Ubisoft is one of the top video games in the world, and their most acclaimed series from Assassin’s Creed to Far Cry to Splinter Cell to now Watch Dogs are played all over the world, and have racked up hundreds of millions of copies sold. As such, I thought it might be time to take a closer look at the company and its games, and so here are ten things you might not know about Ubisoft, both from its humble origins to its recent controversies.
1. The company was started by five brothers in France in 1986, the Guillemots. They made deals with EA, Sierra and others to distribute their games in France, but soon expanded to the US and UK. By the early ’90s, they were starting to develop and distribute their own games in-house, and they became a publicly traded company in 1996. They currently boast 1B Euro in sales and have over 9,200 team members around the world, making them one of the largest video game companies on earth.
2. Ubisoft’s Flagship series, Assassin’s Creed, is more historically accurate than many would believe. Other than perhaps the grand Assassin/Templar conspiracy, Ubisoft goes out of their way to specifically use real historical figures from the time period to build their story. And much of the time, they met their end at the same time as when you’re tasked to kill them in the game. Obviously, not all died from hidden blades or throwing knives, but Ubisoft does their best to ensure that their games are not wholly derived from complete fiction with a disregard for history.
3. There actually was a guild of Assassins working out a castle in Persia during the Third Crusade. It was founded by Persian missionary and philosopher Hassan-i Sabbah, who would target leaders he deemed a threat to the people. Sometimes, the leaders weren’t killed and merely threatened. A common tactic was for his guild to leave a dagger on their pillow, which changed his targets’ way of thinking rather quickly.
4. One of Ubisoft’s most iconic villains, Vaas in Far Cry 3, almost never existed at all. The actor Michael Vando came in to read for a different part, but Ubisoft liked him so much that they invented a new character for him to play specifically. Vaas became the face of the game, and the most iconic villain of the experience, even if he didn’t have the honor of sticking around for the entirety of the game (which many fans viewed as a mistake, given how well animated and voice-acted he was by Vando).
5. These are Ubisoft’s best selling franchises, and you may have underestimated just how popular Just Dance is for them:
– Assassin’s Creed: 76 million
– Just Dance: 49 million
– Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell: 30 million
– Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six: 26 million
– Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon: 25 million
– Petz: 24 million
– Rayman: 26 million
– Imagine: 21 million
– Prince of Persia: 20 million
– Driver: 19 million
– Far Cry: 19 million
– Rayman Raving Rabbids: 14 million
6. There is an Assassin’s Creed movie currently in the works starring Michael Fassbender in the titular role. Ubisoft learned their lesson from the poorly received Prince of Persia, and insisted on being intimately involved with the creation of the film. They struck a deal that was completely unprecedented for the industry, given the level of control they had over the movie. The film has now assembled a cast, writer and directors, and looks to break the seemingly eternal curse of poor video game-to-movie adaptations. There is also a Splinter Cell film in development.
7. Ubisoft recently broke records with Watch Dogs, their new open world hacking game that became not only their fastest selling game, beating out Assassin’s Creed 3, but also the fastest selling new IP in the entire industry. Watch Dogs managed to sell 4 million copies in its first week of launch, which is extremely impressive for a completely untested series. Watch Dogs 2 is already in development, and the film rights have already been optioned.
8. Ubisoft is no stranger to controversy, and has racked up quite a few in their time. They’ve gotten in trouble with fans for overly-restrictive Digital Rights Management (DRM), which was seen as punishing paying players while rewarding pirates. They had a large security breach in 2013 which left 58 million users’ personal information exposed. They have been accused of “overdressing” game footage so that it looks better in presentations than it does by the time the game is released. Most recently at E3, Ubisoft was criticized for including a lack of playable female characters in both the upcoming Far Cry 4 and Assassin’s Creed Unity
9. Ubisoft’s partnership with Tom Clancy began in 2000 when the company bought out Red Storm Entertainment. The series has three main installments, Splinter Cell, Rainbow Six and Ghost Recon, and when combined the Tom Clancy games are the companies’ biggest selling series. Ubisoft has high hopes for “Tom Clancy’s The Division,” a multiplayer, co-op open world title set in a post-apocalyptic city, which shows off Ubisoft’s next generation “Snowdrop” engine. The game has been delayed until 2015.
10. Ubisoft has had a tricky relationship with Nintendo lately. With the launch of the Wii U, Ubisoft was their biggest third party supporter, putting a lot of effort into games like ZombiU. But slow sales of the Wii U have caused Ubisoft to scale back their support for the system. For instance, recently with the 5-platform launch of Watch Dogs, the Wii U version was not included, and instead is being developed separately and released much, much later. Ubisoft has said that sales of the Wii U need to pick up before the system is worth developing for.
[Photo via Ubisoft]
