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According to the latest breaking news from Bloomberg, Chinese tech and gaming giant Tencent Holdings and the Guillemot family are in talks with French video game publisher Ubisoft over a potential buyout.
The two parties are considering various options and one of them includes a total buyout of Ubisoft after the French company lost more than half of its market value since the start of 2024.
According to the report, Tencent and Ubisoft have been speaking with advisors to help them find ways to stabilise the situation at Ubisoft and boost the company's stock price. One of the options that the two sides are also considering involves teaming up to take the company private, according to the source who provided Bloomberg with the info.
So what does this mean for the gaming industry and Ubisoft? First, it would probably be the most expensive buyout in the history of the gaming, eclipsing even the $69 billion fee that Microsoft paid for Activision Blizzard King recently.
Secondly, it does smell like a move to help the Guillemot family keep their business by taking it private as they probably have shareholders breathing down their neck every day, especially after the recent delay of Assassin's Creed Shadows and commercial and critical flop that was Star Wars Outlaws.
Ubisoft have been dancing on thin ice for many years with underwhelming video game releases and more serious matters like harassment accusations, which even led to the arrest of five Ubisoft executives.
In addition, the feedback from the developers working inside the company and players regarding Ubisoft's video games has seemingly fallen on deaf ears with some reports suggesting Ubisoft executives dismissed pleas to put the games back on Steam and didn't want to delay games to allow devs more time for optimisation.
Over the last two years, Ubisoft's stock dropped over 78 per cent, which certainly sounded a lot of alarms in the Guillemot HQ.
The cheap share price is probably another reason why Tencent got involved as this could be a steal for the Chinese company.
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