To hear them tell it, Ubisoft is just as shocked as you to discover that Assassin’s Creed Unity runs terribly on every platform for which it was released. The game has only been out since Tuesday and already a prodigious gold mine of glitches and bugs have been found and documented online, which is to say nothing about the horrendous frame rate issues that plague the game no matter how you play it.
First came the ominous request that media outlets hold their reviews back for 12 hours past the game’s launch time. There could be numerous reasons Ubisoft asked for this, but given the shoddy state of the game one can’t help but wonder if it was just a desperate attempt to keep the bad news held back until the game made its first boatload of money.
After the floodgates opened the critical panning and user outrage set in. Ubisoft’s stock even dropped over 9% yesterday as a result of the bad press.
Meanwhile the company has remained relatively quiet on the issues, only making one mention of the situation on their Twitter account:
Please visit our Live Updates blog for info on how our team is addressing the issues #ACUnity players are reporting http://t.co/WEm851pMCW
— Ubisoft (@Ubisoft) November 13, 2014
Visiting the live blog, the most recent update is from today and reveals that the developers will be addressing the following complaints in the game’s next (currently undated) patch:
- Arno falling through the ground.
- Game crashing when joining a co-op session.
- Arno getting caught inside of hay carts.
- Delay in reaching the main menu screen at game start.
They also note that they are now aware of other problems that will likely take a bit longer to resolve:
- Frame rate issues.
- Graphical and collision issues.
- Matchmaking co-op issues.
- Helix Credits issues.
A post from a community manager on the Ubisoft forums also acknowledges the poor performance on the PC and largely places the blame on AMD graphics cards and processors which luckily aren’t owned by a “vast majority” of PC players.
We are aware that the graphics performance of Assassin’s Creed Unity on PC may be adversely affected by certain AMD CPU and GPU configurations. This should not affect the vast majority of PC players, but rest assured that AMD and Ubisoft are continuing to work together closely to resolve the issue, and will provide more information as soon as it is available.
Of course players with nVidia chipsets are noticing that the game doesn’t work well on their hardware either. Word is even with the latest nVidia cards running in SLI the game still can’t reach acceptable frame rates at its highest graphical ratings.
We’re still working through the game to get a review out, but right now I can give you a special preview: Don’t buy Assassin’s Creed Unity.
