Earlier this week Ubisoft announced Teammates, which the company describes as its first "playable generative AI research project which explores how AI can be used to deepen the player experience through real-time voice commands and enhanced gameplay".
Upon reading that, my first reaction was "well that's some bullshit", but quickly following was a second reaction that I remember hearing something similar before. From Ubisoft. Promises of a bold new future, of pioneering new technology that would empower players to own their own stories, but which ultimately led nowhere, because they were so patently and obviously stupid.
Over the last four years, the company--which has been in serious financial and legal trouble for a very long time--sure has been excited to hitch its cart (and its workers, resources and reputation) to whatever picture of a horse the latest Silicon Valley huckster has forwarded into CEO Yves Guillemot's inbox that week.
Like how in 2021 the company first announced Ubisoft Quartz, "an NFT initiative which allows people to buy artificially scarce digital items using cryptocurrency". Ghost Recon Breakpoint, the first game to make use of that marketplace, was cancelled less than a year later.
Or in February 2022, when Ubisoft announced its first foray into the metaverse, with a Rabbids world for the Sandbox platform, designed "to empower players to create their own original experiences incorporating elements of our gaming IP". Earlier this year Sandbox laid off half its staff, amid claims the "platform...now attracts only a few hundred daily users, largely bots".
Then in October 2024 Ubisoft released Champions Tactics: Grimoria Chronicles, a PvP tactical RPG with a "crypto-backed marketplace". At time of launch the most expensive collectible for the game was "worth" over $60,000. Just a year later the game's shopfront looks like this:
Now, in November 2025 comes Teammates, a project building on some ghastly stuff they first teased last year, and which is so on-the-nose that Ubisoft had to put a disclaimer in its own press release:
The team is aware of the criticisms around AI in games. The goal is not to replace creatives, but rather to find ways to enhance it by combining the strengths of the technology and the human creativity and ingenuity that are crucial to making games.
This is a company run by the dumbest people on the planet. I look forward to updating this post in two years' time to make fun of whatever new set of keys someone is jingling in front of Ubisoft's face. If they're still around to fall for it.
