Ubisoft Halts Unity's Season Pass, Offers Free Stuff

All the extra annoying implementation is so stupid, the worst is I'm actually enjoying Unity at the moment. I'm leaning towards getting Far Cry 4 instead of the crew for sure! Not bad at all for "free".

Seems like a good move. Earning back the faith of the preorder crowd is going to be an uphill battle after all that happened with this game and the announcement about how they are handling The Crew's release though.

I hope not, since that China DLC (and many of the other options on that screen at the beginning of the game) was far more interesting than the actual game that shipped.

Integrity is measured by how you respond to a mistake, and it looks like Ubisoft is willing to admit they ****ed up.

Good on them.

The image of that faceless monster that Patrick uses in every Assassins Creed Unity article he writes is still hilarious. Ubisoft needs to make a game where everyone looks like that.

@cactusapple: That is an interesting question. They might take a hit when all the numbers are added up. Not enough to shake up the whole company but people are definitely getting called into their superior's offices.

We won't know for sure the actual financial hit they take until probably after the new year comes. Since we'd have to compare projected sales vs. what they are now giving away and outright halting.

The one time I don't buy a season pass and this happens

Well good. This is a good step.

I am glad they are doing this, but I would rather they just not release a broken mess of a game. I hope Ubisoft learns a good lesson from all this and cleans up their act.

It's a good thing that they are admitting their mistakes and offering compensations to their customer.

But this won't make everything go away. I just hope that this won't happen again.

The obvious choice is Far Cry 4

I'm loving ACU in spite of the fact that it's a technical mess, so free DLC is pretty cool news to me. :D

This is what EA did with Sim City but with a better selection of games. I just wonder what happens to the other season pass stuff. The armor stuff sounded lame and the China stuff sounded cool but after Unity idk if I'd trust them to make it be any good. Everything but the China dlc make free and the China stuff a $10 add on with unlockables to the main game.

Well, ubisoft knows how many people bought the season pass, and how many out of those ALREADY bought far cry 4, leaving an acceptable low number.

The crew propably will benefit from more people owning the game.

Yikes. Well at least you could get a free game that will probably run better on your system, I suppose.

I wouldn't mind not seeing an Assassin's Creed game next year if it means that they'll have more time to come up with something really spectacular (and something that has less game breaking bugs) in 2016.

So the gist is this:

If you bought AC:U you get the DLC(Dead Kings) for free.

If you bought AC:U and AC:U Season Pass, you get the DLC(Dead Kings) for free, Assassin's Creed Chronicles: China, and a free game from Ubi.

If you bought AC:U Gold Edition you get the DLC (Dead Kings) for free, ACC:China and a free game from Ubi.

So it's a win-win for everyone, apart from Ubisoft's financial quarter results.

I would still gladly pay for the dlc. If they have learned something out of this experience, that is definitely enough for me. Like to pay for my things.

This just reminds me how completely disappointing Watch Dogs turned out to be... I wouldn't even want it for free.

Ok, that was good PR, specially considering the line-up. Many of those games are still full price...

I think thats a nice gesture, they obviously got burned pretty bad from review score, player feedback and reduced sales, i would have said stopping at the free dlc was enough but they clearly dont want to turn customers off buying the next one.

Of course that does not make up for them releasing a game that was below average even without the bugs, maybe can go back to game very 2 years and spend some time innovating a little?

@shrekeh: I think it's great for the historical setting, and they manage to pull something beautiful and emotional even with all the corporate stuff that keeps it running. The ending of AC4, or Edward's life in that story, was quite a good example of that. They also have some great soundtrack (Homestead AC3 and couple of AC2 osts) to go along with the beautiful visuals. I quite appreciate the beautiful bits, with all the problems and everything :)

I made a vid which might explain it better though

Good looking out on their part. The Dead Kings DLC for free could have probably been enough but the free (basically just released) game bonus is a nice touch. People will still hate them, mostly because it's in fashion to do so, but at least they're trying.

I guess we should have believed them when they said there wasn't enough time in the development cycle to develop a female protagonist - there apparently wasn't enough time in the development cycle to finish the game properly either.

Also, this isn't a free game; they are giving you a different product in place of the product you pre-purchased from them. You paid money for it - therefor it isn't FREE. If they were giving you your money back and then an addition game on top - then it would be free. The game they are tossing customers maybe 'discounted' but we would really need to understand how much a game cost them to understand how much they are really giving away.

It is illegal in most lines of work to sell someone something and then hand them a different item. It is acceptable here because gamers continually demonstrate their tolerance to being bent over by these companies.

@lnin0: Everyone who bought AC Unity got AC Unity + an extra free DLC that they didnt pay anything for. How is that anything but free?

This also has nothing to do with pre purchasing the game. Everyone who buy the game gets the free DLC no matter if they preordered or not and on top of that season pass owners get a free AAA game.

This is a good move by Ubi but they need to get the message, and it is to never again ship a game like the Swedes shipped Wasa. That is an unacceptable act. Bowing down and giving apologies is an acceptable act, but it does not forgive them.

Unity has been in development for 4 years, and the reason the last gen version is "better" is because its just a rehash of all the assets that were in it prior. Also no game is bug free.

Gettin' good mileage out of that amazing image.

I bought the season pass. Yes, I know I am an impulsive idiot. I play pretty much everything in the series on release and I knew I would be getting both Dead Kings and China when they came out, so figured I would save a bit of money and get the bonus items for the main game. I have really enjoyed every game in the series, Ubisoft had generally earned my trust on the DLC front, in spite of the odd misstep.

I own Black Flag, Watch Dogs and Far Cry 4 already. I have no interest in The Crew or Just Dance 2015, I don't really play driving games much and I don't like any of the music in Just Dance 2015. I know Rayman Legends is a good game, but I really have not interest in it, and I could buy it brand new online for about 2/3 the cost of the season pass in the UK if I really wanted to.

I understand Dead Kings is going to be free to everyone. Is Chronicles: China going to be free to season pass purchasers also, and full price for everyone else? Or will season pass purchasers have to pay for China full price?

Because as it stands, if season pass purchasers don't get China for free, I have paid for the cost of a season pass and am getting a game I do not want and would not have purchased otherwise, and could have purchased for less, and a few throwaway bonus items in Unity. Which, given the cost of the season pass on the UK PSN store, is making me pretty mad.

Even if I do get China for free, I assume that its full price will be less than I paid for the season pass, which leaves me having spent money I would not have otherwise spent.

Note to Ubisoft: you've probably screwed yourselves out of me buying a season pass for AC5 next year.

@nevi: You do get ACC: China free.

Obviously consumers should pressure Ubisoft to release a finished, bug-free product next time. I just wonder what the best way to go about that is? Is it better to give the game strong sales, and then bombard their support department, or is it better to give the game poor sales? I don't necessarily think poor sales will translate to more polish for the next game, unless thousands tell Ubisoft that that is the reason they didn't buy.

Even with all of the issues facing Unity I can't imagine it's worse than Watch_Dogs. That game is a pile of nothing.

I do have to say that Ubisoft has shown over the last couple handfuls of apologies and reversals that they probably do care about making good with their customers more than the average mega giant. That's admirable. I repeat, the last couple handfuls of apologies and reversals have shown that Ubisoft will try to make it up to you if they piss enough people off.

You know... that's probably true.

I feel like the only apology that will work for me is for the to not release broken ass games. Just another reason for me to never pre order I guess.

How about "insert snarky proposition", then "insert real desired goal".

This is really cool Ubisoft, I've not seen a response like this from a publisher, ever.

EA does it a lot. I mean I had issues because I bought the ME3 trilogy while I had the first 2 games on steam but not origin and thought the trilogy came with more DLC than it did. (It didn't make it clear what was in the package before I bought it.) While it took them 1 month to get me a refund when their system states 10 days. I ended up getting like 4 games for free, The first 2 dead spaces, bulletstorm, Shank 2 and Crysis 3. All because I kept messaging EA support for status reports and they must have had something in their support book that said if they are asking for a refund, give them a free game and hope they forget about the refund. In the end they also gave me ME1 and 2 on origin as well.

Additionally EA did some of the same stuff after simcity, giving away games for people who were upset at support.

So while this sort of action isn't very common, they are pulling pages from the right books imo. At least they aren't acting like steam support. "No refunds, all sales final unless it's a pre-order." Even then takes a week and a half to get an initial response sometimes.

EA tried to give away free games when BF4 catastrophic launch backfired on them and they STILL did not live it down even after they have pretty much fixed the game.

I suspect the internet will not forgive Ubisoft for this launch and will most likely hinder sales of the next AC game.

Just got it on sale. I kind of like it.

@cactusapple I sincerely doubt it since Far Cry 4 already dropped, and I'm not sure that there's the same amount of hype around their car game. sleepy_dogs is already out and was already 50% off on Steam, so they're going for the residual dollars there. I think this loses them the least amount of money while generating the most amount of goodwill. Which isn't necessarily bad, I sincerely doubt it's an altogether altruistic move.

I don't think we'll see another botched launch like this, though, not because they learned any sort of lesson from dropping this turd on the public, but because they've figured out the basics of the new consoles/build of their engine and all that (notice how Far Cry 4 wasn't a catastrophic launch).

Edit:

Forgot that the car game is launching next week. Nevermind, brace for impact boys!

This doesn't make up for releasing a broken game.

The deal for those with the season pass seems like a really strong move, but I can't help thinking this isn't enough for those who bought the game but not the season pass. Ubisoft are just offering downloadable content for a game people are already soured on.