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Ubisoft's logos have tracked its shifts in strategy. It began in 1986 as a local video game distributor with a very 1980s mark. In 1995, the year Rayman arrived, it adopted a rainbow, signalling the move from distribution to creating mostly family games. In 2003, after acquiring Red Storm and building the Tom Clancy titles, the blue swirl appeared, marking a more mature, diversified approach, the company explained in its own retrospective.

On 31 May 2017, 14 years later, Ubisoft introduced its fourth refresh, a new swirl and a new font, Gematsu reported. The company said the change marked a new era, with more focus on live and digital games and a player-centric approach to building immersive worlds. Its worlds, it said, now lived as games, comics, films, TV shows, books and amusement park rides.

The new logo is minimalist, modern and monochromatic. GameSpot described it as no drastic redesign: the swirl stays largely intact, but the blue is gone, replaced by thick black or white lines. Ubisoft said the swirl and the O of the wordmark were deliberately drawn to recall hand-drawn shapes, representing enthusiasm, curiosity and the 'grain de folie', the touch of madness, Ubisoft is known for. It called the logo a window into its worlds, meant to take on the colours and textures of individual games.

It arrived just before E3, where the company planned to show a new Assassin's Creed, Far Cry 5 and The Crew 2. GameSpot's subhead summed up the reaction: meet the new swirl, same as the old swirl.

Polygon noted this was only the fourth logo since the company launched in 1986 with a hot pink design, and the first change since 2003, when the swirl arrived in three dimensional royal blue. Fans worried about the coloured, game themed boot animations, and the company replied that there would still be plenty. Eurogamer was blunter: it really was not that much different, and the stated reasons were that it suited the future and worked better on social media. A colourless swirl is a canvas rather than a logo, which is exactly the point for a publisher of many worlds.

That undersells it a little. Dropping the blue and giving the stroke a hand-made wobble makes the swirl friendlier and far more flexible over game art, which is exactly the job of a publisher's logo before a trailer. It is modest, but smart.