Ubisoft $74 Million Net loss

[Hexcaliber]

Originally Posted by speculum jockey

Actually this might be the best possible news for Cliffs of Dover.

If Maddox games can get Ubisoft to void their contract, they could do the distribution themselves (well Steam will do it) and reap all the rewards (most of the cash). How have the helped?

Originally Posted by BadAim

Ubishaft is only the publisher. Their demise would only be an inconvenience to Maddox games, or more likely a straight up blessing.

If only it were that easy, UBI are notorious for tying smaller developers up with their contracts, and refusing to release the rights to a title once the developer wakes up and realises what has happened.

It matters not one jot what UBI do to promote the product, if they own the rights to a title as happened with SH V, the developers do not have a leg to stand on. With SH V, the developers did not want to publish, and when forced to do so by UBI, wanted to continue support for the product to bring it up to a level they could be happy with, and publicly complained about UBI's refusal to continue support. Due to their contract with UBI, a single patch was released before it was dropped and the franchise left in tatters despite the developers desire to continue support and development.

A few developers swallowed up and now owned by UBI; Blue Byte software, Red storm entertainment, Mindscape, Strategic simulations INC, Massive Entertainment, Sinister Games, Wolf pack studios, Reflections Interactive, and Microids. Recognise any of those names? You should do if you have been gaming for any length of time, most but not all were published by UBI before UBI took over after first acquiring rights to their titles. Some they purchased before closing down the studio and developing their key titles in house.

UBI losing money could be very BAD for COD's future, and almost certainly explains why the release came out of the blue with little warning after being in development for so long particularly given its current state.