The launch of Assassin's Creed Unity has been less than ideal for Ubisoft. Overall, the game has been plagued with a variety of errors, including some major problems with frame rate, random crashes, and bizarre graphical and collision glitches. That's without even mentioning the major connectivity issues, causing plenty of players to be unable to enjoy the cooperative mode that was seen by many as Assassin's Creed Unity's strongest selling point.
As such, the game has been met with a less-than-ideal reception by a number of critics. The mediocre reception has had huge knock-on effects for Ubisoft, including the publisher's stock price falling by over 9%. Sensing that something needed to be done, Ubisoft has since promised that its Montreal studio will have more time to develop future games.
Not one to sit candidly with its newly released product, Ubi released a list of upcoming fixes that were bizarrely absent in Assassin's Creed Unity's 1GB day one patch. Now, the publisher has released a sizeable list of all known issues with the game. Over on the Ubisoft Forums, there is a post listing all current known problems with the title, across all platforms, as well as details of any fixes or any workarounds that players can use.
It looks like most of the problems are pretty constant for the newly released game across all platforms, including the aforementioned frame rate issues, graphical and collision errors, and connectivity problems with the cooperative mode. Some of the workarounds that Ubisoft is suggesting are hardly perfect, however. Framerate problems can be reduced by disconnecting from the internet in single player mode, leaving no mention of how to fix this in multiplayer. Meanwhile, players facing major game crashes on PS4 or PC and facing major game crashes will have to wait it out until Ubisoft fix the problems.
There is some good news, though. A workaround for co-op suggests players meeting in the free roam world rather than in-mission, whilst some major errors can be fixed. Arno should no longer fall through the floor when free running, or get stuck in a hay cart next to the Pantheon. Meanwhile, PS4 and PC players should not have any more crashes when joining the co-op session of a player who has specific single player and side missions in progress.
Is it too little, too late for the publisher, however? Although Assassin's Creed Unity was causing plenty of excitement before release, it also caused a fair amount of concern from players and fans of the series. There was controversy over the lack of female characters in the co-operative mode, and how Ubisoft responded to those complaints. There were also raised eyebrows all round when Ubisoft revealed that the game would be locked at 900p and 30fps on Xbox One and PS4, as well as a pricing structure for microtransactions that sees players able to spend $99.99 on Helix Credits.
All in all, the launch of Assassin's Creed Unity has been a major part of why this week has been a sad one for the video game industry. In fact, you could make a strong case that Assassin's Creed Unity is the current frontrunner of the growing list of AAA titles that has been released in a frankly unfinished state. Let's see whether Ubisoft can regain player trust, and just how the company chooses to go about doing it.
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Source: Ubisoft Forums