Gameloft (2016-present)

Gameloft SE is a French game developer and publisher based in Paris, founded in December 1999 by Ubisoft co-founder Michel Guillemot. The company publishes games with a special focus on the mobile games market. Formerly a public company traded at the Paris Bourse, Gameloft was acquired by media conglomerate Vivendi in 2016. In 2016, Gameloft has become to the world's largest mobile-games publisher in terms of downloads.

Why They Suck Now
NOTE: Many of these problems occurred after they were acquired by Vivendi.
 * 1) Their customer service is horrible and useless, as they would basically troll you by asking you for some game screenshots and your player ID. And at the end, they will basically tell you to check out their other games, even going as far as to tell you how to find them on the stores.
 * 2) * This has only gotten worse since being taken over by Vivendi.
 * 3) Much like Tencent and NetEase (although much better in quality), their games are basically clones of other popular franchises:
 * 4) * Modern Combat is based off Activision's Call of Duty and Valve's Counter-strike, with the title being copied from Mortal Kombat.
 * 5) * Asphalt is based off EA's Need For Speed.
 * 6) * Gangstar is based off Rockstar's Grand Theft Auto, and later Volition's Saints Row.
 * 7) * N.O.V.A is based off Microsoft's Halo. Apparently, the title is taken from a nuclear bomb found in the latter game.
 * 8) * GT Racing is based off Sony's Gran Turismo.
 * 9) * In addition, games involving famous (usually childish) brands are literally the same. This is actually the reason why most of their games suffer from a lack of creativity.
 * 10) * Most, if not all of their games, are the "building" genre, in which most of the games belonging to it are inundated with microtransactions.
 * 11) They rely on the freemium business model (like with many other mobile game developers), in which games are free-to-play, but micro-transactions flood them.
 * 12) *Ironically, Gameloft's games used to be paid back then, and players could either download a free demo, or pay for the full game. This has changed since 2013, where all games released were made free afterwards.
 * 13) **Not only that, they also shut down their only good "building" game, Cars: Fast as Lightning, for unexplained reasons. However, it may be due to copyright issues with Disney/Pixar.
 * 14) * Since Vivendi’s hostile acquisition in mid-2016, this has just gotten worse, as Vivendi ordered Gameloft to make more money and prioritize their profit.
 * 15) * Whenever their new titles fail to succeed, they just simply removed said game from the Google Play Store/App Store without any warning.
 * 16) Some of their games are low quality, even simply redefining the progress of some franchises like Asphalt and Modern Combat, making the gamer start the game from zero.
 * 17) Some require an internet connection to play them. However, company servers often fail while the game loads.
 * 18) The port of franchises such as Assassin's Creed (from Ubisoft) for older cell phones (or feature phones) were complete disasters.
 * 19) * Some mobile games were lazily ported to the Microsoft Store (known as the Windows Store until 2017) and Steam (Modern Combat 5 being the worst offender of this). For the Microsoft store, it was mainly ported for the now-defunct lineup of Windows smartphones.
 * 20) Aside from that, many of those games that came out on the older cell phones are very short and can be beaten in an hour or less.
 * 21) Their Asphalt franchise has several flaws aside from microtransactions and pay to win mechanics.
 * 22) *Ever since Urban GT 2 and up until Elite Racing, they had the audacity to feature scantily clad women in the loading screens and leader boards who serve no purpose in the game other than just fanservice. Although however, their presence in Elite Racing is tolerable since they provide various racing benefits. And Urban GT 2 is the worst offender out of the trio, as it features the infamous Pussycat Dolls group. Plus, their music is never featured in the game, which literally depicts the "Sex Sells" trope.
 * 23) **Plus, said games have an E 10+ rating, and seductive models in a game is definitely not E-rated content.
 * 24) * Almost all of their Asphalt spinoffs literally capitalise on a certain ongoing trend.
 * 25) **Asphalt 3D was a Nintendo 3DS exclusive and launch game, hence the name "3D". Fortunately, the game isn't that bad.
 * 26) **Asphalt Injection was a PlayStation Vita exclusive. The game was as bad as the handheld's failure.
 * 27) **Asphalt Overdrive was made as a cash in to the endless runner mobile genre that was trending at the time.
 * 28) ** Asphalt Street Storm was made to compete with NaturalMotion's CSR Racing 2.
 * 29) They even randomly ban players who do not cheat or hack, and yet the actual hackers, cheaters, and trolls remain.
 * 30) They remove their older games from App Store and Google Play, which were good and lacked microtransactions (since they were paid games). As a result, the oldest game remaining is Gangstar Rio: City of Saints which was released in 2011.
 * 31) They got rid of the Dragon Mania Legends Facebook compatibility with cloud saving removed and it restarts data over and over again.
 * 32) They took down the Spider-Man: Miles Morales 's trailer for PlayStation 5 over "copyright infringement", despite the fact that Sony is the one who holds the rights for Spider-Man franchise, and that Gameloft only had a license for the use of Spider-Man materials in their mobile game from Sony. Thankfully, the trailer was reinstated shortly after.
 * 33) At one point in the mid-2000s, they started making games for handheld consoles as well (since their main aim was to make games you can play anywhere) like the Nintendo DS and the PlayStation Vita, sometimes as exclusives. But after 2012 they focused primarily on mobile and abandoned handheld gaming.
 * 34) They even ruined some games that used to be good, with Minion Rush being prime example.
 * 35) *This is more evident since the takeover by Vivendi.
 * 36) Like Electronic Arts, Ubisoft, Konami and more, they do support NFTs, as shown with their Asphalt 9 Drive Syndicate 4 NFTs. NFTs that uses Ethereum, are mostly known for harming the environment and for poor security, scams, and much more.
 * 37) They ditched local multiplayer from their franchises after 2016. They also started to make their games always-online in the same year.
 * 38) Their older games have inconsistent graphics on various devices, such as reflections being absent on a low end device but present on high end ones.

Redeeming Qualities

 * 1) The company was better before Vivendi bought them. If you're lucky, you can find an old Gameloft game that has no microtransactions and can be played to the end precisely. One example is the first Zombie Infection game.
 * 2) Although they flood most of their games with microtransactions, this is still at an acceptable rate.
 * 3) They never rely on ads.
 * 4) Because of the company being founded by an Ubisoft co-founder, there were chances of the latter's games being available on mobile, such as the first Driver game.
 * 5) They have done awesome games such as Asphalt 6, 7, and Lego Legacy: Heroes Unboxed.
 * 6) They brought back Earthworm Jim with Earthworm Jim HD.
 * 7) It was announced that Gameloft's mobile games will support Xbox Live.
 * 8) Unlike most mobile game developers, they always take advantage of mobile hardware and try to make their games more definitive, especially in their Asphalt games.
 * 9) They donated 600000€ to the employees working in their Kharkiv and Lviv studios during the invasion of Ukraine.

Videos
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