There have been few positive headlines surrounding Ubisoft this past week.

The publisher announced Wednesday that the latest installment in the Assassin’s Creed franchise was getting pushed back from Nov 12 to Feb 14, shortly thereafter announcing that their most recent AAA game, Star Wars Outlaws, did not meet their sales expectations. Roughly a week prior, an investment firm with a stake in Ubisoft sent an open letter lambasting them for opting for quantity over quality in game releases. This, of course, was before Ubisoft announced they would be pulling out of the Tokyo Game Show.

Now, Ubisoft’s board of trustees has launched an investigation into the company’s woes as of late. The company’s stock price has dropped just over 47% in the past month, and the board may be struggling to appease investors.

Ubisoft founder and CEO Yves Guillemot has been at the helm since it’s inception, guiding the company to its best decisions (such as securing the video game rights to Tom Clancy’s works) and its worst (launching a subscription service exclusively for Ubisoft games, for example). It is unclear how much he is to blame for the company’s creative direction, but AJ Investments openly called for his head in their open letter, expressing a lack of confidence in his leadership.

Ironically, what the public sees as a symptom of Ubisoft’s ills may end up being what keeps them afloat. Ubisoft desperately needs a hit game to stabilize their financial situation, and clearly the Assassin’s Creed Shadows development team did not think their game in its current state would be the lifeline the publisher needed. A delay causes plenty of short-term financial issues and is bad for optics, but extra time for development gives Assassin’s Creed Shadows a better chance at success. As Scott Wozniak pointed out in his video To Delay A Game, if a developer needs to even consider a delay, the game likely needs one. Pushing Assassin’s Creed Shadows‘ release date back three months is not what the fans wanted to see, but it may have been the right move.