Ubisoft CEO Echoes Valve's Gabe Newell, Calling AI Gaming's Next 3D-Scale Revolution

Game bosses keep taking big gulps of generative AI and calling it the future, and Ubisoft just cranked the volume. If Gabe Newell thinks AI is a 'cheat code' moment on par with pre- vs. post-internet, Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot basically matched that energy, promising a seismic shift and hinting that we are very close to seeing it in an actual Ubisoft game.

What Guillemot told investors (after a weird delay)

Ubisoft held its latest earnings call after pushing it back for reasons the company did not explain. Alongside that, Ubisoft said Tencent’s $1.3 billion investment in Vantage Studios — the outfit now shepherding Assassin’s Creed — is imminent.

On the AI front, Guillemot went full-throated:

'We are making great strides in applying gen AI to high-value use cases that bring tangible benefits to our players and teams. It is as big a revolution for our industry as the shift to 3D, and we have everything to lead on this front.'

He also claimed Ubisoft is moving from R&D to something players will actually touch, building on its NPC experiments from earlier this year. His phrasing: the team has advanced from prototyping to 'player reality' and plans to share more before the end of the year.

The NPC experiment that got... odd

Back in March 2024, Ubisoft showed off a generative AI NPC prototype — basically a chatbot wearing a character model — but with the pitch that writers still steer the character and the tech reacts in-role without going off-book. The demo was intriguing and also kind of bizarre. Ubisoft talked about giving each character a 'soul,' then had to rework one NPC after it started acting too 'flirtatious and seductive.' The goal, they said, was to keep the model locked to the writer’s intent.

'The model’s task becomes: I must impersonate this character. It is really important to us that it behaves like the character Virginie created. So, while we’re talking to it, we ask ourselves: Is this Lisa? Would Lisa say this? And if the answer is no, we need to go back and find out what happened within the model to make it stray from the vision.'

At the time, that Project NEO NPC tech was still early. Now Guillemot says it has crossed into something players will actually encounter, with a bigger reveal promised before December 31.

How far Ubisoft is taking AI internally

Guillemot said teams across every Ubisoft studio and office are embracing the tech and probing new uses in programming, art, and overall game quality. That puts Ubisoft in the same broad camp as EA when it comes to company-wide AI adoption — though the degree and depth of usage remain fuzzy from the outside.

The broader AI backlash is already here

While Ubisoft pushes forward, other studios are catching heat for obvious AI usage. Arc Raiders has been dragged for using AI voices — one of the first high-profile cases of a big live game leaning on AI in a very visible way. Embark Studios’ CCO and co-founder Stefan Strandberg defended the approach by drawing a line around it, saying:

'We don’t use generative AI in other domains across the game.'

Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 has also been dinged for using gen AI, but in more contained ways. And just to add gasoline, a former Square Enix exec recently claimed that 'Gen Z loves AI slop,' suggesting Arc Raiders is merely the early tip of a larger wave.

• Mar 2024: Ubisoft demos its AI-driven NPC concept (Project NEO NPC), promises writer control and reactive conversations — but the behaviors get weird enough that one character has to be dialed back.
• Now: Earnings call is delayed without explanation; Guillemot says the NPC tech has moved from prototypes to something players will see soon; Tencent’s $1.3B into Vantage Studios is said to be imminent.
• Before Dec 31: Ubisoft expects to share more concrete details on the player-facing rollout.

Where this likely goes

If Ubisoft really believes this is as big as the 2D-to-3D leap, the next reveal needs to be more than a clever chatbot in a trench coat. The company is clearly all-in, the timeline is short, and the market is already touchy about AI. Deliver something that feels authored, not automated, and players might be onboard. Miss that mark, and the blowback writes itself.