Assassin’s Creed Shadows release delayed to March as Ubisoft’s board consider a company sale

Ubisoft are delaying Assassin’s Creed Shadows again, but this time, not just out of concern about the quality of Assassin’s Creed Shadows. The French publisher are pushing back release of the new samurai-era open worlder from 14th February to 20th March 2025 while they look into “various transformational strategic and capitalistic options to extract the best value for stakeholders”, with news of a possible major “transaction” to follow.

Quite what this means is open to speculation, but it was recently rumoured that Ubi’s First Family the Guillemot brothers have been conspiring with Tencent to buy the company out, while minority shareholders displeased by the company’s falling share price have been clamouring for the board to “take Ubisoft private or allow it to sell to a strategic investor”. So this could be Big. Bigger than a single video game’s delay, anyway.

“Following the strategic and execution reviews initiated by the Executive Committee a few months ago, Ubisoft is taking decisive steps to reshape the Group in order to deliver best-in-class player experiences, enhance operational efficiency and maximize value creation,” reads a “strategic update” from Ubisoft, posted this afternoon.

“Ubisoft announced today that it has appointed leading advisors to review and pursue various transformational strategic and capitalistic options to extract the best value for stakeholders,” it continues. “This process will be overseen by the independent members of the Board of Directors. Ubisoft will inform the market in accordance with applicable regulations if and once a transaction materializes.”

Ubisoft have been somewhat up the creek financially for a while, losing almost half their share value in 2024, partly due to the “soft” performance of Star Wars Outlaws. As such they’ve been cutting back. In December, Ubisoft discontinued PvP shooter XDefiant and laid off around 277 people. According to today’s statement, shuttering XDefiant involved the closure of “three production studios in high-cost geographies” – as in, regions where wages are higher.

The company “will continue to drive significant cost reductions, together with a highly selective approach to investments”, the statement goes on. Ubisoft now expect to reduce their “fixed cost base” (in other words, costs that consist of more predictable, recurring business expenses, like employee salaries) by €200 million for the fiscal year 2025-2026, compared to 2022-2023 on an annualised basis.

And then there’s the delaying of Shadows, a moderately promising historical opus which appears to have far too much riding on it in the wake of Outlaws.

“Additionally, as part of the renewed focus on gameplay quality and engaging Day-1 experiences, it has been decided to provide an additional month of development to Assassin’s Creed Shadows,” Ubisoft write. “This additional time will allow the team to better incorporate the player feedback gathered over the past three months and help create the best conditions for launch by continuing to engage closely with the increasingly positive Assassin’s Creed community. The game is now scheduled for March 20.”

I do not have the insight to play soothsayer about Ubisoft’s fortunes here. I will end instead by pointing you towards this bracingly weary Alice0 (RPS in peace) article from 2022, in which CEO Yves Guillemot talks up Ubisoft’s independence while also stating that, of course, they’d happily sell the farm to anybody with a really, really large amount of money.