The almost unanimously positive reaction to the release of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt hints at no small degree of favoritism when it comes to the game’s developers CD Projekt Red. While its performance issues and various bugs and glitches (some of which have proven to be game-breaking, such as the save bug on the Xbox One version of the game) have been reported upon, little animosity has been directed towards its devs despite there being a strong case for the game having not been ready at launch.
Compare its response to that of Ubisoft’s Assassin’s Creed: Unity, a controversial sequel that received a public whipping for weeks before and after its release. Its framerate became a keen topic of debate for most major gaming publications, while its myriad of bugs were recorded, scrutinized and used as evidence against Ubisoft for pushing out a “broken” game that had been released before it was ready. It was another example of Ubisoft’s cash-grabbing, anti-consumer behavior, the numerous opinion pieces following its launch claimed, while The Witcher 3 currently holds a MetaScore of 93, flaws and all.
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So why has The Witcher 3 been let off the hook while Assassin’s Creed: Unity was hounded into oblivion? Were Assassin’s Creed: Unity‘s flaws exaggerated in order to make for easier dog-piling upon Ubisoft, a company which is steadily rising to assume EA’s mantle of most loathed gaming publisher? Well, yeah, actually.
Yes, Unity had its flaws, some of them crippling, but they were rectified rather swiftly. Granted, it wasn’t a great game, but Ubisoft followed its release with a number of major updates and small patches that eventually got it to work in the way that they intended. As a way of apologizing to the series’ fans that they had disappointed, they also released its story DLC Dead Kings for free, with those who had already purchased the game’s season pass instead being given one free game from a list of recently released Ubisoft titles.
It was a decent gesture from the company, but it didn’t really serve to help improve their image all that much. A number of misfires in 2014, including the underwhelming Far Cry 4 and the argument of Watch Dogs’ clear graphics downgrade since its initial E3 showing, meant that no matter what they did following the poor launch of Unity, all would not be forgiven. The minute THAT image of a character model with a disembodied mouth, hair and eyes hovering above a cravat surfaced, all was lost for Ubisoft, a company which had already positioned itself as a moving target for the ire of gamers in 2014.
This in large part is why the reaction to The Witcher 3‘s performance issues has differed so greatly to that of AC: Unity’s. Ubisoft are regarded as “the bad guys” now, while CD Projekt Red, who announced that they would be giving 16 batches of The Witcher 3 DLC to the game’s players for free, are anything but. As such, headlines promoting this negative attitude towards the company will be commended, doing little more than repeating commonly held opinions. On the other hand, it’s more difficult to garner support for criticisms against CD Projekt Red when the company actively includes fucking thank you notes in its video games:
But Ubisoft has warranted its negative public perception through its misleading of consumers and partaking in a number of activities that have steadily become loathed by consumers. Season passes, announcements of DLC for games that haven’t even been released and the aforementioned graphical downgrades have all stood to place them in the bad books of gamers, and while the launch of The Witcher 3 and AC: Unity certainly share a number of similarities, the difference is that many want CD Projekt Red to succeed and Ubisoft to fail. As long as this continues, then there is always going to be a disparity between the amount of coverage Ubisoft’s mistakes receive in comparison with the company’s more likable peers, which isn’t entirely fair.
Ubisoft is now yet another gaming company that sits alongside EA as one of the most reviled publishers in the industry, while smaller companies such as CD Projekt Red are allowed to commit most of the same mistakes but are still met with overwhelming adoration. There’s certainly a touch of hypocrisy involved, but more than anything its emblematic of the poor relationship shared between gamers and the figureheads of the industry, with smaller studios such as Projekt Red seeming like plucky underdogs by comparison with their thank you notes and free batches of DLC. While no public support followed Ubisoft in the wake of the AC: Unity crucifixion, consumers have been more than willing to jump to the defense of The Witcher 3‘s devs. Perhaps this should be an indicator to the likes of Ubisoft of how to curry favor with the audience.
