Prince of Persia: The Lost Throne was a critical hit but didn't sell very well, and Michael Douse thinks that's entirely Ubisoft's fault.

Larian director of publishing Michael Douse, never one to be shy about speaking his mind, has spoken his mind about Ubisoft’s decision to disband the Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown development team, saying it’s the result of a “broken strategy” that prioritizes subscriptions over sales.

Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown is quite good. PC Gamer’s Mollie Taylor felt it was dragged down by a very slow start, calling it “a slow burn to a fault” in an overall positive review, and it holds an enviable 86 aggregate score on Metacritic. Despite that, Ubisoft recently confirmed that the development team has been scattered to the four winds to work on “other projects that will benefit from their expertise.”

This, Douse feels, is at least partially the outcome of Ubisoft’s focus on subscriptions over conventional game sales—the whole “feeling comfortable with not owning your game” thing espoused by Ubisoft director of subscriptions Philippe Tremblay earlier this year—and the decision to stop releasing games on Steam, which is far and away the biggest digital storefront for PC gaming.

  • @[email protected]English
    6•27 days ago

    Yes, but you can’t use their assets to make other games or products.

    You can add whatever you want to Skyrim, but you can’t add Skrim to whatever you like.

    • @[email protected]English
      3•27 days ago

      You can. If your project gets big enough, they’ll take legal action. But you can definitely get away with fan projects.

      Also with physical objects, you can’t legally do whatever you want either. There’s nothing physically stopping you from taking a piece of wood and carving it into any shape you like. But if you make a big enough project out of it, you may eventually run into legal issues. It could be related to IP like patents, trademarks, or copyright, or it could be something like safety.

      It’s ok to make a hamburger for your friends at a cookout, but if you start selling your burgers or distributing them in mass, your government may expect you to follow food safety laws, and you can’t market your burgers as “McDonalds”.