of 2024.  EA reportedly had expectations that it would sell 10 million copies over its lifetime, yet after two months, it had only “engaged” 1.5 million players—a vague and misleading metric that conveniently avoids saying how many people actually bought the game. In reality, The Veilguard was abandoned almost immediately after launch. The game’s price dropped to $24.99 within four months, GameStop slashed its trade-in value to a measly $22 shortly after release, and reports surfaced that tens of thousands of copies were returned—a rare fate for a major AAA release. Players weren’t just uninterested; they were actively rejecting the game.   Rather than admitting that poor gameplay, weak storytelling, and a forced ideological shift turned longtime fans away, EA tried to spin the failure by suggesting that The Veilguard flopped because it wasn’t a live service game...   Baldur’s Gate 3, a purely narrative-driven RPG, dominated the industry and won Game of the Year. Elden Ring, another game with no live service elements, became a massive commercial success. Gamers are still hungry for deep, well-crafted single-player experiences—they just don’t want rushed, soulless cash grabs loaded with modern ideological messaging.   EA’s claim that The Veilguard would have performed better if it had live-service mechanics is laughable. If anything, trying to force microtransactions or a multiplayer element would have made things even worse—just ask anyone who played Anthem."

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"

Age of Empires III: The WarChiefs

Sandy Petersen on X

How to get your dream project - corporate politicking.

After my successes with Rise of Rome and The Conquerors, I was a shoe-in to do the expansion for Age of Empires 3. But I had a problem. The natural assumption everyone had was that this expansion would be Asian civs. I did not want to do Asian civs because it was stupid - 1600s Japan, India, China & Korea were emphatically not in colonizing moods. And believe it or not, I do care a little about historical verisimilitude. (Mainly because I think it makes the game more fun, but still...)

So what I wanted to do was to turn some of the Native Americans into playable civs. Why? I think Indians are awesome and I wanted to see them as more than the minor allies they were presented as in the original game.

But how could I do this? MicroSoft expected Asians. The suits in charge at Ensemble expected Asians. The other leads on the project expected Asians. And the rest of the non-lead team members expected Asians.

Here's how I went about it. (Oh yeah, if you thought the Warchiefs was dumb then you're a bad person with bad opinions. So there. But you may still find something useful in my tale.) 

First, I had to convince MYSELF that the Natives would be cool. I wanted to give them a new and interesting ability and make them undeniably cool. I worked on this for a while, coming up with the Firepit idea (which lets the Indian villagers dance for special powers) and the Warchief unit, which is way different from the European Scouts because the Warchief can "convert" wild animals on the map to his team which is super-fun. I also decided the three civs would be the Sioux, the Aztecs, and the Iroquois, which would be interestingly different. Later on they changed the name of the Sioux to the Lakota but I want you to know that I actually PHONED the Seven Council Fires and was told in person by native representatives that Sioux was a perfectly good term for them. Though of course Dakota, Lakota, and Nakota also worked. I stuck with Sioux as being more inclusive. (I assume the name was eventually changed because of white men activists, not natives, because it was white Seattle natives who thought it should be Lakota back in the day.)

The Aztecs wouldn't have gunpowder or horses, the Sioux would be heavily cavalry-based, and the Iroquois would be kind of a "high tech" Native civ. Anyway I was an easy sell, because I'd been thinking about this for a while.

Second, I took all the other leads (consisting of the producer, the lead programmer & the lead artist) out to a long business lunch and we hammered out all the details. Basically I proselyted how cool the natives would be, and how much neater a horde of screaming charging Sioux would be than a stand of Mughal archers. And by the end of that (3 hour) lunch I had them all convinced. I'd answered their arguments, presented ideas they liked, and got them on my side. 

Next step - the team. Now that all the leads agreed with me, we met with the team - programmers, designers, and artists first as individual groups then all together and made our case for Indian civs. The artists were the easiest ones to convince, once I started talking about Jaguar Warriors and Lakota lancers, feathers waving in the air. So colorful. The designers were fairly easy too because they liked the challenge it presented. The programmers, always hyper-conservatives, were the toughest, but they fell to our eloquent arguments as well. Everyone was enthusiastic now and loved the Warchief idea.

Now I went to our superiors at the company - the guys who approved our paychecks. And here was the argument I gave them. "The whole team loves the Warchief idea. Surely it's better to put us on a project that we love, rather than one we only reluctantly acquiesce to?" And because the management at Ensemble Studios wasn't a pack of morons, they bought it. They then fought for us against the Microsoft drones (who WERE, of course, a pack of morons) for our team vision.

And in the end, we were victorious in getting my idea approved. But now it all rested on my being able to produce what I'd promised design-wise. Obviously the programmers and artists were capable of making whatever they were asked. It was mainly on me.  

And I succeeded. The first civ I did was the Iroquois, because I felt they were the most like the Europeans. They used gunpowder & horses, etc.

From the first moment they were tried out in the game they were a big hit. I think the main reason everyone loved them was because they were able to produce swarms of little crappy siege weapons (battering rams, etc.) which are of course Real. Fun. Nothing warms the cold black hearts of Age of Empires players like destroying peaceful villages.

Once everyone was playing the Iroquois (and fighting over who got to be them in our playtests), the Warchiefs were In Like Flynn. The whole of Ensemble Studios was bought in. 

A few weeks later I brought in the Aztecs, who THEN became the most popular civ I think because of all the cool specialized warriors - Coyote Runners, Eagle Scouts, Priests, Jaguar Knights, Puma Spearmen, Arrow Knights, Skull Knights, etc. They were just so colorful & cool. And their home city looked awesome because Aztec architecture.

The last civ I created was the Lakota, and everyone was so excited to try them probably they were predisposed to love them on sight. And they were. Having a giant army of cavalry is super fun though of course they had to have anti-pike units as well, which they did because the Sioux had lots of rifles. Plus I gave them invisible units, including the only invisible cavalry unit in the game.

Anyway the Warchiefs was doing great and everyone seemed happy. Until MicroSoft struck back. 

They sent in a team which was whining because in Age of Empires III though we had native americans, they couldn't be wiped out. But in The Warchiefs, if you were playing a native civ, obviously you could be annihilated. Sort of the whole purpose to playing an RTS, right?

But no, the all-white-dude contingent they sent to complain about this terrible injustice was concerned it would send a bad message.

I didn't have to say hardly anything - I'd prepped everyone at Ensemble Studios so well that they fought on my behalf. No one wanted to give up playing the awesome Native civs. And the best part came when to thwart our MS foes, we presented them with the document that THEY HAD SENT US when we first did Age III, in which Native elders from Washington state complained that the natives in Age III COULDN'T BE KILLED. They said, "The natives in Age are not in power of their own destiny. We want them to be their own independent civs and live or die based on their skills and strengths."

Which is of course EXACTLY what we'd done. We had fulfilled, almost to the letter, what the actual Native Americans desired, in a document which MicroSoft had prepared after Age 3 came out. 

So we got to have our way. It probably helped my case that this was in 2005 - Lord knows what it would have been like if this had happened 20 years later.

Someone is probably going to say, "But Sandy, later on you guys DID an Asian expansion for Age 3." Well actually, no. Ensemble Studios didn't do it - BigHugeGames did The Asian Dynasties a year later, and they did a great job. And really, it was the obvious next expansion. I didn't object to doing Asians, but if we were ever going to do Native Americans I stand by the fact we would have had to do it first.

Links - 2nd February 2025 (2 - Get Woke, Go Broke: Ubisoft [including Star Wars Outlaws, Assassin's Creed/Yasuke])

EXCLUSIVE: Ubisoft Seemingly Prepping for Bankruptcy Ahead of Assassin's Creed Shadows Release as Past Failures Spell Almost Certain Doom - "we highlighted Ubisoft’s abysmal credit rating, rooted in troubling financial metrics such as a €1.4 billion net debt, plummeting market cap down over 85% in the past four years, and an unsustainable workforce of 18,666 employees costing an estimated €746.6 million annually.  These indicators painted a bleak picture of a company teetering on the edge of financial ruin. Now, on January 9, 2025, Ubisoft announced that it has appointed leading advisors to review and pursue various transformational strategic and capitalistic options to “extract the best value for stakeholders.   What does this mean?  On paper, it suggests Ubisoft has hired consultants to address the company’s strategic missteps from recent years. However, in practice, this move aligns more closely with preparations to sell off valuable assets such as intellectual properties like Assassin’s Creed, Far Cry, Rainbow Six, streaming rights, or other goods, and possibly edge closer to bankruptcy. This announcement comes on the heels of yet another delay for Assassin’s Creed Shadows, now pushed from February to March. Coupled with declining sales from Star Wars Outlaws and the cancellation of XDefiant, it seems Ubisoft’s financial woes are far worse than initially anticipated."

Assassin's Creed Shadows New Release Date is Anniversary of The Worst Modern Domestic Terrorist Attack in Japanese History, Another Wildly Tone Deaf Ubisoft Move Toward Japanese Culture - "The game, delayed twice already, is now slated to launch on March 20, 2025—a date that marks the 30th anniversary of the Tokyo subway sarin attack, Japan’s deadliest modern terrorist incident. For a game purportedly steeped in Japanese history, this decision has left many questioning Ubisoft’s sincerity and sensitivity. It’s a glaring misstep in a development cycle already riddled with accusations of disrespect and historical inaccuracies."

Ubisoft Value Tanks: Market Cap Dropped 85% From 2021 to 2025

Meme - Perma Banned: "So the claim made by AJ Investments about how the Guillemots and Tencent are deliberately pummeling Ubisoft’s value to the ground through horrible decisions, to facilitate gaining more of its shares… Was very likely not “just a ridiculous conspiracy theory”? I’m shocked…"
"https://aj-invest.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/Ubisoft-Open-Letter.pdf
2. Management and Governance: The control exercised in September 2022 by Tencent and the Guillemot family has effectively blocked potential acquisitions and partnerships that could have been beneficial for the company and its shareholders. More recently, in 2022, private equity firms such as KKR and Blackstone expressed interest in acquiring Ubisoft, but were unable to proceed due to existing agreements that prevent any single entity from gaining control without Guillemot and Tencent's consent. ( https://www.bloomberg.com/ news/articles/2022-04-22/assassin-s-creed-publisher-ubisoft-said-to-draw-buyout-interest? embedded-checkout=true) This pattern of blocking potential acquisitions has prevented much-needed restructuring and revitalization that will benefit all the stakeholders of Ubisoft. We believe that Guillemot family and Tencent are discounting potential value of Ubisoft in order to buy more shares at lower valuation and eventually take full control of the company at
Ubisoft Confirms Tencent Buyout Discussions. The studio will continue executing its strategy to meet the needs and expectations of its stakeholders."

Toxic gaming tackled by Ubisoft's unique police alert system - ""We want to be on the right side of history," says Damien Glorieux a senior director of the Newcastle-based Ubisoft Customer Relationship Centre.  It's here, and at four other locations around the world, that staff monitor how players of Ubisoft games are getting on - responding to requests for help and actively getting involved with the communities that have evolved around their titles. They deal with everything from purchasing issues to online toxicity.  Other companies have similar set-ups, but what's unique here is the involvement of local law enforcement... Holliday tells us about a recent case in Norway, saying: "Things were said and behaviours displayed that hit our threshold for intervention. There was a threat to life or serious harm.  "The agreement with Northumbria Police meant that after we flagged it, even though it wasn't a UK citizen - they were able to get Norwegian authorities involved.  "It was a lot quicker, more efficient and safer than trying to do it as a private citizen."... For Northumbria Police, Detective Chief Superintendent Deborah Alderson has been leading the work with Ubisoft on this agreement.  She argues that policing "is about prioritising protecting the vulnerable"... Andy Millmoor is the player experience director at the centre, and says that when it comes to online behaviour, making people feel "safe and secure" is their number one goal.  "Toxicity takes a lot of different shapes," he says."
Thoughtcrime bad!
Clearly enforcing left wing orthodoxy hasn't hurt the studio

Meme - "Star Wars Outlaws' Backlash Proves We Need More Women Protagonists"
"The game failed? Good. make more."

Ubisoft Reportedly Pressures Steam to Get Rid of Concurrent Player Count After 'Star Wars: Outlaws' Disastrous Debut

Meme - "DID YOU STOP HIRING WHITE MALES"
"YES"
"WHAT DID IT COST?"
"EVERYTHING" *plummeting stock price)

Ubisoft CEO Blames Gamers After Poor Sales of Star Wars Outlaws - "Ubisoft recently commented that the sales of its recent Star Wars game were below expectations, which has caused turmoil for the gaming giant. However, instead of taking responsibility for the damages, the CEO seems to have blamed the fandom.   Speaking on an investor call recently Yves Guillemot said that delivering a solid quality isn’t enough for the gamers anymore. He thinks that gamers have extraordinary expectations that are hard to meet now."

'Star Wars Outlaws' Nearly Falls Off Top 40 Most Popular PlayStation Games List Less Than A Month After Release - "To put this in perspective it’s getting beat by Hogwarts Legacy, God of War Ragnarök, and Ghost of Tsushima. All three of those games released over a year ago.   Not only is the game almost out of the Top 40 list, but True Trophies indicates that less than 9,000 people played the game. Similarly PSN Profiles reports that there are only 7,090 Star Wars Outlaws owners.  For comparison, True Trophies noted that Firewalk Studios’ Concord had 1,696 players while PSN Profiles reported 1,662 Concord owners. In the other direction, Black Myth: Wukong has 26,753 owners according to True Trophies and 22,206 according to PSN Profiles.  Finally, Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 has 12,414 according to True Trophies and 7,558 according to PSN Profiles. Of note, Black Myth: Wukong is 9th on True Trophies most recent Top 40 list while Space Marine 2 is in 12th...   Christopher Dring noted that its “launch sales [were] 55% lower than what Star Wars Jedi: Survivor did.” A week later he shared that its sales were “about half of Assassin’s Creed Mirage... Maybe one of the biggest pieces of evidence that the game is not selling well is that Ubisoft has not touted any sales figures."

LearningTheLaw on X - "The only reason Star Wars Outlaws doesn't drop below a 7 on Metacritic Metascore is because IGN essentially released 400 reviews that count toward the system's score. How is that even legal? lmao 💀"

Meme - Pirat_Nation: "You are now the new CEO of Ubisoft. How do you save the company?"
Nate Hodibrey @DjinnBartimaeus: ">First day as CEO
>Fire anyone with:
1) Pronouns in Bio
2) Brightly colored hair
3) Overt activism on their public Social Media Profiles
4) The entire HR team
Results:
>Costs get cut by 60% by laying off all the useless deadweight & keeping only meritorious devs
>Games get made for GAMERS and not a screeching activist minority
>Customers LIKE the games again instead of actively rejecting them
Congratulations, Ubisoft is highly profitable again."

Meme - Blue-haired bowl cut woman with glasses to table of blue-haired bowl cut women with septum rings, with everyone having the same phone and mug (white mug with heart): "now that the company's diversity goals achieved..."
"UBISOFT CLOSE TO LIQUIDATION AS LAYOFFS ACCELERATE, SHARES PLUMMET"

Ubisoft director blames gamers, says they've been exposed as 'non-decent humans' - "Ubisoft's continuous downward spiral is seemingly only gaining speed, with the latest speed boost coming from the company Monetization Director for Ubisoft, who took to LinkedIn to call gamers critiquing the company and its products "non-decent human[s]"... These company woes have also spawned an internal investigation and review by company board members. All of these bumps in the road have caused Ubisoft's share price to plummet more than 50% in just the last two months, causing the company's board of directors to launch an internal review of the company's performance which will likely result in a reshuffling of staff. Now, in the heat of what could be considered the most tumultuous time for Ubisoft, the company's director for monetization, Stevy Chassard, has taken to LinkedIn to voice his opinion on the public's reaction to Ubisoft and its recent decisions."
Once again, any opposition of the left wing agenda is "hate"

Meme - Grummz @Grummz: "We have no agenda. We want the widest possible audience.  This Ubisoft statement sounds good until you realize Disney said the same thing in response to their movies being accused of a woke agenda.  What happened? Nothing. Disney carried on until they had several more mega flops.  Widest possible audience = code for inclusivity as usual."
"in the light of recent challenges, we acknowledge the need for greater efficiency while delighting players. As a result, beyond the first important short-term actions undertaken, the Executive Committee, under the supervision of the Board of Directors, is launching a review aimed at further improving our execution, notably in this player-centric approach, and accelerating our strategic path towards a higher performing model to the benefit of our stakeholders and shareholders. Finally, let me address some of the polarized comments around Ubisoft lately. I want to reaffirm that we are an entertainment-first company, creating games for the broadest possible audience, and our goal is not to push any specific agenda. We remain committed to creating games for fans and players that everyone can enjoy."

Ubisoft Shares Fall as Star Wars: Outlaws Fails to Meet Expectations - "As of September 3rd, Ubisoft’s stock had dropped by 2.4%, reaching its lowest level since 2015. This decline is attributed to the disappointing performance of Star Wars: Outlaws and the underwhelming reception of another recent release, Xdefiant. The latter, a free-to-play shooter, initially generated buzz but quickly saw a steep drop in player interest and viewership on Twitch.  Analysts were particularly concerned because Star Wars: Outlaws had a significantly higher development budget—at least 30% more—than Assassin’s Creed Mirage, a title released by Ubisoft last year. Despite this, early sales figures and player engagement have not met expectations. J.P. Morgan analyst Daniel Kerven even lowered his sales forecast for Outlaws by 2 million units, predicting that it would sell only 5.5 million copies by the end of the fiscal year in March 2025.   Star Wars: Outlaws was not just another game for Ubisoft; it was supposed to be one of the key titles that would help the company recover from four consecutive years of negative cash flow. After delays and cancellations of other projects, Ubisoft was banking on Outlaws and the upcoming Assassin’s Creed Shadows, set to release on November 15th, to bring a financial boost."

Meme - Assassin's Creed: "Assassin's Creed Shadows will now release February 14, 2025."
Kangmin Lee: "Just delay it forever. No one wants to play as a black dude killing Asians in feudal Japan. We see that enough in San Francisco."
Ori Girindra: "You know Shits are getting real when you see Korean defending Japanese"

Ubisoft Executive Says 'Assassin's Creed Shadows' Devs "Think It's The Worst Thing They've Ever Seen" - "Ubisoft’s Executive Producer for its Assassin’s Creed franchise Marc-Alexis Côté shared that a number of the developers on Assassin’s Creed Shadows believe the game is “the worst thing they’ve ever seen.” During the Q&A portion of the interview, he also revealed that many of the people working at Ubisoft on the Assassin’s Creed franchise have no experience with the franchise. He said, “One of the things that I’ve noticed since the pandemic is that we have a lot of juniors in our teams. … Probably half the team that’s building Assassin’s Creed is building a game for the first time.”... he shared “that historical experts were brought onto the project much later than usual for a project of this magnitude and that miscommunication between teams and cutting corners when it came to the approval process of assets to meet deadlines” resulted in “many of the historical and cultural concerns” that have been raised by gamers. He also divulged that Ubisoft management had ignored their own developers who had been calling for a delay. He stated, “Seven developers working on the project said that they have been pushing for a delay for some time, and their situation had even been heard at other studios in the company.” YouTuber Endymion also shared information from his source that claimed that Ubisoft is planning to make changes to Yasuke. He said, “One of the things for sure getting removed from Shadows, according to my sources, is indeed the rap, hip-hop music for Yasuke. Apparently Ubisoft brought out a questionnaire and they were unanimously told that the rap music was tonally wrong and completely unneeded. And that it was actually offensive that Ubisoft believed Yasuke needed a hip-hop battle theme in a game that was set well before such music existed and it was only implemented ’cause Yasuke was black.”... They are also going to be removing dialogue from the game that according to my source told me that it would actually enrage players it they heard it,” he added. “I wasn’t given concrete examples of what kind of dialogue but the source assumed it may have been Yasuke saying some sort of sociopolitical pandering nonsense about he was sold by white men or something and that he hates white men and white supremacy must be abolished and such.”"

[ENG] "Yasuke Isn't to blame." arranged from "弥助でもええねん” [Unofficial MV] Assassin’s Creed Shadows - YouTube

The Bogus Story of Yasuke & "wokeness" revisionist history - " We will begin with the fact that Yasuke was a real person, he did exist, he was of African descent and he was put into the service of Oda Nobunaga. This is fact, and is not disputed.  What is disputed are all the revisionist stories of Yasuke as a great warrior, as  having been awarded Samurai status, and earning respect of the Japanese people and other Damiyo that he encountered in the service of the Oda...  THIS IS NOT FACT.  Romantic stories of the famed Black Samurai are nothing more than fables no more real than the futuristic comic book land of Wakanda.  Recent books  by authors such  as Thomas Lockley provide a plethora of speculation portrayed as fact, typically referencing historical documents and then interpreting them in a way to fit the narrative that sells books... the black man named Yasuke was given his own residence and a short, ceremonial katana by Nobunaga. Nobunaga also assigned him the duty of weapon bearer (much to the annoyance of actual samurai)  Here is where the facts morph from what is known, to what is "wished for"...  Nobunaga had a propensity for the unique, and he was particularly interested in all things foreign. Clearly he was fascinated by Yasuke, and this was documented to be to the chagrin of many of his top generals such as Akechi Mitsuhide, who is reported to have been disgusted by the site of Yasuke, and saw him as nothing more than a wild beast.   After the Battle of Tenmokuzan, Nobunaga led his force, including Yasuke, and inspected the former territory of the Takeda clan. So people make the assumption that Yasuke actually fought in this battle, and that he donned Samurai armor and fought valiantly as a samurai hero.
Fact check: A sword bearer stays behind with the general camp, near to the lord, they don't go out on the battlefield, and there is ABSOLUTELY POSITVELY NO RECORD OF YASUKE FIGHTING IN ANY BATTLE!  There is also NO RECORD of Yasuke receiving martial arts training, or use of the Japanese sword, either when in the service of Nobunaga or the years prior.    The truth is that his time with Nobunaga was limited, as they first met in 1581 and Oda Nobunaga was dead a year later. This is hardly enough time for Yasuke to be trained to be the great warrior all the Waukanda dreamers want him to be... some people attempt to equate Yasuke as a non Japanese Samurai in the same way the English sailor William Adams (Pilot) was later viewed.  However Adams was actually presented Samurai status, and  there is no record of Yasuke being bestowed similar Samurai status. The FACTs are that Oda Nobunaga made him a servant for a few months... Another fact that is clear;  Yasuke was kept around as talking piece, an oddity for Nobunaga to show off, much in the same way he enjoyed irking other Daimyo by showing them Azai Nagamasa's gold plated skull... Despite modern romanticized versions of Yasuke, if he was this great Samurai some would have you believe, then it stands to reason that he would have either fought to the death at Honnoji, or at the very least he would have committed Seppuku.  Nope.... didn't happen.  Or if he was an honorable Samurai like the 47 Ronin, at the very least he would have begged to join Hideyoshi in the fight against Mitsuhide and gotten revenge.... don't you think? Nope,  didn't happen  All that is known about the fate of Yaskue , is that he was seen with the Christian Missionaries after Nobunagas death and reportedly fled the country soon after. So while people may attempt to romanticize the story of Yasuke to suit their agenda, the truth is that such blatantly false attempts to rewrite history are pure revisionism and nothing more.  Faking history because it makes you "feel good" does nothing but a disservice to all students of the culture, the Japanese nation and the historical record.  There was no black samurai, no great Yasuke, no hero.... just a man who was a victim of circumstance and the times he lived in"
The "teaching accurate history" people love made up history when it pushes the left wing agenda

Meme - Grummz @Grummz: "Ubisoft is censoring Japanese creators critical of Assassin's Creed, citing "hate speech"."
Hypnotic @RealHypnotic1: "Youtuber and content creator SHOHEI KONDO Gets his assassins creed shadows videos REMOVED for hate speech from YouTube."
Shohei Kondo @shoheikondo: "Thank you for sharing! The video is removed 7 times! Every time the video gets back, it gets removed again and again! I'm contacting YouTube's internal team"

Perma Banned on X - "-be Ubisoft again
-releases another Assassin's Creed Shadow figurine set
-uses a One-Leg Torii as the backdrop for it
-the only known instance of a One-Leg Torii is the Sanno Shrine...which is a remnant/reminder of the Nagasaki incident from...1945
Ubisoft you just...I can't believe it...  Oh yeah Ubisoft, once again so "Respectful of Japanese Culture and History" you are. Using a tragedy reminder, for your merchandise sale. I can FEEL the respect from here.  Passing off historical revisionism from a foreigner as fact, plagiarise reenactment group banners, buying props made by other artists and passing it off as their own, messing up Chinese/Japanese AND time period architecture, culture and EVEN writing.  Now this?  You will have trouble convincing me that Ubisoft doesn't actually HATE Japan at this point."

Domino’s offers Assassin’s Creed Shadows help to “deliver on time” following delay, Assassin’s Creed responds - "On a facebook post on their official page, Dominos Pizza reposted the press report put out by Ubisoft regarding the month-long delay on Assassin's Creed Shadows, adding post-scriptum:      "call us if you need help delivering on time"... All joshing on social media aside, the now further-delayed launch is a pivotal point at Ubisoft's very existence as a game-development company. The once-juggernaut of AAA gaming has undergone significant losses in the past few quarters. With speculations of outright liquidation on the line, it's likely the company will at least go through some corporate restructuring and corner-cutting to make it profit-ready again."

Meme - Loyalists of the Galactic Empire: Somehow returned: "There is truly nothing more colonial-esc than butchering an entire countries history and culture to suit your western political ideology. Then calling them bigots for objecting."
CerberusXt @CerberuXt: "Having to chose between a black guy and a woman is truly the ;9/11 of bigots :'D"
Bizlet @bizlet7: "I can't believe they thought this was a good idea"

Financial Analysts Downgrade Ubisoft Stock Citing 'Star Wars Outlaws' And Predicting It Will "Underperform Expectations" - "“BNP Paribas downgraded the stock to neutral on Wednesday.” The firm’s analyst Nicolas Langlet, who is described by Bloomberg as a “bull of Ubisoft Entertainment SA” downgraded the stock citing a crowded release schedule and increased competition including Grand Theft Auto VI.  According to the report, Langlet “cut his price target on the stock by more than half to €14.50, a new low among analysts tracked by Bloomberg.”   On top of Langlet downgrading the stock, Cantor Fitzgerald also downgraded Ubisoft’s stock...   As for why he believes the company will go bankrupt or be forced into a buyout situation, Valliant Renegade pointed to The Walt Disney Company, which owns Star Wars. He said, “The ‘woke’ is what has murdered this stuff. … It’s very simple. The Walt Disney Company … the same company that destroyed Marvel in Phases 4 and 5, the same company that has destroyed Star Wars since day one is the same company that is now destroying another partner out there.  “The Walt Disney Company has put an enormous amount of downward negative pressure on Hasbro because of the fact that they broke Marvel and they broke Stars Wars. And Hasbro is on the hook for billions of dollars in licensing fees for these toys that they can’t sell like Captain Marvel, like Ms. Marvel, and all this other trash that they had to spend a ton of money to produce. Same with new Star Wars, all the money they lose with Rose Tico dolls, Reva stuff, and all this crap. People don’t want it.   “That’s how woke breaks people,” he declared. Still later, he noted, “This is where the ‘woke’ side comes in. Is that like many other Hollywood studios, television and film, and in this case game development studios have succumbed to the DEI ideology where they are just hiring people to fill a void.  He continued, “Because they can say, ‘Oh, we now have 30% of our game developers and our game writers and all this kind of other stuff are women.’ Sweet! Are they any good?”"

Rumor: Vast Majority Of Developers At Ubisoft Are "Deadweight": "They Don't Know How To Do Anything" - "“So basically the way developers at Ubisoft is classed according to this insider is you have the the superstars. These are the best of the best. And they're incredibly good at what they do and they're often also very well known. Now, he says there's very few of these people left at Ubisoft. Most of them have already left and have found much better positions at companies that is a lot better positioned within the market.”  “Then there's the what he refers to as the good developers, but they don't have brands. They don't tweet,” he relayed. “And he calls himself one of these developers. They make up a small portion of those developers that are still left at Ubisoft. The problem is while they're good they don't have names so they can't get jobs anywhere else.”  “And then the vast majority of developers is what he calls deadweight. They don't know how to do anything no matter what you give them. They're pretty much always doing it wrong. But what they're very good at is social change, pushing social change. So basically if you can't do the job that you were hired for make sure that you become a political activist is what I took from that,” he declared. “He didn't even talk about the DEI stuff with these guys just apparently they make working for Ubisoft very, very, very difficult.”... This rumor comes in the wake of Assassin’s Creed Executive Producer Marc-Alexis Côté revealing during an appearance at the XDS24 conference that half of the people working on Assassin’s Creed Shadows are working on their very first game... “[Assassin’s Creed Shadows] had no business taking as long as it did to be developed, but it's a Molotov cocktail of poor company oversight being poisoned by a competitor wearing the clothing of an ally and a worker base that is purposely being filled to the brim with activist DEI hires.”  “One look at photos of Ubisoft in its prime versus now tells you everything that you kind of need to know. The company is currently overrun by activist developers from the ground level to the very top,” Endymion continued. “I already reported on how Ubisoft has a terrible work atmosphere and a lot of the most important tasks within the company are being handled by outsourced contractors mostly. It's simply because the actual talent is not seasoned enough apparently based on what I'm being told. I got employees telling me that their co-workers have no business being in the industry whatsoever based on the interaction that they've had with these devs.”  “And I've even had two sources tell me they could have most of their teams fired and gone and development wouldn't be changed one bit for the most part,” he added. “The bloat at Ubisoft which is a prevailing problem across the board for many publishers is a self-inflicted wound of their own making.” "

Financial Analysts Downgrade Ubisoft Stock Citing 'Star Wars Outlaws' And Predicting It Will "Underperform Expectations" : r/KotakuInAction - "Saying the issue with SWO is that GTA6 will release a year later is insane cope."

After ‘Assassin’s Creed Shadows’ Delay, Ubisoft Acknowledges ‘Outlaws’ Issues, Anti-Woke Pushback - "There was similar pushback to Kay Vess leading Star Wars Outlaws as a woman, and a not-attractive-enough woman at that. No uh, historical accuracy complaints there, as it was pretty straightforward “woke/DEI” talking points there. But it is surprising to see Ubisoft entertain this at all."

Rumor: 'Assassin's Creed Shadows' Had "Only About 7% The Pre-Ordered Numbers Of Valhalla During The Same Time Period" - "This rumor comes in the wake of a previous one from Craig Skistimas aka Stuttering Craig the owner of the Side Scrollers Podcast that claimed Assassin’s Creed Shadows’ physical pre-orders was less than 1 per store.   He shared on X at the end of August, “My insider told me that, as of this morning at their nation wide big box chain, Assassins’ Creed Shadows has less than 800 pre-orders combined for Xbox & PS5 company wide.”  He added, “They have over 900 stores. That is less than 1 preorder per store. YIKES.”...   The game’s pre-orders on the PlayStation store did not look great. The Ultimate Edition of the game, which costs $129.99 was 16th behind New World: Aeternum, Dragon Age: The Veilguard, Silent Hill 2, Mortal Kombat 1: Khaos Reigns Expansion, and Dragon Ball: Sparking! ZERO back on September 20th. It was in the 14th spot.  The base game was even further down the list in the 21st place behind Disney Epic Mickey: Rebrushed, Throne and Liberty, and Sonic X Shadow Generations. The gold edition sat on the second page in 30th place...   “But in September 2024 Ubisoft had just launched and seen Star Wars Outlaws flop, which was a game that they expected would completely explode into being one of the biggest titles of the year and from the looks of it, it sold just OK. It sold like the least a Star Wars game should sell when there is no public interest in it, right? And part of the problem was that the game was completely bugged at launch. Ubisoft even had to apologize to the fans and promise that they are working on urgent fixes for performance problems on all platforms”"

Financial Analyst Describes Ubisoft's Sales Collapse And Delaying Of 'Assassin's Creed Shadows' As "Total Meltdown" As Stock Price Collapses - "Valliant Renegade reacted to the news that broke yesterday afternoon in the United States that Ubisoft was not only delaying Assassin’s Creed Shadows, but that they were reducing their sales expectations for its second quarter by 30% from €500 million to €350-370 million. On top of that the company also revised their entire year expectation to “around break-even” instead of profitability. He described it as a “total meltdown.”   Valliant Renegade specifically reacted to the stock price crashing nearly 20% since the market opened this morning around €9.  He stated, “A little over four years ago Ubisoft was trading at nearly €90. 9-0 euros. And four years and seven months later here we are nine euros. That means the company has shed 90% of its total market capitalization. And right now as this continues on, this is going to make Ubisoft worth probably less than $1 billion on the open market by the end of trading today.”... Valliant Renegade reacted to the latest statement from AJ Investments, who had previously called for the company to sell its assets and go private and replace CEO Yves Guillemot.  According to a report from Reuters, AJ Investments, which itself holds around a 1% stake in Ubisoft, claims it has “gathered support from 10% of the French videogame publishers shareholders.”...   He also speculated that the reason for delaying Assassin’s Creed Shadows has nothing to do with Ubisoft’s official statements about polishing the game, but has more to do with attempting to ensure the company at least breaks even for its fiscal year."

Ubisoft Astroturfing / Ubisoft Inclusive Exclusive Mentorship Program / How to Spot a Failed Studio / Concord

"Ubisoft uses Babel Media to help their online image."
"Online marketing can take a variety of forms, depending on the type of product being promoted. As multilingual experts, we employ a team of native 'guerrillas' to infiltrate forums and message boards in selected territories. Specific site administrators can also be contacted to run competitions in return for exclusive and inside information on a product."
"Not only Ubisoft. BG3 has been shilled by them, they got BTFO'd by white men posting their hands after they kept spamming a "only shitskins dislike bg3" line. They now moved on to shill Hades2 and they literally confirmed they are the same exact jeets by posting the hand that BTFO'd them in BG3 half a year ago."

"r/KotakuInAction
Ubisoft inclusive mentorship program that excludes men (link/source in the post section)"

"MENTORSHIP PROGRAM

With more people playing video games than ever before, it is important for us to help build an inclusive entertainment industry that reflects the diversity of our players. With this mentorship, we have an exciting opportunity to support talents from different backgrounds, bringing fresh perspectives and new ideas.

The selected candidates will create a project based on a predetermined theme and will be mentored by a Ubisoft expert over a fixed period, from November 2024 to March 2025 (specific timelines may vary by location). During this time, they will receive feedback to help build their project.

ELIGIBILITY CRITERIA

To be eligible you must :

. Identify as a woman or a non-binary individual
. Be 18 years old or older
. Currently attend or have graduated in or after Spring 2023
. Have less than 2 years of professional experience in Game Design or Programming in video games
. Be legally entitled to work in the country where you are applying
. Apply to only one location
. Submit an individual entry - team entries will not be considered"

Grummz @Grummz: "These comparisons always come up. You can point out that the "all women" photos are a selected subset. That's not the issue. The issue is that studios who are woke go out of their way to publish these "look at our women!" photos in order to virtue signal. That's the true concern here. If a studio is doing these types of photos, it's usually because its a DEI move."
Ghost of Tsushima: *all men*
Ghost of Yotei: *all women including one transwoman [?]*

Doomer Wojak Sony: "Maybe spending 8 years to develop an online only FPS featuring plus-size troon space pirates was a bad business decision"

Links - 2nd December 2024 (2 - Get Woke, Go Broke: Dragon Age: The Veilguard)

Meme - Renson Seow: "The claim: "There is no ongoing attempt to uglify women in Western games".
The 1st pic: Dragon's Age Veilguard character creator side profile, glutes setting maxed.
The 2nd pic: Mexican Weather Girl Yanet Garcia, side profile."

Meme - DRAGON AGE ORIGINS: "Dragon Age"
DRAGON AGE: THE VEILGUARD: "Identifies as Dragon Age"

Meme - "SO WHAT'S NEW PETER?"
"DRAGON AGE VEILGUARD IS AN AMAZING LAUNCH ARE LOVING IT, OVER 80,000 PLAYING IT LAUNCH WEEK, A HUGE HIT"
"OH? YOU WERE BEING SERIOUS? *laughs*"
Baldur's Gate III: "875,343 all-time peak 15 months ago"

Meme - "Taash: I don't want to be that.
1. Our team is with you.
2. You're in control here.
3. You're allowed to feel things.
4. I feel like that, too."
"RPGs are all about choice"

Meme - Bioware in year 2000: "Aerie-I... I will show you my body, Dayin... and I hope it pleases you. Would you... would you stay with me this night, Davin? Will you show me what true love consists of?"
"How could I refuse such a sweet offer?"
"This isn't all love is, Acrie. Wouldn't you rather wait until the time is right?"
"Er... can't get past those huge lumps of scar tissue on your shoulders. I'm really not in the mood."
"Get lost, Aerie... I'm really not interested in being your tutor."
Bioware in year 2024: Rook: "Take a long hard look in it, kid. It'll always show the face of a hero who can get it done"
"Establishes trangender identity and unlocks new dialogue options in future conversations"
"I'm getting there"
"I love who I am"
"Feels good to see the real me"
"Scars are lessons learned."
"My scars are badges of honor."
"These scars are sexy!"

Dragon Age: The Veilguard's Lack Of Evil Player Choice Options May Be Bad News For The Next Mass Effect Game - "Unfortunately for Dragon Age: The Veilguard, its dialogue options are some of the weakest in the franchise, lacking the divisive or downright evil options from previous entries... Aside from the lack of player choice, much of the dialogue throughout Veilguard is much more lighthearted and quippy than before, feeling out of place in the gritty fantasy setting of the series... Putting Mass Effect's iconic dialogue aside, many fans like Reddit user Alternative_Fan2458 still felt past Dragon Age games have vastly superior conversation options compared to Veilguard's reportedly bland writing direction. Where these issues become most prevalent are related to Veilguard's companions, lacking in conflict or serious choices that could cause party strife or infighting, unlike in previous Dragon Age games where members would have more dynamic reactions to player choices. Overall, much of the world in Veilguard has the potential to make for interesting and impactful character stories, but it's often held back by the game's unnatural and inoffensive writing style.  Another common complaint from critical fans was Veilguard's new art style direction, which aimed for more cartoonish design choices for the characters... BioWare has different expectations on the kind of tone and overall style they want for both franchises moving forward, giving players some hope at avoiding another Mass Effect Andromeda catastrophe."

Moon Studios CEO Describes 'Dragon Age: The Veilguard' Writing As "Infantile And Terrible" - "Moon Studios CEO Thomas Mahler described the writing in BioWare’s recently released Dragon Age: The Veilguard as “infantile and terrible.” In a recent post to X, Mahler, who is currently developing No Rest for the Wicked, wrote, “I grew up in the 80s – even as a young boy back then, I always thought TV shows were low-effort trash. Because every show back then was trying to be as politically correct as possible. Every show was about happy families, always trying to paint a perfect picture, always being careful not to talk about anything that could be in the slightest controversial.”  “Then the Simpsons and Fresh Prince of Bel Air dropped and that stuff suddenly felt radical because every now and then the writers on these shows dared to approach subjects that were real. And whenever they tried that, it resulted in episodes that were memorable – I’d like to think it’s because the writers managed to put some of their own experiences in there,” he continued.  “Then, in the late 90s, The Sopranos dropped and suddenly it was clear that TV shows didn’t have to be trash,” he stated. “That the episodic format could actually be used to give even more insight into characters, their trials and tribulations, etc. And it kept going from that point on – We saw more and more TV shows that delivered excellent drama, like The Wire, Breaking Bad, etc., etc.” He then turned his attention to Dragon Age: The Veilguard and video games, “Looking at games now, it’s clear to see that we’re apparently moving back to the stone age of political correctness. I just watched a Dragon Age playthrough and it’s quite unfathomable how infantile and terrible the writing is. Everything feels sanitized and dehumanized.”  “I don’t know why we’re suddenly thinking that this is okay. Your job as a writer is to write about things that are heartfelt, interesting and true, to draw people into that world that you created and if this is the best that you can come up with, you shouldn’t be a writer in the first place,” he asserted. “I hate to sound so harsh because I’m sure these people had the best intentions in mind, but this is what happens when art is created by amateurs, when we have to walk on eggshells and don’t dare to approach difficult subjects – you end up with a bland and bad product instead of art,” he continued.   “Always approach writing from a human angle first, draw from your own experiences and dare to approach subjects that might seem risky – because often magic happens when we’re okay with making ourselves vulnerable,” Mahler concluded."

Laura Fryer (former executive producer for Microsoft) calls out games industry bubble, developer echo chamber, attacking fans. DA Veilguard as prime example (at 7:30) : r/gamingnews
Of course, the mods removed this

Moon Studios CEO Describes 'Dragon Age: The Veilguard' Writing As "Infantile And Terrible" : r/KotakuInAction - "“Mom said to eat the fruits”
“I like the cookies better!”
“Everyone likes the cookies”
“I’ll eat the fruits”
I saw that in a clip and couldn’t help but cringe, both characters looked like adults and they were speaking like a toddler and a 7 year old?"

Dragon Age: The Veilguard’s Clumsy, Preachy Political Messaging Does More Harm Than Good - "The best way to convince someone of your own point-of-view is generally not to bash them over the head with a cudgel, though that seems to be the preferred approach in modern political discourse and, alas, in entertainment. The culture, being what it is, has lost all sense of subtlety. In far too many films, TV shows and video games, we see a heavy-handed, top-down approach to the issues of the day. It’s a real shame that the developers at BioWare decided to go this route in Dragon Age: The Veilguard... I had not yet arrived at a certain section of the game that has now been making the rounds on social media, being roundly—and rightfully—mocked. Unfortunately, the scene in question will play directly into the narrative that this game is “woke”, feeding a cycle of online discourse that goes nowhere but earns lots of clicks. It will undoubtedly turn many gamers off entirely, not necessarily because they’re unsympathetic to trans rights, but because they’re tired of being preached at.  In the scene in question (below), one character misgenders another. To atone for this sin, she does a set of push-ups and then lectures the other characters on how to properly apologize. The term “nonbinary” is thrown around, despite this being a word that very few people had even heard of when Dragon Age: Inquisition came out a decade ago—let alone in a fantasy setting divorced entirely from the real world. This is immersion-breaking. Frankly, it’s written so poorly that it comes across as self-parody. The character’s performative apology is shallow and empty, as all performative apologies are. In my experience, a simple and genuine “sorry” is better than making a big show of it and then bragging about how much better your apology is. The whole scene feels freshly cut from some conversation in an undergrad gender studies class in the year 2024—the kind of conversation said undergrads will someday look back on and cringe over. Here’s the scene: Again, my problem with this scene is not the inclusion of trans or nonbinary characters in Dragon Age, but with the hamfisted way this issue is framed.  I recently wrote a review of Lev Grossman’s excellent Arthurian fantasy, The Bright Sword, and noted in that review that he includes a trans character as one of the Knights of the Round Table. The difference in approach is worth noting here. In the book, the term “trans” is never used, since it would not have been around in the Arthurian era (similar to how “nonbinary” would not be a word in Dragon Age). Instead, the character is born as one of two twins. At birth, she is a girl and her twin is a boy, but she chaffes at all things girly and the confines and restrictions placed upon her and wants nothing more than to train with a sword and become a knight...   This works because it’s never preachy. It doesn’t awkwardly adopt the terms of modern-day gender politics. Instead, Grossman tells the kind of story anyone can relate to (with beautifully written prose that never comes off as politically driven, but rather part of a grander, timeless tale)... Alas, this will undoubtedly dominate the conversation around Veilguard—and to what end? Will anyone who plays this game learn something useful because of this scene? Will people who are hostile toward social justice politics become convinced otherwise? That’s the problem with preaching to the choir. Someone not normally inclined to sympathy toward trans people might read The Bright Sword and actually walk away with more complicated feelings; nobody playing The Veilguard will. Instead, they’ll be rightfully annoyed at having this type of 21st century dialogue (hamfisted even for the modern era) foisted upon them midway through a fantasy RPG... You can see how misguided the game’s writers truly are in the scene above. The character says that a normal apology “makes it all about you” when she’s just blatantly hogged the spotlight and made it all about her. Nobody seems to spot the irony. I have to ask, has anyone ever successfully apologized while lecturing everyone at the same time? “Ah, I made a mistake, here’s my apology and here’s why my apology is so great and your apology is so bad, even though you’re not the one who made the mistake. Look at me! Look how wonderful I am!”  That’s sort of how I see BioWare in all of this. They’re making it all about them, all so they can be praised for their progressive bonafides rather than doing the hard work required to tell stories that might actually evoke in players true empathy and understanding. Tapping into that, creating something that people can relate to, requires more than a cudgel. Nobody enjoys being beaten over the head. In the parlance of our times, “Do better, Bioware.”"

Dragon Age: The Veilguard’s Clumsy, Preachy Political Messaging Does More Harm Than Good : r/gamingnews - "Mass Effect handled this issue the best that I have ever seen in a game, during one scene in ME2 or ME3 (it was so "normal" that I can barely remember it). Shepard comes down into the cargo bay to speak with a male crew member, just to see how he was holding up. The crew member replied that he was concerned about his husband, who was on a planet being threatened by Reapers. Shepard gave his condolences, the two had a moment of camaraderie, and... that's it... that was the end of the scene.  No preaching. It was just normal, like... we're all adults here, now let's get back to saving the galaxy."

Meme - "Dragon Age: The Veilguard encourages players to perform ten push ups after misgendering someone."
"My character at the start of the game *scrawny Steve Rogers*
My character five minutes later *muscular Steve Rogers*"

Meme - "I hope Bioware closes down k"
Rook: "Take a long hard look in it, kid. It'll always show the face of a hero who can get it done."
"Establishes transgender identity and unlocks new dialogue options in future conversations."
Taash: "Non-binary. I just said. And I'm going to use "they" instead of "she" from now on"

Meme - Perma Banned: "Games Journalist Jason Schreier Deleted his post gloating about Dragon Age Veilguard's supposed "success". Then he found out Veilguard in fact, was far from successful. Oof"
Jason Schreier: "Go woke, go bro- err, top the charts"
"58,958 24-hour peak"
"This Post was deleted by the Post author."

BioWare Claims 'Dragon Age: The Veilguard' Sales Have Reached 1 Million Copies as Company Hunts Down Whistleblowers - "Dragon Age: The Veilguard sales have reportedly reached 1 million copies, according to an internal memo from BioWare. However, this might not be good news for the once popular RPG studio.   Since the Halloween release of Veilguard, there have been a striking number of leaks coming out of BioWare and EA. Independent commentators like SmashJT, Endymion, and former World of Warcraft team lead Mark Kern, AKA Grummz, have been spilling the tea regarding abysmal sales numbers, horrible reviews, a shocking return rate, and plummeting resale value...   “I spoke with that original whistleblower after publishing that initial video and he put me at ease that no one there knows it was him at this time,” SmashJT said in a post on his official website. “But the reaction from the fallout of that video speaks volumes for the atmosphere at BioWare right now. They’re more concerned with silencing any ‘whistleblowers’ than addressing any actual issues within the company: Much like Firewalk Studios before their ultimate demise, the toxic positivity has taken over the workplace.” It was originally reported by both SmashJT and YouTube commentator Endymion that the game had sold only 500,000 copies with more than 30,000 refunds issued. However, BioWare is internally disputing those numbers, claiming in a memo sent out to its team that they’ve crossed the 1 million copy threshold... Even if this figure is true, after a nine year development and costs swelling to reportedly exceed $200 million, its estimated that the game will have to sell up to 5 million copies to break even.  It’s also unknown whether BioWare is referring to the number of copies sold by retailers or the number of copies they’ve shipped to retailers.   A That Park Place source that works in retail management has told this outlet that his sales region (comprised of seven stores) has seen an exchange and resale rate of 75% for the troubled title.   The trade in value for Veilguard would also support the theory that there’s plenty of copies clogging up retailer shelves.   As of this writing, the trade-in value of Dragon Age: The Veilguard on PlayStation 5 is “up to $22.”  That figure is actually the value for store credit. Players looking to return this brand new $70 game for cash will only net $14 or $15 for a pristine copy.   Concurrent players have also dropped off big time. As of this writing, the game has 27,277 players with a 24-hour peak of 31,654. At launch, the game experienced a high of 89,418. That’s A 64.6% drop before the game is even a month old.   BioWare seems to be touting the 1 million units figure internally as a success. But according to SmashJT’s source, the atmosphere within the company is grim and tense.   “Despite the reported sales, according my insider, the atmosphere at BioWare is anything but celebratory,” SmashJT said. “Morale is at an all time low, and there’s extreme tension surrounding the game’s reception and the state of internal relations. The response to The Veilguard has been weak, with YouTubers and players alike voicing concerns about its quality and perceived indoctrination, alongside a severe lack of any innovation. Amid this, internal pressures are taking a toll on BioWare’s team, adding multiple layers of stress to an already difficult launch.”"

Grummz on X - "We're winning. DAV has fallen. Dragon Age Veilguard has failed to recover it's costs. It has failed and no, holiday sales won't save it. Bioware is so angry that Dragon Age Veilguard sales numbers have leaked, that they are launching an internal investigation to find the leakers. Here's what we know from @EndymionYT, @SmashJT, @RealHypnotic1 and others:
- Concurrent players have dropped off the charts just 2 weeks in, sitting at a peak of 34,068 vs their launch weekend high of 89,418. A 62% drop before the month even closes.
- Returns are rumored to be 30,000 copies, and the game is being traded in at Gamestop so fast that used copies of the game are flooded and being discounted with a trade-in value of only $14 cash. By comparison, Stellar Blade, a much smaller IP and many months older than DAV is $16.10 cash, which shows you just how bad DAV's value has dropped. Fun fact: Star Wars Outlaws is even worse, at just $11.90 cash. Stellar Blade wins again.
- Total sales for DAV have only JUST crested 1 million copies in 2 weeks. Budget is rumored to be at 250-300M for the game, making it fall well short of breaking even. If you take most games sales profit at around 70-80% of list price (after store markups and digital platform fees), a 300M budget would need around 6-7 million copies sold. (this is where I differ from most other's estimates who say 4-5M).
Dragon Age Veilguard has failed. They will see a tiny surge in sales in Holidays but not much. Total copies will barely reach 2M by next year (unless they start just giving it away - expect heavy discounts and bundles to make this number seem bigger than it is). Gamers have rejected the heavy handed woke, preachy politics for one, and DA fans have rejected the new graphics and action oriented gameplay, which feel very alien to the franchise. You can do diversity right, without preachy HR lectures disguised as a story, and you can do it very very wrong, like DAV. We're winning. Everybody fights, everybody builds, nobody quits!
Sources: Gamestop website, Steam DB, insider leak videos from Smash and Endymion and Hypnotic retail data and my own industry experience publishing, operating and developing AAA games."

Brianna Wu on X - "I thought a lot this year about how progressivism got so far off course. This clip is a perfect example.  The culture has devolved into a mirror of the Christian fundamentalists I grew up with in Mississippi. Wield moral superiority, threaten non-believers, hijack the culture.   It’s not that you have a point of view - it’s that you cannot even conceive that other people don’t share it. It’s that you feel so moral - you feel unlimited by social etiquette.   And I feel particularly qualified to say as a trans woman, THIS DOESN’T WORK. If strangers are constantly misgendering you, you are the only one that can change this. You can’t hector the world into believing gender doesn’t exist anymore than a Christian can hector the world into accepting Jesus as their savior.  I will do my best to gender nonbinary people correctly. I always want to talk to people with respect. But, y’all have to ask yourself, “Is our strategy working?” This is not and it will never work."

Meme - "Return to form seems to be the message EA told them to get across"
"100 Checkpoint Gaming. Dragon Age: The Veliguard is a triumphant return to form..."
"95 Playstation Universe... a return to form for Bioware"
"70 Digital Trends. Dragon Age: The Veliguard is a return to form..."
"80 IGN Portugal. Dragon Age: The Veliguard is a return to form for Bioware..."
"90 Pure Xbox"

Cyael on X - "This extremely organic Dragon Age "Coming out to your parents" edit was part of the cringe compilations Bioware worked hard to remove from the internet yetsterday. They know their unpopular trans messaging strangles like..yknow what, I'll wait to give thoughts"

Meme - @Grxit: "Let's check in on who was hired to write for #DragonAgeVeilguard Oh.... *Non-binary (?) men with half-blue hair, with one having a half-shaved head*
Mr. Smiles & Hugs because you're...: "These people are so fucking gross and incompetent."

Dragon Age: The Veilguard User Reviews on Metacritic Are an Abysmal 2.6/10

Dragon Age: The Veilguard Faces 'Uphill Battle' to Match Inquisition's Launch Sales, Says Analyst

Meme - LearningTheLaw: "Dragon Age: The Veilguard collapsed with only 10k players on Steam worldwide and is still declining. It's over."

Dragon Age: The Veilguard just took its first major price cut on PS5 - "This brings it down to $54 (was $69.99) just under a month after its official release."

The Veilguard is the first Dragon Age game where my companions don't care enough about anything to argue with me - "By the end, Rook's companions are all pretty much goodie two-shoes characters with uncomplicated beliefs."