Ubisoft And Guerrilla Developers Ratio'd Into Going Private After Complaining That 'Elden Ring' Is So Beloved

It's only been out for 10 days, but FromSoftware's Elden Ring is quite literally shaking up the video game industry. On top of being widely acclaimed as a masterpiece by both fans and critics, it's also drawn the ire of game developers from other companies. Over the weekend, a screenshot featuring a Ubisoft developer, a Sony developer and a Guerrilla Games developer griping about the game's glowing reviews went viral.

Developers from Ubisoft and Guerrilla as well as others upset over Elden Rings success. pic.twitter.com/yAN3sdGwl0

— Ghastly Lantern Vendor Lavender 🏮 (@LavenderGhast) March 5, 2022

The bitter trio in question is Ubisoft's UX director Ahmed Salama, Nixxes Software's Rebecca Fernandez O’Shea and Guerrilla Games' Blake Rebouche, the quest designer for Horizon Forbidden West. Each expressed a gripe via hot take with Elden Ring relevant to their field: Salama said the glowing reviews prove critics "don’t give a flaming poop about Game UX." O'Shea chimed in, "Nor PC graphics, stability and performance, apparently." Rebouche added, "Nor quest design, really."

For gamers, the screenshot was a Chef Kiss of irony. Salama, in particular, drew the brunt of the jokes. Elden Ring has a very bare-bones user interface, as there is oftentimes nothing on the screen except the player and game world. Players will have to press a button to make their items, weapons and health bar appear on the screen. By comparison, Ubisoft games are notorious for having what some call a "cluttered" interface, exemplified by some widely circulated meme demonstrating what Elden Ring might look like if Ubisoft made it.

I found it, the Elden Ring with the "good UX" pic.twitter.com/MBEbLPIonx

— Alex (@alexdnz) March 6, 2022

lmfao pic.twitter.com/Nj9OPmmqiI

— jam C•ㅅ•Ↄ (@SandCastleSam) March 4, 2022

Rebouche also attracted criticism for complaining about the game's quest design. The quests in Elden Ring, as they are in other FromSoft titles, are very obtuse, and the game does not guide the player into completing sidequests or finishing NPC storylines. By comparison, the Horizon games, such as Zero Dawn, are much more straightforward in instructing the player on what to do and where to go, which is generally the industry standard when it comes to sidequests. Horizon Forbidden West performed very respectfully on Metacritic, netting an 88/100, but few would argue that the game wasn't completely overshadowed by Elden Ring, released one week after.

See this is valid criticism, if it wasn’t come from another competing game dev. Unbelievable poor taste and it’s just clear as day they’re salty elden ring took the spotlight. I would have no problem if there was anything friendly in the tweets but it was just pure butthurt

— joe (@checkitout5555) March 7, 2022

Hey Guerrilla</a> I was really excited to play HFW, but after seeing <a href="https://twitter.com/Bigrebo?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">Bigrebo's tweet disparaging ELDENRING</a> and <a href="https://twitter.com/fromsoftware_pr?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">fromsoftware_pr I will never buy or play a game made by this bitter person. It's not From's fault that people stopped talking about HFW. This is classless behavior. pic.twitter.com/wbjBzU4fGm

— Joshua Bochicchio (@itheconflict) March 5, 2022

Absolute pure grade copium coming from Horizon Forbidden West's senior quest designer pic.twitter.com/cPVFcfA0Ac

— Triodug (@Tri0dug) March 4, 2022

On top of the pile-ons in the QRTs, many felt that the developers from competing studios throwing potshots at another developer's success were in poor taste.

the sad thing is that the three of them are fellow developers. there were lots of devs in that thread being salty and jealous. https://t.co/I5eZcQImUs

— gg (kupokweh) <a href="https://twitter.com/kupokweh/status/1500404588637474816?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 6, 2022</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script> <blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-conversation="none"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Devs can also act professionally and not shit on another company&#39;s game making themselves look like pissed diapered children; further cementing the rift both communities have. <a href="https://t.co/JduHQb7bGD">https://t.co/JduHQb7bGD</a></p>&mdash; DAHADOOSHTUBE (dahadooshtube) March 6, 2022

Ubisoft devs mad bc Elden Ring successful despite having "bad UX design" is the biggest cope I've ever seen

— MaxPoetingway @ post MSQ syndrome (@Max_Poetic) March 6, 2022

Though it's only been out a week and the majority of its players aren't halfway done with the game, it's clear we won't see the end of Elden Ring discourse for a long time.