Expedition 33 Director BLAMES Ubisoft for Killing His Passion!

Ubisoft Let a Star Walk Out the Door – Now He’s Made 2025’s Game of the Year

Credit to the BBC for the reporting and quotes from Guillaume Broche.

In an industry flooded with extreme bloated budgets and soulless reboot after heartless rerelease, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 bursts onto the scene like a breath of fresh air. Developed by a hungry and wildly talented team of just 33 developers over at Sandfall Interactive, the game's taken 2025 by storm seemingly out of nowhere—earning rave reviews, topping sales charts, and even gaining the attention of France’s president. But what makes this story even more crazy is its origin - get ready for this one: It was born out of boredom of being at Ubisoft... and built on the kind of raw passion that AAA publishers have long since lost for the better part of the last decade or longer.

Guillaume Broche | Image Credit: Reallusion Magazine

Director Guillaume Broche told the BBC that ...he was simply “bored in [his] job and wanting to do something different.” So, during the pandemic in 2020, he decided to chase a wild dream—creating a game inspired by his childhood love of Final Fantasy. He began cold-messaging everyone from voice actors to even collaborators being found on Reddit and other internet forums, relying on his instinct and shared creative energy more than résumés and corporate pipelines. Amazing what can happen when you drop the "DEI" in hiring decisions...

Jennifer Svedberg-Yen | Photo Credit: BBC

One of his first recruits, Jennifer Svedberg-Yen, originally auditioned for a free demo as a voice actor... and instead ended up as the game’s lead writer. Composer Lorien Testard was discovered on SoundCloud, and he was someone who never worked in the games industry before. “I call this the Guillaume effect,” Jennifer told the BBC. “He’s very good at finding really cool people.” Guillaume, ever humble, chalks it up to “massive luck,” but there’s no denying his eye for talent—and leadership that inspired his small team of 33 people to outperform studios over 100 times their size. Just incredible when you really think about it...

And let’s talk about that performance. Expedition 33 is, without exaggeration, my Game of the Year for 2025. Honestly the more I play it, the more it separates from the rest of the competition. It’s an unforgettable turn-based RPG drenched in 19th-century French aesthetics, blending tight storytelling, stunning visuals, and incredibly beautiful soundtrack. A soundtrack so great that I find myself playing it in my car while I drop my kids off at basketball and gymnastics. Its that good.

Its core premise—a world where people vanish once their age number is painted away by a supernatural entity—feels both mythic and uniquely grounded. It’s original enough and to be at a point where I would say that it's rare for a game to feel this handcrafted and yet... so technically refined.

Pirat_Nation on X stated that:

"Expedition 33 already outgrossed Assassins Creed Shadows' total 6-week Steam revenue in its second weekend, despite costing $20 less"

Which brings me to Ubisoft. How does a company with nearly 20,000 employees, billion-dollar budgets, and decades of institutional knowledge let someone like Guillaume Broche slip through the cracks? The answer is surprisingly simple: Ubisoft no longer recognizes or respects raw creative vision. One could argue they haven't for a while now. They bury that all important characteristic under layers of their own bureaucracy, live-service mandates, and most notably, DEI checklists. Guillaume wasn’t asking for the moon- no- not even close to that... just a chance to make a game with heart. Instead of empowering him, Ubisoft made him... bored.

Ubisoft has got to be kicking themselves. Seriously. They had this level of talent in-house and let it walk away to build a masterpiece from scratch. And that—more than any financial loss or PR scandal—should absolutely terrify them. Because Expedition 33 isn’t just a hit; it’s a legitimate GOTY contender. A reminder that real creativity doesn’t need 800+ people or more working on a game and a bloated trailer budget. No. It needs vision, trust, and a willingness to break from the mold.

In Guillaume’s own words:

“We have, I think, an amazing team mostly of junior people but they are so incredibly invested in the project and talented. Somehow it worked, which still makes no sense to me after all these years.”

But ironically, it makes perfect sense to anyone who actually games. Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 worked because it was built on passion, not pipelines.

Ubisoft, take notes—if it’s not already too late. But I think we all know better at this point...

~Smash