Daily Briefing: Wednesday 8th September

Activision branding returns to Call of Duty marketing

Activision's logo has been conspicuously absent from previous pieces of media surrounding the upcoming Call of Duty: Vanguard as the company attempted to slip away into the background in the wake of the devastating sexual harassment lawsuit. The plan was presumably to distance themselves from their flagship franchise in the hope that people would forget it has anything to do with them. At any rate, this restraint (?) only lasted about a month, because the latest Vanguard trailer once again proudly displays the Activision logo.

• It's an odd situation and you have to wonder how effective any of it really was. Activision couldn't even be open about what was clearly a cynical attempt to hide from ongoing scrutiny, instead repeatedly asserting that the decision to remove their own logo from their biggest annual release was a "creative choice that reflects how Vanguard represents the next major instalment in the franchise." What?

Ubisoft name new chief creative officer

The controversial post of chief creative officer has been vacant since last year when Serge Hascoët departed the company following numerous reports of discrimination and sexual harassment at Ubisoft. Hascoët was reportedly a lynchpin in Ubisoft's deeply toxic corporate culture, and his departure was part of a promised overhaul designed to boost diversity and representation at the publisher. However, after a year of thinking really hard, the best Ubisoft have come up with is replacing one white French man with another.

• Igor Manceau joined Ubisoft way back in 1998 as part of their business marketing team, and has been at Ubisoft's Annecy office since 2014 where he served first as creative director on Steep and then on Riders Republic. Announcing the appointment, embattled Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot said that Manceau "is one of the most experienced, innovative, and well-respected creative directors at Ubisoft and in the video game industry at large." Guillemot went on to credit his "deep understanding of players' motivations", his "strong intuition for reaching new markets", and his "exemplary leadership style." Surely, with the amount of time he's been there, Manceau is also a part of the Ubisoft old boys' club that has proven so problematic?

New footage of PES successor eFootball isn't going over so well

Konami really haven't gotten off to the best start with the eFootball series, have they? It was always going to be a tall order to rebrand Pro Evolution Soccer, one of their premier franchises and one of the biggest premium sports series in gaming, into a F2P title with a liveservice model with piecemeal content additions and expect the same appeal. There's a, shall we say, tentative sort of curiosity the community regarding this new approach, but a newly published chunk of gameplay footage is making it pretty difficult to be excited.

• The 11-minute video published to China-based YouTube channel Great Game shows off some very dodgy collision animations and ball physics, and just generally doesn't look like the bold leap forward necessary for a series trying to reinvent itself. Granted, it's not entirely clear whether the footage was ever intended to be published as it's just a camera pointed at a screen. We also can't be certain of just how old the build is but, with eFootball seemingly determined to launch at the end of the month with only a handful of modes, things may not be looking so hot for Konami.