Ubisoft Spins Out Subsidiary With a Billion-Dollar Investment From Tencent

Ubisoft is launching a new subsidiary focused on Assassin's Creed, Far Cry, and Rainbow Six, backed by a 1.16 billion-euro investment from Tencent. "The as-yet-unnamed subsidiary will fold in the teams working on those three series, including Ubisoft studios in Montreal, Quebec, Sherbrooke, Saguenay, Barcelona and Sofia," reports Engadget. From the report: This new business will receive an investment of 1.16 billion-euro (roughly $1.25 billion) from its longstanding partner Tencent, granting the conglomerate a minority ownership stake. Following the transaction, Ubisoft will narrow focus to its other franchises, such as The Division and Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon. [...] There is some extra good news in the announcement. The description of the new subsidiary does specify that "it will drive further increases in quality of narrative solo experiences." So while we can expect to also see multiplayer and free-to-play offerings from the Ubisoft umbrella, they aren't giving up on single-player games. "Today Ubisoft is opening a new chapter in its history," CEO and Co-Founder Yves Guillemot said. "As we accelerate the company's transformation, this is a foundational step in changing Ubisoft's operating model that will enable us to be both agile and ambitious."

Silver Lining

[Anonymouse 2]

Maybe Tencent will help reverse Ubisoft's hamfisting of "the message" to gamers and get back to making games that aren't thinly veiled preachy lectures

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you being needlessly contrarian or just stupid? The most recent flop from Ubisoft is Assassin's Creed in feudal Japan. You'd think, cool, there's a butt-ton of history and intrigue there and that place was full of ninjas and samurai, it would be totally awesome to play a Japanese assassin. Except it's not a Japanese assassin who's the main guy in the story, it's some black dude named Yasuke who was basically the pet of Nobunaga for a couple years, and the game itself is profoundly offensive, like includ

Re:

[Morromist]

Uh... what is the basis for saying "The most recent flop from Ubisoft is Assassin's Creed in feudal Japan"? From what I'm reading it is actually one of Ubisoft's very
few recent success stories.

https://variety.com/2025/gamin... [variety.com]

You know what amuses me about you folks who constantly cry about DEI like little babies? Its almost always totally irrevant to whatever you're talking about. Ubisoft's poor game sales were never from DEI but from boring, bad games that copied the same gameplay over and over. But gettin

Re:Silver Lining

[derplord]

Variety as your source, really?

That being said, players != sales. If a company says they have 5 million PLAYERS and not 5 million SALES, you know they're hiding the real numbers because they're bad.

Re:

[Entrope]

every mainline game before has been about white Europeans.

Let me introduce you to the main character of a game called Assassin's Creed, Altair Ibn-La'ahad. As his name suggests, he was not a "white European". We can continue with Assassin's Creed 3, about the half-Mohawk Ratonhnhake:ton. Maybe AC: Origins, which has an Egyptian founder of the assassin brotherhood in the close of the BCE era? Or AC: Mirage and its return to an Arab main character?

Embarrassing indeed.

Re:

[dnaumov]

Imagine being so out of touch with reality, you still try to paint AC: Shadow as some sort of failure. After all the reviews and released player numbers are out. This is embarrassing as fuck :D

Re:

[ffkom]

One of the messages from the Ubisoft management was that the gamers should get used to not owning their games [steamcommunity.com]. And apparently they did, pretty fast. And now Ubisoft gets used to also not own their games. It was strange to see a CEO basically telling his customer base to fuck off, but ok, so shall be it.

Re:

[ffkom]

But here's a question: how many physical copies of games have you bought recently?

I bought AC Unity, AC Origins, AC Odyssey, AC Valhalla, Far Cry 5, Far Cry 6 all on physical media, to only name the Ubisoft games I bought. I do not buy "online" licenses, never have, never will. If there is no physical copy available that also runs when there is no Internet connection, then I am out, and rather pursue other hobbies.

Game studios seem to forget that potential buyers have a lot of other options to spend their money, and when they deliberately piss off those potential buyers, regardless of w

Re:

[organgtool]

I think this is a bit of a misuse of the right-wing joke about "the message", but I agree with the overall sentiment. While there's nothing wrong with games that feature black people as main characters, I don't think everyone who is scratching his or her head about a black person as one of the main characters in a game that takes place in feudal Japan is a racist.

The heart of the issue is that video games are a form of fantasy. People play them because they want to spend some time being immersed in a d

Re:

[organgtool]

Seriously, I want you to tell me. Given what you just said, how is it possible to have a black character in any game and not be accused of "injecting politics" by following your same logic?

I already gave you an example: for a game that takes place in different periods of distant history, such as Assassin's Creed, they could make a game that takes place almost anywhere in Africa. For a game that takes place in modern times, it could take place anywhere except Iceland or Minnesota (relax, I'm joking). Ther

Re:

[DrMrLordX]

Or maybe Tencent will lose all their money. Seems like a win to me!

Beyond the fancy corpo-wording...

[ffkom]

... this just means Ubisoft needs to sell its most valuable franchises (in slices) to raise some money to survive at all, while preparing for big layoffs in the large worthless part of the company that is not attracting investor money (like the new franchise-owning "subsidiary" does).

And it tells us that "AC Shadows" is not selling as great as some want to make us believe, but the truth about that will remain a closely guarded secret up until the next shareholder conference.

Re:

[drinkypoo]

They haven't sold them yet, if Tencent is taking a minority stake, but this is definitely the first step in that direction.

A lot of how The West has remained on top is media dominance. Video games are now much of that media. Every single thing about the messaging of the Assassins Creed series is problematic for right wing leaders. Far Cry and Rainbow Six aren't exactly friendly to fascism in their rhetoric, either.

Salvaging from a wreck

[khchung]

Only time will tell if what they salvaged is worth saving.

I would bet this is a waste of money. It would be better to just buy the IP of the games and develop them entirely within China.

In the past two years, you can tell if a game was developed in Asia just by looking at the main character of the game.

Re:

[ffkom]

I mean the graphics engine of AC Shadows does look good, and so do the graphics assets. So essentially they would need to replace the game mechanics designers and story writers, plus of course the C-level, who proactively tried to alienate the customer base.

Rainbow Six

[VorpalRodent]

Can I please just have another R6 game in the style of the originals? Planning, followed by execution. I don't want multiplayer. I just want to make my own waypoints.