Ubisoft is reportedly sending Far Cry 6 players emails as part of a marketing campaign intended to keep players interested in the game as well as bring back those who have fallen off. Problem is, they apparently thought berating players for not playing the game enough was a good idea. If you’ve played under a certain amount of hours, Far Cry 6‘s fascist antagonist leader Anton Castillo will criticize you for leaving Yara to him.
As if video game companies taking user data wasn’t bad enough, they’re now using it to shame players for not playing their game. As Twitter user Brendan Sinclair notes, the email campaign tracks how much time users spent in the game. In Sinclair’s case, they had only played the game for 3 hours. Ubisoft writes out this playtime under a tagline that I can only assume was an attempt at being funny.
A lot of games are already ruthlessly designed to maximize engagement, but now they email and hassle you if you dare to stop playing them. pic.twitter.com/TRIsV4jnZP
— Brendan Sinclair (@BrendanSinclair) October 26, 2021
It’s important to note that players who have spent a considerable amount of time in Far Cry 6 are also receiving similar emails featuring assorted stats. However, they’re in a wildly different tone that changes depending on what you’ve accomplished. Some emails highlight how many regions the player has taken from Castillo, as well as their number of kills and captured checkpoints.
Ubisoft may have intended for the emails to be a fun gimmick to give people their gameplay stats (though surely you could just check them yourself). But it’s perhaps not the best idea to send these emails to those who, quite clearly, haven’t enjoyed the game.
This isn’t the first time Ubisoft has landed in hot water over some of its marketing campaigns, either. Back in 2019, the company issued an apology after it sent out a promo email for Tom Clancy’s The Division 2, in which it made a joke about the US government shutdown. About 800,000 government workers were out of work during that same government shutdown.
What do you think of Ubisoft’s Far Cry 6 emails? Are they overreaching, or just a harmless marketing campaign?
[Source: VG247]
