What you need to know
- Ubisoft is the game publisher behind franchises like Assassin's Creed and Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six.
- Ubisoft's share price has plummeted in recent months after the softer-than-expected launch of Star Wars Outlaws and the delay of Assassin's Creed Shadows to 2025.
- Per a new report, Chinese tech powerhouse Tencent is considering teaming up with the Guillemot family to acquire Ubisoft.
- The acquisition might include plans to take the company private, and comes after Tencent acquired a stake in the Guillemot family's holdings in 2023.
There could be another seismic acquisition shaking the gaming industry soon.
A new report from Bloomberg indicates Chinese tech conglomerate Tencent is considering teaming up with the Guillemot family and buying Ubisoft, the developer and publisher of franchises like Assassin's Creed and Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Siege. The move reportedly includes the possibility that the company would be taken private following the acquisition.
This news comes as Ubisoft faces increasing financial challenges in recent years. Massive Entertainment's Star Wars Outlaws received "softer" sales than the company expected, while upcoming action-adventure title Assassin's Creed Shadows has been delayed from November 2024 to February 2025.
Meanwhile, a number of other Ubisoft games have been repeatedly pushed back years past their expected launch dates. Ubisoft's shareholder price has fallen to its lowest point in a decade, while Tencent acquired a stake in the Guillemot family's holdings in 2023.
With over 19,000 employees and dozens of development studios around the world, Ubisoft is one of the largest gaming publishers in the world. Ubisoft currently holds the Cloud gaming rights for Activision Blizzard titles, after Microsoft sold the rights off in order to appease the CMA (the regulatory authority in the UK) and finalize its acquisition of Activision Blizzard King in October 2023.
Ubisoft is a huge part of gaming history
The Guillemot family founded Ubisoft back in 1986, with the company rising through the following via a series of strategic moves such as acquiring Red Storm Entertainment, a studio in Cary, North Carolina founded by author Tom Clancy.
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That growth continued with the launch of games like Assassin's Creed, a title that began life as a Prince of Persia game but went on to spawn Ubisoft's biggest and most successful franchise.
The prior mainline game in the series, the Viking RPG Assassin's Creed Valhalla, vastly exceeded expectations, reaching over 20 million players and over $1 billion in revenue by 2020.
Assassin's Creed Shadows is currently slated to launch on Feb. 14, 2025 across Xbox Series X|S, Windows PC, PlayStation 5, Mac, and Amazon Luna.
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