They have so many great IPs that are just gathering dust or in development hell, yet they keep milking the same few games every year.

To make the games, or to cook their books?

You're correct! They should have fired at least 20% more of their staff and used AI to build everything, and not test any of it. It's the only way.

Now it just looks like a flushing toilet.

That logo quit being worthwhile seeing 15 years ago.

That's what you get when you don't want to pay people for their work and try to keep teams together. The newbies aren't going to care about the rich history of the games they're banging out code for at 3 AM on a Saturday.

The usual cycle. They get good, get big, get shit, get insolvent or bought up until there's no bigger fish anymore (in which case you have to live with shit until they get insolvent after a long time).

You can do whatever you want there, as long as you are ok with the penalties.

You... can...

But its... kind of a really bad move, from the perspective of anyone with money, involved in Ubisoft.

This is roughly the equivalent of an unannounced, sudden bank holiday, you know, right before everything over the FDIC insured 250k gets cleaned out.

You cheer this on, but what are the odds that saudi arabia buys them up?

How many things do you want owned by the worst country bar none for human rights? (yes I am aware the US is racing to catch up, but is nowhere near as bad per capita).

Don't forget AA, doing pretty good too.

Then the AAA studios will use some of their Saudi cash to buy out the most prominent indie developers, only to slowly strangle their products

It's what happens when you operate your company with an accountant mentality. The focus is 100% on money, and 0% on creativity.

They always realize too late that customers won't just give you money, you have to offer them something decent in exchange, but accountants don't know how to do that, which is why you NEVER let accountant craft the business strategy for a company.

If they try to offer suggestions, you scream at them to get back to their hole and count the money like they're supposed to, and when their opinion is needed, it will be solicited, which will be NEVER.

The Nestle of video games. Because just like the food empire it never got flagged by the EU for overreach.

Roguelike Deckbuilder Extraction Shooter.

Professional (as in they earn money, not skill level) Xers fuck everything up. (here, X is an arbitrary verb or a brand name)

My anecdotes: Youtube was good before professional youtubers became a thing (systemic problem, people are not the issue but the environment which breeds them), now it's attention economy and or one topic discussed for 50 minutes (a video explaining the same topic with the same intensity from 10 years ago is 2 minutes long)

Gamers were problematic but harmless, professional gamers caused betting pandemic (sponsored content).

Streamers were funny, professional streamers are sexy/deadly-sells-to-children.

I liked it when people were sharing stuff online because they were bored, and not because they were hungry.

I'm noticing it happens with all companies.

They start out small and can't afford to pay businesspeople to figure out how to fuck over their customers as hard as possible.

Then, after the company is successful thanks to the hard work of the workers, the business-school people start applying in droves to make sure every company operates like gas stations across the street from each other.

It results in companies making decisions like having higher budgets for advertising than what they spend on actually making a product, because the data says it will make them more money and stupid customers keep reinforcing it.

Nothing will meaningfully improve until our culture stops valuing people based on their wealth. I have no hope for that to happen in my lifetime.