In its 2024-25 annual financial report, Ubisoft paints a picture of a company that has taken some hits but is ready to bounce back in 2026 and 2027, banking on titles that have been delayed to assure quality. While net income fell hard—from €252M all the way down to -€70M (yes, that’s a negative seventy million)—the company has maintained positive free cash flow and seems set on righting the ship.
That’s not the controversial part of the document, though. Early in the “Group Business Model and Strategy” section, Ubisoft writes:
“Ubisoft is committed to creating gaming experiences that enhance players’ lives and environments in which they can fully enjoy the gaming experience with their friends in complete safety. This requires the adoption of monetization and engagement policies that respect the player experience and are sustainable in the long term. At Ubisoft, the golden rule when developing premium games is to allow players to enjoy the game in full without having to spend more. Our monetization offer within premium games makes the player experience more fun by allowing them to personalize their avatars or progress more quickly, however this is always optional.”
Many people have already written quite a bit on this topic. Windows Central called it “maybe the worst quote in gaming history.” PC Gamer wrote that microtransactions are “something that players would never classify as fun.” The general sentiment on social media has been to sneer at Ubisoft, a company which has done little to put itself in gamers’ good graces in recent years. Last year, the company’s “Monetization Director” referred to gamers as “non-decent humans,” and the company’s staunch opposition to the Stop Killing Games initiative isn’t earning it any praises, either.
We take a slightly more nuanced view of Ubisoft’s remarks. It’s definitely true that some players do enjoy the experiences offered by microtransactions, even in so-called “premium” games—which is to say games on the “pay to play” model, not free-to-play. Cosmetic items, convenience items, and similar microtransactions are popular purchases even in titles like Monster Hunter Wilds. If you want to blame someone for the continued existence of microtransactions in premium games, blame your fellow gamers.
With that said, it’s also definitely true that these items could be made available as part of the game. Gamers have long been aware of the industry’s efforts to nickel-and-dime them by stripping out bits of content that, in eras past, would have been included in the base game package, then offering them as microtransactions. From that point of view, it’s very easy to be enraged by Ubisoft’s remarks, and perhaps righteously so.
Microtransactions aren’t the devil; not intrinsically, anyway. When deployed correctly, particularly in “freemium” games like Warframe or Phantasy Star Online, they definitely can improve the players’ experience. Ultimately whether a game’s microtransactions are proper or predatory is going to come down to the game in question, how much content (and what quality of content) it offers for the original asking price, and the pricing of the add-on features. It’s really not something you can make a blanket statement about, neither in a negative nor positive light. Not responsibly, at least.
As for Ubisoft, specifically, most players take a very dim view of the company’s monetization practices, which makes the “the golden rule … is to allow players to enjoy the game in full without having to spend more” line completely laughable. In Assassin’s Creed Shadows, the company’s most recent major release (which sells for $70 up front), players have to acquire and spend premium currency to unlock cosmetic items for the player characters. This is the very same kind of content that would have been earned through in-game unlocks in the previous Assassin’s Creed games.
While other companies, including EA, Activision, and Capcom have all done similar things, Ubisoft is certainly the very exemplar of the “nickel and dime” model that gamers have come to resent, and so coming from Ubisoft specifically, this “more fun” sentiment especially grates. Will the outcry from this event convince Ubisoft to change its ways? Probably not. Nothing short of a full-on boycott will likely force a sea change in the industry. Might be a good year to finally catch up on your backlog instead of bankrolling the next “more fun” update.
