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There are so many opportunities for leisure in the summertime – you can read at the beach, slurp up some Italian ice – but, you have to admit, completing microtransactions is much more versatile.
It's all-seasons entertainment, right? Paying more money for a game you thought you already paid for? Rainbow Six and Assassin's Creed developer Ubisoft seems to think so, telling investors in its most recent annual financial report that monetization "within premium games makes the player experience more fun."
"This is always optional," Ubisoft stresses, but players like to pay to "personalize their avatars or progress more quickly."
It's nice that Ubisoft's decided to inform its investors of that fact, but maybe it should alert its actual players next – online gaming communities are full of screaming spirits that only still walk the Earth to punish us for our microtransactions, and, to them, Ubisoft is one of the industry's major offenders.
Assassin’s Creed Shadows unfortunately has a Microtransactions Store same as in Origins/Odyssey/ValhallaI’ve been against this since it was introduced in Origins and it remains the biggest issue with Ubisoft as a whole, MTX stores just don’t have a place in single-player games.… pic.twitter.com/Zy0UnZK1NyMarch 19, 2025
"I find [it] baffling that Ubisoft has implemented terrible microtransactions into every single one of their AAA games," says one acerbic Reddit thread with over 2,000 upvotes. "Quite literally almost every single AAA title they've released for nearly a decade now have turned their games into this absolutely horrifying amalgamation made of greed, dollar bills and copying machines."
"How bad are the micro-transactions?" frets a Steam user in the discussions page for Assassin's Creed Shadows. "I can't stand when [companies] dump in a ton of micro-transactions."
But Ubisoft's world is all tea cups and roses, and dollar bills shaped like roses – the company continues to say in its financial report that "with the strong growth in its digital business in recent years, Ubisoft has managed to successfully transform its economic model."
And it's being responsible. The company has also "set up a working group dedicated to monetization and the associated risks," with the goal of gaining "a better understanding of the issues surrounding monetization, in particular by identifying practices that could be perceived as manipulative or non-transparent."
That said, "Due to the complexity, sensitivity and strategic nature of this subject," continues Ubisoft, "the Group has decided not to provide further details on the guidelines, practices and recommendations mentioned above."
