Ubisoft CEO claims it just stopped feeding the trolls when it came to Assassin’s Creed: Shadows, which ‘very quickly eliminated the fights, which were just fake fights’

Remember the Assassin’s Creed: Shadows controversy? I barely do. If you listened to a very particular crowd back when it was revealed the game would feature Yasuke, a real historical figure who’s been referenced a whole bunch in Japanese media anyway, you’d have thought it was the end of days. Initially, Ubisoft tried to mollify said crowd, calm them down which… Well, it went about as well as you’d expect.

The sky didn’t fall. What actually happened was that the game sold pretty well as an entertaining open world romp, and we all moved on with our lives. In other words, Ubisoft made an Ubisoft game. Nothing exploded because a Black samurai was in it. Gaming survived.

Part of why Shadows’ release was uneventful was, in part, because of Ubisoft’s sudden pivot to, essentially, ‘stop feeding the trolls.’ Speaking at a BAFTA event last year, former franchise head Marc-Alexis Coté put his foot down:

“When we self-censor in the face of threats, we hand over our power, piece by piece, until freedom and creativity both wither away. We cannot let that happen. It’s time for us as creators to stand firm on our commitment to our values, by telling stories that inspire, that challenge and that help people connect. Our silence cannot become complicit.”

Coté did, however, recently get slowly encouraged to leave the company, which will go some ways to explain the level of cynicism I’m about to apply to Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot incoming words here—which don’t necessarily match up to actions taken by Ubisoft in the ensuing months. More on that later.

Guillemot more-or-less agrees in a transcript shared by GameFile of an internal company video that more-or-less goes over this process of inviting the culture warriors to vote with their wallet. Which, as mentioned above, nobody did, so it was all a bunch of (upsetting, racially-charged) hullaballoo.

That’s not to say Guillemot is quite as impassioned as Coté was, though he stabs at roughly the same jist: “In September 2024, we had our backs against the wall, and that’s when it clicked. To get out of the corner, we had to stop focusing on those who hated us. We had to start firing up our allies. So we stopped trying to win the argument, and leaned on what had carried us for 18 years: The Assassin’s Creed brand.”

Which, as Guillemot states a little earlier in the video, “quickly eliminated the fights, which were just fake fights.”

That pivot included a delay, which Ubisoft took not just as an opportunity to tweak stuff based on internal feedback, but also to ignore the game-is-woke-because-Yasuke crowd more effectively: “We started by doing the last thing anyone would have advised. We delayed the game. The extra time allowed the devs to polish, optimize, and reach the high standards fans expect from an Assassin’s Creed game.

“It also gave us time to rebuild the Assassin’s Creed brand pact, putting the markers of the franchise back at the center.” Guillemot, somewhat hilariously, classifies this as “more hood, more stealth, more leap of faith, more lore.” I, too, love it when things from a videogame like hood and leap of faith are in a videogame. Much lore, big stabs. Yum yum.

Still, Guillemot states, “Fans came back, conversations started shifting, and everyone who built, played, and loved this game could be proud again.”

Honestly I’m glad the plan worked, though I’m a smidge cynical of Guillemot, here. Not because he immediately starts talking about how cool the brand is, or how everyone wants more hood and stealth and lore in their Assassin’s Creed games, but because Ubisoft also reportedly cancelled a whole planned Civil War-era game where you went up against the Ku Klux Klan due to the US political climate. And then there’s the Coté thing.

There are actions Ubisoft also might’ve just done so for financial reasons—but it’s probably a good reminder that Ubisoft’s ‘Operation: Stop listening to the racists’ wasn’t done entirely out of the goodness of its heart: It just happens that not feeding the trolls is the most effective way to, well, starve them.