It’s no secret that Ubisoft is facing quite a few troubles these days. The French publisher’s stock value has plummeted around 54% this year alone on the Paris stock market, and the once major company is now only said to be worth around €1.4 billion, something the struggles of Star Wars Outlaws and the delay and constant fan backlash of Assassin’s Creed Shadows is clearly not helping with.
We’ve seen a report in the past that Ubisoft has started an internal audit to see how it can right the ship and get the company back on track, and now a new report from Bloomberg has come out and claimed that mega Chinese publisher Tencent (who currently owns around 9.2% of Ubisoft) and the Guillemot family (which owns another 20.5%) could be looking to team up, buy out the other investors, and to take Ubisoft private.
Nothing official has been announced on this matter, and the report does note that Tencent and the Guillemots could be looking at other alternatives too, but it’s also mentioned that “some minority shareholders including AJ Investments have been pushing for either a take-private or a sale of Ubisoft to a strategic investor amid the stock price plunge.”
This wouldn’t be the first time that Ubisoft was on the auction block in the past few years, as in 2022 the company was the subject of several bids, all before Tencent stepped in and acquired a bunch of the Guillemot family’s holding company and locked down (albeit temporarily) the future of the company. This time however, does seem like a much more likely buyout/sale as the stock value is significantly lower and the company is in much deeper and more dangerous waters.