As many severely disappointed gamers already know, Ubisoft’s Assassin’s Creed Unity released early last week for the PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC, and it’s launch was just shy of remarkable disaster at best.
The game has been subject to a large amount of criticisms since its release, ranging from shoddy, unoptimized performance across all available platforms to intriguing accusations against Ubisoft by a variety of prominent gaming websites in regards to the use of Unity’s review embargo to hide the game’s multitude of technical issues from avid fans of the Assassin’s Creed franchise.
Given Unity‘s current state, even after over a week since its release, it seems safe to say that Ubisoft’s Assassin’s Creed launch day surpassed the negative firestorm associated with another Ubisoft title released earlier this year, Watch_Dogs.
Moving on, it seems that Ubisoft has been hard at work attempting to fix Assassin’s Creed Unity‘s multitude of technical issues, which, in and of itself, is a good move. However, the question(s) many gamers may be asking (either quietly to themselves or vehemently on a number of different gaming forums) is this:
“How did Assassin’s Creed Unity’s problems make it past game testing? That is to say, how and/or why did Ubisoft get Unity to launch state without discovering the game’s severe technical issues?”
Fortunately, a game developer, known as “LordDemiGod”, who is a gameplay programmer for Ubisoft, has elaborated on the potential reasons for Assassin’s Creed Unity‘s launch (and post-release) issues slipping through both Ubisoft and game tester’s fingers.
Note: LordDemiGod is indeed a game developer at Ubisoft, however he did not work on Assassin’s Creed Unity. He is merely explaining the various game testing/development processes leading up to many Ubisoft games’ launch – which, in turn, may have led to some of Unity’s problems getting past game testing, QA, et cetera.
Read what the Ubisoft developer had to say on the matter after the break.
Ubisoft Game Dev on Unity Issues
In the comments section of this particular Eurogamer article regarding some of Assassin’s Creed Unity‘s issues, LordDemiGod (the Ubisoft game developer/programmer) stated the following:
“Just as a note – I have not worked on Unity so I have no idea what is going on with this game.
But to answer your question: ‘Do they not have retail units to test on?’ – Yes, we do have retail units, but you can’t test anything on them, because they can only run signed code. Which means that the only time when we can actually run a game we worked on on a retail console is when we get the actual discs with it in the studio, couple weeks before the release.
And yes, there are bugs that appear only on retail consoles which do not happen on devkits because of hardware or firmware differences, those are usually fixed in time for day 1 patch or slightly later, but I honestly don’t see how you could do anything about them beforehand, since like I have said – we can’t run games in development on retail kits.
I have absolutely no idea what is wrong inside the code of that game or how that team is going to fix it. I only commented on the fact that yes, there are differences between devkits and retail kits. And yes, I have seen those differences causing issues that could not have been caught before release. I don’t know how many (or if any) of those issues in Unity are caused by this, so I can’t possibly comment(as much as I would love to).
One example I can give you is where a game I worked on was already certified and on its way to the shops, and new console firmware was released the same day as the game. That firmware caused some small issues, so everyone who updated their console before playing the game thought there were problems in the game. And we don’t get early developer access to the new firmware – we get it on our devkits the same time as everyone else.“
As reported by the Ubisoft developer above, it appears that the fact that Unity‘s numerous problems may be due to limitations caused by the inherent differences between development kits and retail consoles.
Keep in mind that this may be a potential reason for Assassin’s Creed Unity‘s issues slipping through the proverbial game testing cracks, or it may not be at all. However, seeing that Ubisoft tends to keep a mantra of solidarity between games and their associated development, their game testing process may be similar across their game testing and quality assurance as well.
What are your thoughts on what the Ubisoft developer had to say on this topic? Do you feel that with further patching and bug fixes, Assassin’s Creed Unity could be regarded as one of the best titles in the franchise? Why or why not?
Let us know in the comments section below! As always, stay tuned to GamerHeadlines.com for the latest in video game and technology news.