Ubisoft's Black Friday Freebie: Smoke and Mirrors?
Okay, so Ubisoft is giving away Immortals Fenyx Rising for free. Big whoop. It's their way of celebrating five years of Ubisoft Connect. Let's be real, is anyone actually celebrating that? It's just another launcher, another way for them to track our data and shove ads down our throats.
And don't even get me started on the game itself. Immortals Fenyx Rising got "generally good reception" according to Metacritic. Meaning it's aggressively mediocre, not terrible but not great. Polygon even said it "can’t help from becoming a game that shoves you down a path." Translation: It's an open-world game that isn't actually that open. You're just following their breadcrumbs.
Uh Oh, Spaghetti-O's
But here's where it gets interesting. The same day they're handing out free games like it's Halloween, Ubisoft decides to delay their earnings report and request a trading freeze. Trading of their shares halted? Now, that's not something you see every day. According to Ubisoft delays its earnings at the last minute and requests a freeze on trading, the company delayed the report at the last minute.
"Due to legal regulations," they can't even tell their own employees what's going on. Right. Like we're all born yesterday. Something stinks here, and it ain't the feta cheese from Immortals Fenyx Rising's fake Greek setting.
It's like when a restaurant offers a "free appetizer" right before announcing they're raising all the entree prices by 50%. A distraction.
Follow the Money
Let's not forget that earlier this year, Ubisoft announced some harebrained scheme to spin off their "top titles" into a new subsidiary, with Tencent grabbing a 25% stake for over a billion dollars. And their rival EA is potentially going private in a $55 billion deal with Saudi money? The gaming industry is starting to feel less like fun and games and more like international high finance, and I gotta say, I don't like it.
Are we supposed to believe that these are all unrelated events? That a free game, a delayed earnings report, and a Tencent investment are just random occurrences? Offcourse not.
I'm not saying there's a conspiracy, but... actually, yeah, I am saying that. There's something going on behind the scenes. Something Ubisoft doesn't want us to see.
Maybe I'm just paranoid. Maybe I need to lay off the caffeine. But something about this whole situation just feels…off.