Ubisoft has just announced that Tencent, a Chinese multinational technology conglomerate, now owns a 25% stake in several of their IPs including Assassin's Creed, Far Cry, and Rainbow Six.
This news comes from an official statement from Ubisoft (thank you to PC Gamer’s Andy Chalk for the source), which details the €1.16 billion (roughly £964,946,000) investment.
“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," stated Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot.
"We are focused on building strong game ecosystems designed to become evergreen, growing high-performing brands and creating new IPs powered by cutting-edge and emerging technologies.”
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The “subsidiary team” formed in the wake of the deal will be comprised of both Ubisoft and Tencent board members, but it sounds like Ubisoft is still very much leading things moving forward.
As stated in PC Gamer's article, Ubisoft's CFO Frederick Duguet revealed in a conference call that this new board "will be controlled by Ubisoft, so Ubisoft will continue controlling and consolidating this entity."
In short, this basically means that Tencent has a pretty big say in things moving forward. They don’t outright own Ubisoft or any of their intellectual properties, but that doesn’t mean that it won’t change in the future.
Owning a 25% stake in something is a bigger deal than it might sound, because Tencent only need another 25% stake in this subsidiary to have a majority vote.
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This news follows the financial disaster that was Ubisoft’s 2024 earnings report, due in part to underperforming titles such as Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora, Skull and Bones, and XDefiant.
No word yet on what the new subsidiary’s plans are moving forward, but expect to hear something new out of this Ubisoft/Tencent partnership in the next couple of months.
Topics: Assassins Creed, Assassin's Creed Shadows, Ubisoft, Far Cry, Rainbow Six Siege