Ubisoft Continues To Implode As Founding Guillemot Brothers Reportedly Teaming With Chinese Tencent To Take ‘Assassin’s Creed Shadow’ Developer Private
Amidst their ongoing plummet into financial and reputational ruin, Ubisoft’s founders, the Guillemot brothers, are reportedly teaming up with Chinese multimedia conglomerate Tencent to buy out the embattled Assassin’s Creed Shadows developer and take it private.
Word of this supposed development was first raised on October 4th courtesy of Bloomberg‘s Vinicy Chan, Dong Cao, and Benoit Berthelot.
Per information allegedly provided to them by “people familiar with the matter”, in light of Ubisoft’s losing of more than half its market value across the past year, “[Tencent] and Guillemot Brothers Ltd. [a limited corporation unsurprisingly owned by the eponymous siblings] have been speaking with advisers to help explore ways to stabilize Ubisoft and bolster its value”.
“One of the possibilities being discussed would involve teaming up to take the company private,” the trio added, before clarifying that this move was not yet a done deal, as “Tencent and the Guillemot family are also considering other alternatives.”
Such a partnership would not be unprecedented nor unsurprising, as not only does Tencent already own a little under 10% of Ubisoft’s total stock, but they also own 49.9% of Guillemot Brothers Ltd. itself, having bought this stake in a 2022 deal whose terms allowed for the Guillemot Brothers themselves both the freedom to work and communicate with whomever they want, as well as the right of first refusal should the Chinese company ever choose to sell their stake in the company (which the deal states they legally cannot do until, at the earliest, 2027).
Notably, the Guillemot brothers’ consideration of taking Ubisoft private comes amidst a long string of PR and financial misses for their video game studio, including current CEO Yves Guillemot’s touting of Skulls & Bones as a ‘Quadruple-A’ title despite the fact that its eleven year dev time couldn’t stop it from releasing as a lackluster mess, the immensely disappointing critical and commercial performance of Star Wars Outlaws, and of course, the entire situation surrounding the upcoming Assassin’s Creed Shadows.
To this end, it also comes after these disasters, as well as many more including their recent addiction to microtransactions and overall stagnation as a studio, prompted one of Ubisoft’s minority investors, AJ Investments and Partners, to call for the company to be taken private.
“We believe that Ubisoft at current valuation is deeply undervalued and should be worth between 40-45 EUR per share,” wrote AJ Investments founder Juraj Krupa, whose firm holds a less-than-1% stake in the company, in his plea. “The main reason why the valuation is so low compared to the peers is that Ubisoft at current state is mismanaged and shareholders are hostages of Guillemot family members and Tencent who take advantage of them. Management is focused on pleasing investors with beating quarterly results and not focusing on long-term strategy to provide exceptional experience for the gamers.”
“Our company has extensive knowledge about the gaming industry and we were longterm shareholder in Activision Blizzard and we started our Ubisoft position couple weeks ago and still adding to it,” he added. “We cannot understand the decision-making process of current management that is focused on releasing multiple average games per year that are harming Ubisoft’s reputation among gamers community instead of focusing to provide hit games within its exceptional franchise portfolio.”
While news of Ubisoft’s being taken private may come as welcome news to the many players who are tired of their recent antics, one industry insider has suggested that, sadly, it may also come with a very real personnel cost.
In response to his own report on this development, Insider-Gaming’s Tom Henderson was met by the observation from popular video game YouTuber JorRaptor that “This would mean a ton of layoffs probably…but something has to happen as this can’t go on for much longer.”
In turn, Henderson admitted, “Yeah. I wouldn’t be surprised to see a significant reduction of about 30-40%
As of writing, neither Tencent nor the Guillemot brothers have offered any official comment on Bloomberg’s report.
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