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How do you get your customers to give you a second chance after you’ve failed to live up to their expectations? That was the question Luc Duchaine, the brand manager for video game For Honor, had to answer.

The game, developed by Ubisoft Montreal, was released in mid-February 2017 to positive reviews. A fighting game in which players control knights, Vikings and samurais, it garnered interest from a large number of video game fans. But that initial reaction quickly soured.

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“We had enormous success when it came out,” Duchaine said. “Then we started to have some technical problems.”

Most of the problems weren’t with the game itself, but with the systems it used to connect players with each other online. There were long waits for matches to start, connections would drop, and a number of other problems started to push players away.

Four months after the game came out, the number of people playing it had dropped by 95 per cent, according to GitHyp, a website that tracks game-related statistics.