2024 was nothing short of a disaster for Ubisoft. In fact, it is no exaggeration to say that it has been a difficult few years. Ubisoft shares have fallen from their February 2021 high of €84.60 to just €12.53 at the time of writing. This is a significant decline of 85% in the stock price compared to its all-time high. To put that into perspective, if you invested $1000 into Ubisoft at its peak, you’d now only have $150 left.
So far, the current fiscal year has not been good either, with poor financial results due to games not meeting internal expectations, increased development costs, and game cancellations and delays. Years of mismanagement, overspending, and a general lack of contact with the gaming realm have left Ubisoft at a crossroads. Unfortunately, it will ultimately be the developers who suffer the consequences, and we won’t have to wait long to see how things change, as Ubisoft’s future appears to hang in the balance of just one AAA game: Assassin’s Creed Shadows.
purchase negotiation
It has been widely reported that Ubisoft is currently consulting with advisors on how to stabilize the business, and the most recent report suggests that Tencent is set to acquire the company and take it private. These talks appear to have stalled, as key terms in the negotiations centered around the Guillemot brothers’ insistence on retaining control. This is probably something Tencent wouldn’t want to agree to. Ultimately, the Guillemot brothers essentially got Ubisoft into this predicament.
For now, stopping negotiations appears to be the strategy for both sides. Tencent will continue to acquire shares and increase its stake. At the same time, the Guillemot brothers will probably want to wait until late February or early March to restart negotiations, as Ubisoft is set to release the highly anticipated Assassin’s Creed Shadows on February 14th. The failure of Assassin’s Creed Shadows gives Tencent more opportunities to increase sales. Hold your stake at a lower stock value. Conversely, a successful launch gives the Guillemot brothers more negotiating power to pursue further talks.
It seems like this move could be more advantageous for the Guillemot brothers, at least according to my sources. By all accounts from various Ubisoft sources, pre-orders for the game were high before its delay and are still going strong, but as expected, it still lags behind Assassin’s Creed Valhalla (which was released on both past- and current-gen consoles at the time). . Assassin’s Creed Shadows appears to be Ubisoft’s last major lifeline, and just because the game is a huge success doesn’t necessarily mean Ubisoft is out of trouble.
management failure hell
Ubisoft and mismanagement go hand in hand. You can’t have one without the other. Over the years, I’ve reported on numerous projects facing mismanagement issues that, taken at face value, never seem to change. In most cases, this comes down to personal friendships and family members of senior management looking out for others at the expense of thousands of frustrated developers.
Some of the most public projects that have struggled include Ubisoft’s self-proclaimed AAAA titles Skull & Bones and Beyond Good and Evil 2, the latter of which has yet to have a public release date despite being announced 16 years ago. But beyond the standout titles, the company’s mismanagement has led to numerous projects being canceled or placed in chaotic development stages with no end in sight. One notable game, codenamed Project U, recently came full circle after five years of development and its budget has expanded significantly. One developer involved in the project said he wouldn’t be surprised if the project’s size has already surpassed $100 million.
XDefiant, one of Ubisoft’s most promising free-to-play shooters, came out frankly half-baked due to industry-wide mismanagement and the fate of a self-serving upper echelon over the past decade. . After the game initially posted impressive numbers, the developers said the writing was on the wall for months and that it would eventually be shut down due to massive declines and lack of player spending. The game lost millions of dollars in development costs alone, excluding initial development costs, servers, etc. This is a cost that Ubisoft cannot afford in its current state, and cannot see a future where it can make a profit. The title speaks for itself.
Ultimately, Ubisoft’s mismanagement presents serious challenges for the company moving forward. Even though Ubisoft’s board has launched an investigation into the company’s troubles – five of whom are from the Guillemot family – no one, at least not those I’ve spoken to, believes it will lead to any change. In conversations with past and present Ubisoft employees from various positions within the company, CEO Yves Guillemot echoed similar sentiments about the other Guillemot brothers, saying it would be better for them to walk away with the ship rather than give up their positions (Skull & Bones). It was widely assumed that it was better. Even if Assassin’s Creed Shadows succeeds, it’s an obstacle the company will have to overcome somehow.
Ubisoft’s latest annual internal survey, which allows employees to provide feedback to the company somewhat anonymously (I say this because departments and studios are not anonymous), shows that employee trust in the company is incredibly low. While we don’t have exact figures for the entire company, some studios have overall company trust levels as low as 15-20% (I’m being intentionally vague here).
uncertain future
It feels somewhat inevitable that Ubisoft will undergo a major change at some point in 2025. Going private seems like a likely way forward, but that decision will undoubtedly impact thousands of developers.
Ubisoft, on the other hand, may be trying to weather the storm, especially if Assassin’s Creed Shadows succeeds the way it hopes, but the company will need to streamline the number of projects it has in the works. We need to win back the trust of our players, starting with Shadows. And you need to rebuild trust by first stopping constantly chasing trends.
Ubisoft is currently developing several major titles, including Splinter Cell Remake, Far Cry 7, Assassin’s Creed Shadows, Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Remake, Assassin’s Creed Hexe, Ghost Recon Over, and Prince of Persia, which are scheduled for release by the end of 2026. Sands of Time Remake and a few smaller projects with big IP names. There are more releases, including The Division 3, Rayman Remake, another Assassin’s Creed remake codenamed Stardust, another flagship Assassin’s Creed RPG, and Beyond Good and Evil 2 (which is currently well underway).
But on the other hand, Ubisoft continues to work on Project U, Project Scout (another Battle Royale heavily inspired by Apex Legends), Project Maverick (a Far Cry extraction-based shooter), NFT games, and a host of other titles that just about everyone can enjoy. They’re pouring money into it. Common sense tells you that you will not get a return on your investment. To be clear, I’m not saying Ubisoft should stop trying “new” ideas (the Animal Crossing-inspired ALTERRA in development at Ubisoft looks phenomenal in my opinion). However, I don’t like some projects because they are so blatantly doomed to fail. -I’m surprised that the company continues to spend hundreds of millions of dollars per year it doesn’t have on the project in hopes of becoming the next Fortnite.
Ubisoft is undoubtedly at a crossroads. But for change to be successful, it must come from the top.
What do you think will happen to Ubisoft in 2025? Let us know in the comments or join the discussion in our community forum!
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