Reuters: Ubisoft and Tencent negotiated acquisition but failed to reach consensus, Guillemot family hopes to retain control

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Reuters: Ubisoft and Tencent negotiated acquisition but failed to reach consensus, Guillemot family hopes to retain control

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In recent years, Ubisoft has been deeply troubled by issues such as the performance of new games has collapsed, labor disputes have broken out and strikes have occurred, and the unreleased new AAA game “Assassin’s Creed: Shadowbringers” has been delayed. The company’s market value has continued to plummet. Foreign media Reuters reported that according to Ubisoft shareholder sources, the company is working with major companies. Shareholder Tencent is negotiating an acquisition agreement, but the two parties have yet to reach consensus on one condition.

The French Guillemot family Yves, Claude, Michel, Gérard and Christian co-founded Ubisoft in 1986. The five brothers are still directors of Ubisoft, with Yves Guillemot serving as CEO for 38 years.

With Ubisoft’s recent financial slump, news of the company selling to survive has been circulating in the market. Among them, Tencent, which spent 300 million euros to acquire a minority stake in 2022, is the second largest shareholder after the Guillemot family and is also the first choice for Ubisoft to sell.

Reuters reported that Ubisoft shareholders and Tencent entered the negotiation stage on the transaction, but because the Guillemot family wanted to retain control after the company was sold, and Tencent wanted to have more say in board-related matters, the two parties were unable to reach a consensus.

The Guillemot family founded the mobile game company Gameloft in 1999, and Michel Guillemot served as CEO for decades. The appeal was unsuccessful. Since then, Michel’s brother and Ubisoft CEO Yves has made it clear for several years that he is not interested in being acquired by any company.

It is undeniable that Ubisoft is currently in a difficult situation. After the delay of “Assassin’s Creed: Shadowbringers”, its multiplayer shooting “XDefiant” (XDefiant), which is aimed at “The Final Hour”, announced the termination of development and the closure of the studio only half a year after its launch. , it’s especially ugly because this happens less than three months after the executive producer insisted that the game would never be put away.

Ubisoft’s stock price has fallen from US$85 at the beginning of 2021 to hovering around US$13 now. The final outcome of the negotiations with Tencent is still uncertain, but pressure from shareholders continues to increase. If the Guillemot family does not take further action, Ubisoft’s brand will soon be It will be over.

Joost van Dreunen, a game industry researcher and assistant professor at New York University, predicts that in order to resist hostile mergers and acquisitions, Ubisoft will find financing partners to privatize the company within 2025, which will lead to the company’s split or reorganization. Its “Rainbow Six: Siege” and Well-known IPs such as “Assassin’s Creed” may be sold for cash.

Joost is not optimistic that the momentum and performance of “Assassin’s Creed: Shadowbringers” will be better than that of the rival PS5 “Yangho War Ghost”. The failure of Ubisoft’s recent works implies that everything is not only the performance of individual games, but also the fault at the organizational level. Deep issues.

The analysis also mentioned that the shutdown of “Bad Front” is not only the collapse of Ubisoft’s game launch, but also a symptom of the company’s conservative thinking. Senior management is still stuck in the stage of catering to passive players, but failed to realize the urgency of “rethinking the game publishing model” sex.

“In this era of player participation and community co-construction, Ubisoft’s development methods are still stuck in their own ways. Without fundamental changes in the way games are developed and maintained, they will further risk alienating investors and players.”

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