Yves Guillemot Points Fingers After Outlaws Flops

Yves Guillemot’s comments reveal more about Ubisoft’s mindset than Star Wars’ supposed decline

During Ubisoft’s annual shareholders meeting, CEO Yves Guillemot was grilled over some of the controversies that plagued the publisher for the past year.

When questioned on the failure of Star Wars Outlaws, Guillemot pointed the finger not inward at Ubisoft’s missteps, but at the Star Wars brand itself. He cited “choppy waters” and “declining relevance,” in addition to low viewership for recent shows like The Acolyte and audience fatigue with Disney’s handling of the franchise.

Here’s the problem: Jedi: Survivor was released a year before Outlaws and did just fine. Battlefront II has seen a resurgence in popularity recently. The issue here isn’t the Star Wars brand but with Ubisoft’s refusal to accept that Outlaws simply wasn’t the best game they put out.

Is Star Wars Really to Blame for Outlaws’ Failure?

Star Wars has maintained a strong presence in modern pop culture since 1977, and has branched off into practically every medium from film, TV, gaming and everything in between. It’s true that fans have been frustrated with lackluster sequel films and TV series. It’s not enough to blame for Outlaws’ reception. The game launched with:

  • Poor optimization and intrusive DRM
  • Technical issues and visual bugs
  • Repetitive, uninspired gameplay
  • A story and characters that felt generic and soulless
  • A world that failed to capture the thrill of being an actual “outlaw”

Guillemot did briefly mention that the game “still needed polish,” but the bulk of his analysis emphasized outside factors. Or maybe deflection would be a better word.

Avoid Accountability, Rinse, Repeat

If this all feels familiar, it’s because Ubisoft pulled a similar stunt before.  When The Crew was shut down earlier this year, Ubisoft responded to backlash with a defensive shrug. During the shareholders meeting, Guillemot doubled down on the publishers’ stance that players shouldn’t expect the games they purchased to remain available after official support ends. He continued to spread misinformation by falsely claiming players want video games to stay online for an eternity, which is not what they’re asking for.

In both cases, the company’s leadership failed to ask why players were upset in the first place?

This deflective mindset is a business liability. When a studio can’t accurately diagnose why something failed, it can’t fix it. And when a CEO blames the IP instead of the product, it signals to both fans and developers that quality control and creative vision aren’t the priority.

Star Wars Isn’t the Problem, Ubisoft Is

Even if franchise fatigue was an issue, it doesn’t stop a great game from succeeding. Fans are still eager to dive into new Star Wars stories as long as those stories are told well. Outlaws had the potential to give us that outlaw fantasy. What we got instead was a sluggish open-world with little connection with the things people love about Star Wars. That’s Ubisoft’s fault and Disney can only be blamed for so many things.

Yves Guillemot’s comments suggest a troubling disconnect between Ubisoft’s leadership and the real issues plaguing their games. Blaming an IP for a game’s failure instead of taking full responsibility is tone-deaf. It discourages honest postmortems, warps internal priorities, and sets up future projects to repeat the same avoidable mistakes.

If Ubisoft wants to win players back, it needs to stop blaming the galaxy far, far away and start fixing itself.

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