A Bloomberg report says struggling writer Ubisoft is on the lookout for buyers for a brand new enterprise enterprise that can take management of a few of its most dear gaming properties, together with Murderer’s Creed. The report says Ubisoft has contacted potential buyers together with Tencent about buying a minority share within the new enterprise.
Nothing is finalized at this level, in keeping with the report, however sources informed the location Ubisoft has requested buyers to make preliminary bids by the tip of the month. Ubisoft might search the next valuation for the brand new entity than that of Ubisoft itself.
That is presumably the following step in a technique that was first reported in January: Bloomberg stated on the time that Ubisoft and Tencent have been taking a look at creating a brand new enterprise that will tackle a few of Ubisoft’s belongings, which might in flip allow Tencent to have a extra direct hand in how they’re managed. Tencent is Ubisoft’s second-largest shareholder however has restricted affect over the corporate, which continues to be kind of totally below the management of the founding Guillemot household—and the Guillemots need to hold it that approach.
Bother for them is, Ubisoft just isn’t doing nicely. The corporate’s struggles are nicely publicized, its share value is a fraction of what it was simply 5 years in the past, and its latest high-profile video games, most notably Star Wars: Outlaws and XDefiant, haven’t lived as much as expectations. Ubisoft hasn’t executed itself any favors on the PR entrance, both. The delisting of The Crew in 2024 was a significant self-inflicted wound, the Murderer’s Creed: Shadows pre-release interval has been marked by stumbles, and no, we nonetheless do not know the place The Sands of Time is.
Stories of a potential buyout of Ubisoft first surfaced in October 2024, and when Murderer’s Creed Shadows was delayed for a second time in January 2025 the corporate stated it was “taking decisive steps to reshape” its enterprise, and had “appointed main advisors to evaluation and pursue numerous transformational strategic and capitalistic choices to extract the very best worth for stakeholders.”
How that may take form is anybody’s guess nevertheless it appears clear that huge strikes are required: Simply weeks after that announcement, Ubisoft closed its Leamington studio and made layoffs on the Düsseldorf, Stockholm, and Ubisoft Reflections studios; all of that occurred little greater than a month after the shutdown of Ubisoft’s San Francisco and Osaka studios.
Ubisoft stated in its third-quarter monetary report in February that the evaluation of its “strategic and capitalistic choices” was ongoing, and referred again to that report in an announcement supplied to PC Gamer.
“As we talked about throughout our Q3 gross sales, the evaluation of assorted transformational strategic and capital-raising choices is ongoing,” a consultant stated. “The Board has established an ad-hoc unbiased Committee to supervise this formal and aggressive course of, in order to extract the very best worth from Ubisoft’s belongings and franchises for all stakeholders. Ubisoft will inform the market in accordance with relevant rules if and as soon as a transaction materializes.”
