Ubisoft announces big structural changes: a new subsidiary with a €1.16 billion Tencent investment

Ubisoft has been struggling a lot these past years, with 2024 being a particularly low point with the poor sales of Star Wars: Outlaws and the backlash and delay of Assassin's Creed Shadows. Thankfully, after months at the brink of collapse, Ubisoft has announced a new business model that will help them survive, receive a money injection from Tencent while maintaining ownership of their core franchises... although things will look different.

Announced in an investors call, Ubisoft has confirmed that they will create a new subsidiary, which will become the home of three of their biggest franchises (and only those franchises): Assassin's Creed, Far Cry, and Rainbow Six Siege. The subsidiary will have their headquarters in Paris, and will include the full studios in of Ubisoft Montreal, Quebec, Sherbrooke, Saguenay, Barcelona, and Sofia, as well as the franchise's back catalogue. And this new company (which does not currently have a known name or board of directors) will have a 25% stake from Chinese conglomerate Tencent, worth €1.16 billion (£966 million).

This new entity will remain exclusively controlled and consolidated by Ubisoft. So... why make this change? Ubisoft says that, by creating a new subsidiary controlling their three biggest brands and the studios making them, it will "spearhead development" and will "drive further increases in quality of narrative solo experiences, expand multiplayer offerings with increased frequency of content release, introduce free-to-play touchpoints and integrate more social features." CEO Yves Guillemot adds that it will have an autonomous leadership team "focused on transforming these three brands into unique ecosystems".

They say this will help the overall company to be more "agile", a word CEOs love to use. In reality, this feels more like a way to attract more investors, who may be more inclined to invest on this subsidiary and the three successful franchises, rather than on Ubisoft as a whole. It remains to be seen if this will impact the cadence and quality of game releases, but theoretically it shouldn't - as far as we know today, the teams will remain the same. And thankfully, all of this happen right after the launch of Assassin's Creed Shadows, which despite some absurd controversies, has been a success critically and commercially.