Assassin's Creed: Unity - 8 Unforgivable Issues That Insult The Fans

2. Initial Embargo Denied Coverage

Taken from a great piece on Polygon, the idea of 'weaponising an embargo' is to restrict the public knowledge on your product until after it's available for purchase - in Unity's case theirs didn't lift on reviews and press coverage for a full 12 hours after release. What does that tell you? Well, that the publishers were unhappy with the final state of Unity, yet elected to sell it full price to the most diehard fans anyway, putting an embargo in place only a week prior so word of the game's many failings didn't become public knowledge until too late. We're all well aware of how disheartened people were after Watch Dogs got delayed, and so it seems that even with a broken title in their midst, Ubi couldn't chance generating similar headlines again. Any gamer who follow the press side of things know that when a game's publisher insists an embargo on game footage be restricted until launch day - or holds off on giving early-access copies of the game to press at all - it's a sign they don't have any faith in the game itself. The nearest comparison we're seeing guys like IGN make is to Dragon Age: Inquisition, a title Bioware handed out proud and early, needing it to succeed after the hull-rupturing iceberg of Mass Effect 3 almost killed everyone on board. By supplying the press outlets with a game early it lets fans get a real idea of how worthwhile a purchase is going to be - whereas withholding it and letting those who have a modicum of faith in their favourite franchises and developers be utterly deceived is downright offensive.