On September 26, Ubisoft officially announced that Assassin's Creed: Shadow (hereinafter referred to as "Shadow"), originally scheduled to be released on November 15 this year, will be postponed to February 14, 2025. Ubisoft says it was a decision based on player feedback.

Ubisoft said that while Shadow is complete and feature-complete, the company decided to devote more time to continuing to refine the game based on the lessons learned from the release of Star Wars: Outlaws (hereinafter referred to as "Outlaws").

As soon as the news came out, Ubisoft's stock price fell in response. Ubisoft United Kingdom/Europe shares fell 4.5% in a day to €11.42 per share. In the United States, Ubisoft's stock price fell more than 14% in a single day to $2.25 per share, and the market value of the U.S. stock market has fallen to a record low. As recently as February this year, Ubisoft's European share price was as high as 24.39 euros/pounds, while the United States share price was $5.18 per share. In other words, the company's stock price has fallen by more than half in 7 months. From the perspective of U.S. stocks, compared with the high of $19.84 per share four years ago, Ubisoft's stock price has fallen by nearly 9%.

Looking back on the series of turmoil since the release of "Shadow", Ubisoft's ticket jump this time is actually in the process of being cleaned up.

As a new work after 4 years, Assassin's Creed: Shadows, which came to a new country, Japan, was originally expected by players. But Ubisoft, which is politically correct, has outrageously chosen the black samurai Yasuke as one of the two protagonists. After the news was announced, it not only offended Japan players, but also drove away many passers-by who hated political correctness to some extent.

In the Japan community, some players bluntly accused Ubisoft of "insulting Japan" and accused it of distorting and tampering with Japan history and making up nonsense about Japan culture. Some players even launched a petition to boycott "Shadow", hoping to stop the release of the game.

In addition to the rhythmic "Shadow", Ubisoft's "Outlaw", which was released in August this year, was not ideal. The game's MC player rating is just 4.9/10, and analysts have lowered their sales forecast for the current fiscal year to 5.5 million copies from 7.5 million. In the United Kingdom, physical sales of Outlaws were lower than expected, 55% lower than during the launch of Star Wars Jedi: Survivor.

Such a lackluster new product matrix is built on Ubisoft's high R&D expenses and as many as 19,000 employees — 2,500 to 3,000 developers are involved in Shadow alone, sources said. According to Ubisoft's FY23~24 annual report, Ubisoft's R&D and administrative expenses amounted to 1.306 billion euros in the last fiscal year.

Looking at revenue figures, Ubisoft's sales were 290 million euros in the first quarter of this year and 550 million euros in the second quarter. Despite the modest revenue performance in the first half of the year, Ubisoft's board of directors has publicly stated that this year's revenue is completely below expectations. Based on this calculation, it is likely that it will be difficult for Ubisoft to turn a profit this year (in FY22-23, Ubisoft's non-IFRS net loss attributable to the parent company was 400 million euros).

Perhaps, Ubisoft's immediate priority is not only to think about whether political correctness is good or bad for the game, but also to re-examine whether these 19,000 employees are doing their jobs well – you may not believe it, but Ubisoft's Montreal studio, which has 4,000 employees, was forced to return to the office after working from home for three years due to the pandemic. In this way, employees are still in a mood, feeling that the company has broken its promise, and hopes to be able to work remotely from home permanently.

In this way, the difficult birth of "Shadow" may be just a small microcosm of Ubisoft's current predicament. Under the double debuff of political correctness and big corporate disease, it will not be easy for Ubisoft to get back on track.

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