It might sound hard to believe for you youngsters out there, but there was a time before Assassin's Creed and Far Cry. A time where those games were entirely new to us. What novel concepts they seemed, and now they are Ubisoft's franchise pillars, alongside Rainbox Six. In recent years, we've seen Ubi stick closer to its core franchises, which one former Far Cry and Assassin's Creed director thinks is the key to its downfall.
Speaking with PC Gamer, Assassin's Creed III and Far Cry 4 creative director Alex Hutchinson explained how a number of factors are involved, but the lack of new IP feels like it is causing a talent drainage at Ubisoft.
"It's a shame. I think a bunch of things happened. The style of development we pioneered was being able to manage big teams by letting them be individual groups with ownership of their own thing, to allow us to make bigger games faster. But then I think with the recent boom, there's been a weird five year boom in private equity and investment from people which we hadn't seen before ever. So a lot of senior people left Ubisoft and started studios or splintered off. So there was this talent drain that went out," he said.
With Ubisoft being able to make big games quickly due to its huge amount of developers, you might have expected other franchises to emerge, but it has actually been the opposite, recently. "They always had a history of sequelizing the franchises, but also having a couple of new things coming along. They became very allergic to the new things, and so they killed a bunch of our ideas, like when I was working on Pioneer. They had nothing new to come through," Hutchinson continued.
Hutchinson left Ubisoft in 2017 to found Typhoon Studios. Stories like his have been popping up across the industry, showing the talent Ubi has lost. Need we remind you the director of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 left Ubisoft to make the game of the year for 2025?