Ubisoft Games

Game publisher Ubisoft is creating a new subsidiary company with a large investment from Tencent to focus on three massive franchises. Fresh off the release of Assassin’s Creed Shadows, which is purportedly the second-biggest launch in the franchise’s history, the company is obtaining external investment to potentially combat its prior issues before the launch of Shadows, such as layoffs, underperforming games, and a record-low stock share price, and this new subsidiary’s focus is quite narrow.

Ubisoft (via VGC) says Assassin’s Creed, Far Cry, and Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six, three of the biggest IPs owned by the company, are going to be the focus points of this new subsidiary. Tencent spent approximately $1.25 billion to buy in and have a minority stake of around 25% in the company. Ubisoft says the new subsidiary, backed by Tencent’s investment, “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.” This new subsidiary is reportedly worth $4.3 billion USD (via IGN).

What This Deal Means For Assassin’s Creed, Far Cry, And Rainbow Six

This Deal With Tencent Brings A Lot of Questions

Assassin's Creed Shadows Naoe far-cry-4-rhino-attack-screenshot-1.jpg rainbow-six-4-lockdown-3_upscayl_2x_ultramix_balanced-1.png Assassin's Creed Shadows Naoe far-cry-4-rhino-attack-screenshot-1.jpg rainbow-six-4-lockdown-3_upscayl_2x_ultramix_balanced-1.png

How exactly this new deal and subsidiary with Tencent will affect these three massive franchises isn’t clear right now, and it brings in more questions than answers. With this size of investment, it seems likely Tencent will have a noticeable amount of influence on the future of these three franchises. Ubisoft said it will “focus” on the development of its Ghost Recon and The Division franchises and grow its top-performing games.

This new subsidiary includes the teams developing the Rainbow Six, Assassin’s Creed, and Far Cry franchises based in Montréal, Quebec, Sherbrooke, Saguenay, Barcelona, and Sofia, as well as Ubisoft’s back-catalog and any new games currently under development or to be developed. So, it would seem that any current projects in development and the developers on those projects are still moving forward, but it remains to be seen if the new deal will bring additional layoffs or other major impacts to Ubisoft.

Ubisoft Is Trying To Transform After A Period Of Turmoil

Recent Success May Open The Path To Preventing Regression

Assassin's Creed Shadows key art showing Yasuke and Naoe ready for battle

Ubisoft may have had very recent success with Assassin’s Creed Shadows, but the path to get there was rocky. Star Wars Outlaws underperformed last year, which partially led to a studio closure and hundreds of layoffs in Ubisoft. The company previously stated that the delays and game cancelations were due to the company making too many games at once.

Other franchises will still continue, however, with Ubisoft saying it will continue working on other franchises besides the three major names under the subsidiary.

Trying to expand and simultaneously narrow its focus with an additional subsidiary after several blunders may be what Ubisoft needs. How exactly the new subsidiary will impact the future of Assassin’s Creed, Far Cry, and Rainbow Six remains to be seen, but hopefully, this move will put Ubisoft in a positive direction.