Ubisoft and Tencent Talks Lead To Speculation Of Going Private

The Ubisoft saga has taken another turn, entering the spooky season with news that the company might be going private. According to a new report, Chinese tech giant Tencent is aiming to run the show.

A Bloomberg report has revealed that Tencent Holdings Ltd. is in talks with Guillemot Brothers Ltd., owners of Ubisoft, with negotiations focused on stabilizing the company.

Ubisoft has had a turbulent year following lukewarm releases of big titles like Star Wars Outlaws. The company was also the target of a shareholder coup attempt by AJ Investments, and its shares dipped 40% to a historic low.

Tencent is not new to Ubisoft. In 2022, the Chinese company bought 49.9% of the shares of the Guillemot Brothers Ltd. holding company. The last available financial report places the company’s holdings at 9.2% of net voting rights, compared to 20.5% held by the Guillemot brothers.

The official reaction from the Chinese side is not known, as Tencent staff have a week off from October 1 to celebrate the National Day of the People’s Republic of China.

The market in France has reacted positively, with a record gain of 33% on Friday, after the news broke. The Guillemot family has refused to comment thus far.

Ubisoft’s Road to Chaos

The French studio started the year with high hopes, banking on the highly-anticipated release of Star Wars Outlaws and Assassin’s Creed Shadows, but things began unraveling over the summer.

The first sign of trouble came when arena shooter XDefiant began to flatline despite a successful launch in May.

In August, Star Wars: Outlaws received a double whammy of lukewarm reviews and sales well below expectations.

Investors began to panic as soon as the early numbers were out, driving stock to a ten-year low and triggering a Slovakian hedge fund to call for the Guillemot family to sell the company.

Until today, the last major update in the Ubisoft saga was the last-minute postponement of Assassin’s Creed Shadows.

The game was set for a November release, with a playable at the Tokyo Game Show and press previews on the verge of going out. Ubisoft mysteriously pulled out of both initiatives before announcing the game was pushed to 2025.

Ubisoft has not had an unequivocally good year since before the pandemic, and it seems years of crunch and uninspired releases have caught up with the French gaming giant.