Vivendi taking over Ubisoft

It's looking more and more likely as Vivendi now owns 22.8% of Ubisoft and holds 20% of voting rights.

And remember, Vivendi just last month bought out Ubisoft's sister company, mobile developer Gamloft.

Remember, Activision-Blizzard bought out their own shares from Vivendi when it looked like they were trying to siphon off funds from them a few years back.

edited 19th Jul '16 12:42:03 PM by tclittle

And nothing of value was lost.

But I like Rainbow Six ;_;

Don't forget Rayman.

edited 19th Jul '16 12:58:50 PM by Bat178

I confess I've never played it.

I don't have high hopes for another Rayman game outside of yet another mobile runner, personally.

Michael Ancel (the designer) went off to his own studio. Supposedly he's still colaborating with Ubi but supposedly that's on Beyond Good and Evil 2.

edited 19th Jul '16 1:40:52 PM by Elle

I really Assassin's Creed isn't lost. I really like the series despite its flaws

So what does this mean for Ubisoft as a game developer? If Vivendi is going to make them stop making games, I'm going to be pretty disappointed since I love the Rayman series and my sister is a huge Assassin's Creed fan.

They probably won't make them stop making games - that's beyond stupid to buy a company and then remove it's core purpose.

The real concern is that they might start behaving even more like EA, Disney, and Activision - that is, primarily concerned with profit margins and sticking only to safe franchise "bets", instead of more riskier new I Ps and gameplay concepts.

Ubi is in large part that already, although they haven't tightened so much that they aren't willing to let people work on smaller arty, experimental and passion projects.

I meant in the regards that Ubi is occasionally willing to take risks on things like Child of Light or For Honor. Activision virtually never touches that stuff anymore (let alone a brand new IP), and EA will only fund it indirectly as a third party.

So? If Ubisoft stops publishing anything that isn't guaranteed-formula AAA, that just means more space for indies, Kickstarter, and Paradox Interactive.

This is the 21st century. If you can't find a publisher, then you go ahead and do it yourself.

With all of the disasters getting press, I wouldn't assume that'll stay as likely forever.

Bugger me backwards with a baseball bat! That's like Umbrella Corp. taking over Weyland Utani.

It's gonna be popcorn worthy, at least...

Kickstarter, Steam Greenlight, and similar projects are beginning to lose face due to fiascos like Mighty No 9, Star Citizen, and the tons of godawful "games" being spammed on Steam's library. Heck if anything, it's turning out to be a great argument in favor of large developers with stringent deadlines and demands; it forces the devs to plan projects realistically, and not suffer from ballooning requests or constant feature creep.

Sure, the next upcoming Co D or Assassin's Creed will very likely be by the numbers and not offer much true innovation, but at least the product will be guaranteed to have some quality polish and be complete in the traditional sense. No worries about the devs running off and giving up on the game before they're even halfway finished like Spacebase DF-9 or Towns.

"Complete in the traditional sense"

Street Fighter V says hello.

And possibly Metal Gear Solid V... or not. I dunno, still confused as to whether Kojima deliberately left it incomplete or not.

Well, hard to say exactly how this will work out.

And good luck getting Activision, EA, Ubisoft or any other big Western 3rd Party to make a cartoony game nowadays (Activision has Skylanders, but it has been pretty much milked to death and sales have been declining). Pretty much the only one who still does is Insomniac.

Well Skylanders sales will probably pick back up with the demise of Disney Infinity.

What's your source for the sales of Skylanders declining though? All figures point out to the entire Toys to Life industry getting better sales every year.

Also, Cuphead is about to come out for Xbox 1 and PC..

No Vivendi people are getting in the Ubisoft board of directors in the meantime.

Reuters: Vivendi to takeover Ubisoft in part to increase it's gaming and advertising marketshare.

Only thing I like from Ubisoft is Rocksmith 2014 Edition. As long as nothing is actually affected I'm fine with it.

edited 25th Apr '17 3:58:11 PM by Halberdier17

Ubisoft is a huge name in the gaming industry with dozens of big name franchises under their brand, there's no way this won't have an impact.

Plus I don't recall much positive news from when Vivendi was originally in the videogame business directly, nor any memorable titles. And for all their faults I'd rather Ubisoft make their own decisions and mistakes rather than have some higher up screw them over for financial reasons.