In a moment that saw Twitter/X briefly become real life, Ubisoft’s CEO was face to face last week with a shareholder and gamer who pressed him on two of the most strident online criticisms against the company: one expressing animus over the Black samurai in this year’s Assassin’s Creed Shadows; the other about a popular web petition decrying game publishers for rendering aging online games unplayable.
“Woke or not woke?” the shareholder asked Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot during the Q&A portion of the company’s annual shareholder meeting in Paris, via an official live translation of the event.
And, later, from the same questioner, regarding the Stop Killing Games movement: “Do you support that petition?”
I’ll share the full questions and Guillemot’s lengthy answers below. (Spoiler: he didn’t take the “woke” bait and said “We wanted to showcase characters with heroic journeys”; as for the petition, he said the company is “working on” the online games issue).
But, first, some scene-setting.
Ubisoft’s annual shareholders meeting occurred on July 10 and began in standard fashion, with Guillemot and Ubisoft Chief Financial Officer Frederick Duguet seated at tables in a meeting room, taking turns presenting the company’s strategy and financial results.
While such events don’t usually involve any new game reveals, Guillemot did mention the “upcoming launch” of a Ghost Recon game, a project that hasn’t been officially announced.
Then, for about half an hour, prior to successful votes regarding the company’s board of directors and pay packages, Guillemot and Duguet took questions from shareholders, who stood up from rows of raised seats to ask about financial plans, the company’s future and more.
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The CEO and CFO were asked about Assassin’s Creed Shadows’ budget Guillemot would only say that it exceeded €100 million ($116 million), which is a no brainer and likely far lower than the game’s cost.
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They were asked about lessons learned from Star Wars Outlaws’ “failure, in terms of sales.” Aside from design issues, Guillemot noted that Outlaws “was released at a time when the brand that it belonged to was in a bit of choppy waters.”
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They were asked, by one frustrated shareholder (“I am very unhappy with the catastrophic share price with minus 40% over 10 years”), about, among other things, what they thought of Riot’s multiplayer game Valorant. Highlights from that exchange below.
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And they were asked by a current employee if Ubisoft is interested in making more AA-scale games to offset the risks of more expensive productions. Guillemot kind of said yes. Full exchange for that below as well.
While the meeting occurred a week ago and has been archived on Ubisoft’s website since then, there’s been little to no reporting about the event.
Thankfully, here at Game File, I have a (possibly) unhealthy interest in visiting video game companies’ investor relations websites and am here to report on what happened.
In addition, I just read through Ubisoft’s 380-page annual report, published to little reaction last month, and have some findings to share from that as well. I can now draw a connection between Ubisoft and the New York Mets, among other revelations.
On with it, we go…
