Ubisoft, the Assasin’s Creed developer, is reportedly being considered for acquisition by private equity firms with “preliminary takeover interests.”
According to Bloomberg’s anonymous sources, several companies including the biggest equity firms in the world, Blackstone Inc. and KKR & Co. are considering purchasing Ubisoft. The developer reportedly hasn’t entered into serious negotiations with these companies yet, and it’s currently uncertain if they will, or even if they will go for a takeover at all.
Sources also told Kotaku that Ubisoft has been audited in recent years in preparation for a potential sale. However, it’s worth mentioning that these audits are fairly common for companies looking to become more profitable.
It is unknown at this time how exactly a potential acquisition of Ubisoft would affect their games, but current and former employees also told Kotaku that the publisher is currently experiencing issues with its production, as seen with the delays of recent games like Rainbow Six Extraction.
This is made even worse by the dipping stock prices, which have fallen from $110 per share in July 2018 to $41 today, which will likely lead to Ubisoft being sold, according to the sources. Led by CEO Yves Guillemot, Ubisoft, fought and eventually won to prevent a takeover attempt by the French mass media company Vivendi in 2018. The Guillemot family still has the biggest stake in the company at 15 per cent.
In their latest earnings call, Guillemot said that Ubisoft was open to reviewing any offers that come in to buy the developer but neither confirmed nor denied that they had been approached by potential buyers. This has become a major strategy for titans in the gaming industry, like Playstation and Xbox recently.
Microsoft recently bought Activision Blizzard, the Overwatch developers, for $68.7 billion in January of this year. PlayStation bought Bungie in the same month for $3.6 billion. They made $168 billion and $2.1 billion in 2021, respectively. These companies aren’t showing any sign of slowing down.
