Ubisoft has had a bad run as of late. Following allegations of widespread toxic mismanagement at the company which resulted in numerous high-ranking departures and firings, the once well-oiled Ubisoft machine has begun to break down. The publisher didn’t put out many games last year, and the few they did, like Rainbow Six Extraction, Roller Champions, and Mario + Rabbids Sparks of Hope, underperformed. Following on from this, Ubisoft today announced another raft of unannounced titles have been canceled and the troubled open-world pirate game Skull and Bones has been delayed yet again.
Amidst these troubles, there has been speculation Ubisoft is looking for a buyer, and according to prolific insider Jeff Grubb, that is indeed the case. According to Grubb, Ubisoft “did the rounds” proposing an acquisition/merger to various players in the tech and entertainment fields, but that they “mostly got laughed at.” Whether that was because suitors didn’t see the value in Ubisoft or management was simply asking too much for the company is unknown.
“Ubisoft definitely already did the rounds proposing acquisitions and mergers with other similar companies, and it mostly got laughed at. It’s just too unwieldy. Its strength was its distributed development structure, and now that is an albatross. I hope it tries to ride it out because I think it might hold onto more people than if it tried to “slim down” for an M&A. Either way, though, it seems grim. Making games is a rough business.”
Of course, take this with a major grain of salt. That said, it’s clear things aren’t going well for Ubisoft and Grubb’s comments about the company’s unwieldy distributed structure actually being a negative when it comes to a sale have a ring of truth. Ubisoft was built with a specific business model in mind – one focused on putting out a steady stream of open-world titles – but the business is changing. The days when you could pump out a AAA open-world game with the level of fidelity and polish people expect in two or three years are rapidly disappearing. Ubisoft’s business model is stuck in the past and it remains to be seen if they can adapt (or find somebody to take the whole mess off their hands).
Currently, the only major game Ubisoft has confirmed for 2023 is Assassin’s Creed Mirage. Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora and Skull and Bones are slated for fiscal year 2024, meaning they could arrive sometime between April of this year and the end of March 2024. Looking further out, Ubisoft has announced Assassin’s Creed Coename Red and Codename Hexe, which will be joined together by the new Assassin’s Creed Infinity hub, but no release window has been put on any of those projects.
