Ubisofts stock tanked this morning ahead of the markets opening

Destide@feddit.uk to Games@lemmy.world – 518 points –
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I hate graphs that don't start the Y axis at zero.

That said, fuck ubisoft.

That's pretty normal for financial charts like this though.

And it's dumb. It says all you need to know about the ethical integrity of most economists. Lying for profit.

Jesus fuck no, it's a valid graph. It shows the relative trend over time and the sudden change. It may show less of a change if it was zero based, but a drastic change that is well off the normal trend is important to visualize. Also like, all exchanges have a toggle to flip to the zero based.

I'd argue it doesn't accurately show the relative value at a cursory glance. The chart shows the area under the curve having decreased over 90%, but when looking at the y-axis, you can see that initial assessment was misled.

In a speculative industry like finance, shouldn't we try our best to make charts less... alarmist?

Look at this thread and realize that it's just a lie. You can show the exact same information with a starting at zero graph, but won't be able to push the “stock is tanking!” panic point. Publishers and marketers do this on purpose to manipulate headlines. This is why the stock market is mostly just high stakes gambling. No one involved is making rational decisions, just moving from panic to mania like psychotic patients.

The stock is tanking. 20% is a huge drop for any massive company. Do you know how much money disappeared overnight because of this? From my very rough calculations, Ubisoft just lost about 300 million dollars because of this drop. That's more than any fine they've had.

The worst day in Stock Market history was Black Thursday, the beginning of the Great Recession. The market only dropped 11% that day. (Somebody call me out if I got those numbers slightly wrong, that's from Wikipedia). These are massive numbers, that I don't think you fully appreciate or understand. The stock market usually deals in single digit or more likely fractional amounts of change. Double digit changes are a huge deal.

Ubisoft just lost about 300 million dollars because of this drop.

So they have 300 million dollars less to spend? They’re going to fire 300 million dollars worth of talent? Their bank account changed by 300 million dollars?

No, they did not lose 300 million dollars.

Do you know how much money disappeared overnight because of this?

I do know, none. Not a single cent disappeared. Because stocks aren't liquidity. That money was never there in the first place. Some paid some money to get those stocks, that money was real and it entered the company's liquidity. Then they spent it on something. Those stocks are but the promise of paying some dividends, some time in the future or giving some power inside the company. Their virtual fluctuations of price over time are nothing but smoke and mirrors, people exchanging virtual titles over those rights like little kids trading collectible cards. Some people cashed out for a low price (that was already grossly overinflated from the pandemic days, so they probably still made bank) and it pushed an already correcting stock to accelerate for today. That money didn't come from the company, it was exchanged entirely by third parties, public traders. Ubisoft didn't participate at all in whatever pushed the price drop. No matter how much I want it to, Ubisoft is not in any more danger today than it was in yesterday. They are still filthy rich, if anything the biggest danger for this is that it gives them lee way to layoff another group of underpaid developers or gut another studio to appease the stockholders. Who are already in a frenzy for blood because Outlaws didn't make all the money.

If you were to compare Ubisoft today to Ubisoft 2 years ago, you would see they dropped nearly 93%. Dear golly, how is this poor boutique family company in business after such a massive loss? /s

You can see right there at the top of the graph it's down 20% in the given timeframe. There are ways to make graphs misleading, but there's nothing misleading at all about zooming in on the data in this chart

Percentages are also misleading. The timeframe will always stretch the percentage. Sure, a 20% drop on the same day is significant, but it still says absolutely nothing about the overall situation, nor why it happened. It is a significantly smaller drop when compared to their year long performance, and a significantly larger loss if only the last month is taken into account. There's research on this, observing day to day changes on stock prices to describe a company is just as effective as describing people's personalities through astrology. It's bullshit.

Sure, a 20% drop on the same day is significant

Yes, and that's literally all this post is trying to convey. This post is not a news report or a economist's dissertation, this is a screenshot of the pre-bell stock price posted to a gaming community on Lemmy

It's already being called the lowest price in a decade. Technically true, but honestly disingenuous since the massive price bump to over €100 was an anomaly caused by the pandemic that swept the entire industry, not just this one publisher. Also drivel to generate engagement. Just like this post, here we are discussing it, despite the fact that it is misleading and poor characterization of the entire picture.

It being at its lowest price in a decade is literally true. I don't have a clue why you're bringing the pandemic into this since this stock reached its peak in 2018. Ubisoft stock has been on a precipitous decline for 4 straight years now, wtf are you even trying to convey here?

If you are not in for the dividents or the voting privileges stocks are always a game of "I hope someone is dumb enough to pay more than me for these shares".

Or someone else is in it for those things.

Markets aren’t based on one party being dumber than the other one. Markets work because different people value different things.

The axes are clearly labeled so I'm not really quite sure what the concern is.

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If you are trying to show year-over-year profit and you have $100 million give or take a few thousand, then starting your y-axis at zero is going to be a pretty worthless graph

And that's why I can't take online activists seriously. 100% of agenda, 0% of brain.

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Agreed. Took me a moment to realise they didn’t drop to zero. !dataisugly

A stock would never drop to zero because the company would be liquidated before that happened. If the stock actually dropped to zero they would have no money they need to call bankruptcy before that point.

There is no point of starting the chart to 0 since it doesn't give any information other than the share price, which is already communicated by the Y axis anyways.

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not really news.. This is a 1 years graph.. its been going downward for some time

Now do a 5 year graph and realise it's kinda back to pre pandemic levels.

hm.. not quite.. but it certainly has seen some ups and downs, that are larger than what happened this morning. This is a graph of "all time"

This thread is like a lesson in the importance of x and y axes range in time series plots

Yes, but it is not acceptable in today's capitalism. Only the growth of growth matters.

If the line does not go up enough, the company is failing.

this is great. i thought they kept making slop because it's giving them a return but I'm glad people are catching on.

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I am curious if the games community has anything positive to say about major publishers at this point.

It’s fun to laugh at one failure, and it’s nice we still get occasional great indie hits. But when most major publishers fail to turn out anything of interest, and even Sony is kind of reaching vanishing expectations amid remasters of remasters, it becomes hard to even suggest what to buy an unknowledgeable kid for Christmas.

I appreciate them for the effort they put into bankrupting companies that make AAA corpo slop. Ubisoft could not have stopped Ubisoft without the help of Ubisoft. If were lucky EA could hop on board and bankrupt EA by acting like EA.

I'd say I'm happy that AAA companies are reaping what they sow from listening to their dumbass stakeholders.

The point is that it’s not just them paying the price, though. With continuous years of NO publishers putting out anything interesting, we’re at a point where people are just less interested in anything that’s coming out.

It’s a carrot and stick problem to some degree. They know now we hate microtransaction-laden live service games, but it’s harder to define what players would enjoy. Keep in mind, there’s many cases of simply letting the developers cook that haven’t worked out either.

There's plenty of publishers putting out interesting games.

They're just not the traditional AAA / "AAAA" games companies because they've grown so big they're hidebound.

I agree when it comes to taste-specific stuff. I'm playing Steamworld Heist 2 and have Tactical Breach Wizards in my wishlist, so indie tactics games have been satisfying me - they're certainly good and interesting, as you say.

But, those aren't games I'd recommend to everyone. It does mean not much water cooler discussion since no one is playing the "same" games in most social circles. It used to be, a big release like Halo came out and everyone was talking about it, playing it, and discovering things together.

I mean that's everything. There isn't a "movie of the summer" anymore really, no I Love Lucy / Cheers / Friends / Simpsons that basically everyone is watching or familiar with. It's been true for longer with books/music because of the lower gateways to entry and being able to be a "local artist", but not by much, and even for them it's exploded since the Internet became mainstream.

The democratization of publication has dramatically broadened the type and quality of things being made and no industry titans really have figured out how to promote around that. At least not consistently.

I fully understand your first point and that is how I feel. That's why I made my comment; I and others have been dealing with endless AAA slop that mostly hasn't been intriguing for a long time. Even if its a certain game franchise I'm not interested in, I understand other people's pain of it been driven into the ground with micro transactions and buggier and buggier games.

Valve is pretty well liked. not sure you can really call them a games publisher any more though.

Right - they don’t even make a game a decade anymore, and even Deadlock is in a genre many people aren’t interested in.

God deadlock is so good though I have to say. I have hundreds of hours already. This is coming from someone who HATED mobas and would still probably never touch dota or League

Agreed. As someone who doesn't really like shooters and never got into League or DOTA, I had mixed feelings about playing a 'hero shooter/moba'. I'm actually blown away at how good it is. They did phenomenal job. 10/10.

It's a invite only alpha and as I write this it's #7 on the steam rankings of current players, 6 if you wanna exclude Banana which is it's own hilarious thing

Dota 2 is #2 and has 565k right now

90% of the games I play are now made by indie or medium sized studios/publishers. I've bought several AAA games in that time frame, but almost universally they've failed to hold my interest and I typically regret my purchase. I can't remember the last AAA I bought that I would consider a 'favorite'.

Also I'm growing more and more detached from what modern, AAA games even feel like. Opening up a game like fortnite or COD where they've shoved dozens of different game modes into an all in one program is confusing and overwhelming. It's off putting to me and I feel like having a 'get off my lawn' moment.

I am curious if the games community has anything positive to say about major publishers at this point.

I'm laughing a lot, is that a positive? These are all self-inflicted wounds because they mistook "shareholders" for the customers.

Capcom has been pretty consistent.

Unless you care about their use of Denuvo

I don't think there's that many big-budget releases you can invest in if you care about Denuvo. Even the Ace Attorney games, re-releases of old DS visual novels, have been getting Denuvo'd.

Japanese publishers retain staff because every Japanese company does, they don't pay as well but you get life time job stability. Capcom is on a roll, Sega still has RGG, Bandai Namco has Fromsoft. They have the chokehold on jrpgs. And finally Nintendo is still king

There's probably a whole thesis or five to be written on the subject.

The "traditional" AAA pipeline is "make big games with loooots of assets and mechanics, maximize playtime, must be an Open World and/or GaaS". Both due to institutional pressures (lowest common denominator, investor expectations for everyone to copy the R* formula, GaaS are money printing machines) and technical reasons (open worlds are easy to do sloppily, you can just deliver the game half finished and have it work (e.g. Cyberpunk), GaaS/open worlds are a somewhat natural consequence of extremely massive development teams that simply could not work together on a more narrowly focused genre).

That's not to say there aren't good expensive games being payrolled by massive studios like Sony or Microsoft. But AAA is a specific subset of those, and blandness comes with the territory. However if I was a betting man I'd say we're nearing the end of this cycle with the high profile market failures of the last few years and the AAA industry will have to reinvent itself at least somewhat. Investors won't want to be left holding the bag for the next Concord.

I regret buying my ps5 so much.

I'm not saying this to be a dick, I would just like to add, no regrets on building my PC.

It didn't tank this morning. It's been going downhill for exactly a month.

You are correct, it's been on a downward slope since about 2021 but had a another sharp dip this morning probaly following the news they were delaying Asassins Creed

A rushed game is usually pretty bad, a delayed game is eventually good. While I dont hold AC in very high regard, im glad they told people that it needs more time to cook instead of throwing it out there half-baked.

Kerbal space program 2 was somehow both rushed and delayed :(

And pretty bad.

Such a tragedy. And that was a game that just needed a tech upgrade, expand a bit, more of the same, nothing crazy.

They tryed to put a story in ksp2. That's how bad they misunderstood the franchise.

Oh and you can still join the discord if you want to talk to people who still believe in ksp2 (its fascinating).

To be fair, those tech upgrades aren't exactly trivial to do, and most programmers aren't skilled enough to do it.

These kinds of projects need very careful management to avoid running overtime and over budget.

I don't know, the first one was cobbled up together from early access by programmers at a marketing firm and while janky (part of the charm some would say), it was quite an achievement.

The approach which should have delivered better results was wrecked with takeovers and company drama then dumped to the public in a bad state.

Yea. Really sad to see the price theyre paying for making the right decision once is 20% of their stock price...

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Quartery earnings report due 10/25. There's no reason to sit capital here if there's no catalyst for change.

It's not much of a delay. It was supposed to come out in 2 months, but delayed another 2 months. Doesn't seem like much time to get any real work done.

They also cancelled their premier at the Tokyo game show days before schedule. I have to wonder if they're worried about the backlash that a lot of games are getting lately (Dustborn, Concord, etc) and just trying to push the game a little bit further out to avoid controversy?

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You can make any graph look bad if you control the axis bounds weirdly like this.

Not that I have good things to say about ubisoft, but at a glance one would assume their stock value plummeted to zero, which is not the case.

This was also my initial take but look at these graphs with the Y axis starting from 0 Stock lost 67% value in the last year alone, and lost 85% in the past 5 years. Looks pretty dire to me. I would say this is undervalued but I have no confidence in the ubi leadership to turn it around.

Might be that the CEO and upper management are dumb fucks running the company to the ground.

No more innovation, just microtransactions in shitty games, and the same old rehashed concepts.

I saw an anecdote from someone who used to work there and they said their infrastructure and resources were outdated as hell. Basically zero support or investment from leadership. Those corpos are intentionally just trying to milk them and the customers dry before total collapse or a buyout.

You can make 20% drops in value look harmless if you flatten the graph enough

Why don't they just start using ai to generate games? Its cheaper and no one will notice.

They're instead letting an AI generate their stock price. It is a number now.

“Tanked”

Checks graph

19% is a hit but I wouldn’t call it tanked.

Some stocks are just volatile. Here is the full history:

Whenever I see social media say something dropped/jumped, I do the same thing as you - I visit the portfolio and take a birds eye view.

I still think about the one time redditors celebrated a company's stock dropping by 90% over the last day.

But what the picture left out was how the company was climbing by 1000% in a week before dropping.

A drop this severe is tanking. Even with a stock history like the one from Ubisoft.

did ubisoft make face masks or something wtf happened in 2020

I think people were just bored out of their minds

WTF you think happened in 2020? No one could leave their house, so video game went gang busters.

I worked at a video game retailer then, and it was the busiest we've ever been.

that makes sense lol, it's been a long time since I've been in a video game store

It's been tanking for a lot longer than that

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-20% what did I miss?!

They're delaying AC: Shadows.

I’m not sure about the need for AC when your house is in the shade, but nevertheless understandable, have a nice day

And it's going to be competing with the Ghost of Tsushima sequel.

For me they're different enough to not really be in competition, but they felt the need to issue a statement about it, so they're obviously a bit worried.

Not that I'm that interested in either. Give me that Soul Reaver remaster baby. Inject that shit into my veins.

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It's really a sad seeing Ubisoft going from a trendsetter up until Far Cry 3, to being a failed trend chaser.

I guess the anti-woke crowd is having a hard-on rn. I don't play ubisoft's games but I know a lot of good persons who work there around Quebec, and many of them fear losing their jobs.

To quote Jason Schreier, “whenever anything bad happens, worst people on the internet will be there to blame diversity”

Disgusting.

This isn't about being diverse. It's about making bad games.

As a matter of fact, the new assassin's Creed is so offensive that the Japanese government is in an uproar about it.

Ubisofts attempt to be so inclusive and sexually neutral is what's making their games bad because they're stifling good game design in the process.

That's not to say that it's not possible to make a good game while adhering to diversification and inclusion.

Hellblade and horizon zero Dawn are two excellent examples of incredibly good games that don't expound sexism. Hell, look at destiny 2. They handle these kinds of situations perfectly!

But to simply imply people are upset because they don't like "woke politics" is a gross over simplification of what's happening to Ubisoft!

Neither of us said that people are ONLY upset because “woke politics”. Original comment is saying that those people are probably celebrating right now because they were “right” and I’m simply pointing out that whenever this happens, the anti-woke crowd think that it’s because of the woke politics. There are plethora of reason to be upset with Ubisoft, just like there were plethora of reasons to not play concord.

Nah, the Japaneses government doesn't care about fictional characters in a videogame. Neither are French-Canadians mad about being depicted as mimes with bread sticks in South Park.

Oh and "it's about making bad games" . The GAME ISN'T EVEN OUT YET. Just don't buy it and stop crying because there's a black character in fictional universe or because you don't want to fuck the main protagonist of Star Wars game (I personally find here damn hot btw lol).

They already delayed the release due to so much negative feedback. It's going to be a bad game. There should never have been a black person in this game at all. It's 1600s Japan. It makes no fucking sense!

There are so many layers as to why Ubisoft is going through what it's going through I don't have the energy to express it here in this comment.

I can assure you, however, if they worried more about making good games and less of inclusion politics their stock would be worth a lot more than 2 bucks!

Why can't you people can't just fucking move on with you life and play other games? The fact that there's a new Assassin or Star Wars doesn't erase the previous ones, go play the previous ones, the "good" ones.

It’s going to be a bad game. Says who? Your just a rando on the internet who has not played the game, why do you think your opinion maters?

There should never have been a black person in this game at all. It’s 1600s Japan. It makes no fucking sense! IT'S A GAME, nothing makes fucking sens. Why do accept it when it's some white dude becoming the chosen one and saving a bunch of indigenous, but rip you shirt the when a black guy (based on a real life character!!!) is one of the protagonist of a game set in a FICTIONAL Japan. It's not real dude, people have the right can make up stories inspired by real things.

I don’t have the energy to express it here in this comment. Nobody ask you too lol. We all have youtube, if we want to hear some white dude's (with no expertise in nothing) ridiculous outrage about a stupid videogame company, we know where to find it.

I really don't get you gamers people. There are dozens of causes that are worth defending, why is the only fucking thing that makes you active is when there's a black man or a woman you don't feel like fucking in a game? That's pretty sad and pathetic if you ask me. Just go play something that fits you narrow world view. Meanwhile, Steam rips off all creators of 30% of their revenue while employing 20 people, but you people get wet whenever your hear their name. If you want to be mad at capitalist business, at least try to find something else than "black charcater" doesn't make sens in a universe where you can walk on walls and kill 20k people by yourself.

So let's just address the meta here real quick. There was a comment on Lemmy to which I responded. In context the genesis of this comment is in reference to Ubisoft and the general state of inclusion politics in gaming today.

You are questioning the fundamental motivation as to why I have an opinion on the subject matter that is presented to me under the protest that "it's just a game".

I mean why even have an opinion? Why formulate thoughts? Why have any kind of discussions?

I am abreast of what is happening generally in gaming and the industry surrounding it because I'm interested in these things. I like playing video games.

I also have other interests. For example, I'm fairly good at playing the guitar, so there's a lot of content in my social media about guitars and music.

I also find it entertaining to watch flat Earth debunking videos on YouTube to pass the time.

The reason I care about assassin's Creed in particular is because I've been playing the game since the very first one. I like the franchise. I like the video games and watching it get ruined because of inclusion politics is heartbreaking.

Moreover, they already have the game. It's already been made. Therefore I have the right to criticize it. Simply stating "it's just a game" isn't helpful.

I don't care if there's black people or women or LGBT people in video games. I could absolutely care less about that as long as it's relevant to the game. If they're just including it to be inclusive, then it's a meaningless gesture. It brings down the game. It brings down the IP and it brings down the company that does it.

Furthermore, people play video games for a reason. Either it be escapism or immersion or simply to pass a small amount of time till whatever else they have to do. Seeing these inconsistencies in the game breaks that immersion it no longer becomes entertainment. It becomes a political statement which I have very little interest in when it comes to my entertainment.

You can pretend to be on your high horse all you want. I have no interest in seeing inclusion politics in my entertainment. It serves no beneficial purpose except to elevate the egos of people like you to make you feel as though something is being included.

Pure nonsense.

Also the new Star wars game which I don't even remember the name of sucked universally. It didn't make any money because people didn't have any interest in it specifically and exclusively because of the inclusion politics added into the game. Also the main character is fucking ugly.

When a game is successful it's because of the executive, but when it bombs it's the fault of the workers, sadly.

Ubisoft made some of my favorite games as a kid. Real shane shitty management and a culture of sexual harassment have ruined their legacy

Has something in particular been happening lately? I feel like Ubisoft has sucked for quite a while, but their stock price was fine until relatively recently, right?

If games sucking was the same thing as games being unprofitable gaming would be in better shape.

I thought from this graph that the stock had tanked to pennies.

It lost about 20% of its value, looks like

FWIW, a 20% drop is borderline catastrophic for a major company. The squeeze it puts on their supply chain, ability to make payroll, and interest rates on borrowing going up, it could be enough to create a death spiral. I think ubisoft is probably managed well enough to deal with this, but this is definitely a serious situation for them.

Look at the entire history.

In 2018 their stock price was about 24, now it's 2.

There's going to be a new CEO by the end of the FY.

Was ubisoft ever okay though? They always have problems going on whether it be a hostile takeover or this, but they always bounce back somehow surprisingly.

Am I too stupid to understand the X Axes? 1Day, 1Week... that makes no sense at all

It's an option to filter by time; only 1 day is selected. The actual time on the x-axis is hidden.