Fireworks in Watch Dogs 2, screencap via YouTuber Nate152. Watch his whole video to hear how noisy they were.
A temporary Independence Day celebration in Watch Dogs 2 was suspended early on July 4 because it was enraging too many people who still play Ubisoft’s late 2016 open-world game.
The fireworks had been added to the game as part of the 1.16 title update that also added a four-player party mode. They were set to erupt during the game’s night cycles from June 29 through July 10. On Twitter, they were described by gamers as “completely obnoxious,” “fucking annoying” and “too frequent, too long and too loud.” Someone else said they were scaring their dog.
Initially, Ubisoft defended the fireworks. Three days ago, in reply to a forum thread titled “Annoying Fireworks At night missions,” a Ubisoft community representative noted: “While you may find them loud in-game, they are really loud in real life too! The sound carries over the water and you can hear them all over the Bay!”
By yesterday, Ubisoft yielded. On Reddit, a company rep noted: “The people have spoken and we have carried out their will! There was an annoying bug that snuck into our Independence Day Event that made the sound effects from the fireworks noticeable from everywhere on the map. They have been turned off as to avoid any further noise complaints.”
When Tweeting the news, the official Watch Dogs 2 Twitter account cc’d the outlet Ars Technica, likely because of the publication’s Tuesday morning story headlined “Ubisoft wishes Watch Dogs 2 players a terrible Fourth of July.”
Of course, as fans of whatever pop song you hate can tell you that even the most cacophonous noise has its fans. Sure enough, a Watch Dogs 2 player on the game’s subreddit lamented the firework deletion. The Ubi rep replied: “We liked them too! But when you’re playing the game at night for hours and can’t escape the popping no matter where you are, that’s not a positive experience for the player. It’s not possible to rush a fix for this so we made a tough choice to remove them. The heart says no but the ear drums say yes.”
Comments
5 responses to “Ubisoft Removes Fourth Of July Fireworks From Watch Dogs 2 After ‘Noise Complaints’”
The mind boggles as to why Ubi put the fireworks in for a week and a half instead of just one day.
Probably because they put a lot of work into them, and didn’t want people to miss them. Of course, they could have just made them show up on one in-game day for each player …
The mind boggles that people invest time in Ubisoft games
Shit I’m real sad I missed that (have been playing Overwatch for the past week)
Also why can’t people just, you know, turn their TV down?
I’ve been playing for the last week and it is louder than any other noise in the game and lasted most of the in game night.