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Ryuu96 12 hours ago
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Chazore said:
Ryuu96 said:

Agreed Tbh.

Like I said in my post earlier though, I don't think it will be an easy acquisition for Tencent, FTC is lot more aggressive nowadays, France is talking heavily about having to protect Europe from America/China or else they'll be left behind in competitive markets and America already did a security probe on Tencent for acquiring frigging Sumo Group, Lol.

Guess we'll see what the structure of the deal will be if there is one, then it'll be easier to make a guess on what may happen, or heck it might not be Tencent but some other company, though I can't see who other than some shady private equity firm, Lol. There's not many who will want to take on 20,000 employees in one swoop.

I know Yves is going to protest it to the death (like he's done so in the past, French family and all that jazz). Tencent will need more than just money though. They'll need leverage to make the buyout worth it somehow, and I honestly don't see that working, besides them going "hey we own Riot"?.

Tencent doesn't exactly scream premium creme de la creme gaming products (maybe in China but not much in the West that makes them stand out like MS/Sony/Nintendo). 

Who knows, maybe MS might be spurred to swoop in, I mean they've gone for Activision/Blizz and Beth after all. It's just scary to think that we'll eventually approach that future where we have megacorps that own the slightly big fish, leaving just the minnows in the lake. 

Microsoft legally isn't allowed to even try to acquire Ubisoft until at least 2033 due to their divestment of Activision-Blizzard cloud licenses to Ubisoft so there's no point in speculating in that one, haha. Even if they could, I'd hope FTC/CMA/EC would come down on them like a ton of bricks and block it in an instant, I'm a big Xbox fan but fuck them, they'd probably lay off 10,000...Lol.

Ain't zero chance Sony goes for it either, they aren't going to want to take on 20,000 employees. Even Activision-Blizzard was "only" around 10k when Microsoft first made the deal to acquire them, they ballooned to about 15k during the legal battles, Lol. Can rule out the other 3rd party publishers as well doing a merger, I reckon, anyone acquiring Ubisoft is going to do massive layoffs.

Unfortunate Yves and Tencent seem to have a good relationship, Tencent owns around 10% and Guillemot Family around 15% but Tencent also owns 49% in Guillemot Brothers Ltd. Over the years, it has been pretty obvious that Yves has been working with Tencent to ensure that both Ubisoft remains independent but his family also remains a top shareholder.

They made these moves to prevent another Vivendi situation (hostile takeover) but may end up selling to Tencent anyway, Lol. I think Yves may go for Tencent owning the company if his family still is allowed a significant stake and leadership role. Not sure if that's enticing to Tencent though, Tencent tends to stay hands off but Ubisoft is mismanaged.

Last edited by Ryuu96 - 12 hours ago