Ubisoft is sending mocking emails to lapsed Far Cry 6 players

[midian182]

WTF?! Ubisoft has a reputation for being the most disliked gaming brand in the world, so what better way to endear itself to people than to send out emails mocking them for not playing Far Cry 6 enough. If you own the latest in the long-running franchise and haven't been to Yara for a while, expect to see a disparaging message from El Presidente himself, Antón Castillo, sitting in your inbox.

GamesIndustry.biz Managing Editor Brendan Sinclair tweeted that he received an email from 'Far Cry 6' showing actor Giancarlo Esposito's Castillo character with his in-game son, Diego (Anthony Gonzalez). It has the subject line "You disappoint me," hinting at what the message contains.

A lot of games are already ruthlessly designed to maximize engagement, but now they email and hassle you if you dare to stop playing them. pic.twitter.com/TRIsV4jnZP

— Brendan Sinclair (@BrendanSinclair) October 26, 2021

"Hola, Rojas,” it reads, referencing the game’s protagonist, Dani Rojas. "I wanted to thank you for giving me free rein in Yara. Take it easy, and know that Yara is in capable hands."

Ubisoft also includes player statistics in the email, complete with a "surely you can do better than this" headline. Sinclair has only played three hours of Far Cry 6, but someone with 33 hours of playtime and over 2,186 kills was also targeted.

It seems that the number of hours you've spent playing Far Cry 6 has no bearing on whether you'll receive a message from Castillo; Ubisoft appears to be hitting those who have abandoned the game. This writer, who has clocked up about 22 hours and still plays regularly, hasn't received anything.

No matter your feelings toward Far Cry 6, Ubisoft's passive-aggressiveness in trying to keep consumers engaging with their products isn't going down well. The company has a history of ramming paid-for extras down players' throats, hence its position as one of the world's most hated brands, and it isn't doing itself any favors here.

For Far Cry games that don't harass you for not playing, check out our 17 Years Of Far Cry feature.

Permalink to story.

https://www.techspot.com/news/91950-ubisoft-sending-mocking-emails-lapsed-far-cry-6.html

 

[Yenega]

Their biggest mistake was making their own launcher

 

[R00sT3R]

Lol..Rare, 'Most hated' Gaming brand in South Korea & Vietnam.

What did Rare do to those countries to deserve such infamy?, they're such a harmless little company nowadays.

 

[Burty117]

How is gamefreak the most hated Video Game company in the UK?

 

[Geralt]

Evidently, they lost their minds.

 

[Faelan]

Lol…

I actually had to look up Game Freak because I don’t remember ever hearing that name before despite starting my gaming life with a Philips Videopac G7000, then a ZX81 clone, C64, Amiga 500 and finally PC. That just tells me that gaming is so broad that you can literally be blissfully unaware of large segments of the industry.

 

[Neatfeatguy]

Just one more reason to avoid this dumpster fire of a franchise for me. I don't need to be harassed about not playing a rehashed series video game.

FarCry (original) was awesome
FarCry 2 sucked monkey balls with the constantly respawning bad guys and the stupid track marks you build up from having to inject yourself with medicine to combat the malaria you picked up.
FarCry 3 - decent, interesting antagonist, disappointing protagonist
FarCry 4 - this was so bad I don't remember if I even beat it. I put maybe 10 hours into and never went back...I don't even remember actually playing it.
FarCry 5 - only saving grace was co-op, otherwise it was pretty much unforgettable like number 4

 

[Leuten]

I do not see the problem. It is a fresh little breeze from the ordinary marketing.

 

[Nobina]

I wouldn't treat Far Cry players any different.

 

[Hexic]

Far Cry has been trash for years. But, players keep buying their copy/pasta games release after release. Shows how low the bar is for game development when Ubisoft can continue to sell games at the rate they do, despite common knowledge they are trash.

 

[Sausagemeat]

I’ve not had any emails and I’ve been playing since day one.

For me Far Cry 6 is the best Far Cry in the series. No crafting, no hunting animals for a skin to trade for a weapon belt. It’s just straight in simple shooting, or stealth, or get a tank, it’s up to you. It’s the best coop game around aswell.

The story is a bit poor but who’s playing Far Cry for the story?

The things they changed in this game that made it so much better than previous are the guns. They feel so much more satisfying to shoot that in previous games and the variety is amazing. Some of them are absolutely ridiculous but that’s great it’s a far cry game!

 

[colinf]

We do find some rather petty things to whine about(yes I do see the irony)

 

[Stingy McDuck]

I find that email humorous, I wouldn't call it harrasment. As for that image of the most hated companies: what the hell, Game Freak is the most hated in the US, Canada and Australia (what did they do wrong)? No mention of Electronic Arts anywhere?

The small letter says that they use twitter for their research...

 

[Hexic]

I find that email humorous, I wouldn't call it harrasment. As for that image of the most hated companies: what the hell, Game Freak is the most hated in the US, Canada and Australia (what did they do wrong)? No mention of Electronic Arts anywhere?

The small letter says that they use twitter for their research...

Twitter, that bastion of objectivity?

Color me impressed!

 

[0dium]

Far Cry has been trash for years. But, players keep buying their copy/pasta games release after release. Shows how low the bar is for game development when Ubisoft can continue to sell games at the rate they do, despite common knowledge they are trash.

Well far cry did receive some improvements, you can see the progress but yeah still not enough. Would like to have more side quests. If you compare new far cry games with first one, surely it didn't go too far away from 2004.

 

[Badvok]

Not sure what the problem is with a game trying to engage/immerse the player a little more. It fits the character of Antón Castillo perfectly.

 

[MisterSpock]

If interpreted as purely tongue-in-cheek, this is about on par with the Game Over sequence whenever you save and quit Banjo-Kazooie.

Sadly, since this seems to be only going out to those who stopped playing for any reason, it loses that joking aspect and starts coming across as a badly attempted guilt trip.

 

[Avro Arrow]

I don't really understand why UbiSoft is so hated. I've NEVER paid any extra money for ANYTHING in ANY of their games. I own Far Cry 3, Blood Dragon, 4, 5, New Dawn (and I'm getting 6) along with three Assassin's Creed titles (I specifically love Odyssey) and I've NEVER felt the need to spend any extra money to play and enjoy any of them.

Having said that, I don't know what UbiSoft is trying to pull here with this crap. Clearly, they have some fool trying to re-invent the wheel when it comes to customer relations which is both impossible and dumb. I would just set emails from UbiSoft to spam and never read them.

Problem solved.

 

[Avro Arrow]

Far Cry has been trash for years. But, players keep buying their copy/pasta games release after release. Shows how low the bar is for game development when Ubisoft can continue to sell games at the rate they do, despite common knowledge they are trash.

The problem is that the formula for Far Cry WORKS and works well. When you have something that works, don't screw with it if your player base doesn't want you to. Ace Combat is the same thing. Namco tried screwing with the formula and Assault Horizon, the most hated game in the series. Most fans of the Ace Combat series flatly refuse to refer to it as an Ace Combat game.

It's a tightrope that these devs have to walk...

 

[Fastturtle]

And this is just one of the many reasons I refuse to buy many of the MMOPG's such as Tanks, W.o.W or even C2D. It's bad enough I get over 200 spams a day on my Gmail address - only one I give out anymore - that if I were to get anything like this from ArenaNet (Guild Wars) I'd be telling the to delete my account and giving up online gaming entirely.

 

[Gezzer]

How is gamefreak the most hated Video Game company in the UK?

Or Canada? Check their little disclaimer in the bottom left corner. They used tweets and a algorithm to determine who gets the most negative tweets in any given country. So it's limited to the most vocal tweeters and the time period the data is extracted. If they did the same calculation a month from now it would be someone totally different. This is a perfect example of bad data analysis, and I consider anything it suggests as purely farcical.

 

[Bamda]

I think this is brilliant! Castillo is taunting me! I will have his head on a pike in a week!

 

[Theinsanegamer]

The problem is that the formula for Far Cry WORKS and works well. When you have something that works, don't screw with it if your player base doesn't want you to. Ace Combat is the same thing. Namco tried screwing with the formula and Assault Horizon, the most hated game in the series. Most fans of the Ace Combat series flatly refuse to refer to it as an Ace Combat game.

It's a tightrope that these devs have to walk...

Interesting comparison. Ace Combat does have one formula that works, but it has been tweaked over the years. 5 and 0 were more precise then ace combat 4, 6 introduced more insane missile and enemy accounts, and 7 is arguably the most arcade of the series yet.

The Ace Combat series also sell itself on amazing music and stories that are cheesy in that Japanese anime style yet take themselves seriously, rather than revolutionary gameplay changes.

Far Cry, however, sells itself on gameplay. The storylines are boring, contrived, uninspired lukewarm milk. The characters are forgettable, the settings samey, and crucially the gameplay feels blatantly copy pasted so that you are doing the same 3 missions repeatedly in different areas of the map. And when you sell yourself on the same gameplay again and again, it gets old quick.

If Ubisoft put more work into making interesting believable characters and settings, perhaps stories with more nuance or impact, the games would not be so maligned for being the same game every year.

 

[Avro Arrow]

Interesting comparison. Ace Combat does have one formula that works, but it has been tweaked over the years. 5 and 0 were more precise then ace combat 4, 6 introduced more insane missile and enemy accounts, and 7 is arguably the most arcade of the series yet.

The Ace Combat series also sell itself on amazing music and stories that are cheesy in that Japanese anime style yet take themselves seriously, rather than revolutionary gameplay changes.

Far Cry, however, sells itself on gameplay. The storylines are boring, contrived, uninspired lukewarm milk. The characters are forgettable, the settings samey, and crucially the gameplay feels blatantly copy pasted so that you are doing the same 3 missions repeatedly in different areas of the map. And when you sell yourself on the same gameplay again and again, it gets old quick.

If Ubisoft put more work into making interesting believable characters and settings, perhaps stories with more nuance or impact, the games would not be so maligned for being the same game every year.

I agree with you 100%. The Far Cry games are cookie-cutter games but I think that's by design. If suddenly the controls worked differently, I'd probably be annoyed. It's true then that Ubisoft needs to make the stories better because at the end of the day, it's just another FPS game (an uber-fun FPS, but an FPS nevertheless).

I think that Ubisoft understands this because they had a character in Far Cry 5 named "Guy Marvel" who did nothing but slander Far Cry games left and right while making a movie called "Blood Dragon" (which ended up being about Zombies somehow..???).