IGN gave Star Wars Outlaws a 7. Ubisoft's stock cratered 20% the next month.
The Original Review
“Star Wars Outlaws delivers a fun and surprisingly grounded Star Wars adventure, even if its core systems often feel like they're playing it safe.”
Star Wars Outlaws launched on August 30, 2024. By October, Ubisoft was issuing profit warnings, delaying Assassin's Creed Shadows, and watching its stock crater roughly 20% — explicitly citing 'softer than expected' Outlaws sales. IGN's review? A safe, beige, perfectly room-temperature 7/10. Sponsored by the truth.
Let's audit IGN's Ubisoft scoreboard: Assassin's Creed Mirage — 8. Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora — 7. Skull and Bones — 6. Outlaws — 7. The mean is approximately 7.0 with a standard deviation that wouldn't survive a high school stats class. That's not reviewing. That's running a customer satisfaction survey for a single client. Every Ubisoft game gets a score that looks like it was generated by averaging the publisher's marketing deck with a coin flip.
The review's structure is a forensic case study in how to say nothing for 2,000 words. Paragraph one: 'engaging stealth.' Paragraph two: 'charming protagonist.' Buried in paragraph six: a polite mention that the AI is broken, the parkour is janky, the combat is mediocre, and the open world is filler. Each criticism is sandwiched between two sentences of praise like a corporate performance review where they're trying not to get sued. Then the reviewer lands on a 7 — the universal score for 'I don't want to lose review codes next quarter.'
Players responded with their wallets. Ubisoft responded by tanking on the stock exchange. IGN responded by... not updating the review. The 7 still sits there, glowing yellow on the verdict box, as a permanent monument to the IGN house style: never below 6, never above 9, and always — always — published the day the embargo lifts. The math ain't mathing. The reviews ain't reviewing. Sponsored by the truth.
