Ubisoft CEO Claims It Just Stopped Feeding The Trolls When It Came...

That's all great, Guillemot, but I have a couple notes.

Remember the Assassin's Creed: Shadows controversy? I barely do. If you listened to a very particular crowd back when it was revealed the game would feature Yasuke, a real historical figure who's been referenced a whole bunch in Japanese media anyway, you'd have thought it was the end of days. Initially, Ubisoft tried to mollify said crowd, calm them down which… Well, it went about as well as you'd expect.

The sky didn't fall. What actually happened was that the game sold pretty well as an entertaining open world romp, and we all moved on with our lives. In other words, Ubisoft made an Ubisoft game. Nothing exploded because a Black samurai was in it. Gaming survived.

Part of why Shadows' release was uneventful was, in part, because of Ubisoft's sudden pivot to, essentially, 'stop feeding the trolls.' Speaking at a BAFTA event last year, former franchise head Marc-Alexis Coté put his foot down:

"When we self-censor in the face of threats, we hand over our power, piece by piece, until freedom and creativity both wither away. We cannot let that happen. It's time for us as creators to stand firm on our commitment to our values, by telling stories that inspire, that challenge and that help people connect. Our silence cannot become complicit."

Coté did, however, recently get slowly encouraged to leave the company, which will go some ways to explain the level of cynicism I'm about to apply to Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot incoming words here—which don't necessarily match up to actions taken by Ubisoft in the ensuing months. More on that later.

Guillemot more-or-less agrees in a transcript shared by GameFile of an internal company video that more-or-less goes over this process of inviting the culture warriors to vote with their wallet. Which, as mentioned above, nobody did, so it was all a bunch of (upsetting, racially-charged) hullaballoo.

That's not to say Guillemot is quite as impassioned as Coté was, though he stabs at roughly the same jist: "In September 2024, we had our backs against the wall, and that's when it clicked. To get out of the corner, we had to stop focusing on those who hated us. We had to start firing up our allies. So we stopped trying to win the argument, and leaned on what had carried us for 18 years: The Assassin's Creed brand."

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Which, as Guillemot states a little earlier in the vi

Source: PC Gamer