On Ubisoft's pandering to unreasonable players

In late 2018, Ubisoft attempted to make aesthetic alterations to the game Rainbow Six: Siege in order to get it into Chinese territories, but the changes in question were met with backlash as it was effectively a form of censorship. When Ubisoft ultimately yielded and dropped these plans, the news spawned a rather inflammatory article from Gameindustry.biz titled: "On Ubisoft's Pandering to Unreasonable Players", written by one James Batchelor.

This attack on gamers disguised as news is the subject of this article.

The Context
The proposed changes that Ubisoft were planning to make involved changing a few icons and some set pieces within some of the game's maps. Such changes included:


 * The melee icon being changed from a knife to a fist.
 * The death icon changed from a skull and cross(es) to a basic torso with an X in the middle of it.
 * Imagery of a skull changed to a masked man.
 * Slot machines in one map removed with only few glass bottles in their place.
 * A neon sign depicting a stripper/pole dancer replaced with something less suggestive.
 * A single blood stain on a wall would've been removed.

These proposed changes were met with scorn from fans of the game as it was Ubisoft's attempt to kowtow to the Chinese market by censoring references to violence, gambling, and sexual content. Players took umbrage with the idea that the game should lose parts of its artistic integrity just to appeal to China. Luckily, Ubisoft decided to reverse their decision to make these changes, and instead chose to put together a separate build for China, even if it meant the next season was delayed as a result.

Gamesindustry's Response
A day after Ubisoft reversed their decision to censor Rainbow Six: Siege, gamesindustry.biz put out an article that admonished the publisher for giving to "unreasonable players", implying that gamers providing feedback sets a more dangerous precedent than a game losing bits of its creative merits for the sake of a large market. The article's writer, James Batchelor, made some bold claims that the changes Ubisoft proposed would have a minuscule impact on gameplay despite acknowledging that he hadn't even played the game, and that making these changes "weren't that big of a deal". He also claimed that the reactions to the announcement came from "a vocal minority", which is absolutely not true since the people who complained were most likely avid Siege players, and gamers who weren't fond of Ubisoft's intent on making a watered down version of the game universal.

Now, here's where the shilling is put on full display: Batchelor claimed that censoring parts of Rainbow Six: Siege would not only allow Ubisoft to get the game into Chinese territories, but also allow the publisher to grow as a company. This is ironic considering Ubisoft for many years has seen a lot of its growth through the pedalling of less-than-desirable means like shady microtransactions, multiple editions, annual Assassin's Creed releases, Season Passes, DLC's, loot boxes, etc. He even makes false equivalences by comparing the proposed alterations to changing the art style to something akin to My Little Pony, or making players shoot bubbles instead of bullets, both examples being comical exaggerations that don't hold a candle to a game losing its lustre for the sake of appeasing one country's strict gaming policies. Batchelor suggested (i.e. encouraged) Ubisoft to save themselves from making a separate build for China by ignoring feedback from disgruntled gamers, and telling gamers to shut up and deal with the adjustments.

Batchelor also talked frequently about "Review Bombing" throughout this article, touting how the publisher's decision to reverse their censorship plans gave review bombers a victory, and how they will use this as a means to influence games moving forward, comparing the review bombing of Pokémon GO! for being a more casual entry in the long running franchise, and causing publishers like Ubisoft to take fewer risks. The Pokémon GO! comparison makes little sense considering it was merely a side project with a main installment in the pipeline at the time, whilst the Rainbow Six: Siege backlash stemmed from the publisher's desire to appeal to Chinese markets by making changes that would affect the main game, which isn't an ideal approach. He even linked to another dreadful gamesindustry article that discussed Activision Blizzard's boneheaded announcement of Diablo Immortal during BlizzCon 2018 titled "How to deal with Entitled Gamers when Announcing a Mobile Game" (no doubt a major berserk button for Grust) by Christopher Dring, another article that completely misses the point of the backlash to that particular incident.

According to Batchelor's article (and Dring's by extension), publishers listening to customer feedback sets some kind of "dangerous precedent", but they make this implication by making sweeping generalisations about gamers by lumping the legitimate complaints in with the toxic noise, the latter of which is the actual vocal minority, while the former is the crowd who raised their pitch forks to Ubisoft's censorship plans, and essentially cherry-picked the worst reactions from the dissenting crowd and highlighting that for the "news" piece. This article highlights the extent to which games journalists will pander to game companies generalising the outrage as gamer entitlement, or by cherry picking the worst responses, or by falsely claiming that the backlash comes from a vocal minority. This article isn't even looking at the situation from a business perspective, which would've been fine, but the article completely misses the point of said backlash. The article concludes with a tangent about Stat Wars: The Last Jedi, a tangent that has absolutely nothing to do with the subject at hand, so we won't go into that, and calling back to the poorly handled ending of Mass Effect 3, despite that incident being a case of misleading marketing that touted how all your choices in the trilogy mattered and would determine the final outcome, when the final product's ending amounted to just picking a colour.

Another misleading statement in the article that was briefly touched upon is the part where Batchelor claimed the fight against changes in the industry would cause major publishers to take fewer risks if they become afraid to upset fans, but the reason that statement is misleading is because gamers generally aren't afraid of change when said change is good, but they admonish the bad changes. Gamers will happily grow with changes that move the industry forward, like when an established developer makes a new game that they've never made before (i.e. a shift from FPS to Action RPG) and acknowledging major achievements in gaming, but will push back against many forms of corporate greed, like the evolution of microtransactions and loot boxes, and especially in this case, the universal censorship of a game - once again - for the sake of one country. This article exemplifies why so gamers are so at odds with mainstream journalism these days.

Forbes' Response
After Batchelor published his crappy piece, Forbes writer Eric Kain posted his own article titled: "No, Ubisoft Didn't 'Pander' to Entitled Gamers over Rainbow Six: Siege Censorship." Kain called out the gamesindustry article for the nonsensical drivel that it was by debunking everything that was said in it.

The first thing that Kain pointed out in his article is that China is an authoritarian state that has committed horrible crimes against humanity, has some of the most inhumane policies in the world, and was implementing as system that tracked "untrustworthy citizens"; he was rightfully concerned about Western companies kowtowing to a country with such inhumane policies, and letting its influence seep into their games just for the sake of making easy money in a market that they don't even know/can't guarantee will be a successful venture.

Moving on to the changes proposed, Kain linked to a Rainbow Six: Siege article by his Forbes colleague - Joe Parklock who, unlike Batchelor, did actually play the game - that highlighted that contrary to Ubisoft's claims, the planned changes to the game will in fact affect gameplay. While the changes were mostly aesthetic, those same changes, according to Parklock, would also affect map readability, lines of sight, and hiding spots. The best example provided was the Club House map, which had the slot machines removed; the reason this was a big deal because it removed a popular hotspot for hiding drones and gadgets, and it became more glaring since there was nothing there to replace them, thus affecting the meta of that particular map. This shows that Kain and Parklock had done their research, and provided clear cut examples of why the alterations were a much bigger deal than Batchelor's short-sighted take, especially considering the latter once again admitted that he never even played Siege, showing that he had no idea what he was talking about.

Kain also slammed the gamesindustry article for pandering to gaming giants like Ubisoft and Activision Blizzard without taking the legitimacy for gamers' complaints into consideration; taking issue with the notion that gamers are at fault for Blizzard's miscommunication and misjudgement of their biggest market when they made a mobile announcement the centrepiece of their own marquee event, and the implication that consumers should sympathise with these companies when their profits come from underhanded practices.

This quote from Kain's article sums up the gamesindustry article perfectly:

Kain then pointed out that Batchelor misrepresented gamers by cherry-picking the more vitriolic and toxic replies, highlighted the idiocy that Mass Effect 3's ill-concieved ending was the catalyst for "angry gamers" and how that supposedly set dangerous precedents for the industry because EA and BioWare caved in to complaints, which is him noting how out of touch Batchelor's take was. Kain concluded his article by pointing out that companies listen to their customers is an effective business strategy (since it builds consumer goodwill), while attacking and demonising them is not (as this move alienates them and drives them away), and even going as far to say that censorship is indefensible. He even sarcastically applauded Batchelor's article for taking the "Entitled Gamer" narrative to new lows by defending Chinese Censorship on business grounds.

As an addendum, Kain did point out that the is right and wrong on both sides of the fence; he called out YouTubers for fanning the flames with over-the-top outrage (like those channels who build their entire online careers out of bashing a particular publisher), while also calling out game journalists for not helping their cases by finger wagging at gamers by defending anti-consumer/anti-gaming practises, stating that while he doesn't agree with the more extreme outrage from gamers, he is more bothered by the press' knee-jerk reaction to more tangible outrage of "bad/entitled/wrong".

Kain's response article was ultimately a fair counter to the article written by James Batchelor over on gamesindustry.biz, acknowledging right and wrong on both sides, getting to the point of gamers' complaints about the Rainbow Six: Siege complaints, while distinguishing between the level-headed majority and toxic vocal minority.