The year of 2014 may be remembered as one of the ugliest stains in gaming history. Prevasive greed in the AAA companies, hugely anticipated titles that failed to deliver the hype, sex scandals that unveiled blatant corruption in gaming journalism and culminated in a cultural war that later spilled into mainstream media, financial losses and faith lost among many people, products were released half-finished and whored out for DLC, one of the worst droughts in recent memory and overall a terrible manner to open the 8th generation of gaming. We should probably wish to forget 2014 but with the effects still being felt in this year, it appears it won't go away any time soon. If there is one thing that stuck out as a sore thumb was the quick fall from grace for French-Canadian dev/publisher company Ubisoft.

Ubisoft had a pretty solid reputation and holds ownership of some well-loved games such as Prince of Persia, Splinter Cell, Assassin's Creed, Rayman and Far Cry. For people who don't know me, I am a massive fan of Prince of Persia, Far Cry and above all else Assassin's Creed - its probably one of my favorite video game franchises of all time and I've declared my love for the series time and time again, devoting reviewing all major releases in the past. Even then as my role as a fan, I felt its necessary to "be cruel in order to be kind" and call out what Ubisoft did wrong last year as well past that. You see they commanded no small respect for console users, but PC gamers in the other hand where treated like they carried the f*cking plague. It was Ubi that introduced the concept of DRM which stands for "digital restrictions management" which a general term for access control mechanisms implemented on digital media to limit what a user can and cannot do with it. In theory, it should be used to prevent piracy and reduce availability of illegal copies, but in practice, DRM punishes the legal buyer for what pirates are doing and doesn't work as intended due to poor implementation. It requires you to remain online all the damn time and if even a slightest connectivity hitch occurs, you're booted from your game and lose any unsaved progress. Assassin's Creed 2 and Splinter Cell Conviction have since had the always-online requirement removed; the games must now "only" access the Internet each time they start up. And how it fares towards the legit customers? The servers used for this scheme went down not even a week after release, making the games unplayable at all for these poor souls. This sh*t is so bad this is what Konrad Tomazschiesk from CD Projekt Red, the creators of The Witcher series had to say:

“In my opinion, DRM is the worst thing in the gaming industry. It’s limiting our rights to play games owned by us. Let’s imagine that you have a game that requires internet connection to prove that you actually bought it. What if you lose your connection because of your internet provider? You can’t play anymore. It is worth mentioning that many people in Poland or even in the US and other countries still don’t have an internet connection or have a very slow one. I was in such a situation once and I really didn’t understand why I couldn’t play games that I had bought. I believe that as long as people feel that companies are cheating them by selling games they cannot play freely, limiting their rights, and making unfair DRM, then they will fight against that (...) Pirancy is often an example of trying to fight the system. Do you know that there are people on pirate forums raging on guys that downloaded Witcher 2 from torrents and didn’t pay for it? In fact, they try to convince everybody to simply buy the game. Our fans out there really appreciate that we trust them and that we treat them with honesty and respect. For us, they are friends and we treat them so. We believe that DRM is not stopping piracy but can be a real pain for legal users. And if this is the case, why would you want to punish your customers instead of supporting them? We are receiving a huge number of letters from people who think alike and support us. I believe that we are slowly changing the way the game industry thinks. There will always be people who don’t have money and will download our games from torrents. But I believe that if they will have more cash in the future, then they will buy our next titles to help us fight for gamers’ rights.”

No wonder CD Projekt earns so much respect from consumers, specially PC users, the Witcher guys are some of the most honest f*ckers out there. The DRM is so ludicrously draconian it inadvertadly encourages piracy instead of fighting against it. Keep in mind all of this I am mentioning now happened in the past 5 or 6 years, long before Ubi's fall from grace. It wasn't noticeable to most people (except PC users obviously) probably because other companies that picked DRM themselves and combined with other consumer unfriendly practices got more attention and let them slide.

In 2012 E3, Watch_Dogs was announced with its very impressive trailer and for the course of a year had built up the hype, stating that would have been the game that justified the conversion from last-gen to current one, which grew so out of proportion there was no believable way the project could live up their expectations. The release was pushed over time and time again, and when it seemed to come around the same time as Grand Theft Auto V's release, Ubisoft pushed it over again for 6 four months, it was when people were starting to lose hope and smell something fishy. By the time the product was finally out, the graphics turned out to be inferior by people that were otherwise blown away by its announcement trailer, the final product was a less remarkable visual experience and far from the next-gen graphical revolution that was promised. What made things worse is when it was discovered much later original graphics from 2012 were still within the game, as discovered by hackers. Which means Ubisoft deliberately downgraded the game's graphics and shipped off an inferior product to costumers.

To this day, Ubisoft remained in silence and never explained why they would do something like this. The most is that they are so grossly incompetent they couldn't code the stuff in time, not even with all the extra months they had to deliver a proper product, either they were trying to shill for Sony by focusing in the PS3 and PS4 consoles, since their live-action movie is under production of their movie studio. Or the cynic in me believes they were trying to sell graphics as DLC on the disk, which is probably too absurd even to their own standards but who knows?

And what happened with Watch_Dogs was peanuts compared to the seventh entry in the Assassin's Creed series, AC Unity. You know at this point, we had one AC game per year ever since 2009 with AC 2 and some people have been saying that Creed is becoming the Call of Duty of action-adventure games. Being the biggest AC fan in vicinity I will be the first to say "You are 110% right motherf*cker". People are just exhausted of games being pumped out every year, being the same thing as the last but slightly improved and that is when they aren't trying new stuff that doesn't make sense like adding naval battles in a stealth game. Hell, I admit Black Flag was an great PIRATE game, but it didn't deserve being called ASSASSIN's Creed by any chance. It has been stated that is official policy of Ubisoft that they won't even try making a new game if it means they can't make an franchise out of it and milk it entirely of its own worth. This attitude is so common that in fact, it was lead by W_D being unveiled too early.

Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot "forced" Ubisoft Montreal to reveal Watch Dogs at E3 2012, despite the studio initially believing that it was too early to show off the game.

"They forced us to go at E3 2012," said creative director Jonathan Morin speaking in the latest issue of EDGE. "We didn't know what the hell those new consoles would be, so Watch Dogs really has worked on [seventh]-gen systems since the start. But we always pushed the ideas, the design, the core of Watch Dogs in such a way that we felt it would fit well with what we thought would be the future of games.

"Yves was the one who wanted us to go at that E3, even though we felt it was a bit early, and in the end I think he was right."

Watch Dogs had initially been scheduled to launch alongside next-gen consoles in November 2013, but saw a last minute delay pushing it into 2014. The game is finally due to launch almost two years after its initial reveal on May 27.

However, the game may launch to scrutiny from some gamers who have accused Watch Dogs' visuals of being "downgraded" since its initial reveal – something the publisher refutes.

In retrospective, I was already afraid of that happening waaaay back in 2013 when I expressed fears of the franchise getting past its prime while expressing some heavy skepticism towards Black Flag being announced just an year after Assassin's Creed III. Who could have told that it was when the series attempted to return to its roots. Despite allegedly being in development for 6 years (roughly around the same time as Brotherhood), the game was announced pretty late in comparison to its previous installment with just a few months left to release. Instead of doing the most sensible thing and push its release to work more on the issues, they had to to release it this year or they would go crazy if they didn't it.

Thing is Ubisoft knew from get to go that Unity was going to be a catastrophe, so they set out to restrict information about it before the game even came out. Some of you probably aren't familiar about review embargos so I will give you the main gist: they are for comparison' sake, the video game equivalent of early screenings for movie critics; publishers give free copies for journalists and reviewers usually a week before the game's official launch so they can beat the game, write material about it and post it on the release's date. Its done so that all outlets can get a fair shot at posting their reviews without having to rush out and give their information before anyone else, those that break embargos by publishing a review before launch day get blacklisted and no longer receive early copies or some exclusive coverage and stuff like that, leaving these journalists at a massive disadvantage. This is all fine and good, but what is the kicker? Ubisoft set the embargo a day after the release of the game, meaning that reviewers could not spread the word around just yet.

Why would they do that, you may ask? By keeping information out of the public as long as possible, they can maximize profit from zero-day sales and pre-orders before the word gets around that maybe, just maybe this game might be kind of a stinker. This is not the first time it happened with a very anticipated AAA title. 2013's Aliens: Colonial Marines, one of the most infamous cases of misleading advertisements and general disappointments in gaming's recent years went through the same process of witholding reviews a day after release. This is a shady, predatory practice out to make more suckers that aren't very skeptical to begin with.

Upon release Unity was loaded with technical issues and glitches across all platforms with PC being hit the hardest (because of course), suffering with all its bugs, crashes AND the aforementioned draconic DRM which they were trying to hide with the post-launch embargo. The issues included but were not limited to disturbing facial deformation, hilarious floating, framerate dropping and random crashes. Its simply humiliating for a company that has been in the business for this long to f*ck up that epically in the most basic level. And that is, believe it or not, just the least of AC Unity's problems. If you could ignore the technical issues, there are still a load of nonsense that you had to deal with like microtransactions - which you have to use real game money to buy some certain items locked in the game and overall, which is a throughout disgusting practice in AAA titles which you already have to spend 60 dollars (or how about 210 reais if you live in Brazil) and still spend even more money to get stuff that should have been in the full game to begin with.

And as absurd as this sounds, that is not even the worst part. In a effort to pull out the fires from people pissed off, they had the brilliant idea of offering free games as compensation if you bought the season pass, but this comes with a catch. If you sign the contract to get the free game, you forfeit your right to charge legal process against Ubisoft... Forever. By accepting the contract, you are releasing your right as a consumer to held them accountable for screwing you up as the term of condition below displays.

You hereby irrevocably and unconditionally RELEASE, WAIVE, AND FOREVER DISCHARGE AND COVENANT NOT TO SUE Ubisoft Entertainment S.A., and each of its past, present and future divisions, parent companies, subsidiaries, affiliates, predecessors, successors and assigns, together with all of their respective past, present and future employees, officers, shareholders, directors and agents, and those who give recommendations, directions, or instructions or engage in risk evaluation or loss control activities regarding the Campaign (all for the purposes herein referred to as “Released Parties”) FROM ANY AND ALL LIABILITY TO YOU, your assigns, heirs, and next of kin FOR ANY AND ALL CLAIMS, DEMANDS, CHARGES, LAWSUITS, DEBTS, DEFENSES, ACTIONS OR CAUSES OF ACTION, OBLIGATIONS, DAMAGES, LOSS OF SERVICE, COMPENSATION, PAIN AND SUFFERING, ATTORNEYS’ FEES, AND COST AND EXPENSES OF SUIT, KNOWN OR UNKNOWN, SUSPECTED OR UNSUSPECTED, ARISING OUT OF OR RELATED TO THE PURCHASE, ACQUISITION, RENTAL, POSSESSION AND/OR USAGE, AND/OR THE INTENT TO PURCHASE, ACQUIRE, RENT, POSSESS AND/OR USE, THE ASSASSIN’S CREED UNITY VIDEO GAME AND/OR THE ASSASSIN’S CREED UNITY SEASON PASS ON ANY AND ALL PLATFORMS, AND/OR RELATED TO THE CAMPAIGN, WHETHER CAUSED BY THE NEGLIGENCE OF THE RELEASED PARTIES OR OTHERWISE.

The company made so many f*ck ups that Forbes had declared it to be the new EA and rightfully so. Do you have any idea of what that is like? Electronic Arts is usually held like the "Big Bad" of corporate industry in video games, representing everything that is wrong with AAA. They embrace all the anti-consumer practices that other companies had made like season pass, DRM, milking franchises of all its worth, rushing out releases to increase their bottom line. They have been building up this reputation for years, there is a reason why they were named Worst Company of America for two years in a row and somehow, in less time than EA, Ubisoft manages to look much worse. EA now fairs much better by sheer virtue of not being Ubisoft and that is just f*cked.

There are no words to describe the sentiment I am having while reviewing all these happenings. Its mind-boggling the level of stupidity and greed that the company allowed to be possessed by it. And even after all that, they still haven't learned their lesson as less than a month after Unity was released they announced ANOTHER AC GAME this time set on Victorian England, which was met by an million fans groaning in frustration. YOU. F*CKIN'. WOT. M8.

Its really distressing to see this happening to the creators of some of my favorite game series and otherwise its really sad to be rambling in for so long, but I suppose it was needed to be done. Its very sad to say that I am really burned out of Assassin's Creed. I will not buy anymore games beyond this point unless if Ubi slows the series down or gives it an satisfying conclusion. In the end, this is an problem that goes beyond just Ubi: is the AAA industry really in that much sh*t that is it really necessary for them to act in such manner? We live in a time where its perfectly acceptable to take out hard modes, storylines and final bosses from the original product and selling separately in pieces. Just ask Metro Last Light, Destiny and Shadow of Mordor. Well, an easy answer to deal with this problem being consumers is to vote with our wallets. But this is something much easier said than done because there will always be people in droves that buy into the hype too easily and aren't much discerning than they need to be.

So that was my rant blog. Phew that was a really long one. I hope you guys appreciate it. I gotta thank my friend @samimista for providing me with some quotes and pictures I needed for the blog. Let me know what you think in the comments below. How you feel about Ubisoft's recent actions?