Ubisoft’s founding Guillemot family and shareholder Tencent are reportedly considering teaming up to take the company private following a number of high-profile video game flops and the collapse of its share price.
Bloomberg reports that both parties are speaking with advisers in a bid to stabilize Ubisoft after shares in the company fell 54% this year. The publication qualifies this by saying these exploratory talks may end up going nowhere, and a buyout is not the only option being discussed. Ubisoft declined to comment.
The Guillemot family, including Ubisoft boss Yves Guillemot, holds just over 20% of Ubisoft’s shares, with Tencent owning just over 9%. At the time of this article’s publication, shares in Ubisoft had rebounded a whopping 26.33% on the news.
Ubisoft has endured an awful year with disappointing returns from Call of Duty competitor XDefiant and, most recently, Star Wars Outlaws. It delayed Assassin’s Creed Shadows into 2025 following poor sales of Outlaws, and its staff have arranged a strike for later this month.
In its recent note to investors, Guillemot acknowledged that the company’s “second quarter fell short of expectations” and vowed to launch “a review aimed at further improving our execution.” He also addressed some of the cultural conversations happening around the company lately, which have intensified around Star Wars Outlaws and the upcoming Assassin’s Creed Shadows.
Meanwhile, Ubisoft has ditched Epic Games Store timed exclusivity for its PC games and gone back to day-one launches on Steam, a move clearly designed to boost flagging sales of its games.
Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at [email protected] or confidentially at [email protected].
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