Ubisoft has joined the Open Gaming Alliance as a corporate member in order to better understand PC gamers.Ubisoft doesn’t have the best reputation when it comes to its PC releases, but the publisher made a move today that may help it improve that in the future.

        The company revealed today that it is the latest corporate member to join the Open Gaming Alliance. The OGA is a nonprofit that helps its members better understand the industry and its consumers, and now Ubisoft will get the benefits of that. While the OGA does more than PC gaming, Ubisoft highlighted how this partnership will help it better understand how to serve that particular segment.

        "PC gamers are important to Ubisoft, and we're committed to better understanding and addressing their needs and to continually improving our relationship with them," said the consumer and marketing knowledge director at Ubisoft, Sandrine Caloiaro. "By joining the OGA, we're able to glean gamer insights from their research, learn from best practices in our industry and contribute to the group's upcoming initiatives.

        "Open Gaming Alliance's director, Wanda Meloni, added the following:

         "Whether Assassin's Creed Syndicate, Rainbow 6 Siege or one of the many other big games in its portfolio, Ubisoft brings quality entertainment experiences to gamers. It's a thought-leader that spans every genre, platform and emerging technology within the industry. Joining the OGA demonstrates Ubisoft's determination to reaching even more players and to partnering with our other members to better our industry.

        "Open Gaming Alliance is 'an open forum where companies can cooperate to develop and promote solutions that drive the PC gaming industry forward'.

        Ubisoft coming out and explicitly stating that it is interested in mending its relationship with PC gamers comes after a number of high-profile failures in the space. The company was one of the first innovators of the despised always-on digital-rights management for its PC games. In May 2010, the publisher’s DRM servers went offline and prevent thousands of gamers from accessing their rightfully purchases software. In November 2011, Ubisoft producer Stanisals Mettra pointed to PC piracy as a reason the company wouldn’t release a PC version of I Am Alive. These moments were also often punctuated by less-than-ideal releases of PC ports for games like Assassin’s Creed 4: Black Flag, Dust, and Splinter Cell: Double Agent. Ubisoft releases on Windows, over the last few years, have often suffered from bugs, a dearth of customization options, and terrible optimization.

         These days, gamers who prefer the personal computer know what to expect from Ubisoft, and it’s going to take a concerted, unwavering effort from the publisher to undo a lot of that. We’ll see if its membership in the OGA will expedite that process.

        This can almost certainly be read as a tacit admission by Ubisoft that it hasn’t been fully understanding the PC gamer audience and what that audience wants and expects from Ubisoft games. Over the past couple of years the French publisher has experienced a remarkable fall from grace, with a number of high-profile games like Watch Dogs and Assassin’s Creed Unity failing to impress PC gamers. Optimisation has been a constant issue, as have game-breaking bugs and enforced use of its Uplay gaming client. Being a Ubi fan ain't easy, basically.

        It’s nice to see Ubisoft have at least taken this on board and are working towards sorting things out, but “learning from the best practices in the industry” only takes a glance over at more highly thought of publishers like Paradox and CD Projekt RED. Talk is cheap and it’s the end product that will let us know whether Ubi has learnt any lessons.