Ubisoft responds to claims that Watch Dogs visuals were downgraded

- Ubisoft denies claims that it has purposely degraded the quality of the visuals in the PC version of Watch Dogs. Earlier this week, a modder discovered rendering options hidden away in the code for the PC version of Watch Dogs, that allow for the game to be rendered in much higher resolution visuals than is possible with the default options. This has led some critics to question why the game has been downgraded in this way, and whether or not it was in aid of making sure the game does not look better on PC than on next-gen consoles. Now Ubisoft has posted a rebuttal to this claim, stating that these hidden options were not provided to PC players as they were not optimized properly. "We test and optimize our games for each platform on which they’re released, striving for the best possible quality," the statement says. "The PC version does indeed contain some old, unused render settings that were deactivated for a variety of reasons, including possible impacts on visual fidelity, stability, performance and overall gameplay quality." This new mod, says Ubisoft, may well enhance the visuals of the game, but can also have various negative effects, including performance issues and stability problems.