Ubisoft Offers Assassin’s Creed Unity Owners Free DLC

Assassin’s Creed Unity has been labelled by many as a broken experience, performance issues and bugs running rife on Ubisoft’s flagship title for 2014. Ubisoft has previously argued against the issues, but the overwhelming negative attitude towards the title has forced Yannis Mallat, CEO of Ubisoft Montreal and Toronto, to formally apologize and offer customers free DLC or a new game.

The option will depend on if the customer bought the standard or season pass edition. Season pass owners will receive a free Ubisoft game; standard owners will receive the Dead Kings DLC. Ubisoft is not the first developer to offer a free game of choice for broken games. Simcity owners were rewarded for buying the broken online experience with a free EA game of choice.

The bugs on Assassin’s Creed Unity include people sinking into the world, scary graphical bugs on cut-scenes, poor loading speeds, low rendering, amongst others. PC owners claimed it was impossible — even on the highest-end machine — to run Assassin’s Creed Unity at max settings.

There were other complaints about Assassin’s Creed Unity, including a rather uninspiring story, similar parkour and assassinations, even though Ubisoft claim it is a whole new engine and system to run Unity. Despite the various issues, Assassin’s Creed Unity still held a top ten spot in most European countries and the U.S. Several critics have complained about Ubisoft holding the embargo date until one day after the launch of the title, severely crippling information on the game.

Ubisoft has not addressed the review embargo criticisms, although various review sites have announced they will not review games if they have an embargo date after the game release.