There are some confused people in the comments, it’s industry standard to sponsor streams/have brand collaboration/twitch drops. Every company does it, and 2 million dollars is not much at all. their advertising budget is at least 20x that much, probably more.
This is true, but one thing I noticed with AC Shadows is that there were a LOT of no-name streamers posting reels with fake hype over the game. It was a little egregious and came off as more than a little desperate.
Without seeing what you’ve seen, that honestly sounds more like a symptom of the platform, current internet trends, and algorithm gaming than it sounds like a cheesy viral marketing campaign
Generally speaking, algorithms on these sites don’t serve me a ton of videos with no views from creators with no followers, en masse. With AC shadows, I was suddenly inundated with these videos, on multiple sites, without ever having looked anything up about it, exclusively by streamers that nobody is watching.
Or just excitement at getting “exclusive” early access as a small streamer. If you don’t know there are thousands of others, it’d feel like an opportunity to make it big.
My buddy is a little streamer (gets maybe a few dozen viewers) and he got early access to it as well. Although he doesn’t add any fake hype, he’s just a very good hype man.
I just wish companies would stop releasing games to streamers only. It does nothing but piss me off when I see someone playing a game, find it interesting then find out it doesn’t even exist to buy yet … no demos, no test play versions no nothing…just coming soon.
I know it’s cool to hate on this game, especially with it being so mediocre, but to me the number is fairly meaningless by itself. I wonder how that 2 million budget compares to other large releases ( say Starfield, since it’s pretty clear that bethesda also pumped a lot of money into the “gaming press”)
I haven’t found a source for this number when I looked for it. The best I got was a finance blog saying “experts say” without saying that they were progenitors of the reporting or not. Valhalla had a budget about half of this, so it would surprise me if Shadows was that much more expensive.
The industry is full of dead studios that made good games. Marketing does work and is necessary, but I’m not sure much you can say this marketing campaign was successful given the heavy lifting Assassin’s Creed as a brand was already doing.
Given the vitriol against Ubisoft (I’m not commenting on how justified it is), obviously they need to do something to counter it. The anti-woke crowd are an incredibly noisy minority.
So they spent advertising money on freelance shills. Ok, that is just another form of advertising like paying an advertising company to do advertising.
Yes, someone who promotes a product while hiding the fact that they’ve been paid to promote the product. Streamers generally say “this is a sponsored stream” to avoid lawsuits.
If someone starts off saying “this is a sponsores stream” then yes, that is correct. It’s illegal to not disclose when media is an advertisement in most of the world. I’m pretty sure it’s against the TOS of most streaming sites, too.
Well I’ve certainly never heard that before and that’s not what the definition of the word is from what I’m seeing but I guess I can understand using that as a distinction.
A shill, also called a plant or a stooge, is a person who publicly helps or gives credibility to a person or organization without disclosing that they have a close relationship with said person or organization, or have been paid to do so.
Shill has primarily been used as an insult for the past 50 years in the way I’m defining it here. I don’t believe you’ve never heard it used to mean that.
one who acts as a decoy (as for a pitchman or gambler)
Literally on that same page.
a person who poses as a customer in order to decoy others into participating, as at a gambling house, auction, confidence game, etc.
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So marketing? What’s the problem here? Should they have spent it advertising on radio?
There are some confused people in the comments, it’s industry standard to sponsor streams/have brand collaboration/twitch drops. Every company does it, and 2 million dollars is not much at all. their advertising budget is at least 20x that much, probably more.
This is true, but one thing I noticed with AC Shadows is that there were a LOT of no-name streamers posting reels with fake hype over the game. It was a little egregious and came off as more than a little desperate.
Without seeing what you’ve seen, that honestly sounds more like a symptom of the platform, current internet trends, and algorithm gaming than it sounds like a cheesy viral marketing campaign
Generally speaking, algorithms on these sites don’t serve me a ton of videos with no views from creators with no followers, en masse. With AC shadows, I was suddenly inundated with these videos, on multiple sites, without ever having looked anything up about it, exclusively by streamers that nobody is watching.
Or just excitement at getting “exclusive” early access as a small streamer. If you don’t know there are thousands of others, it’d feel like an opportunity to make it big.
My buddy is a little streamer (gets maybe a few dozen viewers) and he got early access to it as well. Although he doesn’t add any fake hype, he’s just a very good hype man.
For real. EA spent north of $10M on streamer sponsorships for the Apex Legends launch and that was like 7 years ago.
I just wish companies would stop releasing games to streamers only. It does nothing but piss me off when I see someone playing a game, find it interesting then find out it doesn’t even exist to buy yet … no demos, no test play versions no nothing…just coming soon.
Makes me not want to play it anymore
I know it’s cool to hate on this game, especially with it being so mediocre, but to me the number is fairly meaningless by itself. I wonder how that 2 million budget compares to other large releases ( say Starfield, since it’s pretty clear that bethesda also pumped a lot of money into the “gaming press”)
I believe its production budget was pegged at between $250m and $350m.
So this particular item in the marketing budget is less than 1% of the development costs.
I haven’t found a source for this number when I looked for it. The best I got was a finance blog saying “experts say” without saying that they were progenitors of the reporting or not. Valhalla had a budget about half of this, so it would surprise me if Shadows was that much more expensive.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astroturfing
Money well spent: Grummz got told the fuck off on twitter lol
I think the only influencers that would matter in terms of direct sales would be Streamers and VTubers
You could cry couldnt you, what a colossal waste of money. Just make a good game, spend the cash there, word will get around.
The industry is full of dead studios that made good games. Marketing does work and is necessary, but I’m not sure much you can say this marketing campaign was successful given the heavy lifting Assassin’s Creed as a brand was already doing.
Good games can still fail, great games can have the luxury of let people do the marketing for them.
Given the vitriol against Ubisoft (I’m not commenting on how justified it is), obviously they need to do something to counter it. The anti-woke crowd are an incredibly noisy minority.
Schedule 1 paid…
So they spent advertising money on freelance shills. Ok, that is just another form of advertising like paying an advertising company to do advertising.
Sponsoring streams isn’t even close to the same thing as hiring shills
Do streamers call themselves influencers?
Plenty do, yeah. Though to the marketing team, all streamers are influencers
You do understand what a shill is, right?
Yes, someone who promotes a product while hiding the fact that they’ve been paid to promote the product. Streamers generally say “this is a sponsored stream” to avoid lawsuits.
So by your own definition streamers are generally not shills?
If someone starts off saying “this is a sponsores stream” then yes, that is correct. It’s illegal to not disclose when media is an advertisement in most of the world. I’m pretty sure it’s against the TOS of most streaming sites, too.
Isn’t it though? They’re being paid to promote a game right? That seems like a shill to me. I’m not sure I understand the difference to you.
A shill doesn’t disclose that they’re being paid to promote a product. The secrecy is what makes them a shill
Well I’ve certainly never heard that before and that’s not what the definition of the word is from what I’m seeing but I guess I can understand using that as a distinction.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shill
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/shill
Shill has primarily been used as an insult for the past 50 years in the way I’m defining it here. I don’t believe you’ve never heard it used to mean that.
Literally on that same page.
https://www.dictionary.com/browse/shill
https://www.dictionary.com/browse/shill
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/shill?q=shill
https://www.wordreference.com/es/translation.asp?tranword=shill