Ubisoft is seemingly looking for financial backers in a new business entity, which will make use of some of its biggest IPs like Assassin’s Creed and others. This information comes from a Bloomberg report, written from details from sources familiar with the situation.
Bloomberg claims that the French gaming giant is apparently looking for bids for this new venture to be made by as soon as the end of the month. These bids would be for a minority stake, and one of the parties reportedly at the table for this whole affair is Tencent. Tencent, which already has a 9.99% ownership in Ubisoft and has been at the centre of prior reports regarding Ubisoft’s future.
Bloomberg’s Dong Cao, Vinicy Chan, and Benoit Berthelot write that Ubisoft may be seeking a valuation of this new IP offshoot business that is “higher than the size of the main company’s” according to their sources, though they note that these matters are still being considered and that no final decision has been made.
Bloomberg reached out for comment from Ubisoft, and was in turn sent the company’s quarterly earnings, and a quote within stating, “review of various transformational strategic and capitalistic options is ongoing to help extract the best value from Ubisoft’s assets and franchises for all stakeholders”. Tencent, which Bloomberg also reached out to, declined to comment entirely.
If accurate – this is Bloomberg we’re talking about, which has a great track record, especially on this topic – it’s a bold move from Ubisoft. Taking all its golden geese and placing them in a new IP house could be interpreted as the company skimming the fat off its pot of various gaming releases, and transferring all the good bits to a seperate, more appealing pot for companies to swoon over.
The benefit too is that, by doing so, you’d be adding a degree of seperation between all the good Ubisoft IPs, and some of the nastier events that plague it’s past. It was only earlier this month when three former Ubisoft executives stood trial following accusations of psychologically and sexually harassing employees. That trail has been adjourned to June. A new entity could very well seperate the valuable IP from this kind of stuff, making things more appealing to investors.
One wonders what impact Assassin’s Creed: Shadows will have on these business dealings. A game that, it’s safe to say, will impact the newfound success or continued spiraling collapse of Ubisoft depending on its reception both critically and commercially. With Assassins’ Creed reportedly one of the IPs included in this new venture, it’s potentially more important than ever that this game does well.
With Assassin’s Creed Shadows launching on March 20, we’ve not got long to find out how it does, and how it’ll impact Ubisoft as a whole later this year.