Ubisoft Stock Tanks As Assassin's Creed: Shadows Suffers Massive P.R. Problems Among Japanese Gamers

Assassin's Creed as a brand looks to be dead and Ubisoft is in full panic mode.

Ubisoft stock has tanked this week, with the Assassin’s Creed: Shadows controversy boiling to new heights.

The French video game company has received a huge backlash from the gaming community, particularly the Japanese gaming community, since the revelation that the main protagonist in the new Assasin’s Creed is Yasuke, who is portrayed as a real-life black samurai in the game. To make matters worse, it has been revealed that the game’s protagonist, Yasuke, will be open to LGBTQ relationships during gameplay. The hostile reception in Japan is so bad that Japanese gamers have created a Change.org petition with nearly 95,000 signatures to remove Assassin’s Creed: Shadows from production because the historical inaccuracies insult Japan.

The criticism is not only coming from gamers but also from historians and even government officials. The inaccurate and disrespectful treatment of Japanese history and culture has been brought to the attention of three different ministries: the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT), and the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI).

The harsh backlash panicked the Assassin’s Creed development team, prompting them to issue an official statement claiming they have “received many positive reactions” but also “some criticism, including from you, our Japanese players.” The statement proceeds with a long explanation of why they did what they did.

This statement, however, did not prevent Ubisoft’s shares from tanking after their earnings call. Their share price fell by more than 10% in one day on July 19th, which also put it at a five-year low. Share prices have remained at this low level since the initial drop.

When reading the Ubisoft statement on Assassin’s Creed, it is easy to understand why it failed to stop the shares from tanking. It is not an admission that they messed up and that they will fix it. Instead, they are doubling down on their disrespectful approach to Japanese history and culture by claiming that they “have put significant effort into ensuring an immersive and respectful representation of Feudal Japan” and that their “intention has never been to present any of our Assassin's Creed games, including Assassin's Creed Shadows, as factual representations of history, or historical characters.”

They justify making the main protagonist a black gay man, killing native Japanese by saying that they have “extensively collaborated with external consultants, historians, researchers, and internal teams at Ubisoft Japan.”

And while feebly apologizing for “some elements” in their promotional materials and saying that the “game footage presented so far is in development and the game will keep evolving,” they insist that their game are inspired by “real historical events and figures,” and that Yasuke was an ideal candidate because of his “unique and mysterious life.” With Japan’s rich history, Ubisoft could have chosen hundreds of unique and mysterious real-life characters from which to choose. Instead, they chose Yasuke, probably the only black man in feudal Japan about whom some historical records exist, albeit very scant documents. And the existing documents don’t claim that Yasuke was indeed a samurai.

The Ubisoft development team wasn’t concerned with immersive and compelling gameplay. Their priority was to please various woke interest groups. This is all the more apparent considering that they were not merely satisfied with the main protagonist set in feudal Japan being black, they had to make him gay too.

Investors can’t be too happy about the Yasuke controversy, which was reflected in the dramatic Ubisoft share drop on the 19^th. Let us know what you think about Ubisoft’s shares tanking in the comments and restack this post!

by Jack Dunn